Trunks's Q and A for the Area52/updates

[MrBear]

Well they were talking about just removing Ren from the picture and open the project to the community to speed up the whole process. Basically they have the story done, and they're working on the characters but they cant do any animations until they know what type of engine they will use. Thats where Ren is missing.

[trunks2585]

Ren is the problem, and to a lesser degree Ptoon-t as well (he's been offline since sunday, maybe having connection issues i dunno. And we still don't have a finished krystal model, hence me hoping katsu will come through for us and that ron will get us some good backgrounds). the biggest problem is this is Ren's forum, he can easily pull the plug and fuck everyone over if he wants to go that route. He'd also be a massive dick if he did. the better option would be, if he stops giving a shit about this, to just host the forums, make everything in development public, and give the community a place to gather and work together, besides pawsru.

[MrBear]

To be honest I dont think Ren would pull the plug on the whole project. He seems like a very nice guy but also very independent, which is probably why he doesnt want to share what the engine looks like. No clue why Ptoon-t would be offline, maybe hes working on the models all day? Lol lets just hope so . Ron looks like hes help the team a load since so far, he can good great backgrounds, in a few hours.

[Cetera]

Agreed, I think Ren doesn't want to get too many people involved at such an early stage of development and by creating the engine solely he knows nothing can stall or corrupt the overall process.

Apologies, i'm not so familiar with flash- is there anyway to post the current core-files and then establish a connection between the engine afterwards?

Luckilly there are many other creative artists covering their own developments and spin-offs of LoK which is definitely keeping me going for the time being !

[Anonymous]

well.theres an ending???
and why hasnt there been any scraps any more

[Reaver]

Katsuis doing a lot of work too and his models are really good. Is he going to become a member of LOK?

[trunks2585]

yes there will be an ending, however it'll probably be quite a few releases before we get to the very end. there havn't been any more scraps to post because there arn't any more scraps to post.

Consider Katsu on the team, even though me and ebonizza don't have the power to make it 'official' but who gives a shit about that? not like we're using the developer's board anymore by this point anyways.

[ronpepper]

I see my name being mentioned. In a good way. All I can say is, let's make this happen and keep doing what we're doing.

About the hosting and fears that the plug is pulled. We could put out a new game which could get picked up by funny-games and it could have the url for a new hosted site up just like 0.2 had for this one. (dunno who is gonna pony up the hosting, but in theory anyway). Also others who are active artists on deviant or whatnot could help pull the community back together when the fan base there goes looking for them and trying to find out why the site is gone. In that way the community would slowly build back again. But the hosting here is magnificent and much appreciated.

Also Katsu's hard work is awesome, always look forward to his latest outfits now that the model question is settled.

[trunks2585]

if all else fails, we can fall back on pawsru.org where this community started at. but I don't see that being a problem, even with ren's silent treatment he's keeping the forums up.

[Reaver]

do u think he might pull the plug and sell the game

[trunks2585]

not a chance in hell he'd sell it, pulling the plug, maybe but i doubt it.

[NeerHeer]

I leave for a few months and EVERYONE is trying to kill EVERYONE ELSE...

Look, I've been on an off for a while, always waiting for 0.3 to come out. But to be honest, I don't want to have to settle for some open-source last-ditch attempt to get 'er done quick, and I don't want to see the team break up. When the game comes out, it wouldn't be the same without Renara's name on it, just like it wouldn't be the same without Trunks or Playshapes or all of the other people who have contributed. Now I'm sure we can go over this, locate a problem and find a solution to it.


Trunks, the issue is that from your point of view, Renara seems to be slacking off or being too ambitiouss, thus preventing the story and animations from being shown. Correct? I think everyone can agree that that must be fucking annoying.

Renara, your side of the story is that you are doing a massive amount of work. You admit that it may be more than you need to do, but you feel that given the total scope of the project, the time that has passed isn't unreasonable, although it is disappointing that so much time has gone by without a product you feel you can show. Yes?

Renara's unwillingness to show code is understandable, the potential for theft of said code is especially great. But even aside from that some people just hate having to display their work before it is finished. On the other hand, Trunks' frustration is also understandable. Without being shown concrete evidence of progress, he has nothing with which to assuage his nagging fears that Renara has effectually given up on the project, and all the work he and the others have done will be for naught.

I think we may be able to settle this in a mutally satisfactory way...
Renara, you mentioned that there are likely thousands of bugs in your faux-3d physics engine (understandable, given the legendary complexities of such a project). Trunks wants you to release some of your work so he and the others can relax, secure in the knowledge that this IS going to happen. You also have a huge fanbase that is interested both in seeing progress, but also in creating fan work. What if you released what you have gotten so far on that engine? Fans could use it for their own projects, bugtesting it in the process and shaving time off the eventual release date, and Trunks' thirst for insider knowledge would be somewhat slated.



Or not, I mean, the fuck do I know, I probably have 5 posts total on this forum...

[Reaver]

i think that about hits it on the bat and flys it out of the park so i gathered

[Darek]

Haven't read this thread for a while now though I've been checking the forums almost daily for new community creatives.
Disappointed at Ren's lack of openness on the coding front, but at the same time I can understand.
I can see it both ways on the depth of the game engine as well - if you guys release a sub-optimal engine with only a few slight improvements on v0.2 than you will eventually have to work on getting a better engine for future updates/projects, and given the sub-optimal nature of the coding you did before you might have to end up redoing everything anyway. Might as well get it right from the start.

Having a highly flexible engine will also help the creative community as it will make contributions to side-projects or even the main project a lot easier once the engine is complete (rather than a half-finished, sub-optimal one). Just look at the Starcraft II Galaxy Editor (where hundreds of games/maps have already been made by the community). Understandably the engine you guys will (I assume) be no where near as advanced, but the idea still holds - a more flexible engine will allow for more avenues for the community to contribute to.
Sort of like a system of roads. If you had no roads, people could go anywhere...but they wouldn't know where to go, where to start, which direction to start, or where to end.
Give them a collection of roads and now they have multiple directions with chosen destinations to go through - now the community has an idea of where they can contribute, and what sort of edits they could make, and for what result. (hope all that makes sense).

I personally don't mind too much that we haven't been given a whole lot of things to play with from the official v0.3 project. I joined last year February or so and I haven't died yet even though it has been a year. I have been constantly fed by the growing creative community and have even been spurred on by the amazing works-in-progress here in the community, starting up my own ideas for a LoK-inspired game and slowly reading up on Flash tutorials.
The fact that there are still people (and a growing number of them) contributing their own fan projects on these forums just shows not only how resilient the community is but also how amazing and inspiring LoK and the official team has been.
Understandably snippets of the official v0.3 progress would drive the community further; but that will be a decision for the official team based on the resources you have, whether there are actually anything to show, and the situation.

Personally I also agree to a name change - v0.3 simply doesn't do any justice to the official team, especially since you are creating an entirely new engine, with new models and backgrounds/etc. "LoK v0.3" should be something the community comes up with using the original engine. For the official team's project, it should be much more grandiose a title that is well-deserved for the effort you are all placing into the project. You want to make sure people can properly differentiate between the original LoK engine and designs, and that of the current LoK team.

In any case, keep up the amazing work. It truly is amazing how this community has grown since the time I joined it, and no doubt Playshapes must be amazed that his solo project could become something so large.

[trunks2585]

Ok a few points to address.

Behind the scenes ren has told us at least 3 times he'd get us a demo, he never did. The first two times were suppose to be a basic demo of how the game would work i think, new ways to walk, not just left and right but jumping, walking into or out of the background, i have no idea what else he planned to throw together for it.

The last demo he was suppose to give us was the combat system that he was 'so sure we would love if we could just see it' to which i agreed we needed to see it to judge if it was worth using or not. He said he'd make the demo, this was back in december, ebonizza messaged him and set up a deadline for i think it was january 5th. Ren himself said, not only that he could have it done by then, but that was more than enough time. ....so why the fuck don't we have a demo? I can understand not having the full engine, but when Ren can't even get a short demo of combat/leveling in on time, he looses all credibility.

Also if you check statistics, ren hasn't been on the forums since the 11th of last month. Yeah he's abandoned this project, sorry NeerHeer, but Ren's name won't be on what we release. And as for this being open source, in my opinion this project was always meant to be open source, that's why we've had spinoffs of it and whatnot. Hell these spinoffs are what's kept Derek interested as he said, watching the community projects and starting on his own version.

[Anonymous]

when 0.3 is done is it going on NG

[trunks2585]

As far as i know.

[Akir94]

i think kicking renara is a bit extreme trunks. if you kick renara from the project he started on his site, he's gonna kick us from this forum. i hope you have a backup plan...
but i do think it's the right choice. the guy was stalling the game for months already, and what's the point in making a community project if he's afraid of it being used by other people?

[Anonymous]

question is the zelda and mario part like in 2 going to be in 3??? just wondering

[trunks2585]

the current zelda part, yes, mario is gonna be put off till we properly develop that area, and i doubt you'll control peach for most of the mario area, the zelda scene shouldn't change, or at least not much, I think we'll be adding stuff to the end of the scene though.