I was off for 3 months...

[Blade]

I was about to write this at the end of December, but felt that it is really not my business to criticize you, so I pressed the cancel button. I really like you, but I should have done it, for your sake.

I went away for 3 months, came back, updated, played an hour. Reported 6 bugs during that time.

I see new things, I see many changes I like, I don't see any I dislike. Good.

However, what I see is that the game is still not ready for beta yet. IF you really want to make a good game, a game that is considerably better than the original Xenonauts, that is.

My point is - why is the community doing the manual testing? If I can find 6 bugs in an hour, a professional tester would find about 18. 8 hours that is around 100... OK, let's say 60. By the time you're releasing, our job is just to give feedback on the features!

We gave you almost 4 times the money you asked for - maybe you should spend some of the extra on some extra staff? QAs are generally easy to get. The rule of thumb we use is 1 QA per 2 devs. If we are at it, it wouldn't be too late to hire a professional UX specialist - they're expensive, but you only need one. UX, not UI designer - I don't mind if the graphic sucks, but when the controls are annoying, I get frustrated.

Look at Harebrained. hey made the Shadowrun series on tablets. Good, but not that better than the oldie-but-goodie CRPG games like Planescape:Torment. An "A" game in my book. Now they have made the Battletech game on PC. (Seems they got a package deal from FASA.) It is so much better technologically I can't express. It is still not there - it is an "AA" game, not an "AAA".

Your case - Xenonauts was an "A" game. If you want to get an "AA" game for Xenonauts 2, you need to change the way you're making it. You will need to grow a little, and that comes with growth pains. But if you don't take that pain, you'll have just another Xenonauts with slightly different mechanics and a slightly better 3D engine. If you're fine with that, then just ignore me - but beware, people will be disappointed.

[Chris]

Well, I'm glad at least that you think the changes we've made so far are good. But the problem we face is neatly explained by this classic project management image:

We don't have very much money compared to the companies you're comparing us to, and therefore we have to hire less people and work slowly. Sure, raising $200k on Kickstarter is great but one decent programmer for one year and the associated desk rent and computer and payroll taxes and software licenses will absorb like $60-70k of that, so it's not like that money goes far. The budget for the game is much higher than the money we raised on Kickstarter but making a game this complicated requires a lot of coding and a lot of artwork.

Sure, we could hire three cheap QA guys rather than rely on the community to provide bug support for us - but we could also spend that money on hiring an extra coder, and I'd rather do that because the coding work is absolutely required to get the game done. It's also not like QA is the bottleneck for us - we already know about a lot of bugs in the game, they're just not a priority to fix them because there are more important things for the coders to be working on if we want to getting the game ready for beta. So more QA people wouldn't address your issue. I can see the argument for a UX designer, but not until the game is properly playable.

The comparison you make with Harebrained games is actually quite telling - Harebrained are great, but the gulf in funding between our companies is so big that I feel like you're holding us to an impossible standard. That "A" game they produced, Shadowrun Returns, raised $1.8m on Kickstarter before development even began (and I'm sure it made a hell of a lot on release too). Battletech raised $2.8m on Kickstarter and then they signed a publishing deal with Paradox halfway through development ... so their budgets are FAR higher than ours, and unfortunately in many respects Xenonauts 2 is actually a more complicated game than Battletech.

That said, I can certainly see why progress on this project feels slow and I don't really blame you for getting a bit frustrated about it.

Part of it is simply because we're a small team and making a big game takes a long time, but I suspect the fact that we're missing a lot of "gameplay" content also contributes a lot. For instance there's a lot of re-used weapon art from the first Xenonauts, and there's no real research text yet, the research tree and bigger UFOs aren't in build V3, etc. I think that stuff makes it feel like development of the actual "game" hasn't really started yet, which is slightly misleading but a natural human reaction to the game we've put in front of you.

Truth is I've been holding off as long as possible on that stuff because I want to know what the final shape of the game is before I start spending money on the final art, but it is now starting to work through the pipeline. I think when that starts to arrive you'll feel a lot better about the game.

[Blade]

Yeah, I see your point - thank you for considering my thoughts seriously.

Just as a background: I work as an agility coach, so I criticize people for a living. OK, that's not all to the job.

I am very well aware of the iron triangle of project management, and it doesn't look like that - no one, ever wants to get bad quality software as a result. (How it turns out... is another matter.)

But yeah, basically budget (and in a smaller scale time) will determine the scope.

Actually, I am not frustrated or angry about the progress. I am a bit sad that you haven't aimed higher. It is clear to me know that you never had the money to build something different - maybe you could have collected some more, but not sure if that much more. That means the players will get a Xenonauts 2.0 at the end, not a Xenonauts II. That is fine in my book, even if I was expecting more.

As a professional, I see that you have grossly underestimated the time and money needed for even the intended scope. Actually, it is a human thing, we suck at estimating. What I can suggest is to cut the scope. Cut it to the bare minimum you can release (minimum marketable product), and add whatever you're still planning (and get money for) add later, in priority order. Maybe you can also release paid DLCs. I hate those, but this case I would understand, and gladly pay more, as I know it is not milking, I get actual value for the extra money, not just a weapon skin or a map texture pack. (I have a problem or two with HBS as well... no way I think they're the greatest. Also, look at Fallout 76, what a shame from the creators of Fallout 4! But that's really another league.)

Your true power is that you are not only the developers, but the owners of this game. It is your child. "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch." - now this is what is making some indie games so great. I work with people who are totally unmotivated because they don't even see their product used in production, let alone use it.

As for using the community to test - I have mixed feelings. True, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.". But I will only use (play) your product and report (or even fix!) bugs for you as long as it is enjoyable. Now the first version I tested was limited to 5 days of game time. The current version is way better, but it hung after 1 hour in a base mission, and as there are no mission saves, I didn't feel like re-starting it. I am fine doing it again with the next version. It that is enough for you, I am fine with it.

[Dagar]

Personally, I think Xeno 2 will be a mild upgrade to Xeno 1. All I really hope for at this point is that the mod tools are really good and easy, and that the vanilla game is engaging enough so that it attracts enough people so that there is a decent mod base fairly quickly.

As a computer scientist, the thought of how to make my software highly adaptable for people without programming skills is pretty unnerving. Just think of having to code the editor for TES 3: Morrowind ...

Edited April 5, 2019 by Dagar
Confusing spelling mistake

[Chris]

5 hours ago, Blade said:

Yeah, I see your point - thank you for considering my thoughts seriously.

Just as a background: I work as an agility coach, so I criticize people for a living. OK, that's not all to the job.

Indeed, well I'm glad you're not criticizing from a position of ignorance then. Our plan is already to do what you're saying; get the core parts of the game ready for early access and then start considering all the little improvements and bugfixes and so forth. Bear in mind also that the lack of upgrades is partially because it's impossible to know what a good gameplay idea is in a game primarily based around complexity until you can test it (plenty of my ideas that seemed good on paper turned out not to be so good in practice), and you can only test them when you've already got the framework of a game in place. So in a lot of ways it makes sense to play it safe at this stage of the project.

I'm actually looking forward to getting out of the stage where we're just trying to get a basically functioning X-Com game as much as anyone is. That's the bit where my job actually becomes fun. As you say, it's definitely taking much longer than I'd hoped or expected, but I wouldn't write the game off too much based on what you see at the moment. The big draw of an X-Com game is the interconnections between all the core mechanics, and once that's complete big gameplay changes can often actually be added with relatively minor amounts of work. 

[Blade]

7 hours ago, Dagar said:

As a computer scientist, the thought of how to make my software highly adaptable people without programming skills is pretty unnerving. Just think of having to code the editor for TES 3: Morrowind ...

English, please. I have a feeling that you're assuming something, so you're trying to insult me, but don't have the balls to write it down straight - but your sentence just doesn't add up.

[Charon]

5 hours ago, Blade said:

English, please. I have a feeling that you're assuming something, so you're trying to insult me, but don't have the balls to write it down straight - but your sentence just doesn't add up.

There is only a for missing.

Quote

As a computer scientist, the thought of how to make my software highly adaptable for people without programming skills is pretty unnerving. Just think of having to code the editor for TES 3: Morrowind ...

And Dagar is simply stating the discrepancy of high end intellectual programmers who really know they will use all of the detailed functionality of the program and the inevitable sacrifices on the altar of accessibility for the end users who cant differentiate between a bit and a byte.

His words also express sympathy towards Chris and the valiant effort he has to make to let his ingenius programmers think on how to make the modding part of the game as open as possible, and the effort which is connected with that.

Dagar also implies that at one point in his life he worked on an editor for TES: Morrowind, and that he knows what it means to work on an editor for a game program.

His words were not addressed to you in the slightest.

 

Looks like plain english to me, not sure how anybody would have problems understanding it.

Edited April 5, 2019 by Charon

[Blade]

4 hours ago, Chris said:

Indeed, well I'm glad you're not criticizing from a position of ignorance then. Our plan is already to do what you're saying; get the core parts of the game ready for early access and then start considering all the little improvements and bugfixes and so forth. Bear in mind also that the lack of upgrades is partially because it's impossible to know what a good gameplay idea is in a game primarily based around complexity until you can test it (plenty of my ideas that seemed good on paper turned out not to be so good in practice), and you can only test them when you've already got the framework of a game in place. So in a lot of ways it makes sense to play it safe at this stage of the project. 

I'm actually looking forward to getting out of the stage where we're just trying to get a basically functioning X-Com game as much as anyone is. That's the bit where my job actually becomes fun. As you say, it's definitely taking much longer than I'd hoped or expected, but I wouldn't write the game off too much based on what you see at the moment. The big draw of an X-Com game is the interconnections between all the core mechanics, and once that's complete big gameplay changes can often actually be added with relatively minor amounts of work.  

What I was trying to say is try managing scope when you're late. People won't mind too much if they don't get the Kickstarter stuff, or there is no Xenopedia in the game - but many will be if you only release it in 2021, or if it is crashing every 15 minutes. I still remember poor Arcanum - it is a fairly complex RPG, very complex dialog system, huge map, nice story, tons of unique quests - but it was so bugged when it came out that we just couldn't play it. Bad UX too. I played it years later - bugs were mostly fixed, and actually it was a good game!

[Blade]

47 minutes ago, Charon said:

s a computer scientist, the thought of how to make my software highly adaptable for people without programming skills is pretty unnerving.

Ah, now I understand. Thank you for the clarification, good sir!

[Dagar]

2 hours ago, Blade said:

English, please. I have a feeling that you're assuming something, so you're trying to insult me, but don't have the balls to write it down straight - but your sentence just doesn't add up. 

Nope, no insult intended. Just said mistake.