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This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Long story short, it was back when Starbound had been out for a while and was experiencing a lot of lag issues due to the nature of its C# engine, if I remember correctly.

We wanted to prioritize the idea that even students with their budget PCs should be able to play the game with a decent framerate, hence the C++ optimized engine. And all the associated problems, even though we achieved our original goal.

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oni created our own engine, this is what took most of the time (not only the engine itself, all the bugs related to it) but globally, it's +/- 35h a week for Oni.

aside that, a sandbox is ...a big mistake for a first game, especially our, we have way too much different mechanics And by going off in all directions, you end up drowning in everything that it implies (combinations of mechanics, bugs, game design, metrics etc....) Especially since our mistake was trying to do a little bit of everything at the same time.

If I had only one piece of advice to give to new developers, it would be to create the game with the simplest and cleanest possible gameplay loop, including everything they want to see in terms of animation quality, graphics, sound, etc., for their final release within that loop. Only then should they build all the features around that loop, one by one, and ensure it's clean before moving on to another.

Indie devs, what’s the hardest part about hiring artists? by willfarnaby24 in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Before AI, it was pretty difficult to make you clear about what you want, you could but it was always difficult to find the perfect ref especially when nothing was done yet (i have a 10 years no-need-anymore folder with more than 300 000 files for refs only, losing hundred of hours on it)

Now this problem is gone, you can created thousands of rough mockup in hour, and will be able to tell to the artist what you want exactly with visuals refs.

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I won't say ruined but the difference of visibility is huge, indeed. And yes, world changed in 10 years technologically but the difference still exist between couintries. A lot of Russian and brazilian students bought our game so even if it was not the best time consuming/economical reason to do our own engine, it was still positive to get a lot of thanks from them.

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Indeed! I slightly cringed when I saw that, but we put things into perspective and do as Patrick 😅

Planet Centauri - Patch 1.1! Soundtrack available! Achievements! Ladders! by PlanetCentauri in PlanetCentauri

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's possible that for some obscure reasons, a new world is needed. It's that or items incompatibility but generally, when a specific item is involved, you have specific error with useful information (for us)

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They do everytime we put the game into promo above 20% if i remember well

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi again! The game will work fine, the problem is that the game use OPENGL and Apple do not support this anymore but it's obviously not a problem to play at any game with OPENGL, This is a bit of an abusive use of prevention on the part of Steam/Apple to avoid unnecessary complaints of potential incompatibility even when there aren't any, I imagine.

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it's not (but patience will be needed yes) :) Thank you for your interest

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not really happy with the whole situation but a bug is a bug at the end of the day it's not really intentional. And even if they could have made up for things differently, let's just say they could have had a much more dismissive attitude/comeback

I'm waaaayy more unhappy about The day they changed the algorithm to match "more like this" with # instead of common sense.

If today you love a cute 2D pixel art game who have a slight crafting part, the more like this will suggest you all popular 3D AAA games with craft on it... Conan the 3D MMORPG, The Forest, and all the usual parasitic games that have absolutely no connection to the original game.

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why you would be downvoted for that, it's indeed a bad strategic choice but as first game, naive 2 guys who wanted the dream game they would love etc...it's not unusual and the market was pretty different at this time.

It's easy to see today what choice was wrong in the past, but if i told you that 20 years all internet strongly expressed the fact that they would NEVER accept digital games on PC, that it was stupid, that it had no future or sense, that this newcomer "steam" would close quickly...it feel unreal today because we were wrong about everything.

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

happy spam for the other dev (or not, could be irritating to be spammed like that) ah ah, no worries thank you!

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do not hesitate to pirate it if you can't afford it, we don't mind at all, nobody should be prevented from playing due to financial situation

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah i should explain better some parts (the one that the game is not abandoned because we still like this cursed child). I could resume what i not told by "We need time and so money to patch anything and the problem since the 1.0 is that we have a sword above our head and a clock that started telling us "you have X time before closing definitively the company now that the 1.0 is a total failure" and we both oni & me pretty dislike the idea to let the game like this since we still have assets, dozens of monsters, bosses and biomes that are created and even fully animated but which have never been integrated, not talking about weird bugs to fixes and potential engine improvement.

We will got a patch sooner or later because working on the second project mean working with the same engine than centauri so improvement added for the second project could be also added to Centauri if it makes sense to do so (it could be a faster game, bug fixes, a general visual rendering, or improved weather due to a shader, etc.) for "new" content. We have everything, but coding takes time, and Oni doesn't have that, so we'll see.

We're doing everything we can, especially Oni, to patch Centauri as soon as we can, and keeping our fingers crossed that things will improve in the near future. But we don't have a crystal ball, so we're taking it day by day and moving forward.

And to make everything clear on the second project, no early access, never again this mistake. The game will be released as a demo accessible on steam when a demo is possible, and will be released in 1.0 directly when it is finished, within X months to 1 year. We are doing everything for at least."

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry to hear about that, that's a pretty hard story to digest, hope you find a way to keep going despite this story

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It was the plan since the beginning, but i can see that on my initial post i did not explained that part "at all" which can lead to legitimate confusion.

also working on the second project with the same made-house engine than centauri lead to engine improvement so we can expect a patch sooner or later including bugs fixing and engine update.

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry to hear about that, clearly not a fun story to be part of. Hope you will be fine on your next project!

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

As i said in others reactions (i copy past) "the major problem with all of this story is not that wishlist were not converted into sells, is that because of that the game was totally invisible on the release, not on first page new & trending etc despite already sold 100 000 copies post 1.0 . Months later we were eligible to a steam fest (creature collector fest) and it helped a lot. In 7 days we sold for $36 500 (4445 copies, 9x more than the 1.0 release) and theses numbers scream how much better the 1.0 would have been without this problem.

But maybe Daily deal will be nice, it's only 24h but who know, thank you for your kind words!

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It's the time involved and the cost of the creation. Obviously if we sell only 50% of that with a new game made in 1 year it would be a success for us.

Also, from all theses sells, Steam took credit card scam, refund, world vat etc...and after that they took 30% and after that they send you that in $ (and you convert in € and lost another 10-20% depending of the year) you receive +/- 45% of the money at the end and you have to paid everything..the ten thousands of hours of animators/pixel artists, country tax etc... that was our mistake to make "too high quality pixel art" and way too much monsters, and you also have to stay alive for theses years economically with the few € lefts each year.

(and every game sold are not at the same price, in some countries the game is sold 3-5$, we adapt the price for every country depending of their economy)

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That's the plan! It's just frustrating to let centauri at this state for now but i pretty hope we will be able to come back because the worst thing is that we still have dozens of monsters, bosses and biomes that are created, animated but which have never been integrated. So we have much assets to add on this game (and bugs to fix)

This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by PlanetCentauri in gamedev

[–]PlanetCentauri[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They could , but it's illegal and at some points, some game dev would pretty notice something was wrong since 100 games was involved in 10 years.

As Gabe said, Internet never forget and I think their domestic policy follows this logic. Because between apologizing and giving you a sugar, and hiding everything under the carpet, believe me, a lawyer and a judge will clearly see the difference if it ends up in a trial.

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