Valiance Online Dev Goes Crazy, Posts Public AMA

Started by Chance-VO, August 23, 2014, 03:02:44 PM

Alpha Series

Well, I just wanna thank Chance and all you heroes at VO for giving us all (and especially me) a big info resource on the VO front! I've been totally curious as to what has been transpiring in Valiance land and this thread has been a real kick in the pants! I look forward to experiencing some of this world! Thank you again!
"You've started an interstellar war!" "No, I didn't start it. But I'm liable to finish it."

Chance-VO

Quote from: Alpha Series on August 31, 2014, 02:01:48 AM
Well, I just wanna thank Chance and all you heroes at VO for giving us all (and especially me) a big info resource on the VO front! I've been totally curious as to what has been transpiring in Valiance land and this thread has been a real kick in the pants! I look forward to experiencing some of this world! Thank you again!

You're welcome :) I still pop in from time to time (when I have the time). There are big things afoot though and the next two weeks are going to be very exciting for the team.  8)

Hyperstrike

Quote from: Dr. Bad Guy on August 23, 2014, 11:40:27 PM
If you are stuck with a single core I would cram as much ram in as I could, swap in a ssd and get at least a 500 series Nvidia card(can't speak to ATI cards, never used one)

More RAM isn't going to help much.

Currently Unity is 32-bit only.  So it's only going to use about 1.5-1.7 GB of memory before it gets unstable.

Chance-VO

Since I know not everyone has/wants Facebook, I'll go ahead and repost this here to answer the question of "What now with the CoH news?" :)

First of all I would like to begin by saying thank you to Nate Downes and his team for their efforts on behalf of the community in attempting to return City of Heroes to its players. It's been two years in coming and it looks like they are moving closer all the time. Really it is incredible work and we at team Valiance respect the effort quite a bit. We know many of you are looking forward to 'going home' again.

That said, I must say as design director, team Valiance has done amazing work of their own. Lore stretching for almost two-hundred years has been created by our outstanding writing team and we look forward to letting players not only explore it completely, but to make their marks in history as well. The coding that our tech department has been working on and is continuing to put forth has been incredible and gives us access to the sorts of options that we used to only dream of. Our systems are thorough, well thought-out, rock solid and will give our players all new options to interact with one another and the world. Our art team has been consistently putting forth amazing art that not only looks good on paper but can be transferred near directly into the 3D space to create that epic comic look to go with the epic feel created by our systems.

We love and respect and indeed even miss our City of Heroes as much as every one of you. It was put forth that Nate Downes' holding company, once they acquired the IP, would be glad to license the rights out to competing games, including our own. At first, the offer was tempting, to be able to directly point at our game and say "Look! We are a part of this greater world!" However, respectfully we will have to decline the offer.

Our team has put in two years' worth of effort to get the game into its current state. If we were to now turn around and say "Alright guys, you need to rewrite it to include these references and these powers, etc" it would not only be unfair, it would be terribly detrimental. It would be a statement that says we do not believe in our own work. We do.

We have no intention of 'turning the boat' around now, we are going to push forward with our designs, our systems, our writing, our art and hope that you all will understand why we proudly stand behind our work and are glad to call ourselves a true spiritual successor. We love and will never forget our old City, but we are moving forward to bring you the best experience that we can, one unburdened by the limitations of former systems, free from the demagoguery of another company who decides what we can and cannot do. No one can make that call of us except for you, the community. You are our guidepost in this adventure and we sincerely hope you will choose to come along for what will be one hell of a ride.

Nathaneal "Chance" Vogeding
-Design Director

Kaos Arcanna

I think you made the right decision. You've worked hard to create your own world and you've gone too far to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and given that your game takes place in the future it would have been hard to place it within the COX framework.


Chance-VO

Quote from: Kaos Arcanna on September 04, 2014, 02:01:44 AM
I think you made the right decision. You've worked hard to create your own world and you've gone too far to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and given that your game takes place in the future it would have been hard to place it within the COX framework.

Indeed, in our case it just didn't seem feasible. We're glad that so many have been understanding and supportive of the decision.   8)

downix

Quote from: Chance-VO on September 04, 2014, 06:33:45 AM
Indeed, in our case it just didn't seem feasible. We're glad that so many have been understanding and supportive of the decision.   8)
Do what is right for your project. Plus can be readdressed in the future as well.

Samurai Cowgirl

#67
Quote from: Chance-VO on September 04, 2014, 06:33:45 AM
Indeed, in our case it just didn't seem feasible. We're glad that so many have been understanding and supportive of the decision.   8)

Yeh, I can see where you going here, added to that all the dangers of external licenses.
Anyways .. Looking forward to seeing how the game looks since the little visit I got in on pre-pre open pre-alpha day. Good Luck

If your still answering questions (and it could be a bit premature for 100% answer .. but definably not to early for the devs to think about .. and I could have missed the answer too)

What kind of pay system are you thinking.. Subs Only/Hybrid/Pay-Per-Expansion .. Cash-Vanity Shop .. Earnable Cash Systems?
Always be Stylin!

Chance-VO

Quote from: Samurai Cowgirl on September 06, 2014, 12:02:32 AM
What kind of pay system are you thinking.. Subs Only/Hybrid/Pay-Per-Expansion .. Cash-Vanity Shop .. Earnable Cash Systems?

We're looking at a hybrid system of subscription/f2p. I can't go into much more detail on it at the moment though.

Hyperstrike

Quote from: Chance-VO on September 07, 2014, 01:59:47 AM
We're looking at a hybrid system of subscription/f2p. I can't go into much more detail on it at the moment though.

Not sure if you've seen this article:  http://martiancraft.com/blog/2014/08/an-unreal-decision/

Have you encountered similar issues in your development cycle with Unity (bumping into the limits of the 32-bit engine, cross-platform being either painful or expensive to deal with, etc).