
Planets³, an Open-World Voxel-Based rpg - nzonbi
http://thepicrain.com/planets%C2%B3-an-open-world-voxel-based-rpg/
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rdl
This looks pretty cool as an idea.

The pseudonyms and cartoons for all the developers is somewhat concerning, as
a naturally suspicious person. I've been happy when I funded game projects by
known successful teams (UberEnt, Garriott), but I'd be reluctant to fund
someone who didn't have a track record or a real identity.

(I just noticed if you dig into their FB page and such, you see stills from
French TV interviews they did, so it's a bit less concerning, but still bad
marketing IMO.)

~~~
pekk
If you are only happy to fund celebrities, then what advantage do they have to
show more pictures of their non-celebrity selves?

~~~
eropple
You are conflating "celebrity" and "somebody who is likely to deliver and not
waste your backing money." As someone doing a Kickstarter fairly soon, this is
an issue I'm working to alleviate, but not with cute pseudonyms.

I mean, WTF is this (from their Kickstarter page):

    
    
       Why should you trust us? The fate of our company and
       its team depends on the success of this game.
    

Well, _of course_ , but that doesn't do anything to substantiate why they
should trust the project owners. The project owners might be complete idiots
laying their company on the line for something they can't do, what reason has
been given to think they can _do_ it?

Betting on people with a track record or demonstrable ability to finish a game
is only smart.

~~~
pekk
I'm not conflating those things.

You don't have to be Richard Garriott to be credible. Why even mention the
guy? The only way you can be him is if you have decades of published games,
it's not useful advice for people who are relatively unknown.

~~~
eropple
You don't have to be Garriott to be credible, but he _is_ credible. Because he
has a track record. If they do have a track record of building quality
projects (and they say they do), they aren't substantiating it. See the
problem?

I don't have a shipped-product track record, so I'm going to have a playable
vertical slice--not a complete game, not narrative-based, but a demonstration
that our features are _already working_ , that our game isn't just hype, and
what we need a Kickstarter for is assets and content creation. Because I
understand people do _and should_ laugh at projects that handwave this stuff.

~~~
cscurmudgeon
Echo this 100%. I am in the same boat. Anybody can put up pretty pictures. If
the project fails, it brings disrepute to the whole indie gamedev community.
Life is already too hard.

~~~
Tloewald
Life is incredibly easy for indie game devs today. There are markets; it's
reasonably transparent; and you have insanely good tools available for free or
cheap (Unity 3D for goodness' sake -- in 1997 we paid $5k to _rent_ a
rudimentary 3d game engine to build an alpha demo, and it was C++ or go f--k
yourself. Serious engines cost six figures plus a significant percentage of
back end. Something not nearly as good as Blender cost $5000/seat in 2005.)

Because of this, competition is fierce. But competition is fierce for web
developers too, and we all seem to be doing OK.

Suck it up, build a playable alpha, and then look for funding.

~~~
eropple
One: this post is insanely douchey. Chill.

Two: it's _much_ harder for a game developer than a web developer. (I do
both.) Game development is much, much more like doing a soup-to-nuts startup
than it is "a web developer", the demand is in aggregate much lower than the
supply, and with entire segments of the market you can't even seriously
playtest something for viability until you've basically built the damn thing.
(So if you don't care much about the social space or something easily done
with a tool like Unity, I hope you like sunk costs.) I'm going to have spent
over a full year building out a vertical slice of this game and I can do so
because I both enjoy the genre and have that kind of time and money to throw
around.

There is _no_ good way to compare "a web developer" and an indie game
developer and you should kind of be embarrassed for trying to light up the guy
you replied to when you haven't the foggiest.

~~~
Tloewald
"Life is already too hard"

Indie game development is like starting your own rock band. It's a hit-driven
business. If you aren't doing it for fun then do something else. And it's
easier to make games and make money from them today than at any time in the
past. If you fail, it's because your game sucked or you were insufficiently
lucky. The odds are against you, but hey, you can always make a living as a
web developer.

I say this as someone who has developed and released multiple games soup-to-
nuts and works as a web developer.

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CrazedGeek
Website: [http://www.planets-cube.com/](http://www.planets-cube.com/)

Kickstarter:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1247991467/planets3](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1247991467/planets3)

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Tloewald
The budget does not look realistic. It's possible they have some incredibly
talented coder who can build the damn thing single-handed (a la Minecraft) but
this is unlikely, and failing that I just don't see this ever shipping.

Good luck though, it looks like a good idea and I like what I see thus far.

~~~
Impossible
This sounds like most video game Kickstarters. Unfortunately backers often
have different expectations of how much a game should cost than developers.
There have been many Kickstarter projects where, if you realistically look at
team size and development time you can figure out that the project doesn't
have enough money to pay all team members a living wage, even if you're
assuming they can live on minimum wage. I guess in those cases most of the
team isn't getting paid or is working as part time contractors, and the people
that are taking money are using it for subsistence. This is common with indie
game projects.

~~~
Tloewald
I don't know about most game kickstarters because I tend to ignore them, but
this one has some very good prep work done, good concept, nice tech demos
(video, but whatever), and superb artwork. But then the initial funding goal
of $250,000 makes no sense to me. The people involved are clearly capable
enough to earn $75k/year in Massachusetts, probably a lot more. Given the
costs of developing something like this you'd burn through $250k in nothing
flat. What then?

Now if this were two guys saying they could get the game rough and ready in
one year, I'd be more convinced. But they have a lot of mouths to feed.

Or maybe if they're all in art school or something.

They need to be more concrete about their plan. If it's "we will make this
thing or die trying, and we'll ship in one year and we're eating ramen until
we ship" then it might be convincing. But it seems too polished for that, so
I'm thinking this is a hobby, and they'll take the $250k and diddle around for
three years.

But they're not even going to get $250k at this rate so it's all academic.

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ohwp
Cool concept. But I think showing beautiful concept art is a big no when the
actual gameplay looks like this: [http://www.planets-
cube.com/img/website/FR/ScreenIG_full_rez...](http://www.planets-
cube.com/img/website/FR/ScreenIG_full_rez.jpg)

Now people will be disappointed.

~~~
ybaumes
As far as I know people go to kickstarter in order to kick start projects. Not
every games are 100% complete when submitted to kickstarter.com . That is a
simple prototype, right. And still it is an exciting one, as far as I am
concerned.

So no, not disappointed at all.

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droopyEyelids
Ah man what a beautiful looking idea. Too bad I've been burned so many times
that I'll never pay for an 'alpha' or 'beta' game again, let alone a
kickstarter for one.

~~~
3rd3
What are some examples for Kickstarter vaporware you donated for?

~~~
cpeterso
I backed "Hadean Lands: Interactive Fiction for the iPhone" [1] in 2010. The
project promised a text adventure game for iOS and open-source game framework.
The game would become the author's "day job" and "might take six months; might
take more." Based on the cool concept and the author's ludography of
interactive fiction games, the $8,000 project was funded to $31,000.

Fast-forward four years and the author posts occasional Kickstarter updates
about unrelated iOS games he's published and that the promised game is now
"11% complete". His explanation is that the fine print of his Kickstarter
proposal included "other IF work", but reading backers' comments [2] as early
as 2011, you can tell that people felt mislead.

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-
inter...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-interactive-
fiction-for-the-iphone)

[2] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-
inter...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-interactive-
fiction-for-the-iphone/comments)

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shiven
Sorry to sound cynical, but having seen the glacial pace of progress with
Godus, thanks, but no thanks.

Kickstarted, drip-fed games, are not my cup of tea.

~~~
touristtam
Godus is certainly not the odd one out, but at the same time the lead behind
it is quite well known for under delivering as opposed to those guys who are
unknown.

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agumonkey
I like the 16bit ascii art impressionism with a modern rendering feel.
Finally.

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zamalek
What I find really interesting is how boxel games immediately get a lot of
attention: it effectively comes down to a lot of a lot of solid material you
get to dig through (and place). Crafting etc. is honestly flavor because
Minecraft's creative mode does as well as its survival mode. Combine that with
the notion of wide expanses of nothing (space) and people really start paying
attention. Add a treadmill (RPG) to that and you get even _more_ attention.

I wonder what psychology is behind the seemingly guaranteed success of these
games - even if it's only initial (pre-order) success; people seem to
naturally want to play around with this type of stuff.

~~~
debacle
They are the epitome of open world. Honestly, though, I haven't found one that
gets the immersion right. Minecraft is too schizophrenic and sparse on
features, Terraria was really good about this but only 2D and also more of an
RPG. King Athur's Gold is purely about environment interaction.

I'd like to see a game that properly develops the non-block mechanics for the
world in a consistent fashion.

~~~
digikata
Dwarf Fortress?
[http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/](http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/)

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krsunny
Sidebar; I have never seen super script in URL before. Didnt even think it was
possible.

~~~
salman89
[http://thepicrain.com/planets%C2%B3-an-open-world-voxel-
base...](http://thepicrain.com/planets%C2%B3-an-open-world-voxel-based-rpg)

I think it is bad practice - users cannot type it out if needed

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gamegoblin
I'm curious how gravity will work when tunneling through a planet.

~~~
jws
I don't know how they plan to handle it. In a similar game I've worked on
(unpublished) gravity is handled like our universe, but with a bias toward the
three orthogonal axis. This leaves you feeling like a 2d world on the faces,
but as you approach to edges you begin to lean into them until you are
"standing on the peak of the roof" at the edge, continuing brings you upright
on the next face. A coefficient governs the strength of the bias, which I
adjusted to trade off the width of the "funny" zones and the gravity direction
gradient.

At the center of the planets, there is a singularity (which if you screw up
the math can catapult you into space, game debugging has lots of fun to it)
but is actually a non-issue because the strength of the gravity approaches
zero, so the fact that it flips around in directions doesn't really matter,
after you debug it.

~~~
Crito
You could probably avoid bugs at the center of planets by simply having an
small cube of unmineable material surrounding them (like minecraft's bedrock).

~~~
zamalek
Or a molten core: one idea I was messing around with for a boxel game I never
found the time to make.

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Tloewald
"10% done" -> 0.1% done.

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eripmav
If any of you guys have any questions about the game, feel free to ask. I'm PR
for the team, so I'm more than happy for you to ask as many Qs as you want!

------
eripmav
If you have any questions about the game, feel free to ask. I'm working the
publicity side of the title, so more than happy to answer any Qs you may have.

------
deletes
This looks like a better version of Minecraft. Probably the final product
won't be on the same level of polish and constant updates.

~~~
Crito
It looks like a better version of minecraft that will probably melt my
computer down into slag. Hopefully they keep low system requirements in mind
during development; minecraft has benefited greatly from that.

~~~
eropple
Having assisted some friends in building something similar in technical scope,
I'd be pretty surprised if they managed to pare it down to run reasonably.
It's a _really hard_ problem.

Minecraft's system requirements remain low because the engine doesn't do a
hell of a lot, which is good because it really...can't.

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johnchristopher
Cubical planet ? I wonder how they plan to handle gravity :].

~~~
eripmav
Check the third video on the Kickstarter campaign - it shows the player
walking over the 'edge' of the planet and what happens when they do:)

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skrowl
I like these game posts. I wish there were more on [Y].

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mml
No OSX port until the surpass their initial goal. Meh.

~~~
touristtam
Look at the 'Technology' part: Ogre3D is used for the rendering. It should
then be technically possible for a port given enough interest is shown.

Plus in the 'Kickstarter Stretch Goals' Category you can see that they plan a
Mac version before a Linux version:
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/001/661/480/bfb68577b1e9...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/001/661/480/bfb68577b1e9b35a0f3395f900e4f7f2_large.jpg?1392999977)

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beefsack
I can't seem to figure out which PC platforms they're targeting, they just say
"PC".

~~~
exadeci
Well you didn't searched :)

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/001/661/480/bfb68577b1e9...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/001/661/480/bfb68577b1e9b35a0f3395f900e4f7f2_large.jpg?1392999977)

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eripmav
Beefsack, PC means....PC ;)

~~~
fredsanford
Well, in my 30ish years of using computers, the PC has run the following
operating systems (not a complete list):

CP/M

DOS versions 1 through 7ish

Windows 16bit on top of DOS

Windows 32bit on top of DOS

OS/2

SCO UNIX

Linux

Minix

Mac OS

QNX

Windows NT

Windows 2000

Mac OSX

Windows XP

Windows Vista

Windows 7

Windows 8

All of the above run on a PC, so... Please take off your marketing hat and put
on your hat that allows rational thought and answer without the smarm.

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Reize
when the game launches?

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warmwaffles
Looks pretty cool

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kjs3
Another "look at this _awesome_ game" which is really "there's really no game,
but Kickstarter!".

~~~
ybaumes
I was thinking that kick starter was all about helping in project to "kick
start". So obviously for me, I find it normal that's there is still no game at
this early stage of development. Or rather: 10% complete development so far.

It looks like people get "wrongly" used to dev studios submitting projects
nearly completed. But those are more like the exception than the rule. If look
closely to the list of kickstart submission I think that's the case most of
the time for software development, that is they are far from completed. And
the lead developer has an idea and needs fund to work full-time on his idea
and/or hire folks for helping him out. For instance: lighttable of Chris
Granger. And I think that's what is thrilling about kick starter and launching
a startup. That's all about taking risks.

~~~
eropple
I get your point, but I think you're identifying the wrong problem.
Kickstarter backers being averse to "here's my idea, give me money" pitches is
rational. Most _professional_ game developers are pretty bad at estimation,
pretty bad at risk forecasting, and just generally aren't great at bringing
stuff to market on time and on budget. Kickstarters with a bunch of people
with no real personal credibility or track record (individually or as a group)
are serious risks and it's perfectly understandable that they'd be treated as
such by potential backers.

As I noted upthread, I have a Kickstarter coming up sooner rather than later
(like, May-ish) and a lot of my time right now is building out my engine to
have a workable hands-on demo for people to play with. It won't be designed to
be "fun" yet, but rather a synthetic demo where I can go "these features will
be used for X, Y, and Z, and you can see them already basically done". I need
money to pay my artists to build assets more than I need money to write the
damn game.

