by BlackWidow » Mon Dec 22, 2014 2:07 am
Thanks @Elmo_STM.
As an addendum, I just want to make sure it's clear, though, that I do not blame any individual or think that anyone working on the game wants to do less than the best work - I completely empathize with them, because I've been in similar situations before, and I know that you can only do what you can do with what you are provided. No one gets more upset about things not working than those working on the game. That's why this is really a resource issue. Games take 2-3 years to develop, and Avalanche/Disney are heck bent on putting one out every 11-12 months. The only way that is possible is if you put a commensurate amount of resources behind it to compensate.
Before the patch, I had a toy box that was 90% complete that was like nothing I have ever seen. Eight levels, combat, puzzles, exploration, all in a unique theme that I haven't seen anyone try. Intricate effects, hidden secrets, camera tricks that blew my mind were possible. Ten minutes of true cut-scenes, over 100 lines of interactive dialogue. I easily spent over 100 hours on it, testing and testing until everything worked perfectly. I found ways to deal with the progressive bugs (trigger boxes suddenly not working on load when they worked 50x before), etc. Just waiting for that "big patch" to finish things up.
And that is the kicker - it WORKED. I had to spend a lot of time working around bugs and unintended behavior, but it worked. The possibilities in this system are incredible. But once the patch hit, it was a nightmare to keep everything working. And then when I finally pushed through and got to 95% - the entire system gave out and I can't even load the game anymore, much less finish it right now. Thankfully it was in the cloud, but I'm going to have to unlock everything all over again to complete it - so I'll probably just wait until I upgrade my system if I have to start a whole new DI from scratch and re-unlock everything that took me two months to do in the first place.
Thing is, I'm not special. At all. What this all made me realize was - this is why we don't see those kinds of Toy Boxes. Because once you get to a certain point, no matter how diligent you were in putting it together, no matter how much testing you do, no matter how you figure out how to work around/within the system, once stuff starts to bug out, you're done. Those are the core issues in the game that need to be addressed - corrupt saves, level start/triggering bugging out (which can ruin an entire level), and things like how the replayer works (it needs to lock down after the recording is stopped, and just play that locked recording back identically each time - but it seems to instead re-write itself every time it's used until it magically picks up other surrounding objects).
It's why I have a "bad feeling about this" when it comes to Star Wars. I know the Star Wars creative community is going to be all over this like nothing you have ever seen - it will attract 10x the amount of folks that Marvel did, and that's a conservative estimate. I can already list you 20 different ToyBoxes that I personally can't wait to try to make, and that's just off the top of my head. Being able to create games around the most beloved franchise of all time is just a dream. But if these core issues aren't addressed - and the game just rushed out as 2.0 was - not only is it going to be a heck storm of epic proportions, but worst of all - we'll never get to play all the thousands of awesome games that I know the Star Wars community is just itching to write.