The Reality Sinks In

Well,  now that I have time to recover from an overly excited state at finding Steve Grands kickstarter listing, I can think a little bit more clearly.  I also read up a little bit more on the project.


First up, the funding is over, I missed it and now I can't even see the projects progress... not that I really had the money to spend on it anyway.

Secondly, the man wants to work alone.  While I understand his reasons for doing so, I also see some pretty big gaping holes in the plan, which makes me sad because I don't want to see another game in the genera die.  Specifically, I see no plans for the world or game the creatures are to inhabit.  Really, Steve should be putting his time into the AI systems and have a team member to flesh out the ecosystem and game elements.  The two systems could rather easily be built separately and then fused at the end so long as the person making the ecosystem and game elements understands academic AI well (one set of code for what the player sees, a second for what the creature sees).  (I say academic to distinguish from traditional game AI).  Sure, finding such a person may be tricky, heck I might be the only one, though I suspect if I exists there must be others.

Anyhow, the reality of the situation is, I'm probably not going to be able to work on this project.  The fact that this project exists probably reduces the likelihood I'll ever get funding for my own (which is how I found it).  And while I really hope it doesn't push the genera further into obscurity in the eyes of the game industry, I'm rather fearful that without someone taking care of the game aspects it will become an excuse example of "why real A-Life games are bad". It's not that I think it's going to be a bad game, it's that I feel like it needs to be more than just a good game, it has to be an incredible game to overcome the stigma that somehow has become attached to the concept.

Wow, that sounds so very pessimistic... I can't very well have that.  Let's face it, this situation is out of my control and I'll just have to keep on moving forward on my own path.  I've got hopes; I've got fears, but it's time I get back to chasing my dreams.

This weekend I got another chunk of Maximum Chaos' assets finalised.

Today I'm getting some sample code on connecting to Amazon's simple database; that should be enough to get the Pharmaceum project up and moving again.