penguinfan

I refuse to take the bait, Doc Vohaul! :P

Terezar, for me native games are way better -- wine is a last resort, often with annoying glitches and occasionally fails to work altogether (especially on less popular games, such as adventure games that I want to play). Loki native ports I used to play were flawless, and the Jack Keane port by Runesoft was also perfect. From early reports it sounds like Unity 4 Linux port was well done so there is going to be a bunch of solid native games coming out soon, thus there is little motivation to bother with any windows games that I don't already own. Also maybe you misread what I was trying to say? I wasn't saying that it lacked a native port, rather that the plot is unlikely to hold my interest. Maybe that was a delayed reaction to my earlier complaint about Unforgotten Quest though.

Aw look another RPG that has Linux support -- too bad I've never liked post-apocalyptic genre (didn't even pledge Wasteland 2 for that reason). I'll submit it to a Linux gaming site anyways.

http://www.kickstart...os/spectraball/ Cross-platform game inspired by the old classic Marble Madness but with fancy modern graphics

How many of the nerdcore bands who got invited to Nerdapalooza have you heard of? As a non-musically-oriented geek I only recognized one of them (not counting Duane and BrandO from this kickstarter thread), and I'm sure you can guess which one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerdapalooza On an unrelated note, I see they have a fan at the ever-entertaining tropes site: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/TheAdventuresOfDuaneAndBrandO?from=Main.TheAdventuresOfDuaneandBrandO

They were not able to get the rights for Space Quest yet -- but if SpaceVenture has successful sales, they might be able to work out a licensing deal since Activision reportedly has been looking into making use of those old Sierra series rather than just sitting on them.

It depends on whether the dev starts out thinking cross-platform or not. If you pick the wrong libraries, every new platform can be a major pain with plenty of platform-specific code, but done right most of the work in adding a new platform is testing with some amount of debugging thrown in. Take Minecraft as a good example of an Indie game that is cross-platform with the help of solid libraries that handle the details.

Unforgotten Quest forgot to plan for a Linux port :/

How much time did we have left when SV made $500k? I don't remember now if it was the last day or the day before.

I stand corrected, not having actually read the book... was too much to assume that a noted book author would extend the courtesy of staying somewhat faithful to another author's novel when writing the movie script, eh?

The Coles fully admit that the art is going to be a step down from the multi-million dollar Sierra classics -- there has been a lot of discussion about the art budgets for those. If they could have counted on Project-Eternity-sized budget they would have gone for the old style, but since that was a huge long-shot they thought it was ridiculous even putting it as a stretch goal: "if we make $3M, we'll give you QfG 4 type art" (I agree, that would have been rather pointless) The reason the Coles didn't opt for the in-between art budget (3D models of SpaceVenture vs the 2D Sierra graphic paintings) is that their own talents lie in other areas (story, character design, puzzle design, programming) -- there will be no Mark Crowe investing long hours into the art as an owner of the company, so they can't be *too* ridiculous about expecting their artists to put in long hours for little pay. So the step-down to simpler art style is fully acknowledged, and people for whom fancy adventure game art was an essential part of the appeal are just not going to be impressed (on the other hand, fans who are still able to enjoy QfG 1 or 2 level of art, should be able to deal with Hero U art also, since it is talented artists like Eriq Chang implementing this simpler style). Some of those people are backing anyways, realizing that their best bet at a QfG sequel is if the Coles stay in the industry and succeed well enough to get a shot at either licensing the IP or being contracted by Activision (just like successful launch of the Two Guys' company is our best hope of an actual Space Quest sequel someday). Clearly not everyone has enough money or motivation to pre-order a game for just a "chance", so I'd guess most hold-outs for QfG art are non-backers like yourself. On the other hand, I don't really get the part about "unreasonable" and "exorbitant"... short of having a game designers' guild that coordinates all kickstarter game projects of a certain size and above, so that no more than one decent-sized project launches per 6 months, how could game designers be expected to pull that off? If the Coles had waited another 6 months, who is to say some other project wouldn't have jumped in ahead of them so they would have to wait another 6 months, and so forth. We all know that some people already spent their whole entertainment budget for the year on earlier projects, but as long as crowdfunding continues to thrive there may never be another time when a would-be project leader can guarantee the wallets of their fans have "recharged" from the last great game project. And if crowdfunding doesn't continue to thrive, then the opportunity to use crowdfunding to kickstart an Indie game company may be over! "Exorbitant" doesn't make sense to me either -- the $400k-$500k range goals set by Sierra alums so far is just not out of line for development costs of a decent-sized Indie game. They aren't making arcade-style shoot-em-ups after all!

Roald Dahl was a pretty terrific writer, but note that even so You Only Live Twice was analogous to my "best hope", which is that the screen writer uses the story from an experienced writer of the genre (in that case, Ian Fleming) and does a good job at adaptation.

I don't know about you guys, but I am decidedly NOT enthusiastic about the choice of screen writer. According to wikipedia, Michael Arndt has written only two sci-fi scripts, neither of which have been released yet. His big hit "Little Miss Sunshine" looks like the kind of story I would not watch unless somebody paid me (a lot). My best hope at the moment is that he'll be adapting somebody else's terrific story and do a faithful job of it, since it looks like both his other upcoming sci-fi stories are based on existing books.

Thank you for explaining your concern! There may still be enough time to update the pitch video to specifically better address this "gaming lite" sort of concern. I'm bringing it to the attention of the Coles hoping they can fix the video before the remind-me-later hordes return to take another look. It is *not* realistic to expect most people to read a bunch of interviews to understand the genre of game, the pitch needs to be appealing enough to make them want to learn more.

Obviously too confusingly stated, but look at the quote that I had pulled -- individually Frede *can't* make a difference, but there have been some small number of kickstarter projects (> 0, saw an article about them somewhere) that have managed to catch the eye of a bunch of well-wishers and get thousands of bucks out of a "trivial" tier. So each person who says "I" can't make a difference is kinda right, but collectively all such well-wishers who donated a small amount *would* make a difference. And then I tried to indicate that was a theoretical quibble, and I'm not going to try to talk my representative sample (those of you kind enough to respond) into doing a token donation, since there really isn't much point without reaching the larger masses. To answer your last question, Hero U is indeed being mentioned in lots of other game forums around the world, and has gotten 548 new backers in the previous 3 days. The problem is that the slow time was too slow, so it's a major game of catch-up now. If there are misconceptions still around that are getting in the way (no, not appreciating fantasy is not a "misconception") then they need to be addressed ASAP. The biggest clue I heard in this thread was from Jess, in the facebook-ish vibes he got. I would not touch this project with a 10-foot pole if it were going to be facebook-ish (hate all things facebook, including the pathetic games!) so one of us has to be wrong. Also seems ironic to me, because the Coles have intentionally stayed away from "casual" games because they don't like them either, unlike Jane Jensen who went casual to make a living (and got funds to invest in her "real" game company, so that strategy wasn't bad). So to me this smells like a misconception, and I'm thinking the Coles should address this explicitly, as best they can...

Wait, I thought of an alternative to the $5 pledge for those who like to help out the Coles comeback even if the game has a "boring" theme... could help out with voting on the plethora of articles and forum threads on Hero U (isn't it ok to vote up something because the Coles are good designers, even though their chosen genre leaves one cold?) Well if it does strike you as ok, give a quick look here for forums where you're already registered (I don't expect people to bother to sign up for new accounts to help out a project they aren't even backing) http://www.questformoreglory.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3155

Well if 5k other SV backers think the same, then collectively you're wrong (though individually right)... but I don't know how to talk masses of anti-fantasy-but-Sierra-well-wishers to invest $5 for being on a website honor roll ;) Personally I have loved both sci-fi and fantasy ever since first encountering them (whenever that was, being an avid early reader) so didn't realize that sci-fi would be an easier sell than fantasy themes.

I think kicktraq only shows count of people who officially pledged, as opposed to the number of people who have "starred" the project for later consideration. People like Capn_Ascii who like to wait for signs of success would likely show up in the latter type of count. If I'm wrong and you can see people who have starred a project without having pledged yet, please speak up! As far as I know there is NO way to do so, kickstarter even removed showing starred projects in a profile (and hunting down individuals who might have starred a project in order to check, was rather impractical even then).

Thanks for that insight into another question that I had wondered about! Of course if there are too many people who find backing non-winners a psychological put-off, then kickstarter projects all become doomed waiting for that critical mass for appearing successful, but luckily we're not all the same ;)

Ok that answer I understand: just not a fan of the genre, so it's no skin off your back whether more get made or not. There are plenty of other genres where I'd feel the same way. Do you really know any QfG fans who have not heard of Hero U yet? There have been lots of interviews, including a really long one on adventuregamers.com, one on kotaku, RPS... bunch of threads on game forums, including all the forums from adventure kickstarters, a huge long one on gog, articles on the andromedan post... where would those QfG fans be hiding?

Can I take that as a variant of #1, that you don't really care to see more games of the sort the Coles make (in other words supporting evidence for Corey's theory)? I.e. not that they actively suck, but more of a 'don't care there's plenty of other stuff that I like better'?

A fellow backer asked a question on another forum http://www.gog.com/e...e_coming/page16 So, to those of you who are a member of the group in question, why would you not want to pledge anything to Hero U? Did the QfG games kinda suck in your opinion, and you'd just as soon the adventure-tainted-by-RPGish-skills die off? Or is it really big-time kickstarter fatigue like some people are speculating ("no no if I log into my kickstarter account again I'll get malnutrition from all the ramen that follows")? Or something else entirely? Note: this is both for curiousity sake and in case there is something in the Hero U campaign that is giving the wrong impression and could be fixed, do not plan to hard-sell to people who respond ;)

Speaking of superfans, the Art Collector tier (pick an original painting from a collection of QfG concept art) was sold out for a while but currently has 1 opening

Your support for platform choice is noted & appreciated Meanwhile, wanted to give QfG fans who were concerned about the art a heads-up that the new pitch video may be worth checking out -- has a couple more representative mock screenshots (and is overall a better pitch video, in my opinion). Gameplay questions have already been pretty well addressed by updates.

Not only that, they are listening to PENGUINS!! Corey Cole: "I have decided to personally commit to bringing Hero-U to Linux. Originally we planned this as part of our first stretch goal, but I came up with a new plan. After Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption is complete and on the way to our Windows and Mac users, I will personally port the game to Linux and - with the help of some of our passionate Linux friends - make sure the game is rock solid. See, there's a little part of my history that 5 or 6 of you might not have heard yet. Before I was a game designer, I was a system programmer. My first job at Sierra was to translate the SCI game engine to the Atari ST and port the first four SCI games to the ST. I'll just put on my software engineer hat for this task." Yaaaaaaaaay! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1878147873/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption/posts/344017