"Space Quest: Roger Wilco and the Outer Edge of Earnon"

[Troels Pleimert]

I'm so glad the project is still underway. I'm looking forward to seeing this so much.

[Johnathon]

Thanks guys.

 

There's a new update on the site. Go ahead and check it out.

[PurpleTentacle]

Wow, I couldn't find the link to the site. I am always on the mobile version, since I only view this forum and comment while on my phone. Just now switched to full view and saw your banner with link. This looks incredible. Just wanted to let you know that people viewing the mobile version of the forum might not see the link right away. Maybe you could post it in the body of your message as well when you update here.

[Johnathon]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm actually working on a responsive web design for the site. Just haven't finished it yet. But yeah, I'll add the link to my post.

[Johnathon]

August 12th, 2014

This is not an easy update for me to make. It is partly because of this that I have put it off for the past two months, some part of me fighting to see if the circumstances could have changed enough for me to not have to make it. But... here we are.

 

The game is not, I repeat, not necessarily cancelled.

 

Here is what's up:

 

This past summer, I acquired my first internship in the computer science program as a mobile app developer. I earnestly put in all the effort I could to excel and learn as much as possible. Nonetheless, I was asked not to come back for a second rotation, due to my inability to learn quickly enough and become productive enough to remain a worthwhile investment. This has caused me to question my abilities and the concern has led me to wanting to focus even more on my curriculum ahead.

 

I am also entering the higher junior-level courses of my major in computer science, and believe the road ahead for the next year and a half is going to be quite bumpy and filled with plenty of taxing responsibilities. I question whether or not attempting to hang on to production of the fan game would truly prove beneficial to either cause.

 

Also, one of my younger brothers unfortunately fell off a roof while working construction, broke his back in several places, and was rushed to the hospital in critical condition a couple weeks ago. He still has no feeling below his right knee and may never be able to walk again without a cane or other tool. He has also contracted a high fever of a cause currently unknown, and frequentyl suffers significant pain due to the damages. This has left me not in the best mood to continue developing on such a highly-spirited and humorous project, and I furthermore may be required to help aid in his rehabilitation.

 

I find it appropriate to put the adventure on indefinite hold for now. I need a little bit of a breather. I am saving all of the material and intend to finish it and release it; but I just don't know when that will be. Depending on how successful I am with graduation and attaining a good enough job to take care of all the top priorities in my life, I may or may not be able to pick up production again in another two years from now -- but there's also a good chance that if I do, I'll be keeping under the radar until it's completely finished (I've been disappointed with my lack of ability to keep to deadlines in the recent past, and I wouldn't feel good about continuing to let you guys keep on waiting and waiting anxiously expecting me to deliver on my promise.

 

Wish me luck. May the Outer Edge of Earnon be completed some day, and long live SpaceVenture!

 

- Johnathon

[pcj]

Sorry to hear about your life troubles. In my experience with game development it seems largely to be a challenge of mainly perseverance combined with just a smidge of ability. If you push through you should be able to complete it, it's just a matter of when.

 

Hopefully you will someday be able to finish your vision of the game. I look forward to seeing it get released eventually. Thanks for the update.

[Troels Pleimert]

Aw, man; I was all gung ho to hear more news about the fan game I've been looking forward to for so long, and now real life has kicked you in the nuts. :( I'm so sorry to hear all that, Johnathan. I hope things will pick up soon.

[Johnathon]

Thanks for your sentiments, Troels.

And there's nothing more I hate than disappointing people (and aliens, sorry) who are waiting on SQ:OEOE

Just thought I'd mention now that after much, much consideration concerning the implementation of the adventure, I have come to the conclusion that I will not be using AGS.

I'm going to be using WinterMute Engine instead. AGS will not allow for some very vital effects and features that are integral to the Outer Edge of Earnon (one notable problem being the limit on backgrounds, rooms, and sprites).

I know it's not much news, but it shows that despite all the life setbacks and other priorities at play, I've still been putting much thought into the adventure and doing what I can to progress on it as I can.

[pcj]

Honestly, not much of a surprise. AGS didn't seem to have the technology to do what you had in mind. I would almost suggest using Unity at that point. But I'm not very familiar with Wintermute, so hopefully it has what you need.

[Johnathon]

It turns out I've changed my mind again.

I chose Wintermute on a whim based upon what I've heard of its greater flexibility over AGS; however, having completed my first course in game design and acquired more experience with C++, I've decided the best thing to do is to just make my own custom engine using the SDL library.

This way, I have complete control over every aspect, and the game will be portable to many platforms. I've already begun implementing and have thus far had great success. I know it's more work up front, but it should pay off in the long run.

[Finn-R]

Last post May 2015 ... Any news? (please)

[Johnathon]

Unfortunately, I have been incredibly swamped and haven't had the pleasure of working much on the project since last summer.

In good news, I have finally graduated with my BS in computer science...

In bad news, because I am currently under the gun with all my debts--about $400 deficit monthly--I wasn't able to justify the cost it would have taken to renew hosting for the website, so it went off-line two days ago...

This having been said, I have not given up on the project, and hope to figure out some hosting solution soon-even if it's a free service (or perhaps will just post updates here exclusively)

[jonathon.bond]

In good news, I have finally graduated with my BS in computer science...

In bad news, because I am currently under the gun with all my debts--about $400 deficit monthly--I wasn't able to justify the cost it would have taken to renew hosting for the website, so it went off-line two days ago...

This having been said, I have not given up on the project, and hope to figure out some hosting solution soon-even if it's a free service (or perhaps will just post updates here exclusively)

Congratulations on your graduation!  Do you have a donations link/site so we can help with the hosting?  I would definitely like to help keep this project alive!

[Sledgy]

 

Johnathon, maybe demo?

 

[Johnathon]

(Monolith Burger)

 

(Grinace Mc-Frigg'n-Dimbass...)

[Johnathon]

(and just for posterity; cause I can see much of the images/links in this thread are no longer functional: https://web.archive.org/web/20160503113653/http://theouteredge.net/)

[OneGuyFromAndromeda]

For anyone coming across this, read the whole thread from Page 1 carefully. It's worth it and you'll laugh your ass off.

Pretty wacky stuff. Almost no work was ever really done on this fangame idea at all and it's certifiably insane to string people along for years. Did anyone actually believe that even a playable demo would come out? Why would a self-professed, talented artist have trouble producing backgrounds? No animation skills so who would animate this game? The creator didn't learn how to program so who was doing that? Less than a dozen clunky screens released during the first 8 years of this project and nothing else to ever come of it, why? Reminder, this project was conceived in 2003, started in 2007 and is now almost 20 years old. I sincerely hope the people here were cracking up and not taking anything OP said seriously.

What we have here is a dreamer LARPing as a game developer. Lots of useless talk and no work shown means a game is never getting started/finished. This happens all of the time with fan projects and sometimes with commercial projects(SpaceVenture). The intention is usually to gain fans without doing the work but after a while with nothing to show for it people start questioning things a bit. There are a few ways false creators extend this attention over time like the classic, "I lost my files due to a hard drive crash(or self-deletion) so now I have to start all over!"

The bamboozlers also love when people ask:

"When is it gonna be finished?" - "When it's done. : )"
"When will a demo be released?" - "I'm working on it! : )
"Will you release the game in chapters?" - "No since it would tarnish my magnificent, epic storyline. : )"

There's a whole metagame that gets played where nobody wants to upset the Grand Creator(who has created nothing) due to fear of them getting upset and deleting it all or quitting due to the intense pressure of Game Creation.

Also popular are authors changing engines/resolutions/game design multiple times so now they have to move all of their work on over, or undergo a complete redesign(meanwhile nothing was done to begin with). It's all a scam, don't fall for it.

To Johnathan:
For all of our sakes, just admit you got in way over your head and there was no way in hell this fangame would or could ever be released, let alone created. Below I have posted my favorite quote from you where you actually hit the nail right on the head when you said this was once a "naive fan's fantasy". You are still that naive fan and it is still a total fantasy. You can admit it and bow out gracefully or keep this sham alive until the forum goes down.

Anyway, thank you for supplying me with greater comedy than even the Space Quest Trilogy could provide. Even though I am expressing criticism in this post I actually admire you since I respect the complexity of a long con. Matchstick Men is one of my favorite movies and as a huge fan of 'Penn & Teller's Bullshit!', this would make a great episode!

---

In conclusion: No deadlines were made, no demo produced, no sprites made, no animations finished, not one background fully completed, no coding done, no music composed, nothing implemented except for a half-baked GUI.

My favorite part of this thread demonstrating the intense egomaniacal nature and major delusions of grandeur from the creator.

[OneGuyFromAndromeda]

Missed this, Johnathan's last deleted post. Here's the original on archive, insanity: https://web.archive.org/web/20220924184109/https://forum.guysfromandromeda.com/topic/146-space-quest-roger-wilco-and-the-outer-edge-of-earnon/page/6/

Our Dreamer kinda making things right! But then deleted it to keep the con going so is this good or bad...

---

Here's a copy for ease:
 

Quote

 

Written by Johnathan on September 17th 2022

I feel guilty doing this--at the same time, I feel as though said very feeling may constitute an unwelcome sense of pretentiousness...

Have I deliberately waited until this seemingly opportune time, seeing how it may serve to soften the blow...? Yes, I have. I am sorry for this, really.

(there's no way you cannot anticipate at this very moment what I'm about to say--reason would have it you've already drawn the conclusion over these last 6 years--somehow, that does not make it any easier for me at this moment. I never wanted to say these words.)

The Outer Edge of Earnon is on indefinite hold...

(everything that has gone into this gesture of expression... this... magnificent dream... is nonetheless retained/backed up to 4 levels of redundancy as it currently stands; I am still after all this time very passionate about it, and still would love to finish and release it someday--thus I would not call it cancelled--but to keep you good people believing that I have been spending significant time on it would not be a very nice thing for me to continue to do. I do feel very guilty about not having told you sooner--somehow I just wasn't willing to let go; and then at some point, I realized how hard it was to continue staying afloat, and then I got the cute idea to utilize SpaceVenture as a cover--figuring you'd have something else to focus on--to avoid having to swallow the 'humble pie' and say what I should have said probably a half-a-decade ago. I do apologize for this. Please accept my apology, to any who have been really following/anticipating...)

I love this dream... just not nearly as much as I love my wife and children...

...they say that life is the hardest teacher, and in a way, this whole endeavor, this experience, has been almost like a sort of...holding onto 'Neverland' experience, in a way, my refusing to walk through the door of reality...

...but reality happened before I was prepared for it, and somehow, I made the right choice (although it has not come without suffering and disappointment--for both of us): I put higher priorities first, and the rip-tide thus swept me away! Here we are!!

Why is it that as we age, we cannot seem to dream, nor to daydream, as vividly as we used to...? The more time you spend in any given world--be it reality or fantasy--the more you tend to become sucked into that world; there's this certain 'law of inertia,' if you will, about life and about the age-old, 'since the beginning of time' tendency we have, given our humble condition/existence in this beautiful cosmos, to resist and reject our reality if and when we find it to be so hard to realize...to acknowledge'... rather than to recognize that it truly is as painful as it is...

Maybe I don't know what in the hell I'm saying. I guess I'll just conclude that I have some very strong desires (to express... to create... to self-actualize...) that I feel have never truly been fulfilled--and I suppose I'll leave it at that. It hurts. But that is what love does...

Let me talk a tad bit now on the things I have accomplished--although probably nobody cares, (nor deserves,) to be burdened with it; but only b\c my EGO seems to be just that sensitive--I have achieved that which I never thought I would: I have the most beautiful (inside and out) partner one could ever have hoped for, and I have become the proud father of five of the most adorable children--I would straight-up undergo torture to save any one of their lives--I love them that much. I have a job that requires a security clearance. I am the first member of my family to actually graduate from college (that is vanity, of course, and a bubble about to pop, let's not get into it)

(I think you can see where my priorities lay, and have lain, if you were to glean from my pattern of postings/updates; clearly The Outer Edge is not yet complete b\c it wasn't a priority in comparison to what I have/had judged as more important--I do, after all, have to sleep w\ myself at night--and we're talking about a "game" here after all--but this doesn't mean that I haven't been... nor that I don't continue to be extremely passionate and excited about the possibility of it. I feel like I'm really bombing this explanation here... just... shit.)

Let me put it to you this way: I recall, very specifically, back in October of 2018... when it had been a couple of years since I had graduated, and I had been working for my (still, as of now, current) employer... I had been aching (and I mean, just ACHING) to work on The Outer Edge, for so long... I remember finally taking the time--after two years out of school--after having gotten on my feet, secured my first home, ensured I could provide for my--at the time--only child and wife (how did I suddenly become the 'old man'...? I mean, now my oldest is pushing 7 years, and I have four others right behind him--my work hasn't even started!; I have to be a good father above everything and anything else, you understand...? and that means before being a good game designer--and my own father is gone; the last memories I have of him are of him wrapped up, pathetically and pitifully in a blanket, with a severe fever, waddling down the hallway, vomiting on the carpet--me barking at my children to stay away b\c "grandpa is ill..." at the ER, I had to go piss so badly I couldn't help myself: I said "Dad, I'll be right back", I couldn't have been in the restroom any longer than 45 seconds;  but when I stepped out, he was gone--and the hospital security guards would not let me go after him nor say goodbye. I spent 12 days worrying about him while he was on the ventilator, before his life was taken, and I never got to see him again.  I hadn't realized, at the time I last spoke to him, that it would be the last I would speak to him in this life--and the next time I saw him was in a casket, 12 days later--and it was just the hardest thing, explaining all this to my little 5-year-old boy, at the time--how someone he had loved, had regularly watched Speed Racer with...was suddenly gone. Harder even, MUCH HARDER, than having to accept for myself that he was gone--so hard for a child so young to understand--my poor little boy!! That was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, explain it to him, I am forever scarred--seeing his denial... his reaction to the whole news of it, still haunts me to this day)...

How the hell did I get into talking about this? This is weakness; you good people aren't looking for convenient excuses... Please accept my apology yet again...

Here's the deal: life happened somehow; and let me get back to what I was saying about October 2018--please forgive me for that personal and very emotionally-charged tangent--I spent a whole weekend working on the Outer Edge of Earnon back in October 2018--and I was feeling so excited and enthusiastic, I was having significant FUN!!! I have always striven to wow myself and to wow other people. It's just a passion, or a compulsion...or both... perhaps it stems from an insecurity...but it's certainly not all that ugly and vain... I am a very visual person after all (that much had better be evident to anyone who's been following me the last 15 years!) and it is very pleasurable, that is... as a person gifted w\ that rare desire to invent, create, impress upon others... to acknowledge the fruits of your labor...

...I was literally on a high... there's no other way to put it. I'm not lying to you guys... I've literally 'blown' entire vacation periods (requested time off from work) during the holiday months in December, etc... just pretending I'm Mark Crowe at my computer screen... producing the best artwork in the world! (also playing VSB and Incinerations on the side, every 20-minutes or so... 😄 ); but then it had occurred to me--just that very weekend, perhaps by happenstance and by the planets having aligned ever so rarely--that I HATE my employer through and through and they had 'screwed me over' for the last time!

They were working me overtime--once again--without compensation b\c I fall into that category of "exempt," and it was all b\c of their own poor planning (if looking at it optimistically--otherwise, clearly as a result of their own greed...)

...and I had been jerked around just one too many times, you see--I could go into it--but I won't...

I looked at the condition in which me and my [pregnant] wife, and son, had been currently living, and I looked at the greed and inhumanity of my employer... and some switch just suddenly flipped in my soul, and I thought to myself, "why [and how?!] should I continue to go on like this...?"

From that very weekend (four solid years ago), not the slightest bit of progress has been made on The Outer Edge of Earnon. I had decided right then and there I was going to use my skill to get us all (my family) out of this... "situation," and that my personal efforts would be utilized on a purely commercial product of the potential to make MONEY!!

(I never was one to idolize money--but when you need it; man it is hard to diss it... let me tell you.. you'll get there as well, if you survive enough shit. It's hard, being human, and suffering, and to continue to see others around you, whom you love... suffering...)

Truth be told, it really is just a means to an end... I  so much love this art of expression, and I have such a desire to create/invent and to impress... I would do it for free, absolutely, and you better believe it--if I could afford too... but the sad reality is that I can't. When you have to worry about explaining to your wife or to your innocent little angels why there is no food, the decision becomes very easy...

I feel like such a jerk right now...

This is the truth, however. I've been working on what I intend to be a commercial production, very intensely, for a solid four years now...

...of course, it hasn't been uninterrupted... there was the pandemic.. the 1.5 years I had to spend--in addition to my full-time job as a software developer--finishing up the ADU I personally designed and erected on my property, in order to keep my father (before he was taken), mother, and sister all off the street during it all--and every single evil in-between all that--as well as those everyday evils that I continue to face, which always wait just around the corner...

...but nonetheless, I press on... I figure if I can get off the runway here with this (commercial product, that is), the floodgates will open! What a DREAM it would be... to be my own boss... to spend all my time in self-employment doing what I love! It doesn't stop w\ OEOE you understand--I am inspired and compelled to produce the best experiences in life that I can dream! I shit you not, I've got at least FIVE (count 'em FIVE)  excellent, passionate, and original ideas still on the back-burner, for the past several years--even since 2007, that have yet to be realized--if I could just somehow break free from this terrible trap... well... the sky would be the limit...

It is at this point that I realize I need to just cut it off. There's no way to wrap up/provide justified explanation to what has occurred (and the choices I've made) over the last 6.5 years...

...Suffice it to say that I'm NOT giving up; but don't expect anything. I am just so, so sorry for having led you good people on any more than I had to. I promise you, it was not deliberate and it was not premeditated. Life just happened you know...? In a way, I bit off a lot and I wasn't able to chew it, maybe one day I will...

...but until then, I have to do what's right. I must first and foremost be that 'rock,' a good husband and a good father (a good son, brother, etc...)

In the meantime, please enjoy SpaceVenture, and keep a lookout for my commercial product. The sooner I yield success in that arena, the more likely I can again become that 'not so shy fish who's willing to put it all on the line by swimming up, totally naked, to the front of the tank, once more...' (I was always weak at spontaneous analogies!) I do still owe 1/3 of a million dollars in debt, and I have to do something about that, after all...

...I'm so sorry guys... I'm just so sorry...

Before I forget, I want to extend my sincerest thanks to all of you who have shown enthusiam for my vision over all these years: including, but not limited to, some very prominent and respected members of the community (who have proven themselves much moreso than I have managed after all this time): Troels, Chris, Kurdt, Frans... I also want to thank my original team, once again, for the great time we had together, initially dreaming this thing up and brainstorming the main plot together back in 2007: Samuel, Vroom, Jeff... I'm sorry life happened. I know we fell apart after just one summer, but although it was half of my lifetime ago, I'll still never forget it, and I appreciate your enthusiam; sorry I wasn't a better and more competent leader...

Sincerely, to all of you who have followed and have shown sincere enthusiasm, it continues to validate me and drive me onward in my current life and endeavors--and though we have nothing concrete/tangible, at least at this point, to show for it, it has really meant, and continues to mean something REAL to me. Thank you for having believed in me, my friends.

(and to anyone whom I have slighted; whether years ago or recently; please also accept my apology. I can tend to have a tad bit of an EGO. I am certainly not without my character flaws--as any human being is not. Please don't take it personal. I'm just a passionate person, and I continue to grow, even at my 30s--Nonetheless, there are times when I wish I had been a little less outspoken)

I'll see you guys...