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Important Progress Update and Clarification


MrXLink

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Greetings Skylords, Skyladies and Skyfolks!

Throughout the past few weeks we have noticed increasingly negative comments and remarks with regards to Skylords Reborn, its progress and its development time. Accusations of us scamming supporters are made on a daily basis, and while that is simply false in every aspect, we do understand that a lot of you have major concerns and are worried about the project, whether it's still a thing, whether we have run off with Patreon funds, and where we are right now after 3 years of development. Don't worry, though! We live, and as you will soon find out, we are doing well and are going nowhere!

The thing is, and beta testers know this, that we are actually making a lot of progress to the point where we are busy stress testing the servers with the Closed Beta testing group, improving server stability and creeping closer to Open Beta with every single test. And by the Old Gods, it took a while to get here. A lot of you have an idea of how long a game development cycle can take, and so it is only understandable that 3 years seems like an awful lot just to bring a game back. However, it's a lot more complicated than that due to this being a passion/voluntary project that we don't get paid for, and finding/fixing bugs being way more complex due to us not having made the client code at all. This makes it an unpredictable process in which we can't set deadlines or promise fixed release times. For a more detailed explanation, refer to the quote below from the Open Beta Information thread:

On 7/19/2018 at 2:30 AM, MrXLink said:

...alongside the programming department having issues with setting up realistic deadlines for the work they are doing (taking personal time into account), this is not your average game development process you're looking at. What we are doing is reviving a pre-existing game through the same game files and code. Now, normally programming is already an unpredictable task, in which bugs are like hydras; one gets fixed, 2 more appear. In this project, it's like fighting an army of hydras while having no idea where they come from. We did not write the code that our server code needs to interact with, and we do not know the game's code or files inside-out, no matter how much we figure out ourselves. Not only does this make coding highly difficult, but also extremely unpredictable. Where you may be able to expose patterns in your own code's flaws, BattleForge is a labyrinth, and bugs may take minutes to fix, or may take days, weeks or months to fix. That is the margin of error we work with here, and it's not pretty.

Combine this with the fact that people have other duties, jobs, and lives to maintain, and there we get a massive uncertainty level for this project's level of progress. We do progress, but the speeds at which we do so varies depending on all these circumstances; it all adds up. You can't expect the team to work steadily and come across as little bugs as possible, you can't expect us to spend all the time we have on this project either. We're never getting paid for this, we don't always have time, and we're all not capable of working constantly. And as much as we all hate the wait, there is no other option than to progress in the way we currently do. If we were doing a complete remake of the game (which would definitely get the project killed), or if we would know every detail about the way the game was originally programmed, we would have a higher probability to make realistic deadlines, but the fact of the matter is that we don't. And with this absurdly high level of uncertainty, we stopped making deadlines, because we would only hurt the community by doing so for no good reason, and we do not want to disappoint you with yet another wrong prediction.

Rest assured, we are happy to inform you that we don't want to make money from this project (even if we wanted to, it would be illegal), and that your support is not in vain. Supporting the project is also completely voluntary, and we do not give any game rewards to patrons at all. Thanks to every single one of you who has been having faith in this project and supporting us by being a thriving and friendly community, we have managed to come a long way in 3 years, in which we faced managerial issues, legal complications, several server rewrites, and a lot of swapping regarding staff and partnerships. Our team right now is very solid and progressive, though, and we're getting closer and closer to that glorious Open Beta. We are reaching important testing milestones, which is fantastic. For example, @Kubik has evaluated our latest Closed Beta Stress Test, which was held yesterday. He has collected the following results:

Kubik said:

Stress test results:
Four severe bugs were identified, and a fix for 3 of them already applied.
12p maps should be less buggy, and maybe even work (probably not yet).
One bug causing ghost lobbies (that will always cause client crashes), is fixed.
One problem with wrong match updates (faster than server can handle) is fixed.
Our threadpool has too big an overhead or does calculations wrongly for a lot of small tasks. This problem is identified and can be tested without bunch of players so I hope we will solve it soon.
79 testers showed up, starting 147 matches.

For more details on the stress test results, there will be an update on our Developer Platform soon!

"What does all this mean?" you may wonder. In essence, it means that we are ironing out some of the last bugs in the current server code (as far as we can see), are getting further in making 12-player maps work properly, and the server is currently able to handle quite some players at the same time. In other words, progress, progress, progress! Keeping this in mind, we would like to give you the following information:

Something BIG is coming.
Though we will not be reaching a full open beta state just yet, something large and important will be coming to the Skylords Reborn community in the near future. To present this and to provide you with details on this big development milestone, we will be announcing a new, important official stream very soon, so stay tuned!

 

Hopefully this update will clarify things and ease away some of the major concerns you may all be having regarding the project. Be sure to check the forums, discord or other social media for the stream announcements, and for weekly updates about all the progress we are actively making, check our Developer Platform!
Thank you all again for your undying support and dedication to the project and the game, and we hope to bring all over 21 THOUSAND of you Skylords, Skyladies and Skythings (*GASP*) more great progress and updates in the near future!

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One crappy example for all, would you expect game to search for open lobbies in the middle of running match?

If no at all you would never figure it out.

If no in first X hours/days/weeks then you would waste that many time searching elsewhere.

We know a lot about BF weird behaviors so it took us "only" 3 hours to figure this out.

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everybody shluld respect the developer team by the fine work they are doing, not critize them. for real we the skyforge community should be like family support eachother not critizize everybody especially not the developers. i'm not one of the beta testers or a supporter either way how much i wanted to i respect them all. because of the fine work they are doing and what they are able to accomplish for us the community, i've been waiting for this a long time. i'm still going to be patient about it and not give critisizm, why not give them more compliments on the small progress and big. because either way it takes us all a step closer to being into the forge, into the battle beside eachother and making us all whole again.

Kunzekalauer and kingre like this
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@Kubik i can feel your pain!

Just looking at how the game handles certain tasks, such as opening boosters etc. It's pretty clear that the game locks the ui when waiting for updates from the server... you know, the kind of flaws that would have gotten a 2nd semester university project i was once doing failed instantly (it's annoying to the user and also very, very error-prone if the server doesn't deliver exactly what you expect it to straight away and a clear sign concurency is foreign to the developer). Looking just at the surface issues in the programming... yeah "wtf" moments are pretty much expected.  

Kubik likes this
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I guess most of peoples (that are not programmers) will not understand most of what you said, but you get the point. I guess they originally want to have multi-server structure, but they figure out it is not possible to send something to server A and wait for response from server C so they have it multiple copies of big servers and split players across them. I hope it was not their intention to make it that weird.

LagOps likes this
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I have watched the progress since the start never posted or wrote anything but i feel like i should.

Most people that are leaving negative comments, just don't bother with reading anything, they just see that there is not what they desire and complain, there's also some people which are doing it again and again under your Facebook Posts for example.

I hope you don't listen to much to it, i know it is hard to "disappoint" people that are longing for something,but most of them just forget, without you these people would not even have something to complain about, there would be no revival of Battleforge, they would and will never have a chance to play it.
They also forget,that this is not a game to make money with as you already have stated and have not the slightest clue how time investing all of this is.

I just wanted to speak my mind and say thanks for all the work and giving the chance to people to play this game again, don't give in to negative people and think about all the smiles you will give to all those people cheering for you.

LagOps, Navarr, Kunzekalauer and 1 other like this
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Thanks, I guess I am not bothered much by them, because I probably never opened Facebook page :) and on the discord I have muted the general channel, beta testers do not complain about it and here on the forum I am active only in parts most of you do not see(beta section) :) 

Navarr likes this
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Just want to respond to the general comments from people that it has been so long (too long) and blablabla... 
Let's imagine you are the ones developing in your free time.
Then you face setbacks you don't want/expect which means you have to dedicate even more of your free time. 
If you would still be like "This takes too long, **** it", the project would've been abandoned a long time ago.
Fortunately for us the developers are not like that and keep dedicating and spending their free time even after all the setbacks and extra time they had/still have to put in.
Tldr: Huge shoutout for the team's perseverance and dedication that the ones complaining obviously wouldn't have had the patience for. 

 

 

Kubik, LagOps and Archeon like this
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Battleforge was the best rts online multiplayer game out there. This single fact was enough for me to believe this project is legit because if someone loved this game, they truly mean it... I love the streams about the game and if that is not enough for anyone then they shouldnt even be here

I respect all the work you guys put into this gem and know how hard and frustrating it can get... and you are doing it for free no wait you are losing some IQ here and there because of the general chat sometimes

Im sorry

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As someone who was hired only months ago by a high tech company doing software work with a massive codebase, I absolutely understand how insanely daunting it is to try to navigate code you didn't write or extensively work with before. Complicated bug fixes can take days to weeks (or even months) by experienced employees, and this is in a paid environment, 8-9 hour workdays. When I'm off work, I only have a few waking hours at best each day to distribute between everything else in my life. Flip this around, where folks only have a few hours at best outside of work and staying alive to possibly allocate to this passion project, and it's perfectly reasonable that this monumental process takes time.

Edited by FailsWithTails
SunWu likes this
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To test a project the team make a pool of tests with all the most important cases and usually feedbacks finish this work overtime. Backwise you're testing for "make the project", the range for every aspect/cases is a colossal work... u're not EA staff .

I'm comfident in your works, I would have liked to join if I had a better expertise

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Im just excited to get to replay this game. It was a lot of fun I got to share with my brothers and I would love to open it up again and run a game with them in the future. I'm content with waiting for the open beta or trying to snag those Closed Beta invites.

Just keep up the good work!

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@FailsWithTails I also work in big company and I say some aspects are much worse in the company. But we can not even navigate the code of Battleforge, because we do not have the client code :( we know many things about it already. It contains some smart things, some things that are just not best, and some that are completely weird(wrong, unless we miss something unexpected they know and we do not). But important thing is for some reason it is very time sensitive, so when we improve performance, random things(read as completely not related to change) break.

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This statement is sooo satisfying to read, finally it comes back alive, due to the dedicated work of the (from my point of view) highly respected developing team and a trustfull crew of closed Beta testers! I´m so hyped to see this great game coming back to life, thank you all! Keep up this great work :hypetrain:

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I am ready... Ready to binge this game into oblivion. my patience is also limitless. So go ahead and do what ever you wanna do.

(I have not applied for beta because I am severely depressed and am not certain if I can get myself out of bed on a day of a beta test or not. I have not figured out that many strategies yet)

Edited by ShakerGER
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Only disappointed and angry people write comments and these are negative. So we (the guys and girls who love the game and can wait until its finished) are reading, understanding and linking the dev post and status updates.

@theWholeSkylordsRebornTeam: dont stress for yourself for these few people :)

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3 hours ago, Tanktiger said:

Only disappointed and angry people write comments and these are negative. So we (the guys and girls who love the game and can wait until its finished) are reading, understanding and linking the dev post and status updates.

@theWholeSkylordsRebornTeam: dont stress for yourself for these few people :)

i mean to be fair, alot of us are frustrated by the long waiting period, but we also understand why it has to be this way so we dont act negatively towards the devs, because it isnt their fault its like this, they can only do things with what they have, and EA didnt give them any official help or resources so they have been doing this on their own, so while many of us are chomping at the bit, we are being patient even though it can be difficult to do that, but we are frustrated BECAUSE we love the game and want it back, but thats also why we are being patient too! angry posts dont make anything happen faster :)

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