Questions from a prospective dev team.

[BlastShock]

Greetings fellow nerds,

 

 

I am the lead programmer for a new studio that some colleagues and myself are starting up on the side. We are a very experienced team in the world of game development, with some 25+ years of experience between us. 

 

We all work in related fields, but have come together with an ambitious side project: An (m)morpg. 

 

As this is more of a "free" time project for us currently, we have decided to use an existing engine as a base to build from. Honestly, the market for such an engine is saturated with lackluster options. We have plenty of budget money set aside for such an indie endeavor (upwards of $40k). 

 

We are currently leaning towards unity, which is a pretty decent option. However, I stumbled across this engine and I am definitely entertaining the idea, as we are all very fond of small indie startups such as this. I am very impressed with what has been accomplished (according to what I read here anyway)

 

 

I do have some concerns.

 

Firstly, I see that this engine will be open source, which is the only way I could ever convince my team to use it anyway.

 

I understand fully that this is a side project, but realistically what are we looking at on a time frame for a stable full release? I only ask as I have been burned in the past by the day that never actually comes, and I cannot pour resources into a project that promises an imminent release for 2 more years. It does toss up a red flag to me that the road map hasn't been updated, and it appears that there has been no substantial news in several months now.

 

 

Without being able to pilfer around the source code myself, one more big question I have is also aimed directly at the devs:

 

How well organized is your source? 

 

No judgement here, just genuinely curious. I just really don't want to cut my designers loose on the existing engine, only to discover that the source is a big garbled mess of spaghetti that Bill Gates himself can't navigate.

 

 

Please dont take offense, I mean none by it. Impressive piece of work you have ever here, I would just like to have a better idea if it is worth our time and money investment, or if we should use our resources elsewhere.

 

We look forward to contributing to the progression of Intersect.

 

 

Thank you.

[Phenomenal]

PREPARE FOR A LONG PARAGRAPH:

@BlastShock Lel these are all valid concerns the devs stated that they are a bit messy at coding but that it should be alright if you know c# and that the unity update should be pretty soon (I think either 2.0 which is when the source comes or 2.1/2.2 I think) and the roadmap not being updated is just jc and kibz being lazy (I haven't checked the roadmap they might have updated it) and I think that getting to work now should be alright and you can get working now but don't go around waiting on the unity update as jc and kibz are mainly huge at working on updates when off college (they said they are gonna chill for christmas I think?) but for summer and things like that they will get lots of work done. I hope this answered all your concerns  also can I ask what you want to do with the source just for curiosity's sake? also even if you don't spend a ton of time on the forums if you or your team get stuck we can help .

[Giligis]

First off, welcome to the forums, @BlastShock! Glad you stumbled upon us, and its always nice to see a new face.

 

Now, I cant speak for @jcsnider or @Kibbelz but I can say this: it is an amazing engine. They have poured time and time again into this project, and yes I will agree that things have been a little slow, but JC and Kibbelz are always working hard, I see them on Skype, or talking in the chatbox, and slowly but surely everything is coming together nice. The roadmap was put into place to give more of a general idea, he's met some of the goals, and others he simply just wont be able to meet, in my honest opinion. With developing, things like that happen, but don't think for a second that means the project is dead. Both developers pop in atleast once a day I'd like to say, so you can see them interacting with the community or using the shoutbox that they are here, just busy. The source is on its way here, and JC himself has said if you want to develop an MORPG making our engine, do it. JC has provided each new version a way to "migrate" everything from your game to the new version of Intersect without corrupting or losing any data. Essentially, this is because the source currently is changing VERY VERY MUCH, and we  would not be able to migrate all your data successfully if you changed a part of the source (in some cases) which is why its not released yet. It is soon, my friend. Also:  

 

HOWEVER, if you have 40K+ to spend and STILL want to use Intersect, I'd say this: use the engine as you'd like to plan, and spend that money on EVERYTHING else. Art, music, etc. You will have a wonderful project, and its a great stepping stone into something truly serious, a game development company maybe of your own. 

 

I cannot speak for the organization of the code, but JC has come a long way. We originate from a different community and whats he produced there from what hes produced now is a drastic difference. Not to mention, Kibbelz is an extremely proficient programmer, and I say with the both of them, my best ASSUMPTION is to say the code will be easy to work with, and somewhat organized. 

 

Good luck, and I hope to have answered your questions to the best of my ability without working on the code hands on!! Best of luck!!

[Oddly]

Welcome to the community,
 

A lot of the questions are constantly asked, and I'm sure are /unorganizedly/ answered somewhere on this community.
I can't speak for the interesct dev team on the timeframe stuff, but their FAQ page on the intersect download page states "within a year or so".

As for source organization:
I can vouch that JC keeps his github projects decently organized and well managed.

[jcsnider]

Not sure if it's smart to announce your budget but in this case it doesn't really matter.

 

I am the lead programmer of the Intersect engine in all of it's glory

 

3 hours ago, BlastShock said:

I understand fully that this is a side project, but realistically what are we looking at on a time frame for a stable full release? I only ask as I have been burned in the past by the day that never actually comes, and I cannot pour resources into a project that promises an imminent release for 2 more years. It does toss up a red flag to me that the road map hasn't been updated, and it appears that there has been no substantial news in several months now.

It's hard to say. Not because there is a lot to do but just because @Kibbelz and I have schedules that go from busy to free for months at a time.  The last few months have sucked as far as updates have gone but this isn't the first dry stretch that we've had. (For example, sort the dev blog topics by start date and then look at there being nothing between Nov 3rd and February 2nd last year). But each dry stretch has been ended by non-stop updates for months at a time where our sole focus has been Intersect. One more sprint like that and it'd be released. I don't know about completely stable... but that is something that can be obtained with the help of the community once the source is out.

 

I think the source is fairly well organized but that is something I am going to be working on during a refactoring phase once all of the features are done. I have been thinking lately that I could open the source to developers during that refactoring phase to help out and take suggestions, it would occur sometime as beta is ending. The roadmap is somewhat unrealistic at the moment. For example we added crafting which isn't on there. Questing is almost done. Parties are done and Trading will only take a day or two of code. If you refer to the roadmap that is 2 versions of beta that will be released in one.

 

We have come wayyyyy too far to stop working on Intersect now. It will be completed in the near future. If for any reason we had to drop it, we would release the source in whatever state it was in.  I hate giving estimates on when we will get stuff done. Over the next 8 weeks I will have 2 weeks of class, 1 week of finals, graduation, Christmas, New Years, countless job interviews, friends visiting from out of town, I'll be moving at least once, and I might actually start a new full time job. I have no idea how long most of that will take or when I will have free time in the midst of it. Kibz has school.. and a new girlfriend  

 

I can guarantee that Intersect will be done in 2017. Probably Q1... probably. Hopefully that helps you in your decision making process.

 

Best,

JC

[Kibbelz]

Hello @BlastShock we're glad that you have an interest in Intersect. To directly address your concerns let me tell you a little bit about ourselves. Myself and JC have been friends for years and both of us are students at university. I have 10 week terms where i'm extremely busy, (JC's schedule stated above) and little attention is given towards Intersect during this time period. My term ends on the 2nd and I look to invest further time into Intersects release. As a non-profit side project it becomes very hard to estimate a time window and an accurate road map. Once i return home with decent internet i plan to stream my programming live as it gives the community some insight to Intersect and also able to make contributions and ideas whilst we develop said features. It is also worth noting I also have exams on like the 3rd-4th January for my degree so even then I cannot solely focus on Intersect, and heck its Christmas! I'm going to save you a wall of text and keep it brief, i assume by the wall of text from everyone above you can see how passionate everybody is for Intersect and the following behind it.

[BlastShock]

@jcsnider I understand, I really do. I just wanted to verify where things stand. Congrats on the graduation . The budget announcement is no big deal. Not really an "announcement" per say, just a casual mention. Hehe. This is a hobby project for the time being between several long time friends that work in the IT field in one way or another, ranging from a couple programmers to a professional designer. We have all just kinda thrown into the pot for the various costs associated.

 

@Kibbelz I am very impressed by what you guys have accomplished. I do see that there is a core of passionate people here, and that is very welcoming for sure. Glad to hear that this project is alive, I really want to use it. Like I said, I totally understand the time thing, especially while you guys are still students. (Which really impresses me even more that two of you were able to accomplish what you have) Many people attempt these things and fail. Many many people make progress and disappear, and I just wanted to verify that this wasn't the case here. 

 

It is exciting that I have found a project that is destined to be open source, and written (entirely?) in C#/.net (My love language, haha).

 

 

Ultimately, we could very well start from scratch and create our own engine, but just reaaaallllllyyy don't want to go that extreme for a side project, especially considering the time sink that an MMO is even with an engine. 

 

We all hail from small indie backgrounds in the beginning, and game dev is what sparked our interest in the field to begin with. That's why we are very much wanting to latch on to a project such as this and perhaps help to nurture the growth of the engine, and the community. Obviously, we can't fully do that without the source, but it seems very likely that we will have it in the near future. 

 

Thanks for all of the replies, it is very reassuring.

 

You'll be hearing from us.