Some idle observations

[cashcurtis]

Hi, my name is Cash Curtis II.  I've followed this project off and on since it began.  A couple notes before I start:

Your password must contain a mix of upper and lower case letters, as well as digits.

That's absurd    This isn't a DOD network password, after all.

And, the guy on your main page looks like Sean Astin.


Well, like I said, I've been following this off and on since '99.  I've always loved Sierra games, especially from the VGA GUI era.  So this project caught my interest early on.  I haven't checked in a couple years, but recently I downloaded a King's Quest remake and I saw the link.  I came here expecting to find the game, but was sadly disappointed.

I read through some more recent threads, and found this one...
http://visitors.hero6.com/forums/index.php?topic=953.0

Essentially stating the the MAD engine was being dropped and AGS was being used, and it would be very easy to convert the game.  This shocked me, relatively speaking.  After almost eight years changing game engines seems insane.  Switching a game engine, even with all assets in line, is no small matter.

I suppose that the bottom line is that your programmers failed you in the creation of the MAD engine.  That's very unfortunate.  I've seen lots of team projects over the years and they almost always fail due to lack of skilled programmers or lack of skilled artists.  Often both.

A big issue that I've always had with this project is no real progress was ever shown.  Lots of ideas were contributed, lots of nice music, but it was always stuck.  I saw the AGS demos as more of a publicity stunt, because making a demo that doesn't use the same game engine is kind of pointless.  Although, I liked the waterfall demo very much.  I always thought that the game should have been made with AGS from the start.

I think that the typical time frame for an indie game of this scope is about two years, if everything goes right.  Now, I'm not just making this up, I've seen a few successful indie games that took about this long, and my own is about to hit the two year mark.  About a year and a half ago I started work on a 3D RPG inspired by Ultima VII.  Visit my website to see screenshots and Youtube videos.

http://www.cashcurtis.com

http://www.youtube.com/cashcurtis

My game is essentially a team project, but I manage it differently than other indie projects that I see.  Often they try to run them like a business.  That never works.  You don't need websites and PR if you don't have a game.  It's too easy to focus on the unimportant details.  I didn't even go public with my game until significant progress had been made.  As such, it was easy to keep people interested as it progressed.

So, my point is that this team project was mismanaged from the start.  The whole project was contingent upon the completion of the MAD engine.  So, my suggestion...

After I release Geisha House (I've got a publisher interested!!) in six to eight months I could modify the RPG engine for use as an adventure game engine.    It would be 3D, 3rd person, in about the same viewpoint as the Sierra games.  3D media could be made that captured the look and feel of Quest for Glory.  Plus, my combat engine kicks ass, so I think that would be a nice addition to the game.  The modification of the engine would be pretty simple.

Here's the catch - if I did this then I'd be using my game engine, and I'd be doing a lot of the 3D modeling (I'm a programmer and an artist, I made most of the media in Geisha House).  Therefore, I wouldn't take second billing to anyone in the sense of being a 'subordinate', but rather a partner, depending on the amount of work contributed by any person.  I'd also want to keep the possibility of publishing the game for profit open, with the expectation of demoting it to abandon-ware after six months or a year.  A 'shipped' game looks good on any one's resume, but when it becomes abandon-ware then it will be free.

So, maybe it's all a terrible idea and offensive, but I like the idea of a Quest for Glory type game with 3D accelerated graphics and Ageia PhysX physics.  Let me know what you guys think.

[Swift]

Thank you for your offer, but we're sticking with AGS, and the game will be free to the public when it's ready.

I do agree with your point about not going public with anything until significant progress is made, which is why there hasn't been any announcements for several months.

FYI, Hero6 was never managed like a business. It has and always will be a community where people contributed work as and when they were able to.

[cashcurtis]

That's fine.

I do agree with your point about not going public with anything until significant progress is made, which is why there hasn't been any announcements for several months.

The problem with that is that the game has been in development for years.  Even if the game went public before significant progress was made, there was time for said significant progress to have been made, several times over.

You say that Hero6 was never managed like a business.  Statements like this...

"...appointed to the chief position of Creative Director in late fourth quarter of 2006" and "experience in managing online communities and some strong relationships with members of the gaming industry and media"

lead me to believe otherwise.  It has always been so in my perception, and I'm willing to bet that many others share this view.  This indie project was presented as a commercial venture in too many ways, especially in the way of structuring.  I think that I have a very valid point about this project focusing way too much on the trivial and unimportant.

AGS is a wonderful engine, good luck with it and I hope to see much good come of it.

[Tyr]

You say that Hero6 was never managed like a business.  Statements like this...

"...appointed to the chief position of Creative Director in late fourth quarter of 2006" and "experience in managing online communities and some strong relationships with members of the gaming industry and media"

lead me to believe otherwise.  It has always been so in my perception, and I'm willing to bet that many others share this view.  This indie project was presented as a commercial venture in too many ways, especially in the way of structuring.  I think that I have a very valid point about this project focusing way too much on the trivial and unimportant.
"

From what I understand the person that made this comment, also the person who made the "Press release" was somewhat.....egotistical? I suppose would be the word. I have to admit I myself was shocked when I saw these references. I aswell have been following this game for quite some time. and as Switf mentioned it has always been run more as a community rather than a game dev. company. Unfortunatly the person who was in charge for...I guess a week or so thought otherwise. To my knowledge said "Creative Director" is no longer a member of the team.

then again what do I know.

[cashcurtis]

I read that in a post, but there is no other mention of it on this forum.  I assume that it's true.  I was quite surprised when I saw that, mostly because there was no official mention of it.

In my experience, 'Creative Directors' never work for an indie project.  Every member has to be contributing to the project itself, or they're not really part of it.  I read some absurd things where this Servant guy said that reorganizing the team and renaming the files was taking a long time.  I've seen team project after team project fail because there is someone that essentially wants others to create their game for them.  They always offer the programmers and artists and musicians a part in the 'credits', when in reality the 'Creative Director' contributes nothing substantial.

This project, if indeed there is still a cohesive vision for a game, needs a fresh start.  Trying to stir up old interest will not yield much in the way of results, especially since no progress has been made.  I know, I see over and over again where people are saying 'Trust me, progress is being made!', but I suspect that it is unquantifiable progress that ultimately results in nothing.  This game needs to be properly developed with progress, in the form of screenshots and videos, shown to the public at reasonable intervals.

[PHattiE]

Hey Curtis,

An interesting post.  Just some quick comments:

Your password must contain a mix of upper and lower case letters, as well as digits.

That's absurd    This isn't a DOD network password, after all.

I agree COMPLETELY.  I *hate* password rules like this.  If I pick a poor password, it's my neck and my fault that someone hacks it, so let me deal with the consequences.  But don't tell me how I have to do stuff.  grr!!! 

And, the guy on your main page looks like Sean Astin.

Wierd.  I wouldn't be surprised if our artist used some references, but I honestly don't see much resemblance. I admit our portrait of the hero does look awfully familiar to me though.

Essentially stating the the MAD engine was being dropped and AGS was being used, and it would be very easy to convert the game.  This shocked me, relatively speaking.  After almost eight years changing game engines seems insane.  Switching a game engine, even with all assets in line, is no small matter.

I am a little puzzled by this statement....

First of all let me say I went to your website and saw your demos.  To say that I was impressed would be an understatement.  Did you really write that 3d engine?

I have a little 3d programming experience myself (XNA), and so I know that 3D programming requires above-average skills.  I use to think I was a pretty good programmer (I've been programming professionally for many years), and I still have not completely grasped 3d programming (physics particularly). 

Most indie game projects I know (ok, ALL) only have "script kiddies" on their team who use a pre-existing engine such as AGS, morrowwind, etc.  This is certainly sufficient if you are aiming to make a morrowwind-like game, or a sierra/lucasarts-like game.  In fact if you intend to make a sierra-like game as we do, it makes no sense whatsoever to write a new engine.  Though, I DO wish AGS was open source so that we weren't reliant on a single programmer to keep it up to date with technology

Anyway, back to my point: you say that switching engines is no small matter.  This statement puzzles me because you of anybody should know that content is by far the most time consuming part of the development cycle.  Once you have the content, switching to a new engine is somewhat trivial.  You see this all the time in the console market: once a game is on one platform, you'll often see it on another a few months later.  This is because all of the models, textures, sound, music, story, game play mechanics, etc are already done.  As long as you don't have to WRITE the new engine, scripting in the existing content is not too painful.  At least that has been my experience.

A big issue that I've always had with this project is no real progress was ever shown.  Lots of ideas were contributed, lots of nice music, but it was always stuck.  I saw the AGS demos as more of a publicity stunt, because making a demo that doesn't use the same game engine is kind of pointless.  Although, I liked the waterfall demo very much.  I always thought that the game should have been made with AGS from the start.

Back when the waterfall demo was out, AGS was still in its infancy.  We did not believe that it had the capabilities of doing RPG elements, action sequences, and mini games.  So at the time MAD seemed to be our only option.  The waterfall demo came about because one of our members at the time wanted to use AGS, and managed to get a lot of content into it (about 20 screens or so).  Since we could actually see how the game was going to look in AGS (meanwhile MAD was being finished and polished), we thought we might as well put out a demo for some of our skeptics. 

Now that we are switching back to AGS, it IS no question a tradgedy for us.  Not for hero6 per se, but for the MAD engine.  At this point though, we really need to get hero6 done, even if MAD is a casualty of it.

So, my point is that this team project was mismanaged from the start.  The whole project was contingent upon the completion of the MAD engine.

I think mismanagement was a part of it.  I also think we were too ambitious, and too fixated on quality.  At one time, hero6 being released before AGDI's KQ1VGA looked like a real possibility.  Of course the quality of hero6 would have been equal, if not worse than KQ1...  and we would have had to scrap many things from our design.  Now that we are determined to get the game done, we are ending up scraping a lot of it anyway, so perhaps we've learned our lesson.  Unfortunately, it has been the case with us that members come and go.  With new members, we loose experience, and we end up back where we started.  Our last "management" didn't understand this at all.

Anyway, I too think hero6 was being run like a business, particularly during the past 2 years.  This is mostly because some of our member's only skill was to do PR work and boss people around .  In my opinion such skills are a terrible waste of time for a indie project and also demotivating.  PR work shouldn't be done until the game is 80%+ done; even then, there is no need for a "team" to do it.  Yes, "press releases" really got under my skin as well.  I can't think of anything more lame then someone taking themselves too seriously.

After I release Geisha House (I've got a publisher interested!!) in six to eight months I could modify the RPG engine for use as an adventure game engine.    It would be 3D, 3rd person, in about the same viewpoint as the Sierra games.  3D media could be made that captured the look and feel of Quest for Glory.  Plus, my combat engine kicks ass, so I think that would be a nice addition to the game.  The modification of the engine would be pretty simple.

So, maybe it's all a terrible idea and offensive, but I like the idea of a Quest for Glory type game with 3D accelerated graphics and Ageia PhysX physics.  Let me know what you guys think.

Congratulations on getting interest from a publisher!

I think yours is an awesome idea, and that's not the half of it.  This is where adventure games need to be.  But I think you would be better off raising money or getting funding and bringing on a crew you can pay a sallery.  Finding people on the 'net to make 3d models is no small task (as some indie 3d projects will tell you; how you managed to do it is perplexing to me).  It takes me a solid week to make one model of "fair" quality (if you compare the quality to today's game industry at least).  Making low-res 2d graphics is quite a bit easier and less time consuming than 3d models too, so our team isn't even qualified to assist you.  And, 3d games can look cold and cheesy if it is not done right.  I cite QfG5 as an example.  I hated the game (even with pre-rendered 3d screens, it would have been much better in full 2d painted art-- even at low res)

I'm not into console games, but anyone who wants to understand what 3d can do to adventure games should check out Folklore (for ps3).  I heard the game wasn't great, but look at the video here (http://ps3.ign.com/articles/824/824614p1.html) and notice the graphics.  The dialogue works similar to QfG4 even.  The game looks very detailed and rich.  In an adventure game, it *must* be very detailed.  Adventure games are about the story afterall.

Screenshots:

[PHattiE]

In my experience, 'Creative Directors' never work for an indie project.  Every member has to be contributing to the project itself, or they're not really part of it.  I read some absurd things where this Servant guy said that reorganizing the team and renaming the files was taking a long time.  I've seen team project after team project fail because there is someone that essentially wants others to create their game for them.  They always offer the programmers and artists and musicians a part in the 'credits', when in reality the 'Creative Director' contributes nothing substantial.

This project, if indeed there is still a cohesive vision for a game, needs a fresh start.  Trying to stir up old interest will not yield much in the way of results, especially since no progress has been made.  I know, I see over and over again where people are saying 'Trust me, progress is being made!', but I suspect that it is unquantifiable progress that ultimately results in nothing.  This game needs to be properly developed with progress, in the form of screenshots and videos, shown to the public at reasonable intervals.

Just saw this... and again I agree.  Having a creative director was and will always be a joke for the very reasons you listed.  Still, many people don't understand the game development pipeline.  When you have a plot asking for multiple wardrobes, horses, and other unreasonable things for a 2d adventure game, someone with game development experience needs to step in.  But our last creative director didn't even have game development experience, so he was even making it worse!  I heard rumors of him attempting to up the resolution after 40+ backgrounds have already been done, and about 20+ NPC drawings have been finished (not to mention the sprites, and other art).  The absurdity of it still boggles the mind today.  He got the position because he was vocal about it and argued his senority and real life management experience qualified him (he also supposedly worked in film)

Anyway, now days there are far less members involved (in fact, I'm not even in the development loop anymore) BUT, with the switch to AGS, the game has been materializing much faster AND the most of the members working on it have been around for a while.  It is also a complete team, with a realistic vision for the game

I think it has a good chance of finishing, but I always do wonder about when the motivation will run out.  Having a small team means everyone needs to see it through to the end. Otherwise it's back to finding inexperienced members to help finish it.

[cashcurtis]

I totally understand why you guys wouldn't want to make a 3D version of the game.  All of the art done for the game would be useless, and I know that a lot of hard work went into it.  Lots of original media would be required for such a thing.  Such a thing wouldn't be at all feasible if you were starting from scratch.  However, I'm very good at what I do - I can model, and I have a TON of RPG type 3D stock media.   Lots of media that I use in Geisha House, for example, can simply be re-textured for vastly different looking models and characters.

If you released an impressive looking video of a 3D game, people (and talent) would flock to it.  It seemed to have a tremendous support base early on.  I think that people would appreciate a well made 3D version of a game that they love.  I won't make 2D games - I grew up with 2D games and I absolutely love them, I have tons of older 2D games that I play when I need to take a 3D break - but so much media is required, so much pixel art.  The worst thing is that the media isn't portable.  If your 'Creative Director' wants to up the resolution, you have to start over.  For 3D it's much simpler, every model is portable to any other project.  Animation is easier, once you've created the model all you have to do is rig and animate the bone structure.

I've made 2D type games that were actually 3D confined to two planes of movement.  The result is more flexible environments, easier media creation, dynamic lighting, etc.

My interest is this project is multifaceted.  On one hand, I absolutely loved Quest for Glory III, I played it every possible way, maxed out every possible stat, saw every possible ending.  I got so good I actually beat that mirror copy of myself near the end.  The same thing still happened, but I felt like a badass    So, if I were involved in such a project, it would indeed touch a special place in my heart.

On the other hand, I see it as a good opportunity.  It's a well known project, it has a large potential fan base, and the subject matter provides us with an entire world and mythology ready to tweak and use.  Also, I have no doubt that the game as it is planned is rich and detailed and fantastic.  I said that I'd want to keep the option of commercially publishing the game open, however my intent is not to make money.  Everyone who was involved in a published game would have a fantastic bullet to add to their resume, myself included.  It takes two shipped games to work as a Game Developer, and Geisha House will be only one.  It would also popularize my RPG Creator system, which would allow games like this to be created.  Geisha House is based on the style of Ultima VII, but this would greatly expand its visibility into a different genre of gaming.  That would be sold for profit.  The point is that I see the publishing of Hero6 as more of a formality with the intention of making it abandonware in an absurdly short amount of time.  The legalities of this could be messy depending on the publisher and the terms of the contract, but anything is possible if it's done right.

Though nostalgic, I'm a very practical guy.  I wouldn't dream of coming into a long running project like this and attempt to strong-arm or warp it into something it's not supposed to be.  I just think that 3D has so much more potential than 2D - you can make the same game with the same viewpoint, interface, and style of play, but better and easier.  You guys that are still involved in this should discuss it and see what you all think.  Maybe everyone is dead set to have a 320x240 2D recreation of their favorite game.  Maybe some want to see that game that they loved so much recreated in 3D.

If there was any interest, I'd put together a tech demo of a 3D version of the game.  I think that the best way to accomplish this is by recreating a memorable QFG moment(s) in the 3D engine, accompanied by some combat.  This video, and /or tech demo would provide six months of intense interest, and at that point much more advanced demonstrations of the game will be available.

The only thing that I would have to do is to hire a 3D artist to make the hero in 3D.  I prefer to contract out my character modeling, I'm better with non humanoid models.  This would be an acceptable investment to me, provided that there was legitimate interest.

You guys talk about it, think about it.  AGS is a nice engine, but it is within the realm of possibility to create a game that is far superior to Quest for Glory V, and such a thing cannot be accomplished in 2D.

[Brassfire]

Hey Cash, welcome to the forums.

My initial instinct is that Hero6 is not a suitable project for conversion to 3d. Although it does have a following which could be used for success as an indie for-profit 3d game, the community spirit and oldskool 2d graphics are an integral part of what it is. To do anything else with that would break the spirit of it and make an entirely different project.

I hold out hope for Hero6 out of sheer stubbornness sometimes, but sometimes I think that might be enough to turn things around.

Now, if you're interested in making NEW adventure games which blend certain aspects of the spirit of QFG and more modern gameplay and graphics/physics technology, I'd love to discuss the possibility of working with you in the future.

What is the engine you're using?

EDIT: Also, you may wish to check out http://www.qfg3d.com/

[Tyr]

With reference to all this creative director business, and such. Plenty of folks have been making mention of getting the wrong impression when coming to this site.

Perhaps it's time for one of the mods to take a look at what is relevant and what is not when it comes to the posts here. (ie the press release not relevant) if the info is no longer
applicable coming from a member of the team who was essentially fired, perhaps it should be removed and/or replaced with material that does apply. For example rather
than saying mailing servant@hero6.com for site issues, mail hero6_web_guy/girl@hero6.com. Or again the "Home page" mentions 3 job opening, again posted by servant
if this positions are not available (or if they are) perhaps the post should be updated to reflect that.

This may assist with peoples (first) impressions of the project as a whole. We all know the project is being worked on, and yes updates would be great but lets face it there
are much more important things to be done. Personally I'd rather know the project is going to be finished, than know what bugs you squashed this week. There may be
plenty of people coming to this site with skill sets that could help out. But all they see is Art lead, and uh..I think it was Management aid (Whatever the hell that is)
positions opening (are they in fact still open? or have the positions been deleted?) which in turn may turn them away.

Again just a thought 

[Blackthorne519]

Sometimes things just get stale.

I'm sure when something of substance happens, it'll come through.

Things take time, heh.

Bt