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Limit Theory: An Infinite, Procedural Space Game

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Cody
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Aye, could be that - or it could be burn-out! It does happen, and he had taken a lot on.

 

I don't follow the LT forum very much, so I've no idea what the word/feeling is over there.

Oolite Naval Attaché


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DarkOne
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Think he is feeling the pinch.... because I think in the last video he promised early 2015 release and I think that might slip. Think he needs to show off a bit more of a completed universe and show its alive and doing its own thing before I would say its ready. That scripting/modding portion that will be in the game will really make this game something special if people take advantage of it. I hope the #22 video shows off some really good stuff.


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Geraldine
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I think all devs (especially when it come close to release time) feel like that. Its lots of pressure for one so young as Josh, but seeing what he has accomplished so far from basically nothing, I think he is up for it. He is just busy is all under the hood of the game and does not want to waste anytime doing community updates so that he can make the deadline he set. Or at least try to at any rate. It might have helped had he a Community Manger to take some of this burden from him, but thats the brakes when your going solo.


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Pyros
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I fear that Josh silence is going for to long to be a simple "crunch mode, DND!" thing. I hope everything is alright with him...


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DarkOne
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You may be right, maybe all the countless hours of coding and doing all the stuff himself got him sick. I hear about kids dying over playing video games for like 2 days straight, I am sure many hours of coding, stress and lack of sleep over a long period of time could do a toll. I think people just need the honesty if he is ill please just say you are and people will understand. If its not that then maybe he hit a wall where there is something that is a huge issue and he is rewriting a ton of code... but I doubt that since Josh has seemed really open and thorough about development thus far.

 

I think every week I look for a new update video and youtube and nothing yet since Nov/Dec.


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NevilClavain
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No more activity on his twitter thread since january

the last tweet is pretty mysterious


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Pinback
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Could in negations with a publisher,NDA and all that, although I guess time will tell what is going on.


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Geraldine
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That too could be a possibility Pinback. It is puzzling though this total silence from Josh. The main thing is I hope he is ok.


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Pinback
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It's very strange although a single post on the forum or social media could clear this all up in a flash.


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Pyros
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It's very strange although a single post on the forum or social media could clear this all up in a flash.

 

Yes.

 

Anyway, according to RPS, he is alive, kicking and working in LT. Good news  , but the extended silence is still a bit odd.


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Pinback
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We might see an update in that case.


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DarkOne
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Josh is back... Yay!

 

 

http://forums.ltheory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4492


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Pinback
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Good news that he is feeling better although their may be long term implication with the game.


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DarkOne
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Do you mean in just getting it out?

 

Yeah it will probably take longer which is ok by me. It just seems like Josh worked his self to bad health driven by his dream its a shame and I guess I would much rather do that for a dream of mine than for someone else 🙂  Glad he is ok and Josh sounds motivated so lets see what 2015 brings and looking forward to see his next video update.


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Pinback
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Do you mean in just getting it out?

 

Sound like he suffered from severe burn out with developing the game and probably it would be best if he was to push the games release date back till later this year or even early next year.


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Cody
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What Pinback said - that sort of burnout is heavy stuff!

Oolite Naval Attaché


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Geraldine
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Its good to see him back but he ought to take the time to heal. I posted a message for him in that thread D1 linked to.


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Waervyn
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Really glad he's back, but I hope he doesn't push himself too much. I'd much rather see this game come out a year late than not at all. His development logs on youtube were amazing to follow.


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DarkOne
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Here is something I pulled from LT forums while looking for progress that is interesting

See more here in this posting: http://forums.ltheory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4640&start=450
 

So the truth is, no, I don't have anything to show at the moment, at least not graphics wise. But there is a tremendously-good reason for that 😉
 
Spoilers!
 
Since people are getting angsty again, let me give some more detail on what I've been doing with LT. It's quite technical but very, very important to actually being able to finish the game. So remember how I used to have this concept of testing 'individual features' in sandboxes using LTSL? Right, well, that was all well and good. But at the end of the day, it actually wasn't all well and good, because, LTSL used the entirety of the game engine (liblt.so , liblt.dll, liblt.dylib depending on platform). It had no choice, because the game engine was one big blob. That means that, while each sandbox may only have called on particular features of the game engine, the entire engine was still there, in the background. Way too stuff was affecting the sandboxes simply because the engine wasn't separated, it was 'monolithic.' Changes to improve the functionality of one sandbox would end up cascading through the entire codebase and, far too often, breaking other functionality in other sandboxes. It was remarkably frustrating and time-consuming.
 
I've spent the past few months, in particular, completely changing this problem. LT is no longer a 'monolothic' engine but rather a compartmentalized ('micro') engine, comprised of many interlinked object files, each of which are independent from most others. Blah blah blah, technicalities. Why should you care? Why am I not able to show screenshots of this?
 
Here's the beauty: there are no screenshots of the game simulation, of the AI, of the core game logic, etc in isolation -- and yet, I can develop them in isolation because one does not need graphics to develop any of these critical pieces of the game!! 'Sandboxes' are now simple console programs that give me readouts of market data, faction stats, etc etc. They have no concept of graphics. OTOH, the asset generation algorithms, which are a heavy WIP at the moment (I hope to be able to show you all some output as soon as I finalize the structure of the algorithms), need graphics but no other concepts from the game. They are simple graphical sandboxes to view single models, just like Maya or something of the sort.
 
So. The game? Here's the deal: you won't actually see it until the component pieces are finished. At that point, we will wrap the player interaction layer over all the components, and that will be the LT alpha.
 
That's a high-level look at what's going on right now. Frankly, I'm really excited about it. On a day-to-day basis, it makes me a lot more comfortable to be able to work towards a specific goal without touching code that needn't be touched. In general, it makes me quite a bit more productive. It might sound like another one of my little 'perfectionist' tendencies, but, in fact, if one considers the complexity of a monolithic engine vs. a micro engine, roughly-speaking, it's the difference between quadratic O(n^2) time to develop and linear O(n) time -- that's because the separation of dependencies ensures that touching one piece of a micro engine doesn't cause a cascade effect that breaks all the other pieces. This is the epitome of the "wall of separation" concept that every good CS student should learn, but which I really failed to do well during my first attempt at structuring the LT engine.
 
"Ok ok ok very technical, much wow, BUT I STILL WANT TO SEE THE GAME AND STUFF." I know. Once I have asset generators in good shape, I'm going to stop being so stingy. I will be showing example assets as they come out of the pipeline when that pipeline is of sufficient quality. But, once again, as I have hinted at before, the next time you see a shot of the whole game (not just graphically, but including interaction and gameplay) will essentially be very, very close to BETA.
 
Did that make any sense?? I hope so!


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IronHound
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Oh cmon you guys. It hurts me to watch you follow this game. Its clearly not going to be done this year or probably next. The dude burned out, I could see it the moment I counted the pimples on the youngster. He's got excuses, hes got wonderfully written posts, and he's got literally nothing to show for it. Come back to the light my friends! 

 

Sorry to make light on you fellows and your pain, but... c'mon. Really? LT isn't vaporware, but it's not coming any time soon. His development is mirroring Bit Oddysey or any other number of 1 man dev teams. We've all seen it time and again.


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DarkOne
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Oh cmon you guys. It hurts me to watch you follow this game. Its clearly not going to be done this year or probably next. The dude burned out, I could see it the moment I counted the pimples on the youngster. He's got excuses, hes got wonderfully written posts, and he's got literally nothing to show for it. Come back to the light my friends! 
 
Sorry to make light on you fellows and your pain, but... c'mon. Really? LT isn't vaporware, but it's not coming any time soon. His development is mirroring Bit Oddysey or any other number of 1 man dev teams. We've all seen it time and again.

Nooooooo.... it must be finished. I do see your reasoning and why it could be like this. Josh has been very silent and I definitely want to see a video because its almost been a year since the last one. I don't like ever thinking something won't be finished but it is reality sometimes. My son always wants me to purchase these early access games on steam and I try to explain to him when it is version 0.1.6 that it is very young in development and could take years to finish, nevermind that it is already a year old on steam 🙂 But I cave and buy it for him anyway knowing one day he will tell me a favorite game of his closed down.

I have to admit I thought he was close to release back almost a year ago, with that scripting language he wrote for the game let the players make the content. Just give us the engine and the framework and let the community build it. 🙂 If its not out in 2016 though Ironhound I will accept your comments as true 🙂


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IronHound
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Haha sorry man, its just I've seen this pattern with alot of kickstarters and early access games. Its made me bitter, and I'm seeing the EXACT same signs with Josh and Limit Theory as I've seen with other titles. Bit Odyssey, Malevolence: Sword of Ahkronox, Limit Theory, the list goes on and on. Basically, I've noticed a few reoccuring themes that I've seen across the internet.

 

Personal issues cropping up. Normally, I would be sympathetic, until I realized how easy it is to say I have 'mental health problems' on the internet in order to buy time. A lady on kickstarter asked for thousands for medical treatment for suicidal tendancies. Her neighbor recognized her and revealed she was spending the money on parties and weed. (That was years ago, my memory could be off here.) With Malevolence, we hadn't seen updates for months, and suddenly the dude behind it says he had to sell his house. I've seen this before. A long lapse in updates, and a personal issue, or 'drive/data loss/computer death' Its something you saw alot among the Half-Life modding community.

 

I think I just have too much experience with this sort of thing lol. Half Life and The Elder Scrolls have magnificent modding communities with beautiful ideas. In a way, they are game developers, just on a smaller scale. Alot of these one man projects mirror a burnt out passion. You develop something, it becomes a full time job, you start dreading deadlines, and you stop having fun, your creative juices run on empty, and one day... you just get up and walk away.

 

I wanted Limit Theory to succeed so I could buy it, but the kickstarter interviews just set off every warning bell I had.

 

I would dearly love to be proven wrong.


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Pinback
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I think their a good possibility that we will never know what's going on LT but if the game fails to make any sort of appearance over the next year, then it probably won't be released, where this will leaves the backers I have no idea.

 

I always had the impression that LT has some good ideas which have been worked on a lot but the basic game from which to hang these ideas from may not be there and this may be the real problem as he seems to have spent a lot time working on the bits he likes while maybe ignoring the rest.

 

One of the biggest problems with any crowd funded game is the changing or dropping of games features and it's something we have all experienced if you have backed any crowd funded game.


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IronHound
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I think I agree with you pinback, I really feel like he only focused on the things he was interested, and assumed the procedural generation would fill in the rest.

 

If nothing it was a REALLY cool idea. I just don't think Josh is the one to pull it off.

 

Luckily, we have space sims everywhere now, as opposed to when that kickstarter started, so I'm not as hurt about it. New games to take up the reigns.


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 Anonymous
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Please read this post by Josh. 

 

If you still are not convinced that Josh is working on LT then I'm not sure what to tell you.  We all want to play LT now, and we all want to see the features completed.  With Josh, we are going to get the finished product once he has found the fastest and most time efficient way to code LT.  Keep in mind that this also makes it easier for the end user to modify the game once it has been released.


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