rich12545 Posted January 8, 2011 Share Posted January 8, 2011 I respectfully ask that you post on the forum what all it would take to fix the all-seeing AI, about how many hours it would take and why you won't do it in your spare time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magitek Posted January 10, 2011 Share Posted January 10, 2011 Brit has given you more than enough information on the issue. It's time to follow your own advice and read what Brit has written: 1.How long will it take to make the ultimate AI that players are clamoring for? I don't know. A long time. After one of the players suggested (via email) a way to access and change the AI, and I've considered moving the AI out into a separate dll. (It already runs in it's own process.) At that point, I could open-source it. I don't know how much work I can put into it. I can imagine a variety of scenarios: I could work on the AI or not work on the AI. Other interested people could work on the AI or not work on the AI. The reality is that I've earned far less than minimum wage for my 5.5 years of work. As a result, I'm deeply buried in debt, my credit cards are maxed out, and I owe lots of money to people. Heck, I'm so strapped that I've procrastinated on getting new brakes put on my car for the past six months despite dire warnings from my car mechanic. Working on the AI would be a volunteer, non-paying effort for me. At best, it would be an academic thing - i.e. a chance to play around with some other approaches to AI. I'm also working more than 40 hours a week at a new job. Despite what was said earlier in the thread, I don't believe that making a non-cheating AI is a "moral obligation". Rather, it's something that some players really want to have added to the game. From my side, I'm looking at hundreds or thousands of extra hours on a project that was a financial disaster for me and won't return any significant reward for that additional time investment. So, you might imagine why I'm not going promise anything. I know that won't make some of the people on this thread happy, but committing myself to something that could take over a thousand hours of work for no pay when I'm already broke won't make me happy. So, I guess this is the part where you flame the bankrupt guy. 2.It's actually uncommon for game AI to use actual fog of war. As far as continuing to work on the game full-time, I think you'd understand and sympathize with my situation better if I explained what happened financially - and how much of the development cost I ended up taking as a loss. So, I'll post that information tomorrow. 3.The question about the omniscient AI: I don't think it's feasible for me to get together an AI that's using real fog of war. It's something that's a real challenge to do, and getting it working properly would be quite a bit of work. And, by "working properly" I mean that the AI can compensate for this lack of knowledge with a much increased skill in playing the game. 4.Thanks for the encouragement. Unfortunately, I see EOS winding down. I just can't afford it anymore. Over 40% of our sales were in November and December of 2009. Sales have been declining ever since the game's release, with an occasional jump thanks to a sale. November 2010 went on record as the worst sales month to date - I earned only $370. (Multiply that by 12 months, and that works out to $4400 / year.) It's not a living wage, and I'm still in debt from developing the game in the first place. We also had some foreign contracts that were bringing in money, but they're about to end (which is why I didn't include them in the $370 figure). I've been trying to turn around sales for the last year without much success, so I just don't have much faith in accomplishing that anymore. I'd really need turn around the sales-decline trend and get a 10-fold increase in sales to earn a living and start paying down my debt. Battlefront says they've sold games through other distributors, but it doesn't make a big difference in revenue once you include their 30% cut of the sales. Steam and the Humble Bundle guys won't return my email. I'll still be around to fix bugs because I feel that I owe it to the users to fix major problems. He has absolutely no obligations to anyone except his investors, anything extra he does to Empires of Steel is purely donation work. He doesn't even have to respond to you; maybe he will? It's not because he has to, but because he doesn't believe in just dropping everything and running off like many other developers. He's been doing support and fixes for a year or more; and been making next to nothing.. just how much does $20 entitle you to? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bugwar Posted January 10, 2011 Share Posted January 10, 2011 I respectfully ask that you post on the forum what all it would take to fix the all-seeing AI, about how many hours it would take and why you won't do it in your spare time. I sometimes wonder where the phrase "beating a dead horse" came from. What part of the country are you from, rich? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich12545 Posted January 10, 2011 Author Share Posted January 10, 2011 Brit has given you more than enough information on the issue. It's time to follow your own advice and read what Brit has written: He has absolutely no obligations to anyone except his investors, anything extra he does to Empires of Steel is purely donation work. He doesn't even have to respond to you; maybe he will? It's not because he has to, but because he doesn't believe in just dropping everything and running off like many other developers. He's been doing support and fixes for a year or more; and been making next to nothing.. just how much does $20 entitle you to? You really don't have a clue. This has already been answered. And it was $35, not $20. What does it entitle me to? A playable game. A wargame that includes a decent AI. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich12545 Posted January 10, 2011 Author Share Posted January 10, 2011 I sometimes wonder where the phrase "beating a dead horse" came from. What part of the country are you from, rich? This has to be the dumbest post yet. Haven't you noticed that my posts are in response to others? You people keep beating the dead horse. When you people quit posting, I won't be responding and it will be done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magitek Posted January 10, 2011 Share Posted January 10, 2011 You really don't have a clue. This has already been answered. And it was $35, not $20. What does it entitle me to? A playable game. A wargame that includes a decent AI. Yes well, everyones definition of playable seems to be different. Yours perhaps slightly more so.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akiva Posted January 10, 2011 Share Posted January 10, 2011 I respectfully ask that you post on the forum what all it would take to fix the all-seeing AI, about how many hours it would take and why you won't do it in your spare time. Self-entitlement knows no bounds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich12545 Posted January 10, 2011 Author Share Posted January 10, 2011 Yes well, everyones definition of playable seems to be different. Yours perhaps slightly more so.. Actually if you were to poll wargamers you would find a huge majority agree with me. I've been on many forums and have read a lot of posts about FOW. Except for fools defending Brit on this forum, every single post agrees with me. No AI FOW is a game killer and hardly anybody would have bought this game is that was known ahead of time. Maybe that's why Brit never mentioned it until a year after release. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emptyT Posted January 10, 2011 Share Posted January 10, 2011 Ok I can't contain myself anymore. Rich - if you weren't such an obnoxious, self opinionated, know-all fool you would have a friend you could play with and we wouldn't have to put up with your bitchin here! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brit Posted January 11, 2011 Share Posted January 11, 2011 Okay, guys, thanks for the support. I'd like to close down the back-and-forth, so we'll consider this thread done. I won't actually close the thread, but know that any replies trigger more replies as people try to defend themselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts