Ohtsam posted:

And speaking of, if you're planning to sell this are you worried about lawsuits from Barkley for using his likeness/name.

quote:

How are you guys selling this game if it breaks so many copyrights?

We are being incredibly careful about copyrights - we've talked to lawyers and have been given the okay. Everything we're doing is completely legal; we're not using ripped art and assets this time around and you'll notice we've been very careful about throwing around Charles Barkley's name!!

Veev posted:

I'm sorry this game is for TRUE DOOM MURDERHEADS only. Maybe you are a TRUE DOOM MURDERHEAD and you just don't know it yet?

Yoya posted:

I'm gonna voice an unpopular opinion and say a 360 port to XBLA could be extremely lucrative. Just have it come out a little bit later than the pc and the ballin Metacritic score will ensure Microsoft will actually promote it. The potential audience there is much larger.

CarpenterWalrus posted:

If Super Meat Boy and Binding of Isaac can get release's then surely your's can too. Thank's! Keep up the great work, guy's!

Clayren posted:

The kickstarter has surpassed $69,420.00 in funds. Time to close this thread and throw it in the goldmine.

helopticor posted:

Don't give up the ghost too soon. It's very common for Kickstarter projects to get a big push just before closing, especially if new websites report on them towards the end of the project.

Groovelord Neato posted:

it's going to be much worse and i dunno why people gave them so much money cuz the shenmues do not hold up at all.

Sleeveless posted:

https://twitter.com/TalesOfGames/status/524751424757202944

OK, This Is Epic

rodbeard posted:

The funny thing is that's how Fez got made.

Alan Smithee posted:

I just got here from kotaku

what's this about a dark drakerz

Phobophilia posted:

the moral of the story is to not hype up a goon project and just freaking do it, i mean baba and hypnospace came out recently no mess no drama

Hiratio posted:

There's a lot of talk of salvaging Barkley 2, making it open source, releasing a build, and so on. I fought extremely hard to try and make this game happen and it did not work.

Around the time Chef and Brian left, work was going at a snails pace and the game was still in disrepair. Liam called me and told me that without me this game would be dead. I wasn't interested, it was too much to take on with little in return and I had my own projects. Then he told me that I would be "partners" with Liam in the ToG business since we were the only two remaining, that I would have authority creatively, and he would do whatever it takes to help me. I would have abandoned the game if those things were not promised.

The reason this game didn't fall apart sooner is because the majority of the time I spent on this game was fixing or making things that were not in dispute. Making this game viable was my priority. After I addressed the majority of technical problems in this game, we were moving more on to game content, systems, and focusing more on scope. It was basically a war of attrition at this point. I would argue against the game being complicated, cutting down ideas, and so on, which was met with "Hold on a second, let's talk about this..." which led to countless meetings, TRAC tickets and compromises. Having to fight against this lunacy constantly took a toll on both me and Laz (Gortarius).

There were times where Laz would do work on this game that moved it forward and Liam would throw a poo poo fit because "he was not informed" of it. I defended Laz every single time and told Liam he's crazy for criticizing someone for doing free work on this struggling game. He knew that Laz and me were a package deal, so Liam tried to convince me to "fire" Laz and I told him that's never going to happen.

Towards the end, Liam even told me that if he was ever a negative influence on this game, he would step away and let us continue. This was during a period where he was struggling to do any meaningful work on the game and facing a lot of personal issues.

Then design decisions on this game were made by Liam and presented as if it was some "agreed on" thing. I would point out I never consented to those features or ideas. Then it turned into more arguments and meetings.

The game was starting to fall apart again because I was aware that my "authority" was meaningless and dealing with Liam was becoming more and more taxing. That's when I took an extended break from this game. When I came back, I aired all of my grievances with the game and over the period of a month there was a very slow back and forth. I informed other ToG members (including Liam's brother, Bort / Brian) of what was going on and my plan to finish it with Laz, since we were the only ones moving the game forward. I received a vote of confidence from everyone I spoke to.

This all ended in a 3 hour call between me and Liam where I confronted him directly on everything. He admitted that he needs me to finish the game but said he will not leave the project and decisions need to be cleared by him. I even said to him, what do you think the public or backers would think if they knew about this? He didn't care. He didn't care that I was the only remaining original team member. I reminded him of his promise to leave if he became a negative influence. He didn't care. He knew that I was capable of getting it done, but it had to be with him in control. There was no way in hell I was going to continue working with this clown so I told him I quit. Laz left days later.

I don't care about the tiny amount of productive work Liam may have done on this game, because it was based on a foundation where he was the supreme ruler of this game and he pitted team members against each other to do so. I don't care if it was done in bad faith or through incompetence. I would also say no one took more advantage of the Barkley 1 legacy and the success of the Barkley 2 Kickstarter than Liam. For those in the know, they know what I'm talking about. I'm glad that even the public, with what little they have seen of him, can see how delusional he is.

I'm being extremely kind when I talk about him and even he knows that, the reason he has no rebuttal. You cannot salvage this game without him dissolving all of his rights of the contracted work done, which by my estimate is about 35% of the game. I don't know what contract Chef signed, it's possible Liam may have exclusive game rights to the music he made during his time. In some unlikely event that Liam gives up that, then you need all of the team members to consent to their work being released for free. There were about 20 people who worked on this game at some point and it would need to be determined if they have a stake from looking at contracts, etc.

lordosis_gamer posted:

Hi everyone, this is bort. You may know me as bhroom’s brother, but down in the dank ToG Basement I had another nickname: “The Comedy Cicada” because I’m extremely funny, but only once every 17 years. I am due up in 2040.

WARNING!!! NO JOKES TO FOLLOW!!!

This has been a strange thread to follow, it's been veering between extremely heartwarming and kind of bitter and vindictive from places I hoped it wouldn’t.

A lot of people have been explaining the game’s downfall and so I will just skip to my part: I am a slow and unexceptional writer, a quintessential idea man, and got involved in the project almost despite fear and insecurity, and once I was fully invested and my ego was at stake I only had my more or less-good ideas to insist upon in order to save face. That’s me. The complimentary take is “the Mark Frost of Tales of Game’s” which is both not a compliment and sadly, aspirational.

As has been stated, I have been largely off this game for awhile due to life stuff. Weirdly, after reading this thread, jumping ship somehow only reduces your culpability! See someone’s post about being “caught holding the bag” a few pages back, which I think is mostly true. I am somehow spotless in this, which is demented, because my absolutely mediocre work and interpersonal skills are instrumental in this game’s failure, but most of all I STOPPED WORKING just like everyone else has on this project with the exception of laz until very recently, bhroom, and of course Frankie.

For everyone else, involvement has been sporadic, mostly fair-weather, or terminated early, and that has been the case for about a dozen of us since the beginning of the project. I really enjoyed reading this thread last night, but seeing that really vibe-killing last post by GZ got me writing a good bit of this post, which I was then was gonna just file away in the end. Then I saw this gelatinous cube stuff which is opportunistic and meanspirited now, and what the hell, why not make my stupid contribution:

----

Re: the stupid cube, it’s some real forest for trees stuff. Here we have a prototypical version of something (a zauber) that utilizes a host of representative functions (altering PC’s stats and collisions, casting animations, global speed changes during spell chargeup, object spawning that interacted with bullets, etc.) and instead of it being taken as an instrumental task to complete (for money), it’s an opportunity to engage in endless arguments with the game’s supposed designers about what “good design” (blech) is, what it should be instead, on and on and on.

“there was no design lead,” “there’s too many cooks in the kitchen,” “bhroom talks too much and he doesn’t listen to other opinions.” You start to wonder why.

I would rather not get into this entire subject, so I’ll suggest we cool it with the anecdotes. There are a thousand unfinished things in the game, from people who were getting paid and people who were not. This thread is enjoyable and I think for everyone’s sake, it should not be hashed out. There’s postmortems and then there’s finger pointing. I already told you what my problems were, let’s not hear anybody else’s, thanks!

----

Expected Bhroom defense:

Well, not really. I have criticisms of everyone’s contribution to this game (well, not Frankie ofc) and my brother has infuriated me, over and over. He says as much in tweets and kickstarter updates, I’ll echo it, ok cool.
I spoke with bhroom and GZ at length in January of this year, as something of a mediator between him and my brother. My synopsis:

• GZ, as someone who has been half in and half out on this project since the beginning, was willing to go all in. [cool]
• Bhroom agrees this is good, GZ is the best chance of finishing the game. [agree here too]
• GZ thought that there was no more need for conversation or additional design. [pretty much]
• Bhroom agrees, and says there is no need for conversation or additional design or re-design or changes or reinventing the wheel because these same topics have been talked and documented to death and it just requires someone to have commitment in some direction, and he would like to have input before nearly-functioning parts of the game are scrapped for new ones, which would jeopardize the “GZ is the best chance of finishing the game” part. [ymmv]
• GZ says he’s an idiot and a clown and a liar and a … etc. … and he cannot bear to have a conversation with him again, he essentially needs to gently caress off and die in order for GZ to begin work [dude]

There was a lot of stuff involving contracts and promised points and money and I tried my hardest to get GZ to dial down from total vitriol and for my brother to be as compromising as he could be. Both of these were absolutely necessary for the salvaging of the project, aaaaannnnnnnnd that is why we are here today. They can dispute the accuracy of the above, but that was the gist as I understood it. From my mouth, that is my fair assessment of their relative positions and grievances.

I thought cooler heads would prevail. I floated the truly sane idea of consulting everyone on the project again, finding my long lost Boyardee, who knows… maybe there could be a ToG Renaissance???

That was January 2, and now on June 3, it’s a trip to see literally the exact same words, verbatim and undiluted, coming from GZ as if 6 months haven’t passed, like he blinked and here he is today just as angry. And I understand the motivation if it’s so the backers can hear the truth, etc. Like everyone else, my conscience was too guilty and there were too many other people involved for me to “spill the beans” about the state of the project, as obvious as it may have been already. I suck, ok! Props to GZ at least putting us out of our misery, I thought.

After the initial lament, this thread actually got pretty fun, people enjoyed the dumb stories, ancient ghosts of forums past chimed in, great! Last night, I found out after a 3 year estrangement that my literally oldest friend in the world doesn’t hate me (hi cboy). Then I check this thread again and we’re back to revengeance or whatever.

What’s crazy I distinctly recall GZ pulling cboy and I aside a couple years back and in an absolutely wrenching conversation ensuring us that his and my lack of focused output was the thing keeping this game from coming out, this massive writing hole. That it was a miracle, “just incredible bhroom has kept things together this long, any other project would be dead.” This was like year 3 when we were already deep in trouble. I didn’t think that was the correct take then. GZ certainly doesn’t think that now, because bhroom is actually a svengali who manipulated him for 7 years, ok sure, but he was positive at the time. Before that, the problem was the programming, and the dozen broken, unfinished systems, or the low hanging fruit, the absurd scope, limited money, and dubiously (maybe strangely) talented team. GZ has had severe complaints about most every aspect of this game and who has worked on this game, about how the code is madness, or someone’s workflow is madness, and I have heard every one of them. (We are friends, of course I have heard it).

I guess he has been deprogrammed from the bhroom cult and is viewing the last 7 years he partially attended (GZ refused offers to join the B2 team until well over a year into the project, and presence was intermittent (a month or two on, several more off) but regular since) but the current interpretation is insultingly simplistic, even from his perspective.

Nobody in their postmortems is mentioning 15 minute compile times we were plagued with for half of production, or busted z-height or delta time or lack of a finished boss or any single one of the systems not being ever finished by a revolving door of people who were at least paid more than zero dollars to finish them. I outlined my failures above. How can a single person be responsible when I know for a fact that I am instrumental in the game’s failure???? (Don’t take that from me, please)

GZ, I understand you are upset and understandably so. I think your current perception is inaccurate. If you seriously want to the game to thrive, please just go ahead and start working. “I quit; the game is dead; I’m the game’s only hope; I need to tell everyone how someone else ruined the game” is a strange position for the game. You have the repo. Start working. Don’t talk to bhroom. Steal it for all I care. You will never hear me say he did a great job managing this game. But please loving chill out, unhook yourself from this same ugly conversation and distorted thinking about “secret back channels” and manipulation you’ve been having since January, and let the subject die, thanks.

I’m sure you’ll say “I don’t have anything against you…” but by insisting on undermining the public’s miraculously fond memories of this catastrophe, yes, you are against me. I love your work on this game, I love you like I do all ToGsters, and despite your insistence there’s still some slim possibility we are all pals again, so please stop posting in this thread. (Here is where I get to use that “you were at my wedding GZ” non-meme that actually just makes you feel like dogshit)

----

It takes me loving hours to write things like this because I gave up the ways of the poster. I’m not gonna refresh, but the last thing was about Zaubers Draining Stats which is of course was the great Vance X Kawazu 2012 Collab other people slept on

If this topic is still Good Vibes Only in a few pages I’ll post one hundred of my notebook scans of notes and graphs and things that were never meant to be, really blow ya drat minds aka look like a tremendous amateur idiot, it will be fun

Groovelord Neato posted:

This tea is canon.

Truecon420 posted:

Hat Thoughts posted:

the best way 2 talk to each other is maybe not to make individual blog posts & "sub"tweets within a Somethingawful thread while various middle-aged forum olds do their best mst3k impression around it but instead have a FINAL convo where u at least figure out some of this stuff over the table with each other instead of randomly throwin barbs and apologies interspersed in posts about gun's
Then come back & make those posts

Deadguy2322 posted:

How the gently caress did the forums of Something Awful, of all places, get overrun with this kind of Lilly-livered “progressive” type? Everything is so “problematic”! Jesus loving Christ, can’t anyone just take a loving joke anymore?

Lurdiak posted:

FrankieSmileShow posted:

Im not working on this demo for Liam, I'm working on this because I want people to see and appreciate at least a little bit of the years worth of work that we have all put in this project, even if its a broken mess.

I spent most of my loving twenties drawing sprites for this, I'm not gonna just set fire to that out of loving spite for one guy who has been mismanaging it.

I know that he like, owns the project and the company or whatever, but that means gently caress all since this broken, incomplete mess is obviously never going to be put on sale for actual money.

We want a demo out on friday. Might take a bit longer. Its gonna just be a public demo available for everybody, not just to backers. When thats out, Im not touching this garbage anymore, unless a goddamn miracle happens and he gets it all actually back on track, and I'm not holding my breath.

The Ultimate Doge posted:

I've posted stuff on this account that I don't want associated with my actual identity, including the fact that I'm LGBT

The Ultimate Doge posted:

I mean I'll try, but I've only been saying two things

1. Most of the devs would like to complete the game and abandoning it for closure is their second choice
2. Liam (bhroom) is preventing both of those things from happening

The second is a matter of public record at this point and I only brought up my proximity to the project because some posters didn't believe me about the first one

Gortarius posted:

Had Barkley2 gone for the jrpg sort of battling like B1 did, it would've been done years ago. This is my theory, I hope you liked it.