has dogmai ever said anything bad about his own map? its just perfect I suppose...
Actually he has admitted its faults several times and has tried hard to improve it. His maps "Faults" Simply lie in the fact of what he released was a demo. This is not a flame thread dont try to turn it into one, this is a thread talking about SCU Kickstarter making it, and the effects it will have on the community.
You claim to be a realist, yet put countless hours into a mediocre map, all because you have hopes to make money from it based on a vague statement that Blizzard once made at some point. Yeah... I dont buy it.
There's no reason to insult his project, He spent a lot of time perfecting what he did, While yes it was a bit silly to expect money, but Blizzard DID say they were going to implement a map marketplace, many put their faith in that(not me because I thought it was a stupid concept). Now, Please Dont derail this thread any further, Otherwise I can predict the future for you right now, A mod will come in here in about 4-5 post and shut this thread down.... so please talk about the kickstarter and the effects there-of, not attacking someone else for their opinion on it.
cmon dogmai has been so arrogant for whole time Iv seen him on mapster.
I do not really mind it, but if he wants to be like that its only natural people gona "set him straight".
When TOFU was released I did test it and post feedback on his weird feedback form. He just doesnt handle well how the arcade is and how well his map has been received...
I agree blizzard is a dick "promising" stuff, but get over it already...its been happening for so long you should just accept it and map for fun without any expectations from blizzard (even if they anounce something sc2 related)
Actually he has admitted its faults several times and has tried hard to improve it. His maps "Faults" Simply lie in the fact of what he released was a demo. This is not a flame thread dont try to turn it into one, this is a thread talking about SCU Kickstarter making it, and the effects it will have on the community.
There's no reason to insult his project, He spent a lot of time perfecting what he did, While yes it was a bit silly to expect money, but Blizzard DID say they were going to implement a map marketplace, many put their faith in that(not me because I thought it was a stupid concept). Now, Please Dont derail this thread any further, Otherwise I can predict the future for you right now, A mod will come in here in about 4-5 post and shut this thread down.... so please talk about the kickstarter and the effects there-of, not attacking someone else for their opinion on it.
I did not insult his project. I said it is mediocre, which is my opinion. And saying he is "abit" silly to expect money is an understatement. He seemed to have made that map solely for the reason of expecting to get money back, which, in fact, is a pretty stupid way of thinking about mapping, seeing how the amout of money you can make creating maps for SC2 (!) would be extremly limited, anyways. Also, Blizzard did not promise anything, they said that they might make a map market and to base such a project solely on such a vague statement and then be all whiny about it when it doesnt turn out the way you wanted, then sorry, but then noone is to blame but you.
Also, I dont think we are derailing the topic at all. He was directly disincouraging people from trying the same stuff that SC:U tried, solely on the basis that his mediocre map project failed, which I think is an untastefull thing to do. So, I think this has everything to do with this kickstarter and maybe kickstarted projects in the future.
To be honest, people like him are annoying me alot, and Im not an easy guy to annoy. As it stands now, the Battle.Net 2.0 is a pretty good platform for custom maps - even I can get my extremly niche maps played on a day to day basis without any problem and receive good and usefull feedback. If you go in with the expectation to make money, then the jokes on you. Thats also the reason why its not a waste of time of making maps/mods for SC2. You make mods/maps to have fun with them and to share it with people - not to make money with them. Making money with any kind of mod is a rare thing in itself and yet you and dogmai blame Blizzard for not beeing able to do it with an editor as simple as SC2. If Dogmai wants money so bad, I advise him to get a skillset that goes beyond mapping for SC2 and program his own real game - him and other people on this forum going around here discouraging people from doing cool map projects is just disgusting to watch.
To be honest, people like him are annoying me alot, and Im not an easy guy to annoy. As it stands now, the Battle.Net 2.0 is a pretty good platform for custom maps - even I can get my extremly niche maps played on a day to day basis without any problem and receive good and usefull feedback. If you go in with the expectation to make money, then the jokes on you. Thats also the reason why its not a waste of time of making maps/mods for SC2. You make mods/maps to have fun with them and to share it with people - not to make money with them. Making money with any kind of mod is a rare thing in itself and yet you and dogmai blame Blizzard for not beeing able to do it with an editor as simple as SC2. If Dogmai wants money so bad, I advise him to get a skillset that goes beyond mapping for SC2 and program his own real game - him and other people on this forum going around here discouraging people from doing cool map projects is just disgusting to watch.
Can I just say, I disliked him before it became mainstream?
To be honest, people like him are annoying me alot, and Im not an easy guy to annoy. As it stands now, the Battle.Net 2.0 is a pretty good platform for custom maps - even I can get my extremly niche maps played on a day to day basis without any problem and receive good and usefull feedback. If you go in with the expectation to make money, then the jokes on you. Thats also the reason why its not a waste of time of making maps/mods for SC2. You make mods/maps to have fun with them and to share it with people - not to make money with them. Making money with any kind of mod is a rare thing in itself and yet you and dogmai blame Blizzard for not beeing able to do it with an editor as simple as SC2. If Dogmai wants money so bad, I advise him to get a skillset that goes beyond mapping for SC2 and program his own real game - him and other people on this forum going around here discouraging people from doing cool map projects is just disgusting to watch.
I like battle.net as an arcade platform, but it really does depend what you are comparing it to.
XBLA and the iphone shop should be Blizzard's goal. I'm not saying they'll reach it, but those are examples of successful arcades.
Tofu was never finished, simple as that. There are many flaws that we wanted to address but we had to walk away.
There are two types of developers for Battle.net 2.0, unlike in Warcraft III where there was one.
Those that did it as a real job, wanting to create hugely polished projects, and those that did it for a hobby.
At no time have I ever said for those who do it because they enjoy it to stop doing it. I merely pointed out, investment wise, it is a poor choice to support Battle.net 2.0 as a development platform for those that wish to earn an income from developing these projects - as was promised to us from Blizzard.
There are many people. including SCU, who did this for REAL money, as a REAL job and worked as such. Many projects folded early on, two stayed (that we know of); SCU and Tofu. If this kickstarter had failed then Ryan and Mille would have walked away like Dryeyece and I, there is no difference between the two projects. Both are unfinished, both teams are in a huge amount of debt - even with the kickstarter injecting funds.
If we received a $80,000 kickstarter, Dryeyece and I could finish Tofu up to where we wanted it to be, but it does not make up for all the lost income from the years preceding. As it stands now, as pointed out by both sides of the argument, it is mediocre and it is unfinished - no body understands that more than Dryeyece and I, but what can we do? We got basically no support (aside from much valued feedback and game tests), we were told to do things by the developers, of which we did and nothing eventuated out of it. We wasted more time and energy trying to do what was "right" on the basis of more and more promises, of which all were broken. It sucks, but such is life.
I am tired, honestly, I am really really tired. I am tired of the project, I am tired of getting no support, I am tired of being rejected and I am tired of having my life on hold because we made the choice to support Battle.net 2.0. In hindsight, Unity and Steam would have been the better choice, but at the time, both platforms looked as good as each other but one was neglected ... go figure.
I do have a really good polished project on my resume, but it is only good if I get a job in the industry.
But as always, everything much happen for a reason right, so we can only look forward to the future and hope something comes out of the work we have done.
Tofu was never finished, simple as that. There are many flaws that we wanted to address but we had to walk away.
I disagree. I think Tofu was "too finished".
One thing that I've taken away from modding for StarCraft is that games need to be developed by more than just the map author.
Good maps tend to start off very simplistic, but with a core addictive quality that is built upon over time. The community learns the map step by step as it's developed.
Tofu was different, though. It did not start off as a simplistic but addictive map. It started off as a complete package, and expected the community to learn it all in one go. As such, it went the way of many large projects.
This is not a flame thread dont try to turn it into one
For once I agree with TaintedWisp here.
Talking about your map situation and expressing your own thoughts about what this represents to you and your project is okay. Insulting each other or someone else either directly or indirectly is not.
Now, Please Dont derail this thread any further, Otherwise I can predict the future for you right now, A mod will come in here in about 4-5 post and shut this thread down....
naaaaw, we've given up on closing topics, we're now in favor of letting them all become flamewars and straight up banning people, pretty cool, right?
OFF TOPIC ENDS HERE
FEEEEEED MY HUNGER YOU HUMANS
EDIT: Oh damn, had to go and use my work-in-progress image, ugh. — JademusSreg
If we received a $80,000 kickstarter, Dryeyece and I could finish Tofu up to where we wanted it to be, but it does not make up for all the lost income from the years preceding. As it stands now, as pointed out by both sides of the argument, it is mediocre and it is unfinished - no body understands that more than Dryeyece and I, but what can we do?
This is something I've never understood. You yourself made the distinction between professional mappers and hobbyist mappers. What can you do? Finish the project? How do you think hobbyist mappers finish their work? They're not complaining that they're not getting support or payment - they just map. The way I see it, there's technically seen barely any difference between 'professional' maps and 'hobbyist' maps.
Now I realize I'm not all-seeing and I am not versed enough in UI modding, coding and data editing to effortlessly see the difference between, say, Mafia and TOFU. But what this thing in the end comes down to is time: you're effectively saying that unless you worked on Tofu full-time, it would take so long for the map to be released that it was no longer worthwhile. This is something I can't understand. I have never in my entire history of mapping encountered a project made solely within a single editor (with maybe one or two small third party applications) that couldn't finish within, say, a year, if the authors actually put the majority of their spare time into it. The amount of coding and UI modding one can possibly do within one single game simply seems too small for any project to take much longer. Adding good terrain and a bunch of assets would add to this time, but - no offense meant - Tofu doesn't even have either. At least SCU has big plans for multiple zones in the form of maps and classes that are a damn lot more complicated than Tofu's heroes.
Look at developers like Eiviyn, or even at projects such as Starmon, Hive Keeper or Chronicles of Azeroth. All of them are making progress and some of these projects have even been released already. I see very little difference between Tofu and any of these in terms of complexity or work done. Not to mention that some of these things are 1-man projects that even incorporate the assets Tofu has yet to touch.
So really: what about Tofu is so damn complicated and time-consuming that the project couldn't be finished in your spare time? Because I've tried, but I honestly can't see it.
1) I'm a bit astonished, how on earth can you be in debt, even huge debt, from an SC2 project. I can only assume you took alot of time off work to work on the project???
2) Tofu looked very playable, you just needed to sort the balance and get the game mechanics right, for example cut down on the excess amount of powerups around the map.
3) What sort of support was you honestly hoping for, Blizzard did at the very least feature your map. It gave you a platform that with momentum and continous map updates you could have built upon.
To be fair I think the same thing of SCU, :P (Custom Models aside, those do take a while to make). But game play, visually, etc its all pretty basic.
but I know if I tried to do it, I would be proven wrong. You have to remember the difference between these projects and projects now is they had to work through problems without any help and create the solutions that a lot of us use today(though I wish there were more tutorials haha). T
To an extent, so do I. The thing is that with SCU I can at least see some things that warrant additional time: the character control system is way more complex than in Tofu, there's a bunch of classes with all probably having a multitude of abilities, boss fights need to be implemented, multiple maps will be used and those all need terrain and a ridiculous amount of custom artwork is required. There's still only so much you can do within the engine (and editor, even) of one game, but I can at least see that SCU would probably take a pretty damn long time to get released if it wasn't being worked on full-time. For Tofu this doesn't seem to be the case. I'm waiting for Dogmai to explain to me why it is.
Took 3 years off work to develop Tofu. The average wage for a male where I live is 6 figures, if I went out to work I would be on ~ 120-150k/year - but it is hard work with long hours, not gonna lie. I would rather develop games.
We needed financial support and more technical support regarding upgrading the platform to support these types of games.
I have applied 3 times for 5 positions within Blizzard (on the suggestion of Devs), each time I had internal support and each time I failed to even get to the phone-call stage. My last application was rejected a few days ago, and I am tired, I am really tired now.
Given my skillset basis in corporate Australia, I should have been *theoretically* over qualified for the positions. 3 were entry level, 2 were mid level. As such, no luck.
@ Mozza,
It could very much be finished in our spare time but the problem lies herein; whilst developing Tofu we regularly put in 50-90 hours per week. We sacrificed time with our families and loved ones to do this project. Therefore, you honestly cannot expect us to go work say 40 hours per week then spend another 20-30 hours a week developing Tofu because it is in our 'spare time'. This is time that is better being spent with our families, because as history as shown us, our families support us a lot better than Blizzard has - which is to be expected.
Tofu indeed has 'big multiple-zones' planned, it was a three part project of the RPG | Hero-Arenas and Moba. We hit the same kind of technical limit that SCU reached in that regard and were waiting for a fix. We wanted fully custom models, some of which were getting done. Good Terrain, yes, we left it to last as it was not worth spending time on until we had finalised all the mechanics etc. Essentially by the time we had finished, you should not be able to tell that you were still playing Starcraft.
But it all comes down to money as well, I would be better of developing in my spare-time in Unity for Steam than Sc2 and Battle.net. If we knew what we knew back then when I started, I would have probably gone with Unity as Battle.net 2.0 didn't live up to what was promised to us. Keep in mind, that I have supported Blizzard 110% up until this point, but with this last rejection, there is no future here for me unless something changes on their end.
Dogmais twisted view on reality and mapping is baffling.
I can understand why though, I'm sure plenty of us got really excited by Blizzard's plans for the arcade. It basically made SC2 into quake 3 + steam...streamlined for RTS. We've never had anything remotely like that before. If you started something on that basis, and as you worked on it kept hearing 'yes yes, we'll do it buuut...in the future' with it kept being pushed off. I'm sure most people would get bitter, no matter how passionate about the game they were.
Dogmai, it would be nice if you stopped hijacking the thread. This is meant to say congrats to the SCU team, and wish the the best.
I do have to say that watching SCU has been really encouraging, seeing it pushed through and seeing some progress on Blizzards end regarding mods (allowing the kickstarter, some [if not a lot] of support shown to the SCU guys). Grats to SCU and good luck!
This was... a celebratory thread but it seems we are measuring cock sizes. whether scu deserves it or not they got funded, and for that I'm happy for them that they have a good dream, vision and goal and are actively working toward it.
I can also understand that we are "Programmers" (loosely used) and as such most of us are like beta fish in water trying to kill each other with egos.
@DogmaiSEA: Go
I understand your frustration, but its over, no need to crash parties now.
As for blizzard:
Apply for their summer internship program. I was thinking of doing that myself since I'm entering my final year of college and i need a internship to graduate and blizzard only accepts college students for its internships. But its harder for you than me, I'm only 4 hours drive from their headquarters. I'm sure ill have a hard time getting the internships since there are a lot of programmers in Irvine and they have partnership with the nearby college to snatch up new programmers.
Let me get it straight: Dogmai decided to give up a "six figures salary" per year, for 3 years. Because he thought TOFU would at least cover that, or he would get hired by Blizzard, which would also cover that. None happened and now it's Blizzard's fault that he doesnt have that money?
Man, I'm stuck in a "four figures salary" per year (converting to american dollars) and I wouldn't think it was a reasonable option to quit a job like that. Even though it would be a lot easier for a map to cover my loss, because it's like one fifth of Dogmai's loss during the same time.
By the end of the first year it should have been enough to see something was going wrong, not with TOFU, but with the scenario that nodoby was making real money out of their own projects, and nobody even expected that. The whole "sc2 situation" has changed only now with SCU.
Dogmai, if you don't see your expectations were unrealistic, that your idea of a future income wasn't going to happen, shame on you, not Blizzard. That's business. I think you won't take it as another offense, because it isn't. To me you held to this unlikely future for too long, that was your mistake.
Applying for a job in Blizzard on the suggestion of Blizzard devs is... I dont know what to call it. They are workermen, to say you had "internal support" isn't true. They are not the ones behind these decisions, its not like the company was already waiting for you to apply only to troll you.
Back to the official topic: Congratulations to the SCU team, You guys will buy some awesome hardware and software with that money, and with that you will create things none of us could with our crappy pcs that run SC2 in the lowest graphic settings (<- that's where I stand).
Actually he has admitted its faults several times and has tried hard to improve it. His maps "Faults" Simply lie in the fact of what he released was a demo. This is not a flame thread dont try to turn it into one, this is a thread talking about SCU Kickstarter making it, and the effects it will have on the community.
There's no reason to insult his project, He spent a lot of time perfecting what he did, While yes it was a bit silly to expect money, but Blizzard DID say they were going to implement a map marketplace, many put their faith in that(not me because I thought it was a stupid concept). Now, Please Dont derail this thread any further, Otherwise I can predict the future for you right now, A mod will come in here in about 4-5 post and shut this thread down.... so please talk about the kickstarter and the effects there-of, not attacking someone else for their opinion on it.
@SearingChicken: Go
cmon dogmai has been so arrogant for whole time Iv seen him on mapster.
I do not really mind it, but if he wants to be like that its only natural people gona "set him straight".
When TOFU was released I did test it and post feedback on his weird feedback form. He just doesnt handle well how the arcade is and how well his map has been received...
I agree blizzard is a dick "promising" stuff, but get over it already...its been happening for so long you should just accept it and map for fun without any expectations from blizzard (even if they anounce something sc2 related)
I did not insult his project. I said it is mediocre, which is my opinion. And saying he is "abit" silly to expect money is an understatement. He seemed to have made that map solely for the reason of expecting to get money back, which, in fact, is a pretty stupid way of thinking about mapping, seeing how the amout of money you can make creating maps for SC2 (!) would be extremly limited, anyways. Also, Blizzard did not promise anything, they said that they might make a map market and to base such a project solely on such a vague statement and then be all whiny about it when it doesnt turn out the way you wanted, then sorry, but then noone is to blame but you.
Also, I dont think we are derailing the topic at all. He was directly disincouraging people from trying the same stuff that SC:U tried, solely on the basis that his mediocre map project failed, which I think is an untastefull thing to do. So, I think this has everything to do with this kickstarter and maybe kickstarted projects in the future.
To be honest, people like him are annoying me alot, and Im not an easy guy to annoy. As it stands now, the Battle.Net 2.0 is a pretty good platform for custom maps - even I can get my extremly niche maps played on a day to day basis without any problem and receive good and usefull feedback. If you go in with the expectation to make money, then the jokes on you. Thats also the reason why its not a waste of time of making maps/mods for SC2. You make mods/maps to have fun with them and to share it with people - not to make money with them. Making money with any kind of mod is a rare thing in itself and yet you and dogmai blame Blizzard for not beeing able to do it with an editor as simple as SC2. If Dogmai wants money so bad, I advise him to get a skillset that goes beyond mapping for SC2 and program his own real game - him and other people on this forum going around here discouraging people from doing cool map projects is just disgusting to watch.
Can I just say, I disliked him before it became mainstream?
I disliked him when it became appropriate.
I like battle.net as an arcade platform, but it really does depend what you are comparing it to.
XBLA and the iphone shop should be Blizzard's goal. I'm not saying they'll reach it, but those are examples of successful arcades.
Tofu was never finished, simple as that. There are many flaws that we wanted to address but we had to walk away.
There are two types of developers for Battle.net 2.0, unlike in Warcraft III where there was one.
Those that did it as a real job, wanting to create hugely polished projects, and those that did it for a hobby.
At no time have I ever said for those who do it because they enjoy it to stop doing it. I merely pointed out, investment wise, it is a poor choice to support Battle.net 2.0 as a development platform for those that wish to earn an income from developing these projects - as was promised to us from Blizzard.
There are many people. including SCU, who did this for REAL money, as a REAL job and worked as such. Many projects folded early on, two stayed (that we know of); SCU and Tofu. If this kickstarter had failed then Ryan and Mille would have walked away like Dryeyece and I, there is no difference between the two projects. Both are unfinished, both teams are in a huge amount of debt - even with the kickstarter injecting funds.
If we received a $80,000 kickstarter, Dryeyece and I could finish Tofu up to where we wanted it to be, but it does not make up for all the lost income from the years preceding. As it stands now, as pointed out by both sides of the argument, it is mediocre and it is unfinished - no body understands that more than Dryeyece and I, but what can we do? We got basically no support (aside from much valued feedback and game tests), we were told to do things by the developers, of which we did and nothing eventuated out of it. We wasted more time and energy trying to do what was "right" on the basis of more and more promises, of which all were broken. It sucks, but such is life.
I am tired, honestly, I am really really tired. I am tired of the project, I am tired of getting no support, I am tired of being rejected and I am tired of having my life on hold because we made the choice to support Battle.net 2.0. In hindsight, Unity and Steam would have been the better choice, but at the time, both platforms looked as good as each other but one was neglected ... go figure.
I do have a really good polished project on my resume, but it is only good if I get a job in the industry.
But as always, everything much happen for a reason right, so we can only look forward to the future and hope something comes out of the work we have done.
I disagree. I think Tofu was "too finished".
One thing that I've taken away from modding for StarCraft is that games need to be developed by more than just the map author.
Good maps tend to start off very simplistic, but with a core addictive quality that is built upon over time. The community learns the map step by step as it's developed.
Tofu was different, though. It did not start off as a simplistic but addictive map. It started off as a complete package, and expected the community to learn it all in one go. As such, it went the way of many large projects.
BANHAMMER IST HIER!
WHO WANTS BE BAN
For once I agree with TaintedWisp here. Talking about your map situation and expressing your own thoughts about what this represents to you and your project is okay. Insulting each other or someone else either directly or indirectly is not.
naaaaw, we've given up on closing topics, we're now in favor of letting them all become flamewars and straight up banning people, pretty cool, right?
OFF TOPIC ENDS HERE
FEEEEEED MY HUNGER YOU HUMANS
EDIT: Oh damn, had to go and use my work-in-progress image, ugh. — JademusSreg
This is something I've never understood. You yourself made the distinction between professional mappers and hobbyist mappers. What can you do? Finish the project? How do you think hobbyist mappers finish their work? They're not complaining that they're not getting support or payment - they just map. The way I see it, there's technically seen barely any difference between 'professional' maps and 'hobbyist' maps.
Now I realize I'm not all-seeing and I am not versed enough in UI modding, coding and data editing to effortlessly see the difference between, say, Mafia and TOFU. But what this thing in the end comes down to is time: you're effectively saying that unless you worked on Tofu full-time, it would take so long for the map to be released that it was no longer worthwhile. This is something I can't understand. I have never in my entire history of mapping encountered a project made solely within a single editor (with maybe one or two small third party applications) that couldn't finish within, say, a year, if the authors actually put the majority of their spare time into it. The amount of coding and UI modding one can possibly do within one single game simply seems too small for any project to take much longer. Adding good terrain and a bunch of assets would add to this time, but - no offense meant - Tofu doesn't even have either. At least SCU has big plans for multiple zones in the form of maps and classes that are a damn lot more complicated than Tofu's heroes.
Look at developers like Eiviyn, or even at projects such as Starmon, Hive Keeper or Chronicles of Azeroth. All of them are making progress and some of these projects have even been released already. I see very little difference between Tofu and any of these in terms of complexity or work done. Not to mention that some of these things are 1-man projects that even incorporate the assets Tofu has yet to touch.
So really: what about Tofu is so damn complicated and time-consuming that the project couldn't be finished in your spare time? Because I've tried, but I honestly can't see it.
@Dogmai
1) I'm a bit astonished, how on earth can you be in debt, even huge debt, from an SC2 project. I can only assume you took alot of time off work to work on the project???
2) Tofu looked very playable, you just needed to sort the balance and get the game mechanics right, for example cut down on the excess amount of powerups around the map.
3) What sort of support was you honestly hoping for, Blizzard did at the very least feature your map. It gave you a platform that with momentum and continous map updates you could have built upon.
Congratulations to StarCraft Universe and the obscenely committed team behind it. Surprised the Kickstarter succeeded, but not at all unpleasantly so.
To those who would shit on it, seems rather petty; people with dignity celebrate the successes of their peers.
@Mozared: Go
To be fair I think the same thing of SCU, :P (Custom Models aside, those do take a while to make). But game play, visually, etc its all pretty basic. but I know if I tried to do it, I would be proven wrong. You have to remember the difference between these projects and projects now is they had to work through problems without any help and create the solutions that a lot of us use today(though I wish there were more tutorials haha). T
Thats just my best guess.
To an extent, so do I. The thing is that with SCU I can at least see some things that warrant additional time: the character control system is way more complex than in Tofu, there's a bunch of classes with all probably having a multitude of abilities, boss fights need to be implemented, multiple maps will be used and those all need terrain and a ridiculous amount of custom artwork is required. There's still only so much you can do within the engine (and editor, even) of one game, but I can at least see that SCU would probably take a pretty damn long time to get released if it wasn't being worked on full-time. For Tofu this doesn't seem to be the case. I'm waiting for Dogmai to explain to me why it is.
@ Fullachain,
Took 3 years off work to develop Tofu. The average wage for a male where I live is 6 figures, if I went out to work I would be on ~ 120-150k/year - but it is hard work with long hours, not gonna lie. I would rather develop games.
We needed financial support and more technical support regarding upgrading the platform to support these types of games.
I have applied 3 times for 5 positions within Blizzard (on the suggestion of Devs), each time I had internal support and each time I failed to even get to the phone-call stage. My last application was rejected a few days ago, and I am tired, I am really tired now.
Given my skillset basis in corporate Australia, I should have been *theoretically* over qualified for the positions. 3 were entry level, 2 were mid level. As such, no luck.
@ Mozza,
It could very much be finished in our spare time but the problem lies herein; whilst developing Tofu we regularly put in 50-90 hours per week. We sacrificed time with our families and loved ones to do this project. Therefore, you honestly cannot expect us to go work say 40 hours per week then spend another 20-30 hours a week developing Tofu because it is in our 'spare time'. This is time that is better being spent with our families, because as history as shown us, our families support us a lot better than Blizzard has - which is to be expected.
Tofu indeed has 'big multiple-zones' planned, it was a three part project of the RPG | Hero-Arenas and Moba. We hit the same kind of technical limit that SCU reached in that regard and were waiting for a fix. We wanted fully custom models, some of which were getting done. Good Terrain, yes, we left it to last as it was not worth spending time on until we had finalised all the mechanics etc. Essentially by the time we had finished, you should not be able to tell that you were still playing Starcraft.
But it all comes down to money as well, I would be better of developing in my spare-time in Unity for Steam than Sc2 and Battle.net. If we knew what we knew back then when I started, I would have probably gone with Unity as Battle.net 2.0 didn't live up to what was promised to us. Keep in mind, that I have supported Blizzard 110% up until this point, but with this last rejection, there is no future here for me unless something changes on their end.
Dogmais twisted view on reality and mapping is baffling.
I can understand why though, I'm sure plenty of us got really excited by Blizzard's plans for the arcade. It basically made SC2 into quake 3 + steam...streamlined for RTS. We've never had anything remotely like that before. If you started something on that basis, and as you worked on it kept hearing 'yes yes, we'll do it buuut...in the future' with it kept being pushed off. I'm sure most people would get bitter, no matter how passionate about the game they were.
Dogmai, it would be nice if you stopped hijacking the thread. This is meant to say congrats to the SCU team, and wish the the best.
I do have to say that watching SCU has been really encouraging, seeing it pushed through and seeing some progress on Blizzards end regarding mods (allowing the kickstarter, some [if not a lot] of support shown to the SCU guys). Grats to SCU and good luck!
This was... a celebratory thread but it seems we are measuring cock sizes. whether scu deserves it or not they got funded, and for that I'm happy for them that they have a good dream, vision and goal and are actively working toward it.
I can also understand that we are "Programmers" (loosely used) and as such most of us are like beta fish in water trying to kill each other with egos.
@DogmaiSEA: Go I understand your frustration, but its over, no need to crash parties now.
As for blizzard:
Apply for their summer internship program. I was thinking of doing that myself since I'm entering my final year of college and i need a internship to graduate and blizzard only accepts college students for its internships. But its harder for you than me, I'm only 4 hours drive from their headquarters. I'm sure ill have a hard time getting the internships since there are a lot of programmers in Irvine and they have partnership with the nearby college to snatch up new programmers.
Let me get it straight: Dogmai decided to give up a "six figures salary" per year, for 3 years. Because he thought TOFU would at least cover that, or he would get hired by Blizzard, which would also cover that. None happened and now it's Blizzard's fault that he doesnt have that money?
Man, I'm stuck in a "four figures salary" per year (converting to american dollars) and I wouldn't think it was a reasonable option to quit a job like that. Even though it would be a lot easier for a map to cover my loss, because it's like one fifth of Dogmai's loss during the same time.
By the end of the first year it should have been enough to see something was going wrong, not with TOFU, but with the scenario that nodoby was making real money out of their own projects, and nobody even expected that. The whole "sc2 situation" has changed only now with SCU.
Dogmai, if you don't see your expectations were unrealistic, that your idea of a future income wasn't going to happen, shame on you, not Blizzard. That's business. I think you won't take it as another offense, because it isn't. To me you held to this unlikely future for too long, that was your mistake.
Applying for a job in Blizzard on the suggestion of Blizzard devs is... I dont know what to call it. They are workermen, to say you had "internal support" isn't true. They are not the ones behind these decisions, its not like the company was already waiting for you to apply only to troll you.
Back to the official topic: Congratulations to the SCU team, You guys will buy some awesome hardware and software with that money, and with that you will create things none of us could with our crappy pcs that run SC2 in the lowest graphic settings (<- that's where I stand).
Damned if I do. Damned if I don't.
Split the thread, I ain't hijacking anything.