When I designed LOD and started developing it in 2010, I already knew that the size of the game, and the sheer number of assets would result in a performance issue. That was even before we completed the engine. The content creation had to be started early. Then in 2011, I decided to ditch the home grown engine in the interest of time (and not reinventing the wheel), and license a slew of middleware to build a custom engine .

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By the time the engine was at a point where performance could be gauged, analyzed etc, the game was already 100% content complete (that was back in 2013 btw).



The result is that we ended up with a powerful space and planetary engine, complete with infantry, air, ground, sea, space dynamics - but lower quality 3D assets which either didn't look all that great for a genre game, or didn't push the limits of the engine. NOTE that for all my previous games, I had built the engines (graphics, AI, animations etc) from scratch.



Earlier this year, we started evaluating which assets needed to be improved upon or completely redone. It's all right there in the game's roadmap (LOL!! yeah, we have that) btw.

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That also goes for the game's art style. As I mentioned in the blogs above, I opted for a more colorful art style (in contrast to all the Greys in Star Citizen), and while some assets at low quality don't look good up front, with on-going revisions, they can be made to look better (we don't yet have the benefit of PBR in the engine) while still retaining the game's art style and performance. When you look at games with a colorful art style like Overwatch, Battleborn, Atlas Reactor, Team Fortress etc, the quality is in the models because the art assets don't benefit from much detail.

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darkoff said:



I know that trying to build another fps was a non-starter. There are so many of those games out there, that it's pointless. So my design goal was to build a game that had unique and fun elements, while not trying to compete with everything else out there.



Mainly the ability to drop everywhere in the level, without restrictions. (iron man style)



Yeah, when I designed the HAIS, that was precisely what I had in mind. It was just another way to get players into the action quicker, due to the size of the scenes



glide suit with jetpack is another fun mechanic.



You're talking about the wingsuit/wingchute which are different from the jetpack. But yeah, those two assets are just another means for infantry to get around quickly



damage on players is based on hit locations as well. Basically the implementation chris roberts is promising with star citizen. (you will start limping around if you drop down from too high cliff)



Yup. And we even had to tweak this a bit because limping across a massive base is no fun. So we implemented the self-healing mechanic to augment that



city level is quite huge and it looks pretty neat in design.



Nightbridge was fun to design. The idea was a massive abandoned city. We still have some work to do on the lighting; but its one of my favorite planetary scenes



Water simulation is pretty complex with waves. (I think its also might be causing some performance issues)



That's courtesy of Triton (by Sundog) because the water in Havok Vision Engine simply wasn't good enough. We also use their Silverlining middleware for our sky, clouds, atmospheric lighting/scattering etc



Bad things in LOD:



Its graphics are really dated. I think closest comparison would be HAZE



Yup. See above. But remember, it's not the graphics engine that's the issue; it's the assets themselves



Theres tons of bugs left to fix



Not really. As of this moment, I count only 10; one (# 01) of which isn't even a bug, but more of a tweak.



Weapons need more variance. Theres tons of weapons but most of the weapons feels quite similar.



All the weapons have unique characteristics (weight, hit damage etc). What's missing is the "feeling" of being different. And this is due to things like weapon sway etc. We will get to that at some point



There is no EU servers yet.



We plan on having official servers outside North America. However, since we have to do a client-server browser version planned for the console version, I am probably going to unify that so that the PC gamers can also host their own private servers like I did with my previous games whereby you can host and play on the same machine, or spin up a dedicated console server. So even if we don't do official servers when the game is released, nothing is stopping others from hosting their own in whatever territory they choose.



Space ships feel simple to fly and sound awful (vacuum cleaners in space)



The simplistic (compared to my previous games) flight dynamics is by design. As noted in the roadmap, the audio are in fact placeholders from legacy games. Yeah, they're not that good



Default keybindings are sometimes weird



Not that I'm aware of. In fact, you can reset and change them as you see fit



However these opinions are half a year old. Because the size of the game (or amount of contend according to star citizen fans) i haventh been keen on keeping the client installed all the time in my computer.



I do think derek smart has been quite active in fixing stuff, thats broken but i do also think that the list is quite long.(its still shorter than list of broken things in star citizen).



It might flop or it might succeed but hey same is true with star citizen right?



A LOT has changed, and it's getting there slowly but surely. The roadmap is clear in what is left to do. When people who own the game see the changelog for any build (we have both GA and DEV builds, all accessible to people who own the game), they know exactly what just got released, and what it yet to come. Nothing is hidden. And that's what "Open Development" is about. I think LOD has some interesting concepts in it that you dont see in many fps games. (i got my copy free)Mainly the ability to drop everywhere in the level, without restrictions. (iron man style)glide suit with jetpack is another fun mechanic.damage on players is based on hit locations as well. Basically the implementation chris roberts is promising with star citizen. (you will start limping around if you drop down from too high cliff)city level is quite huge and it looks pretty neat in design.Water simulation is pretty complex with waves. (I think its also might be causing some performance issues)Bad things in LOD:Its graphics are really dated. I think closest comparison would be HAZETheres tons of bugs left to fixWeapons need more variance. Theres tons of weapons but most of the weapons feels quite similar.There is no EU servers yet.Space ships feel simple to fly and sound awful (vacuum cleaners in space)Default keybindings are sometimes weirdHowever these opinions are half a year old. Because the size of the game (or amount of contend according to star citizen fans) i haventh been keen on keeping the client installed all the time in my computer.I do think derek smart has been quite active in fixing stuff, thats broken but i do also think that the list is quite long.(its still shorter than list of broken things in star citizen).It might flop or it might succeed but hey same is true with star citizen right? Click to expand...

OK, where do I start?First, comparisons to Star Citizen are not only unfounded, but are just laughable. In fact, earlier this morning I wrote a new Star Citizen scoop and which had a section on this very issue.Going strictly by what the OP listed.That intro trailer was done back in 2012 by a third-party using 100% in-game assets. The idea was to show off what could be done in the game; which btw, currently exists in the game. There's nothing in that video that's missing in the game. We didn't spend a large sum of money or time doing a glitz trailer (like those other guys) and which wouldn't be indicative of the game being developed.The "flight model" video. Here's the hilarious part. That's actually a third person camera that only manipulates the camera and bears no relation to the aircraft flight dynamics because the game was never developed for aircraft to be flown in 3rd person. In fact, we removed it for that very reason. The LOD flight model (both planetary and space) works just fine. And while not as advanced as my previous games which use a very different and more advanced flight model that I wrote, it is in line with the type of game. Not to mention the fact that the game being in Early Access, whatever version () he was running in Feb 2016, no longer even exists in the current () game due to a multitude of tweaks, fixes, updates etc.The game does not require you to spend a lot of money to play it. It is 100% skill based. Whether the final game will be F2P or not, has yet to be decided. But even so, a starter kit is only $19.99. And the Tactical Advancement Kits ($29.99-$59.99) are just a bundle of items, and which also contain a few features which are similar to standard and premium versions of games. disabled the game's Steam store page back in April , and moved it into CBT sooner than I planned, because most of the toxic Star Citizen fans were buying the game, review bombing it - while expressing their opinions on my "going after Star Citizen", then getting a refund. That's why you can no longer buy it on Steam, but you can buy it through some partner sites which still have keys available.The biggest complaints we get about the game, are about the graphics. I even wrote a series of blogs explaining the art direction/style, engine etc. They're interesting, if you are into that sort of thing.Basically, back when we started in 2010 with the custom engine, being a massive game, I chose this art direction/style because I didn't want performance to be an issue down the road. So with low fidelity assets, the plan was to use shaders down the road to augment the quality without going overboard. Especially since we don't have the benefit of PBR. In other words, games like Team Fortress 2, Battleborn, Overwatch, Atlas Reactor etc have a similar art direction/style.The issue with LOD is that there's too much detail in some of the already low quality assets, and which need to be redone anyway. Here are some excerpts from this detailed post in another thread on this forum:All the game's promised features, including the upcoming and on-going visual improvements, are outlined in the roadmap (which has been trimmed to reflect only the remaining final stages of the development) and being implemented. A LOT of those elements don't even have their tweak passes yet. e.g. the fps portion needs a lot of tweaks because atm it just doesn't feel right. It's actually also listed in the known issues page.It's a very large game, and while I believe that the areas which require visual improvements will vastly improve on things, I have no reason to believe that the game will appeal to everyone. The game is not a pure fps game. It's not a space combat sim. It's not a planetary combat sim. It's not a vehicular sim. It doesn't have trading, exploration, mining, missions, orof that. Because it'sthat kind of game. Instead, it is an all-encompassing PvP arena style multiplayer game played in fps mode, and which has infantry as well as air, land, sea, space player controlled assets. Some people compare it to Planetside. It's a close comparison except that i) the planetside games are more complex and involved ii) it has more in common with my 2009 All Aspect Warfare game. And it's nowhere near as complex as any game I've developed.The greatest challenge has been staying true to my original design, and not changing direction just because the industry keeps doing that. Rather than doing an AAW sequel with a legacy engine, I decided to buildtype of game, from scratch, so that I could improve (the expansion plans are in the roadmap btw) on it over time without having to build another game every few years, seeing as I'm semi-retired and all.We still have a few months to go before it hits final Beta. But if the changelog and bugs list are anything to go by, it's quite clear that game has clear goals and we're not only working on completing those goals, but also fixing, tweaking, and improving things as we go along. All of that - for such a massive game - without the benefit of 300+ developers, let alone millions of dollars in revenue each month.In truth, I am more concerned about the game's performance, "", and feature set coherence, than I am about visuals. That has always been the case with my games. You can have the best visuals in the world, yes it helps, but if the game itself sucks, nobody will care, regardless of how beautiful it looks. I'm old school, and over the years it's been clear to me as a gamer and gamedev that features, enjoyment, and community are what keep games going - not just awesome graphics.I have never been one to convince people to buy my games, because for me, this is more of a hobby than it is a business. I have just been lucky enough that my games have always sold enough for me to keep making them, while making a decent income. Buy it, don't buy, I don't care. I never did. Which is why when people use my games to attack me, just make me laugh because the joke - more often than not - is always on them. Me? I just get to keep making games that some people buy and play.Those of you who own LOD, either because you bought it, got a free key etc, have seen theprogress that we've made since it went public in. At the end of the day, the game will be finished, and released - just like all my games. And as these things go, people will still hate on it, regardless of merit. It's the nature of the beast.Some feedback:ps: I'm guessing that the moderators are going to be working over time in this thread before long