Hello guys, Phr00t here. I made 3079, Gentrieve 2 & 3089. I'd love for the opportunity to address some of the criticism raised here.
Didn't the 3079 devs basically stop supporting that game and release the same game as 3089 to get more money? So what's to say they won't stop supporting this and try to sell us 3099 in a few months?
Support for 3079 was never stopped. 3079 remains in "maintenance" mode & support is still provided in the forums for bugs & other issues.
3079 & 3089 are not the same game. 3089 is a completely different game with a whole new engine, story & set of gameplay mechanics. I've made a page detailing the differences here:
3089game[.]wordpress[.]com/features/
I will not stop supporting 3089 anytime soon. 3089 is still in alpha & is still being heavily developed. No new games are planned, since 3089 is my current focus & I will continue developing it until it is done.
Plus the dev's "texture artist" stole textures from Duke Nukem 3D and used them in 3079.
I made it very clear to the texture artist that all the work he provided me was to be free of any copyright issues. The textures that non-official sources were claiming to be stolen were very generic brick and steal textures. Nothing about those textures were screaming "rip-off". However, I did end up changing the textures because it takes less time replacing a generic brick texture than it does dealing with people claiming a texture has been ripped off. The bottom line is, I didn't steal textures & I didn't accept textures that I knew were stolen.
Honestly, I couldn't care less that they stole some textures from another game. I care that I plopped down $5 for 3079, and they cut and ran on that game once they got tired of it, or it wasn't raking in the bucks anymore. The darn thing went from Alpha to complete game in one fell swoop.
To add insult to injury, the new game basically looks like the old one minus the blocky Minecraft look. So even if we want to be charitable and assume that the motivation for moving on to the next game wasn't to get more money, what the hell is the reason to buy this new game? It's basically the same damn game.
I did not cut & run from 3079. It did not go from Alpha to complete game in one fell swoop. Here is the version history:
sites[.]google[.]com/site/3079game/version-history
It was actually never really labeled "alpha", but instead "beta"; although those labels were rather interchangeable in this instance since it simply meant the game was in heavy development & otherwise incomplete.
3079 received approximately 41 updates before being considered "stable". After that, 3079 received 13 more updates that included more content, tweaks & improvements.
Again, 3089 is not the same game as 3079. You can read about the differences here:
3089game[.]wordpress[.]com/features/
3089 isn't going to look or play
completely differently, since it is a sequel. However, there are many key changes built on a whole new engine that should bring more enjoyment to the series.
I like to think I'm a reasonably big booster of indie devs. One annoying habit some developers have is they try to stoke some kind of anti-establishment sentiment by evoking a good guys (indie) vs bad guys (major developers) battle. In my experiences, they have a point: much of the gaming press focus less on the little guys than I would like. Then something like this happens and shows it's not that black and white.
Much of this drama is manufactured to drum up controversy. Little bits of truth get wrapped up in rumors & hearsay that spreads unchecked on the internet. This is inevitable, and I have come to accept that. I never believed all indie developers are good guys, and all major developers are bad guys... there is "good" and "evil" to be shared on both sides. However, don't forget the same goes for gamers too. Some gamers will hate you, no matter what you do, while fanboys will love whatever you do. In the end, I just try to focus on making fun games that hopefully most people will enjoy. I wish everyone could like me for doing that, but it unfortunately doesn't work that way.
I wasn't aware of all the dev drama, but I really enjoyed 3079. There's a lot of really great stuff in there, especially if you can play it with a friend.
Thank you Dantarp -- I'm glad you enjoyed 3079. You'll probably be able to find "dev drama" on anyone tucked away somewhere... I try to not let it get in the way of developing my games.
Anyway, I want to thank you guys for reading this far. I'm just trying to be honest. I thank my supporters, whom I greatly appreciate, and I'm going to continue working on my games & making new ones in the future -- I hope you stick around.
- Phr00t
PS. Sorry for the links, I wasn't allowed to post them properly
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