Apeiron

[Talyn82 84]

I really haven't been following the progress of the fan made remake.  But this video was recommended to me by YouTube.  It's about the revealing of Bastila's model. 

 

[DarthParametric 3,782]

3 hours ago, Malkior said:

Well, they were originally just a bunch of kids playing in Unreal, but recently they either hired or convinced a legitimate professional to help them. 

You can see someone reminded them of the fact that they actually need non player characters in.. you know a story-driven game, evident by the character placeholders in their more recent screenshots. 

That's just more art. That doesn't advance the project, if anything it pushes it even further along the wrong path. Artists are a dime a dozen. A monkey could slap together some art assets in Unreal and call it a game (as evidenced by all the asset flips on Steam). What a game needs is programmers. If you don't have any then you shouldn't even bother starting a project.

If I was going to undertake a hypothetical KOTOR remake (and let's call it what it actually is and dispense with this "mod" BS) in Unreal or other 3rd party engine, I would start with a fully functional recreation of the Endar Spire level. Forget about the art assets, simple white box mockups and default Unreal characters would suffice. What matters in an RPG is the underlying systems. If you are starting KOTOR from scratch, you need to develop a multi-node branching conversation system, equipment and inventory system, stats and levelling system, party/companion system, ranged and melee combat mechanics, etc. The Endar Spire is the perfect test level for developing and testing that. You have a couple of NPCs with a few lines of dialogue, a couple of conversations, a few combat encounters, a few cutscenes, etc. all in a very small space comprised of a few small rooms linked by corridors. And if you haven't demonstrated even a fraction of any of that after 2 or 3 years of screwing around, you should just stop wasting your time.

[Malkior 476]

That's actually.. quite a good point. I suppose the reason is simply because they couldn't think of any tangible way to improve on the Kotor code, which would do nothing to increase hype.

However, it's not like they have access or permission to use the game code from the Aurora engine, so they would eventually have to recreate the entire combat, conversation, and game loop code from scratch (or improvise using Unreal Tools). Since there hasn't been any work shown regarding even a skeleton of those structures, it's quite likely that they simply either haven't considered it, have been working behind the scenes on it but want to keep it in the background so that hype can be garnered by the visuals, or they  have no idea how to create the necessary scripts.

[1Leonard 134]

16 hours ago, Malkior said:

Well, they were originally just a bunch of kids playing in Unreal, but recently they either hired or convinced a legitimate professional to help them. 

You can see someone reminded them of the fact that they actually need non player characters in.. you know a story-driven game, evident by the character placeholders in their more recent screenshots. 

But that's just not how you would create a working game. You don't just go putting out assets without rhyme or reason. What you should do is to put out a "Vertical slice", a very small level containing all major gameplay elements of the game. In the case of Kotor that would be:
navigating maps,
changing equipment,
combat,
levelling up,
dialogue,
completing quests and gaining dark side/ lightside points.

If you do it that way, when you find something that doesn't work or is very difficult to implement, you're still able to easily fix it. 

 

For example, say I want to remake mario 64. I could model all 15 or so levels that are available (not counting all variations per level for each star course) and put out screens and videos of these levels over the course of a couple of years without even touching the gameplay part. OR you could create a small level that includes a working player model and (nearly) all the necessary physics and moves that are in the original game.

Look at the discription, this small level took two weeks to make. How long has Apeiron been taking now?

 

Edit: Ah darn, completely missed DP's post. Needless to say, I agree with him.

[1Leonard 134]

14 hours ago, Talyn82 said:

I really haven't been following the progress of the fan made remake.  But this video was recommended to me by YouTube.  It's about the revealing of Bastila's model. 

 

I hate to use this term, but this is actual fake news.

This model was a fan creation and has nothing to do with the apeiron project.

(I don't know why this bothers me so, but it does. Maybe it's that the author of this video just made stuff up for clicks.)

[Talyn82 84]

40 minutes ago, 1Leonard said:

I hate to use this term, but this is actual fake news.

This model was a fan creation and has nothing to do with the apeiron project.

(I don't know why this bothers me so, but it does. Maybe it's that the author of this video just made stuff up for clicks.)

Okay.  Like I said I really haven't been following the remakes progress, but for some reason this video was recommended to me.

[zbyl2 811]

18 hours ago, Malkior said:

Well, they were originally just a bunch of kids playing in Unreal, but recently they either hired or convinced a legitimate professional to help them.

Show me a legitimate, proffesional, non-terrible developer, with any kind of experience, willing to work on a project this complex for free.

I'm very interested in hiring that person.

 

edit; by developer I mean a programmer who can do any kind of gameplay stuff. DP did a good job of explaining what they should have done first, but that'd require apeiron team to know anything about game development.

 

also making levels without a gameplay isn't just useless, it's a complete waste of time. You just can't design a level without knowing how the game behaves, how good your path finding is, how your AI behaves and so on.

[HK-47 84]

The author of the video of the Bastila model said that it's not made for this remake, but was made by someone that was recently made part of the team, before they became part of the team.

 

I personally am not expecting anything out of this. I am not watching it myself either. I am impressed with some stuff that I have seen. I hope it works out though, whether they're "doing it right" or not. After all, restoring K2 seemed a hopeless endeavor for a while, much less a fully fleshed out M4-78, and an M4 that was compatible with the aforementioned restoration.

[zbyl2 811]

Rrestoring bunch of content by an ever changing group of people, or even making a new planet, isn't anywhere near the level of complexity of a game; and 99% of mods that are in any way ambitious get dropped pretty quickly.

[1Leonard 134]

12 minutes ago, HK-47 said:

The author of the video of the Bastila model said that it's not made for this remake, but was made by someone that was recently made part of the team, before they became part of the team.

 

Which he pulls out of his ass and has no proof of whatsoever.

[Mephiles550 227]

The assets are all really cool looking and the mappers and modelers certainly know their stuff, but is this going to be an actual game? lol no. Maybe if the team continues at this pace for the next 20 years we will have a complete game, but determination of projects like this tend to die off eventually once they realize the full scale of how unreachable their ambitions are.

[HK-47 84]

6 hours ago, 1Leonard said:

Which he pulls out of his ass and has no proof of whatsoever.

There's the proof of it's existence in the twitter post in the video and in the description for the video, as well as other links.

Perhaps I misunderstand what there is no proof of. Or maybe you're having a bad day and need some cheering up?

 

[1Leonard 134]

7 hours ago, HK-47 said:

There's the proof of it's existence in the twitter post in the video and in the description for the video, as well as other links.

Perhaps I misunderstand what there is no proof of. Or maybe you're having a bad day and need some cheering up?

 

Wasn't there when I posted my comments. I'll reserve judgment until I see gameplay. 

[Canderis 180]

Honestly I don't ever expect to get a real game out of this but if we can get a walking-through demo honestly that'd still make me very happy.

[Haveayap 127]

I know there are many here who love this glorious "mod" as the devs have been telling everyone for the past 2 years. So let me post a conversation that I had with a dev on their discord chat earlier today. For those that do not know, my discord name is Winter 😂

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

I am surprised that more folks from here haven't commented about this on the Reddit thread about this topic.  Even more surprised that the Apeiron sycophants haven't been down rated more.

[Malkior 476]

Well.. Wow!  They don't have a legal leg to stand on and yet they don't seem to care. Now I'm just concerned about what the fallout will be once they get caught and/or punished.

Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if Youtube's gaming news channels are at this moment gearing up to "expose" them using that Reddit thread as evidence.

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

9 minutes ago, Malkior said:

Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if Youtube's gaming news channels are at this moment gearing up to "expose" them using that Reddit thread as evidence.

Depends if the YouTube channels in question are Apeiron sycophants or not. LOL

[Haveayap 127]

2 hours ago, Malkior said:

Well.. Wow!  They don't have a legal leg to stand on and yet they don't seem to care. Now I'm just concerned about what the fallout will be once they get caught and/or punished.

Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if Youtube's gaming news channels are at this moment gearing up to "expose" them using that Reddit thread as evidence.

I actually could not believe that one of Apeirons developers admitted that to me after they have spent the last year convincing people that it is 100% legal. Im sure they didnt expect me to take snippets of that and post it over here and on redit 

 

Edit: can mods merge this with the main apeiron chat

[Haveayap 127]

 Ill post a link in here for those who wont see the post. 

[Abocreature 1]

IP laws are notoriously flexible. It's difficult to be sure of any legality unless you're the holder of the property. What was important was how this differed from other similar projects that have been taken down, not that it meets a rigid definition of legality. Yes, EA still has all the legal power in the world to force them to stop, but it's really about whether or not they would  do that rather than if they could do that.

Apeiron doesn't accept donations and won't be charging for the end product. No one is being cheated out of anything, so going around making sure everyone and their mother who might be a little bit excited about this know that it's absolutely doomed and they shouldn't bother is accomplishing nothing more than being a dick. Let us be hopeful. Let us have fun in this harmless way.

Edited August 26, 2018 by Abocreature

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

3 minutes ago, Abocreature said:

Apeiron doesn't accept donations and won't be charging for the end product. No one is being cheated out of anything, so going around making sure everyone and their mother who might be a little bit excited about this know that it's absolutely doomed and they shouldn't bother is accomplishing nothing more than being a dick. Let us be hopeful.

A free version of KotOR is taking money out of the license holder's pockets.  Had that not occurred to you?

[Abocreature 1]

2 minutes ago, Sith Holocron said:

A free version of KotOR is taking money out of the license holder's pockets.  Had that not occurred to you?

It has been stated multiple times that it will require the base game to be installed in order to install or run at all. That sounds like it's encouraging people to give the license holder money, not taking it from them.

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

1 minute ago, Abocreature said:

It has been stated multiple times that it will require the base game to be installed in order to install or run at all. That sounds like it's encouraging people to give the license holder money, not taking it from them.

The Apeiron developer admitted that was a lie.  Reread the initial post and read the conversation in the pictures.

[Abocreature 1]

1 minute ago, Sith Holocron said:

The Apeiron developer admitted that was a lie.  Reread the initial post and read the conversation in the pictures.

All that one developer said is that he is "well aware of [IP law not working that way]". This doesn't imply that they're lying about it requiring the base game.

Since there's no financial gain, there's not a huge reason to waste all of this time if they aren't going to do everything they can to try and make sure it stays up.