New Core Decision website

[d3jake]

Yay! Update! Even if it's something like that I think that at least I appreciate an update about CD. Good to hear that it's going swimmingly now.

[Wurby]

I have a question..


is there a way we can donate through paypal to help speed things up??

[Viper7]

I would imagine you would have to contact them about that.

I got this from their site.

ABOUT US

About Uplink Studios
Hours 8:00 A.M. - 8:00p Eastern Standard Time
Phone: (866)328-1886
FAX: (269)649-5622

Mailing Address:
Uplink Studios
PO BOX 374
Three Rivers, Michigan
49093 USA

Email Addresses
Jobs: hr/at/uplinkstudios.com
Info: info/at/uplinkstudios.com
Support: support/at/uplinkstudios.com
Web Master: webmaster/at/uplinkstudios.com
Investors: investors/at/uplinkstudios.com

I would email info.

[MD-2389]

I have a question..


is there a way we can donate through paypal to help speed things up??

Your heart is in the right place, but money isn't the issue. They had a few development setbacks a while back, but they've been back on track for a while now. I don't think it'll be much longer. The biggest thing is that they want it to be done RIGHT instead of rushing it out the door and fixing it later (like EA).

[Viper7]

This may be true but, if people were to donate money to the project I'm sure that it would help considerably. Last I heard they could use it.

[MD-2389]

This may be true but, if people were to donate money to the project I'm sure that it would help considerably. Last I heard they could use it.

You heard wrong. I'm not at liberty to say how much they got (NDA and all), but its not an issue. I keep in touch with zbriggs on a relatively regular basis, so if something like that happened I'd know about it.

[Viper7]

Then I think you need to talk to him again. They have clearly stated that they have a publisher and are making development progress but have had some set backs and are also looking for investors.

[Ferno]

the last thing High Octane is concerned about is finances.

A company may be looking for investors but that does not bespeak of a financial situation of any kind.

[Viper7]

Yes but that does however mean that they are looking for more money. You know what, ultimately its his choice whether he donates. He should contact them and find out for himself. That's why Zach leaves his information. Beside, how are they going to find investors if you cause everyone who wants to give them money to turn away?

Given the information that they have released and the information you have stated, I would talk to them before you continue to drive people away.

[Mobius]

I hope you'll take the following with a grain of salt. I am half seriious, and half humourous here...

Heya. I am sorry I didn't notice this post sooner, I have new hours at work and they are kicking my butt.

>Translation: I'm not doing my PR job correctly. Actually, I have a job, and that's unusual, because I can't stay up playing Quake until 4am any more. It's taking me time to adjust.

For those who do not know me, I am the Creative Director for Uplink Studios.

>Translation: No one knows what my job is yet.

The game content, sound, music, and play mechanics are all under my supervision (in fact I am personally making around 80% of it right now)

>>Translation: Despite being described as "Creative Director", I seem to also be doing a LOT of development work that I am not qualified to do.

and the game IS progressing albiet slowly at the moment.

>Translation: the game is NOT progressing.

We have had a number of setbacks.

>Translation: We are almost toast. We've had an avalanche of falure and despair overtake us.

One of them is NOT losing our publisher.

>Translation: One of them is our publisher freaking out and threatening to pull the pin.

We have publishing, in fact our publisher defined this as a AAA title.

>Translation: "AAA" means "highly unlikely to ever be published". "ZZZ" means "certain to be published on time and on budget."

The move from the other site was prompted by many things

>Translation: Mostly NIH - it wasn't my baby, and I need total control of the site in order to try to maintain the "Creative Director" role, and minimising the development stuff, which I am not qualified to do. Or did I already mention that?

one of which was that I personally felt the PR for the project got off on the wrong foot by setting a lot of expectations that weren't real and so we decided to kind of reset the meter at this point.

>Translation: We found there is NO WAY we could deliver what we have said we would.

The existing content and writeups are partially outdated

>Translation: The existing content no longer reflect our previous promises to you.

and I will get some fresh content for you guys ASAP (maybe over the weekend here)

>Translation: Not a chance you are going to see anything for months!

but its very difficult for me to juggle everything.

>Translation: See, I told you - MONTHS!

Uplink is currently down to only a few active workers

>Translation: There's me and another guy - but he spends most of the time asleep.

and we are all working on our own time at this point.

>Translation: We haven't been paid in 7 weeks, and I have been eating nothing but cup noodles for the last 4 weeks.

Progress continues, steadily in fact, and we will NOT cut corners to get this game out.

>Translation: Progress has stalled. We won't cut corners! No need you see: the game is never going gold.

We may make changes to the overall design in order to accomodate the level of funding we currently have

>Translation: We are producing something that looks and feels like D1 - complete with sprites and 320 x 240 textures!

but the goal remains to create a game with the same essence of balanced, competition grade gameplay as was found in Descent 1.

>Translation: Did I mention the sprites?

I will put together a new PR package that we will launch on the uplink site

>Translation: if I ever get time, or just paid, I'll stick something up you can read.

and this time rather than opening the floodgates to the community we are taking a more silent approach

>Translation: There will be a forum, but we won't be posting anything on it. Or visiting it even!

so as to not mislead people and stay more in control of the real information.

>Translation: We won't tell you diddly squat unless the game goes gold.

Much has been posted about CD that is now outdated,

>Translation: It's all wrong! WRONG. WRONG. WRONG!

especially since my taking the creative director position,

>Translation: I changed it all, to try and make it better. Did I tell you I am also doing lots of development work - which I am not qualified to do?

and we need to erase the old stale stuff and get the whole thing up to date as far as what the game is actually going to be like and what we are trying to accomplish with our first title.

>Translation: What we are trying to accomplish is impossible. But we haven't actually realised it yet.

We will try our best to reestablish our web presence in a more professional and reassuring manner for those who worry about the status of the game.

>Translation: We will launch a glossy new website which will (hopefully) make you think we are still on track!

We realize that we are taking your baby and trying to evolve it into something new, and we have a huge respect for the existing descent community.

>Translation: We realise we are taking your baby and throwing it out with the bathwater. Sorry about that. But we can't create what we originally wanted to, so you're gonna get something which is a lot less than what you hoped it might be. Oh, we have no respect for the community, we only have respect for dollars, which we hope you'll give us for a game which isn't anything like what we said it would be.

We would really like to just turn out a solid game

>Translation: We would just like to release ANY game at this juncture!

that gives you that same exhilaration you felt from the Descent series.

>Translation: That is nothing like Descent, in fact.

Our focus is on fun gameplay rooted in the traditions of the original Descent.

>Translation: It won;t be anything like descent - but you MIGHT like it! We hope...

We are not going to copy it,

>Translation: We don't have the time or money or expertise (eeek!) to produce a professional game like Descent. We really did bite off more than we could chew, in our youthful exuberance and passion for the initial concept.

I am going to distill its essence and use it to guide the creation of this new project.

>Translation: I'm going to get drunk a lot (if I ever get paid) and that's more of the "distillation" I am talking about.

You can look forward to Core Decision being released at some point without fail,

>Translation: Can you say 2012? It'll probably fail then too.

because even if we lost all our funding

>Translation: We have.

and publishing

>Translation: It's most likely we WILL.

we would not give up production until it was done.

>Translation: We will bail on it so fast it'll make your head spin.

I am not involved with this project because I want to make video games,

>Translation: I'm actually a qualified belly dancer. I have time free for performances if you are interested. I will work for food, and the cost of the gas to get there.

I am involved with it because I feel the community is owed a new installation of our favorite game.

>Translation: I need the kudos of carrying this off!

Since it's currently impossible to make Descent 4

>Translation: "Too Costly" and "Too Diificult". Well, that's close to impossible isn't it?

we will give you Core Decision, and hopefully it will fill in the gap

>Translation: If you are EXCEPTIONALLY lucky, CD will be released some time in the future. The gap we are trying to fill is the gap between each side of our wallets.

and give this community something new to revel in.

>Translation: And give this community something else to ★■◆● and moan about.

That is our goal.

>Translation: Our goal is to get laid! BUT, It isn't working!

To not let the genre die and to breathe new life into it as well, rather than just attempting to keep it breathing.

>Translation: Our joysticks are seizing up. Probably time to shift to an All-Mouse config, and screw the 6DOFers 6 ways from sunday.

There will be something for everyone - joystickers, mousers, d3 players, and d1/2 players.

>Translation: As long as you have a mouse, you'll be fine!

More to come after I deal with getting chewed out for releasing all this internal info,

>Translation: Maybe I can post something sometime, after feeding you a ton of BS here!

it's worth it for me to let you all know the real story behind our progress, I feel we owe you all that.

>Translation: I need to keep writing, because the development stuff is REALLY HARD!

p.s. I checked with zach before hitting submit and I didn't get chewed out

>Translation: I checked with Zach, and he said "Brilliant! I have never seen so much text with so little actual content in my entire life! Great PR stuff there man! Post It! I'm glad we hired you. Oh, sorry about the lack of pay by the way. Can I get back to my nap now?"

[BUBBALOU]

/me slaps Mobi - Bad Dog - messing with Psi like that

[Viper7]

ADMINS> Can we loose the crap post please.

[psionik]

Mobius
You have to be kidding me.
I quit reading halfway through your idiot list.
All i can say is a big SCREW YOU, DICK. I am sick of your endless \"wish-mobius-had-the-credentials-to-back-up-any-of-what-he-just-said\" posts about BS you imagine to be true and therefore it must be in your pathetic forum troller mind. No more posts from you are necessary as you obviously know nothing and simply want to antagonize. Consider me pissed and consider yourself a true jerk, you negative, deconstructive, rumour mongering piece of ass garbage.

[Kilarin]

Don't let Mobi bother you. He's from New Zealand, where the sheep outnumber human women by more than Twenty to One. He's gets depressed a lot and it frequently spills out onto the forum.

[psionik]

Hey Wurby. Zach called me at work about your post and the replies and I need to address them.
Thank you very much for your generous idea, it never occurred to us to actually allow people to donate as we have been pursuing funding. To be 100% honest with you and everyone else we have been doing this whole project on our own money and time while we seek funding. It has been rather close more than once but never gone all the way through so onward we trod. Based on your post, Zach and I have decided to setup a paypal fund for people who want to donate. The address is paypal@uplinkstudios.com
Any donations of hardware or cash would be very appreciated and would be used towards the development of the game i.e. hardware and paying the workers. We can furnish receipts for payments or purchases. We will also include anyone who donates in the credits under Special Thanks. We have a really good group of guys right now that took a lot of work to get together and I would like to be able to toss them money for their efforts on this game. Things we need are along the lines of Ram, a couple PhysX cards, new machines for a couple of our guys who are on old behemoths... just some things that would help development move forward faster. Right now the biggest thing to me is to pay the coders and the texture artists some money to keep morale up and strong. I hope you guys realize that I am sharing sensitive internal material with you for no other reason than that I personally feel like everyone deserves to know the real deal.

For those of you that are inevitably going to try to walk on this and other posts I make, I welcome you to message me anytime to discuss how you feel about it so I can personally set you straight. Keep your negative posts to yourselves, I don't care if you play this game or not and I'm not going to let a bunch of ignorant wanna be know it alls naysay our efforts. The attitude that we are not legit is just absurd. How about if you have anything bad to say about us and our efforts you just don't post and find another game to heckle. Sorry for my bad mood but I am getting tired of the crap, as if we don't have a hard enough job ahead of us.

[De Rigueur]

I hope you'll take the following with a grain of salt. I am half seriious, and half humourous here...

At least he included a disclaimer. I think Mobi might be making progress.

[psionik]

I took the disclaimer into account but it only covers half the atrocious comments :]

[Money!]

MOBIUS - ★■◆● YOU!

PSIONIK - I'M EXCITED!

so excited that I need to use caps

[Sirius]

Eh, it was amusing but he went on a bit long.

It DOES remind me of the \"guides to interpreting software PR\" though.

[[]V[]essenjah]

I say we give Mobi the Diedel treatment.

[Viper7]

LOL. Flame him good!

[MD-2389]

How bout lets not. The last thing we need is to have this thread Lobberized again.

[TIGERassault]

Remember Psi, it wasn't just a coincidence that \"Moius\" sounds very similar to \"Morpheus\"

[Ferno]

massive flame directed to mobius

Jeez dude! chill out!

I understand where you're coming from but you've just lost your head there.

[psionik]

Thanks for your judgement Ferno but I can handle myself. When someone attacks something that ferociously and I have spent two years pulling it out of a hole and giving real life to it I take serious offense. It's our livelihood that's being walked on here. I will always respond like that to a person who is trying to jeopardize a project I am working on. Everything I have ever said has come from the heart and not from some PR stance. I mean every word I say and I will NOT stand for them to be bent around and played with. If it's all in humour and not from some hateful wench I can laugh too but this far exceeds that. This project means way more to me than you will ever understand, apparently. If a guy took it upon himself to deconstruct every word you said and twist it around and basically crap all over your efforts I would certainly hope you would have the balls to defend yourself as well. How's that for PR?

[De Rigueur]

FWIW, I'm sure most people here are rooting for y'all to succeed. Please keep that in mind.

BTW, I don't know what the deal is with Mobius. He hasn't always been like this. I remember years ago he and I and others were posting on the Aquanox forums and the Zero-G Marines forums begging the developers to implement 6dof. Well, they didn't . . .

[Krom]

and give this community something new to revel in.

>Translation: And give this community something else to ***** and moan about.

I laughed at that one....

[Money!]

I agree with Psionik. Who cares wtf he doin'. He's doin' somethin'. And that's more than we can say. Let him be. Someone shooting down your dreams, and especially taking all that time and effort to do it, is just fucked up.

[Ferno]

Thanks for your judgement Ferno but I can handle myself. When someone attacks something that ferociously and I have spent two years pulling it out of a hole and giving real life to it I take serious offense. It's our livelihood that's being walked on here. I will always respond like that to a person who is trying to jeopardize a project I am working on. Everything I have ever said has come from the heart and not from some PR stance. I mean every word I say and I will NOT stand for them to be bent around and played with. If it's all in humour and not from some hateful wench I can laugh too but this far exceeds that. This project means way more to me than you will ever understand, apparently. If a guy took it upon himself to deconstruct every word you said and twist it around and basically crap all over your efforts I would certainly hope you would have the balls to defend yourself as well. How's that for PR?

I still think you could have handled it better. You're one of the head guys after all.


Sure, refute what he said. I have no qualms about that. But exploding like that doesn't put us in a very good light.

[Viper7]

Hey Ferno, zbriggs needs a ballwasher on line 2.

[psionik]

Thanks for your judgement Ferno but I can handle myself. When someone attacks something that ferociously and I have spent two years pulling it out of a hole and giving real life to it I take serious offense. It's our livelihood that's being walked on here. I will always respond like that to a person who is trying to jeopardize a project I am working on. Everything I have ever said has come from the heart and not from some PR stance. I mean every word I say and I will NOT stand for them to be bent around and played with. If it's all in humour and not from some hateful wench I can laugh too but this far exceeds that. This project means way more to me than you will ever understand, apparently. If a guy took it upon himself to deconstruct every word you said and twist it around and basically crap all over your efforts I would certainly hope you would have the balls to defend yourself as well. How's that for PR?

I still think you could have handled it better. You're one of the head guys after all.


Sure, refute what he said. I have no qualms about that. But exploding like that doesn't put us in a very good light.

I couldn't have done anything better. I do not understand why it's me you're saying went over the edge, Ferno. You need to re-read the thread again, maybe you missed the three page insult post aimed directly at me... And what is this "Us"? You do not work for us. Quit acting like you do.

[MD-2389]

Guys, take the drama to PM.

[psionik]

Guys, take the drama to PM.

How about we all just drop all the crap and act like decent people? I'm all for that.

[Top Wop]

Im really excited for this game and I wish you guys all the best.

[fliptw]

Ahh mobius, the man with too much time on his hands.

[Duper]

Ahh mobius, the man with too much time on his hands.

Or maybe WITH his hands.. hard call.





(couldn't resist)

[Mobius]

Duper - I love that comment. Laughed out loud, in fact. Wine only came out my nose when I read Bubba on another thread though.

Look, I'm as keen as anyone to play this game - and if it gets released, I'll buy it just to support the team, regardless of what or how it is.

I am only trying to inject a little humour, along with a few jaded, cynical barbs - and besides, what I translated that post into was EXACTLY what everyone else is thinking, but won't post.

Good luck gents - the odds are heavily stacked against you. I don't believe you can do it, but I'm happy to be proved wrong.

[[]V[]essenjah]

That's probably why we all put up with it better from you Mobi. Yes, even I have had a few thoughts like that in the past, but a team like this has to fight through hell to keep their heads in the game. A post like that, doesn't exactly help them out. In fact, it is very destructive moral-wise towards the team, not to mention a complete waste of time.


So please keep it down a little.

[MD-2389]

You guys have got to remember that they are under alot of pressure right now. Posts like what Mobius made, no matter how well intended, aren't exactly appreciated if you catch my drift. They really need all the encouragement you can give them.

[Krom]

You know, game development is a lot like fansubbing, if you don't have anything good to say to the developers/subbers, or you want to know when the next release is, you should just stfu or you will end up facing the wrath of all other parties involved...and that can get real ugly real fast. Even if you are trying to be funny you should be very careful about what you say, since game developers and fansubbers especially when they are busy or stressed tend to find something amusing only if it is either completely unrelated to anything they are working on, or it is torturing the forum peons that said the wrong joke.