DescentBB

Miner Wars is a 6DOF underground and space shooter played in a fully destructible environment and is a combination of single player story game and massive multiplayer online.
It aparently has some former Descent team members on the project.

http://www.minerwars.com/?aid=6811

i was really impressed by the vid showcasing the solar flare, pilot had to blast a hole in some rock to escape the charged particle stream. playing in a fully destructive environment could be really intresting, Makeing my own mine as i go
IDK about the whole haveing 300+ people in a game at a time, thats gona bee wierd

Im strongly considering buying it, heck i think the descent series was the best 30 bucks i ever spent.

EDIT: just noticed this was posted elsewhere

I am intrigued.

Also, they kinda strongly hited that this was descent-themed. The ship at the start of that vid looks like a heavily modified pyro, and the phrase \"youre going down\" is easily identified with descent.

tottally noticed that too cause it said something like \" 15 years ago you were going down\" and i belive \"your going down again\" was the catch for d2

Kida wrote:Im strongly considering buying it...

Don't!!

...At least not until there's something real to buy.

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From my perspective, there are huge 'red flags' all over that project.

• They have been promoting their product almost solely to a small niche group (fans of Descent) through contests, forums, etc.
• They have obtained investor $$ from multiple sources... but they are asking for donated help (with compensation based on future sales, of course!).
• They are pre-$elling during a "pre-Alpha" stage of the game, long before even a vague future release date.
• They are already starting to backpedal on promises.

"But there are lots of images and videos!"

Yep, it looks cool (especially to the Descent fan niche), doesn't it?

"But they have a demo!"

I'd barely call it that. Their 'demo' is built on a third-party graphics engine, and solely consists of flying around and shooting things. Given all their promised features, their 'demo' demonstrates very little real functionality.

...But most importantly, after years of development on an MMO, their "demo" during a period where they are pre-$elling the game is entirely offline?

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Personally, I don't think Miner Wars (at least, with anything close to all the promised features and gameplay) will ever see the light of day.

I think the fact that they're trying to sell a pre-alpha version of a game is the most important thing you've brought up.

It's always best to buy games from respectable software companies. Professional game developers have real release dates and actual development schedules; they don't have to wait for royalties to come in from future sales to pay their workers; they don't do shady stuff like trying to sell a pre-alpha version of a game.

I have to contend with two of Foil's points.

That they are only selling to Descent niche players: At least half the people on the forums who have bought the pre-alpha (and who also like it) have not played Descent (maybe some of them played it once in 1995, idk). They've attracted players from Minecraft, Red Faction, and a whole host of other games. I believe there's even someone (probably more than one) on the forum who I've played against in TrackMania (and no, he hasn't played Descent).

Their demo is built on their own in-house engine, VRage. They built the engine themselves. As far as I can tell the engine is what was in development for years.

Alter-Fox wrote:That they are only selling to Descent niche players:

I never said that. I said that they are promoting almost solely (e.g. primarily) to the Descent niche. They frequently reference Descent, they post on Descent forums. Heck, they even tried to run a tournament for Descent players to drum up interest.

Alter-Fox wrote:Their demo is built on their own in-house engine, VRage. They built the engine themselves. As far as I can tell the engine is what was in development for years.

Wrong. They call it "VRage", but it's built on XNA Game Studio. Claiming it as "their own game engine" is very misleading.

i think its neat.

I looked up XNA Game Studio. It's not a game engine. It's an IDE by Microsoft that was made for indie companies to develop game engines.
I used something similar when I was in high school for my computer programming/computer science class.

Alter-Fox wrote:I looked up XNA Game Studio. It's an IDE by Microsoft that was made for indie companies to develop game engines.

Exactly. Building an engine on that platform is far from developing one's own engine.

I don't understand the difference...
Does \"developing your own engine\" apply only if you type all the code in notepad?
Oh well, since it's free, I might as well download it to see what you're talking about.

The point is that they are promoting the product as something *far* more than what it is.

Even if they put significant work on top of the game studio platform, Miner Wars shows all the signs of being a fluff investement.

I don't understand what the difference is between using a program that's built to edit code or editing code in notepad. Both seem equally valid to me. Of course, since you're a programmer for a living you probably know this better than me.

And I wasn't able to download the program because Microsoft is crap (I had forgotten about that part for a minute). It has some random error installing the prerequisite for Visual Studio, which is the prerequisite for XNA... And if Miner Wars really requires that, I'm willing to bet the random error is that it's installed already since the prealpha should need it to run. The XNA installation says it isn't installed , and it refuses to go any farther. Despite being a savant Bill Gates is apparently really stupid.

In any case, I highly doubt that Keen Software's intent is malicious. More likely they're aiming too high and are just starting to realize that... hence they have to go back on some promises. If they've bit off more than they can chew, my advice would be: support them and help them chew it . From playing the prealpha I think they can pull it off. It might take a long time because their team is very small, and not in the optimal location(s). But heck, TrackMania 2 is being developed by Ubisoft and the release date keeps getting pushed back (it seems every month they push it back a year). So this isn't the only company with nebulous release dates.

I respect your opinion Foil, but I don't share it.

Alter-Fox wrote:I don't understand what the difference is between using a program that's built to edit code or editing code in notepad. Both seem equally valid to me.

Building an engine yourself and building an engine on top of a platform (with everything from the rendering pipeline to premade classes and object movement/management functionality already in place) are very, very different.

Alter-Fox wrote:I respect your opinion Foil, but I don't share it.

That's fine, you don't have to share it. But I highly suggest saving your $$.

XNA Game Studio is a set of development tools, not a game engine.

Foil's argument is like complaining that someone used a hammer to nail boards together rather than their bare hands or using assembly rather than poking bits in ram.

It's more like building a house w/ basic material (boards, bricks, pipe etc.) vs. building it from prefab parts (walls, roof, etc.). Foil has a good point, XNA is an environment geared towards developing games in C# under MS OSes, providing an engine framework that makes this relatively easy at the cost of portability to non-XNA environments. A \"real\" game engine like iD engines can be ported to almost any platform, albeit at the cost of 4x (or more) the development efforts. XNA is at a similar level as Torque.

As far as I can tell at present, it looks like it will skip out on being for other platforms. If this game were to be a gameplay / commercial success, it would be another that the Linux / Macintosh crowd miss out on save those who have a Windows partition/install to make use of. I know full well there's no \"real\" market with those platforms, but then they are never really marketed to to begin with to allow for it to happen, and things like OpenGL, which is getting \"up there\" in comparison to the titan DirectX, are almost never given a chance by game developers.

Maybe for ports it'll be sold to a third party like Descent 3 was to Loki...

A \"real\" game engine like iD engines can be ported to almost any platform, albeit at the cost of 4x (or more) the development efforts.

I was thinking of id software's multiplatform engines (in particular, the one used for Doom 3) while making this post and then I see it mentioned in yours.

i think you are expecting too much.
i gave it try without any problems with installation and i thought it was really fun. the solar wind blast is pretty sweet. as unpolished as it is, it doesn't mean the game is crap. i thought they did a good job. for a playable demo. all the other projects that come along here and are like descent or linked to the community in any way always have either a few screenshots or none at all and just end up dead (with the exception of that doom 3 descent mod). it's not that easy to make a video game.

Personally, my doubts were gone when Dan Wentz joined their team. I think someone who has worked on as many games as he has would know how to tell when a game looks promising and finishable. And considering that Keen Software didn't ask him, he volunteered to join the team...

Alter-Fox wrote:I don't understand what the difference is between using a program that's built to edit code or editing code in notepad. Both seem equally valid to me. Of course, since you're a programmer for a living you probably know this better than me.

And I wasn't able to download the program because Microsoft is crap (I had forgotten about that part for a minute). It has some random error installing the prerequisite for Visual Studio, which is the prerequisite for XNA... And if Miner Wars really requires that, I'm willing to bet the random error is that it's installed already since the prealpha should need it to run. The XNA installation says it isn't installed , and it refuses to go any farther. Despite being a savant Bill Gates is apparently really stupid.

First paragraph: The key is that XNA is not merely an IDE, it's basically a game development toolkit with a lot of libraries, etc. I doubt it would qualify as a complete game engine, but it probably does have a largely complete rendering pipeline, etc, which would massively reduce the time you'd need to develop games with it. For a company their size that's probably a good move since you need serious investment to roll your own game engine without losing all hope of ever completing anything.

Second paragraph: Exact error? This is usually something you can just Google and be done with it, if you hit it at all - I've rarely run into errors installing Visual Studio. Other thing is, I doubt Bill Gates even commissioned XNA Game Studio, let alone had any hand in its development (he pretty much moved on from that by the early 1990s).

Foil wrote:Personally, I don't think Miner Wars (at least, with anything close to all the promised features and gameplay) will ever see the light of day.

I'm not going to comment on the programming development side, but purely from a business standpoint I would argue that Keen Software House is legally obliged to finish it.

I normally hate to quote myself, but in this case I will:

Gekko71 wrote: Accepting payment in exchange for the alpha legally constitutes the acceptance of a completion guarantee by Keen Software House to the purchaser. Failing to complete the game would constitute a breech of the terms of sale offered by K.S.H. and leaves themselves open to prosecution later on.

As for the subject of KSH having investors yet still sourcing funds from gamers... Why would an investor spend money buying into a company and developing a product, when they can buy into the company and have someone else pay for product development?

And on the Descent-like front, that's just sensible marketing. D1-3 were very popular in their day and there is still a dearth of similar product out there. "If you liked that, you're going to love this" may be a marketing cliche, but that doesn't mean that it isn't effective.

Avder wrote:The ship at the start of that vid looks like a heavily modified pyro

Unless I'm sorely mistaken, the ship at the start of that video featured in various posts for core decision / geocore. IIRC, I've seen psionik on the KSH dev team, which might explain the similarity

I could be mistaken but I believe Psionik is currently one of the four musicians working on the soundtrack . (Soon to be five hopefully... Dan Wentz is showing a lot of interest in my work right now).

@Sirius my comment about Bill Gates was meant to be taken facetiously.

Grendel wrote:It's more like building a house w/ basic material (boards, bricks, pipe etc.) vs. building it from prefab parts (walls, roof, etc.).

Good analogy, illustrates my point about the engine development well, thank you.

Gekko71 wrote:Accepting payment in exchange for the alpha legally constitutes the acceptance of a completion guarantee by Keen Software House to the purchaser. Failing to complete the game would constitute a breech of the terms of sale offered by K.S.H. and leaves themselves open to prosecution later on.

Ability to file suit for breach of contract is hardly sufficient protection. Investors in the company don't have that guarantee (if the company fails before completing a game, it's simply investment loss), and purchasers won't have enough at stake to pursue legal action.

Gekko71 wrote:And on the Descent-like front, that's just sensible marketing. D1-3 were very popular in their day...

Descent fans comprise a very small niche market, and the MW guys seem to be focusing 95% of their promotional their efforts in that direction. That's either a poor move, or intentionally limiting their risk... I think it's the latter.

P.S. I find it odd that folks here are reassured that developers from previous failed/dead/uncompleted projects are on KSH staff. That's another red flag in my book.

Wow i opened a can of worms didnt I.
Good research from a few people, i was definatly intrested in this game, but after reading alot of this, most of what foil is saying makes sence.

If this does make it to full release ill see what its about, but none of this pre-order-not-complete-yet-things-may-change-in-the-future-product they are offering at this point.

It doesn't help perceptions that the Descent community as a whole has been repeatedly wounded by failed successor projects that had a flimsy foundation from their start... Think back as far as \"nTrap\" and go from there...

Foil wrote:I find it odd that folks here are reassured that developers from previous failed/dead/uncompleted projects are on KSH staff. That's another red flag in my book.

Yeah, that's what I say too. Sounds like many of you are just making excuses for them.

I like being able to play what there is now, because it is 6DoF, and it looks a heck of a lot more modern than Descent. The soundtrack is awesome as well.

Let's wait until we see both a demo and a release date first.

Well if I'm going to contribute to the soundtrack (part of my master plan) I'd need to do it before then I think.

I don't. ^_~

Ferno wrote:Let's wait until we see both a demo and a release date first.

Yeah, that's what I say, too. :P

After about 10 promised 6-DOF games that never panned out,

I'll check it out once it's released.

Burlyman wrote:I don't. ^_~

Hey, even if it's never finished, it can still go on my resume (I've researched these things). I'm in a unique position right now (Dan Wentz likes my work and wants to help me get it into the game), and I don't want to waste it because I don't think I'll get another chance like this.

Alter-Fox wrote:

Burlyman wrote:I don't. ^_~

Hey, even if it's never finished, it can still go on my resume (I've researched these things). I'm in a unique position right now (Dan Wentz likes my work and wants to help me get it into the game), and I don't want to waste it because I don't think I'll get another chance like this.

Hey, any experience that you get helps you professionally. If anything it helps get you a job at a bigger place where they're actually making money on software.

It's a long shot. Past projects have gone flat, and there are too many red flags, and until I see a decent demo (no pun intended), and an actual release date, I'm not holding my breath.

Your skeptisism is warranted, but this company being shady is not a given. Minecraft was done in a similar way (pre-sales) and look at how awesome it is. BTW Minerwars is $13, not $30 (who said it was $30?). Pretty similar to Minecraft's $10 price

hehe, minerwars/minecraft crossovers would be pretty funny, i can see it now. Minerwarcrafts lol

d3jake wrote:until I see a decent demo (no pun intended), and an actual release date, I'm not holding my breath.

likewise. But i'm still kinda tempted to give them $13 regardless - i'm in a Minecraft "be generous with Indy developers" state of mind.
On 2nd thought it might be a good idea to wait until they release more Alphas, to prove that they are actually continuing to work.


edit: guys there seems to be a bunch of ppl who have uploaded their own vids of playing Minerwars Alpha
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... rwars&aq=f

If nTrap offered a pre-purchasable playable alpha (like Minecraft does), i wonder if it'd still be around today...

*ponder* *ponder* *ponder*


edit: hangon a tick, check this out:

Miner Wars 2081 - pre-alpha - 70% discount
Buy Miner Wars 2081 for a special pre-release price! Included: Access to the pre-alpha test phase of the game and full version of the game upon release. Single Player/Co-Op/Standard Multi-Player. (Miner Wars MMO will be a separate product.)
9.99 €
~12.30 $

So our pre-purchase $13 is not actually buying the full game at all? uuuuuuhhhhhh

roid wrote: edit: hangon a tick, check this out:

(Miner Wars MMO will be a separate product.)

So our pre-purchase $13 is not actually buying the full game at all? uuuuuuhhhhhh

Correct. The MW guys are claiming they "meant it to be two different games from the beginning":

Foil wrote:

• They are already starting to backpedal on promises.

No one ever said they're shady.

Burlyman wrote:No one ever said they're shady.

... I didn't? Well, I certainly meant to say it looks shady to me.

Seriously, if you looked at the entire post rather than just the first paragraph they were much more generous than most big software companies. For example I now will have a free copy of the MMO when/if it's finished. I don't think this is going to hurt them (even if some of us don't buy ). I've only ever seen one other company that's done anything this generous before -- and they won't be doing it again I wager since they were acquired by Ubisoft (since they got such a huge fan base). Bottom line is I don't think it looks any shadier than any other company/corporation.
There are far more people on their forums who are very confident in Keen Software and Miner Wars than there are people doubting here (just wanted to point that out, not trying to be critical). I would post about what they achieved on the IndieDB website but I really don't know how valid that website is . It seems like the sort of thing Foil would counter with a website that appears more valid.

Anyway, I'd recommend at least buying the soundtrack. It's only $13.00 and the stuff on there is real and it rocks (you get access right away). It's very Descent-ish (well most of it is by Dan Wentz ). As of now there are 19 full-length songs (some are in the game already some will be put in later) and there will be updates with more in the future.