[DaveyDoomsday]

Personally, I think it would have been awesome for us to have a demo out pre-release or better yet a closed beta would have been amazing so we could have gotten serious community feedback on features - but again it's one of those things that we just never had the time/money to do.

A NEW shareware episode post-release gives people who didn't buy into the hype pre-release something to try for free that will hopefully entice them to buy the full product AND it gives the early adopters who pre-ordered the game or bought it on day one new content for FREE. I think that's a good deal on both sides.

I'm also going to push for a free weekend on Steam in the first few weeks of release. I want us to have the best chance of a big multiplayer community from the get go. Fingers crossed and all that.

[Kathy]

DaveyDoomsday, on 20 July 2013 - 10:24 PM, said:

GUYS, RELAX.I can always move back in with my mom. In fact, she's kind of looking forward to it. My girlfriend isn't...

So we need to pirate ROTT to make your mom happy? Okay.

Mr.Deviance, on 20 July 2013 - 10:26 PM, said:

Pre-order is not a mechanism that allows you to experience the game without paying for it first.Pre-oders are a great way of buying on hype alone which is something I would never do.

Also - money.

Quote

Remember how many people pre-ordered DNF and got fucked up the ass really bad when they saw what the game actually was.

I would have pre-ordered it anyway. And wasn't demo released pre-release? Or was it only for those who pre-ordered? Pre-ordering the game so you could get a demo... Now that is fucked up.

[Mr.Deviance]

DaveyDoomsday, on 20 July 2013 - 10:31 PM, said:

Personally, I think it would have been awesome for us to have a demo out pre-release or better yet a closed beta would have been amazing so we could have gotten serious community feedback on features - but again it's one of those things that we just never had the time/money to do.

A NEW shareware episode post-release gives people who didn't buy into the hype pre-release something to try for free that will hopefully entice them to buy the full product AND it gives the early adopters who pre-ordered the game or bought it on day one new content for FREE. I think that's a good deal on both sides.

I'm also going to push for a free weekend on Steam in the first few weeks of release. I want us to have the best chance of a big multiplayer community from the get go. Fingers crossed and all that.

I will buy the game just to make sure you won't get to sleep with your mother.
So if you end up sleeping on your mother's couch, you should know it's not because I didn't buy the game.

Kathy, on 20 July 2013 - 10:34 PM, said:

So we need to pirate ROTT to make your mom happy? Okay.


Also - money.


I would have pre-ordered it anyway. And wasn't demo released pre-release? Or was it only for those who pre-ordered? Pre-ordering the game so you could get a demo... Now that is fucked up.

Yes you are right it is fucked up and it's exactly what happened if I recall correctly.
You had to preorder the game and receive a key which you would enter on a shitty site that spat out a steam key that activated the demo.

[DaveyDoomsday]

MORE IMPORTANTLY. THIS HAPPENED YESTERDAY:

[Kathy]

Mr.Deviance, on 20 July 2013 - 10:35 PM, said:

I will buy the game just to make sure you won't get to sleep with your mother.

What a great PR slogan.


Aww, you've edited it.

[Mr.Deviance]

Kathy, on 20 July 2013 - 10:38 PM, said:

What a great PR slogan.


Aww, you've edited it.

I fixed it now that you quoted me, I might as well keep it.
I was just trying to be less hard on the guy since I did kind of trashed him too much today, though I take nothing of what I said back.
Maybe in the end he will sell the game and not lose his house but allow me to have my doubts.

[OpenMaw]

Kathy, on 20 July 2013 - 10:21 PM, said:

Because right now we have a concept of pre-ordering. Pre-order shit so you could get it 10% off with other shit you wouldn't buy other way.

Incentive to pre-order is not the same thing as having a demo or shareware. It's nothing at all like it, and unfortunately Mr. Deviance is right on the money with many of his points.

DaveyDoomsday, on 20 July 2013 - 10:35 PM, said:

MORE IMPORTANTLY. THIS HAPPENED YESTERDAY:

So that's where the save-game budget went.

[Kathy]

Commando Nukem, on 20 July 2013 - 10:57 PM, said:

Incentive to pre-order is not the same thing as having a demo or shareware.

I wasn't implying it was. One replaced the other. Now you have 10% off and free stuff as incentives. It would be disadvantageous to release a demo with good hype-based pre-orders.

[DaveyDoomsday]

I think we'll do fine. The game is fast, it's fun, it's crazy faithful to the original, there's a ton of content in it, it's moddable, we're putting out new content for free, we put it on Steam for the Steam heads and GOG for the old-school crowd, and it's $15.

The thing about ROTT is that since we have such a small budget, we don't need it to sell a gajillion copies for it to be successful for us. We're not making a game for millions of people or even hundreds of thousands of people. We're literally making a game for 10's of thousands of people. And as long as they like it, we'll be ok.

I'M NOT FREAKING OUT OR ANYTHING.

I'm kinda freaking out.

[leilei]

Saving is probably not all that possible without ripping the engine itself apart real deep, which is something only brave souls at Epic could do. Saving stuff like instances of physics, the middleware data and the like... would probably be a huge undertaking


I can't even name a single UnrealEngine3 game that did have manual saving.

[DavoX]

And let's not forget that UDK itself started on the Multiplayer only UT3. Which of course didn't have any saves at all. So you really have to start from scratch to code that thing.

[Kathy]

leilei, on 21 July 2013 - 03:56 AM, said:

I can't even name a single UnrealEngine3 game that did have manual saving.

Mass Effect

[Radar]

I remember back when the first version of Blood had saving problems. If you saved a game before a wall could explode properly, that wall would explode no more. It would basically destroy everything you had achieved so far in the episode.

[Player Lin]

Well, if the UE3 engine is problematic for manual saving, just fair enough...but it may led me just cheat the game forever after I found those checkpoints still sucks ass...whatever you guys keeping say they're not.

[MusicallyInspired]

You say this is crazy faithful to the original. Is this a straight remake? A reimagining of the same story? I was never clear on that.

[Frederik Schreiber]

It's basically a reboot.
We kept the soul of ROTT.
What we believe made ROTT great. That meant the Weapons, Style of gameplay, the explorative level design, the crazy gore, the difficulty and the arcade feeling.
We believe we got a great mix of our own ideas, and the ideas from the original ROTT, so we are quite proud of it

[ReaperMan]

DaveyDoomsday, on 20 July 2013 - 03:43 PM, said:

Hey wait a minute...... ROTT could never run on a TRS-80.

[Mr.Deviance]

Frederik Schreiber, on 21 July 2013 - 11:37 AM, said:

It's basically a reboot.
We kept the soul of ROTT.
What we believe made ROTT great. That meant the Weapons, Style of gameplay, the explorative level design, the crazy gore, the difficulty and the arcade feeling.
We believe we got a great mix of our own ideas, and the ideas from the original ROTT, so we are quite proud of it

Just out of curiosity. Have the original devs of the original game ever been contacted by your team so you can exchange details about the art direction and what they initially wanted to make with the game?
Or did you just start remaking the game based on your vision and you didn't give a shit about the actual vision of the original devs?

[Kathy]

I thought Siegler was(is?) somehow involved.

edit: http://interceptor-e...io/joe-siegler/

[Mr. Tibbs]

I found a ROTT review and D.W. ad in an old CGW.
Stopped working again. I'll find and different host and get them back up.

[DaveyDoomsday]

Kathy, on 22 July 2013 - 01:33 PM, said:

I thought Siegler was(is?) somehow involved.

edit: http://interceptor-e...io/joe-siegler/

Yep, love him or hate him - Joe acts as our ROTT bible (he knows way too much about everything, even moreso than Tom he says) and was also the model for Sebastian Krist again. Lee Jackson has been working with Andrew on the music (we talked about this in our latest dev diary and podcast) and we've had several interactions with Tom Hall but he's off doing his own thing.

We've poured over all the original design documents and constantly consulted with everyone involved back then who's still available to be involved and have always had their ear when working on our game.

Last but not least, this is the first thing you see in the credits of the game. We thought it was a very fitting tribute to one of the DIPS!

[Mr.Deviance]

Kathy, on 22 July 2013 - 01:33 PM, said:

I thought Siegler was(is?) somehow involved.

edit: http://interceptor-e...io/joe-siegler/

What has Joe Siegler actually contributed importantly to the old game?
As far as I was aware, Joe Siegler has not been involved into the art direction or coding of any game ever besides duke's voice in the platformer days.
But if Joe Siegler was a very important member in the development of the old game then that is news to me and I am happy to hear that he wasn't just the coke machine refill guy that I've been hearing he was across the years.
The reason why I asked that question above is because I was wondering if the guys that claim

Quote

We kept the soul of ROTT.

actually even know what the soul is or maybe the soul of the game is just their subjective vision of what the game should look and feel like?
Has Joe Siegler came up with any artistic directions for the old game or is this remake based on Joe Siegler's subjective vision of what the old game is supposed to be?
Just how if you ask 1000 different people about the soul of a classic movie or videogame, everybody will have a slightly different view on what it was supposed to be about...
Thinking that you get it just by liking the original doesn't automatically mean that you've captured the true soul of an art piece, just saying...

Look at the movies Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation made by different directors and you will realize that even though Terminator 1 and 2 were very easy to get by anybody, sadly only James Cameron can actually make a sequel that maintains the soul of the series.
Just like doom 3 was completely different in the way it felt because John Romero and the other guys that were actively involved in the art direction for Doom 1 and Doom 2 were not around to do it again for doom3.
Most of the people just think they get a franchise and what's it about but when you draw the line in the end everybody's views of what a movie/game is about first gets filtered through their own personality and twisted by their independent desires, frustrations,life long dreams and by similar stories they've experienced in the past that confuse their idea of what the original creators had in mind for their art piece.
So not asking or having the original lead artists helping in one way or the other when it comes to a remake, is huge mistake in my opinion.

[Micky C]

Joe was one of the level designers for ROTT IIRC.

[Mark]

Mr Deviance. On the off chance you actually end up liking the game, do you have a list of the next things you are going to bitch about or do you play it by ear. Jeez.

[TerminX]

Joe designed a few of the levels in ROTT and played as one of the bosses too.

[Mr.Deviance]

Mark., on 22 July 2013 - 07:36 PM, said:

Mr Deviance. On the off chance you actually end up liking the game, do you have a list of the next things you are going to bitch about or do you play it by ear. Jeez.

I asked a valid question. Is this game based on what Interceptor and Joe Siegler think the original game is supposed to be about or is it based on what the original devs thought it was supposed to be about.
I already got an answer that Joe Sigler was a level designer for ROTT which makes me happy to hear that he is working on this project then.

[Jimmy]

Joe has always been very essential to 3D Realms. Who else would stock the Coke machines?

[Mr.Deviance]

Jimmy, on 22 July 2013 - 07:43 PM, said:

Joe has always been very essential to 3D Realms. Who else would stock the Coke machines?

About that joke with Coke machines and Joe is what I just said 2 posts behind.
I keep hearing that everywhere I see a debate about Joe Siegler.
But see, apparently he was involved with Shadow Warrior.
So which is it?
Or maybe he was restocking the Coke machines while also being involved with art design or mapping or what ever it that he did?

[Jimmy]

Oh shit, you're right. You did say that. I usually skim your posts because they are tl;dr, but I love the ensuing butthurt.

And yes, Joe has been getting shit for years for only working at 3DR because of nepotism. It was hilarious then, and is still to this day.

[DaveyDoomsday]

Mr.Deviance, on 22 July 2013 - 07:40 PM, said:

I asked a valid question. Is this game based on what Interceptor and Joe Siegler think the original game is supposed to be about or is it based on what the original devs thought it was supposed to be about.
I already got an answer that Joe Sigler was a level designer for ROTT which makes me happy to hear that he is working on this project then.

Joe also did the majority of the levels in Extreme ROTT. Other than Tom Hall, he is the authority on anything and everything ROTT '95. He knows things about the game nobody else does, and often bores us to death with said things. In fact, he told us a story about the textures used in The Vomitorium just today in our Facebook group:



As for the basis of the game. It's all pretty much exactly the same as the original. Same characters, same story, same weapons, and the majority of the levels are based directly on their original counterparts. I believe that's what Fred means when he says we kept the 'soul' of ROTT. Basically, anything that you would idenfity with Rise of the Triad 1995, is in Rise of the Triad 2013. I was watching some Broll of ROTT '95 we sent to GOG earlier and as I was I was seriously thinking to yself, "Jesus Christ we really did remake this thing, huh" I mean, for better or worse, we've remade Rise of the Triad. For the initial release we wanted to keep it as close to the original as possible.

BUT THEN when we start releasing addon content for free we can start deviating from the source material. Like adding a shotgun. GOOD LORD ROTT NEEDS A SHOTGUN. And I've probably already told you way too much and can expect an angry Skype message from Fred any minute now...