Dias posted:

That could be another incredibly convoluted, resource wasting joke: it does what it says on the tin...then you're stuck there forever and it's a soft lock.

FrankieSmileShow posted:

I mean it must have at least been temporary and have limited uses or something?
Its the first time I hear about the cube. I remember a few of the zaubers though.
Some of them had really neat visual effects using shaders. I think GZ had programmed most of those?

My favorite was the ultimate Zauber, because it was called HELL gently caress
dont even remember what it did, cover the screen with fire probably

Rotten Red Rod posted:

what

Bisse posted:

Your stats went reset to normal when visiting a save point. So not a permanent effect, should have been more clear there sorry. Think of it as Zauber casting draining your energy until you can rest.

Rotten Red Rod posted:

Ah yes. "I'm not an artist, a coder, or a musician, so I must be good at game design!" A common fallacy.

Yinlock posted:

the "ideas man" fallacy

cboy posted:

Hey guys, this is Chef Boyardee, one of the writers and musicians for the game,

Rotten Red Rod posted:

So it's effectively a mana system that punishes you for actually using spells. There's a lot of other interesting mechanics here that could work well in a completed game, for sure, but that one in particular... Yikes.

Liquid Dinosaur posted:

Oh yeah I forgot to say how it occurred to me that in your postmortems ya'll aren't even bothering to obfuscate that X114JAM9 is Hoopz anymore.

Groovelord Neato posted:

magic is for lamewads so i'd be glad it's punishing.

Patware posted:

barkley 1: a joke the devs lovingly told us, the players
barkley 2: a joke the game cruelly told the devs themselves

truly the ultimate evolution

WarpDogs posted:

I don't really have a problem with the invincible cube. There are plenty of games with "immobile but invincible" type of skills and it's not like Barkley 2 should have been a balanced game. Of course I understand your point goes beyond mechanics

The more we hear about behind the scenes the more I think the issue was a fundamental lack of understanding of Barkley 1. Yeah that game had a lot of goofy and weird poo poo that poked fun at video game tropes, but the actual core of the game was made up of extremely simple pieces that were familiar to anyone that played a JRPG

GNU Order posted:

What if all of us in here all worked together to finish Barkley 2?

I’ll make the wiki

FrankieSmileShow posted:

Another was an early prototype of Non-Human, a really fun shooter I made for a tigsource game jam around remaking various games from Action52. I was working on that game pretty hard, but "temporarily" put it on hold when Barkley2 went in full swing, thinking Id be back at it as soon as Barkley2 is done... welp

NickPancakes posted:

Laz and GZ also have their Phucker series. https://gzstorm.itch.io/phucker-in-the-woods-0

lordosis_gamer posted:

Hi everyone, this is bort. You may know me as bhroom’s brother, but down in the dank ToG Basement I had another nickname: “The Comedy Cicada” because I’m extremely funny, but only once every 17 years. I am due up in 2040.

WARNING!!! NO JOKES TO FOLLOW!!!

This has been a strange thread to follow, it's been veering between extremely heartwarming and kind of bitter and vindictive from places I hoped it wouldn’t.

A lot of people have been explaining the game’s downfall and so I will just skip to my part: I am a slow and unexceptional writer, a quintessential idea man, and got involved in the project almost despite fear and insecurity, and once I was fully invested and my ego was at stake I only had my more or less-good ideas to insist upon in order to save face. That’s me. The complimentary take is “the Mark Frost of Tales of Game’s” which is both not a compliment and sadly, aspirational.

As has been stated, I have been largely off this game for awhile due to life stuff. Weirdly, after reading this thread, jumping ship somehow only reduces your culpability! See someone’s post about being “caught holding the bag” a few pages back, which I think is mostly true. I am somehow spotless in this, which is demented, because my absolutely mediocre work and interpersonal skills are instrumental in this game’s failure, but most of all I STOPPED WORKING just like everyone else has on this project with the exception of laz until very recently, bhroom, and of course Frankie.

For everyone else, involvement has been sporadic, mostly fair-weather, or terminated early, and that has been the case for about a dozen of us since the beginning of the project. I really enjoyed reading this thread last night, but seeing that really vibe-killing last post by GZ got me writing a good bit of this post, which I was then was gonna just file away in the end. Then I saw this gelatinous cube stuff which is opportunistic and meanspirited now, and what the hell, why not make my stupid contribution:

----

Re: the stupid cube, it’s some real forest for trees stuff. Here we have a prototypical version of something (a zauber) that utilizes a host of representative functions (altering PC’s stats and collisions, casting animations, global speed changes during spell chargeup, object spawning that interacted with bullets, etc.) and instead of it being taken as an instrumental task to complete (for money), it’s an opportunity to engage in endless arguments with the game’s supposed designers about what “good design” (blech) is, what it should be instead, on and on and on.

“there was no design lead,” “there’s too many cooks in the kitchen,” “bhroom talks too much and he doesn’t listen to other opinions.” You start to wonder why.

I would rather not get into this entire subject, so I’ll suggest we cool it with the anecdotes. There are a thousand unfinished things in the game, from people who were getting paid and people who were not. This thread is enjoyable and I think for everyone’s sake, it should not be hashed out. There’s postmortems and then there’s finger pointing. I already told you what my problems were, let’s not hear anybody else’s, thanks!

----

Expected Bhroom defense:

Well, not really. I have criticisms of everyone’s contribution to this game (well, not Frankie ofc) and my brother has infuriated me, over and over. He says as much in tweets and kickstarter updates, I’ll echo it, ok cool.
I spoke with bhroom and GZ at length in January of this year, as something of a mediator between him and my brother. My synopsis:

• GZ, as someone who has been half in and half out on this project since the beginning, was willing to go all in. [cool]
• Bhroom agrees this is good, GZ is the best chance of finishing the game. [agree here too]
• GZ thought that there was no more need for conversation or additional design. [pretty much]
• Bhroom agrees, and says there is no need for conversation or additional design or re-design or changes or reinventing the wheel because these same topics have been talked and documented to death and it just requires someone to have commitment in some direction, and he would like to have input before nearly-functioning parts of the game are scrapped for new ones, which would jeopardize the “GZ is the best chance of finishing the game” part. [ymmv]
• GZ says he’s an idiot and a clown and a liar and a … etc. … and he cannot bear to have a conversation with him again, he essentially needs to gently caress off and die in order for GZ to begin work [dude]

There was a lot of stuff involving contracts and promised points and money and I tried my hardest to get GZ to dial down from total vitriol and for my brother to be as compromising as he could be. Both of these were absolutely necessary for the salvaging of the project, aaaaannnnnnnnd that is why we are here today. They can dispute the accuracy of the above, but that was the gist as I understood it. From my mouth, that is my fair assessment of their relative positions and grievances.

I thought cooler heads would prevail. I floated the truly sane idea of consulting everyone on the project again, finding my long lost Boyardee, who knows… maybe there could be a ToG Renaissance???

That was January 2, and now on June 3, it’s a trip to see literally the exact same words, verbatim and undiluted, coming from GZ as if 6 months haven’t passed, like he blinked and here he is today just as angry. And I understand the motivation if it’s so the backers can hear the truth, etc. Like everyone else, my conscience was too guilty and there were too many other people involved for me to “spill the beans” about the state of the project, as obvious as it may have been already. I suck, ok! Props to GZ at least putting us out of our misery, I thought.

After the initial lament, this thread actually got pretty fun, people enjoyed the dumb stories, ancient ghosts of forums past chimed in, great! Last night, I found out after a 3 year estrangement that my literally oldest friend in the world doesn’t hate me (hi cboy). Then I check this thread again and we’re back to revengeance or whatever.

What’s crazy I distinctly recall GZ pulling cboy and I aside a couple years back and in an absolutely wrenching conversation ensuring us that his and my lack of focused output was the thing keeping this game from coming out, this massive writing hole. That it was a miracle, “just incredible bhroom has kept things together this long, any other project would be dead.” This was like year 3 when we were already deep in trouble. I didn’t think that was the correct take then. GZ certainly doesn’t think that now, because bhroom is actually a svengali who manipulated him for 7 years, ok sure, but he was positive at the time. Before that, the problem was the programming, and the dozen broken, unfinished systems, or the low hanging fruit, the absurd scope, limited money, and dubiously (maybe strangely) talented team. GZ has had severe complaints about most every aspect of this game and who has worked on this game, about how the code is madness, or someone’s workflow is madness, and I have heard every one of them. (We are friends, of course I have heard it).

I guess he has been deprogrammed from the bhroom cult and is viewing the last 7 years he partially attended (GZ refused offers to join the B2 team until well over a year into the project, and presence was intermittent (a month or two on, several more off) but regular since) but the current interpretation is insultingly simplistic, even from his perspective.

Nobody in their postmortems is mentioning 15 minute compile times we were plagued with for half of production, or busted z-height or delta time or lack of a finished boss or any single one of the systems not being ever finished by a revolving door of people who were at least paid more than zero dollars to finish them. I outlined my failures above. How can a single person be responsible when I know for a fact that I am instrumental in the game’s failure???? (Don’t take that from me, please)

GZ, I understand you are upset and understandably so. I think your current perception is inaccurate. If you seriously want to the game to thrive, please just go ahead and start working. “I quit; the game is dead; I’m the game’s only hope; I need to tell everyone how someone else ruined the game” is a strange position for the game. You have the repo. Start working. Don’t talk to bhroom. Steal it for all I care. You will never hear me say he did a great job managing this game. But please loving chill out, unhook yourself from this same ugly conversation and distorted thinking about “secret back channels” and manipulation you’ve been having since January, and let the subject die, thanks.

I’m sure you’ll say “I don’t have anything against you…” but by insisting on undermining the public’s miraculously fond memories of this catastrophe, yes, you are against me. I love your work on this game, I love you like I do all ToGsters, and despite your insistence there’s still some slim possibility we are all pals again, so please stop posting in this thread. (Here is where I get to use that “you were at my wedding GZ” non-meme that actually just makes you feel like dogshit)

----

It takes me loving hours to write things like this because I gave up the ways of the poster. I’m not gonna refresh, but the last thing was about Zaubers Draining Stats which is of course was the great Vance X Kawazu 2012 Collab other people slept on

If this topic is still Good Vibes Only in a few pages I’ll post one hundred of my notebook scans of notes and graphs and things that were never meant to be, really blow ya drat minds aka look like a tremendous amateur idiot, it will be fun

lordosis_gamer posted:

Hi everyone, this is bort. You may know me as bhroom’s brother, but down in the dank ToG Basement I had another nickname: “The Comedy Cicada” because I’m extremely funny, but only once every 17 years. I am due up in 2040.

WARNING!!! NO JOKES TO FOLLOW!!!

This has been a strange thread to follow, it's been veering between extremely heartwarming and kind of bitter and vindictive from places I hoped it wouldn’t.

A lot of people have been explaining the game’s downfall and so I will just skip to my part: I am a slow and unexceptional writer, a quintessential idea man, and got involved in the project almost despite fear and insecurity, and once I was fully invested and my ego was at stake I only had my more or less-good ideas to insist upon in order to save face. That’s me. The complimentary take is “the Mark Frost of Tales of Game’s” which is both not a compliment and sadly, aspirational.

As has been stated, I have been largely off this game for awhile due to life stuff. Weirdly, after reading this thread, jumping ship somehow only reduces your culpability! See someone’s post about being “caught holding the bag” a few pages back, which I think is mostly true. I am somehow spotless in this, which is demented, because my absolutely mediocre work and interpersonal skills are instrumental in this game’s failure, but most of all I STOPPED WORKING just like everyone else has on this project with the exception of laz until very recently, bhroom, and of course Frankie.

For everyone else, involvement has been sporadic, mostly fair-weather, or terminated early, and that has been the case for about a dozen of us since the beginning of the project. I really enjoyed reading this thread last night, but seeing that really vibe-killing last post by GZ got me writing a good bit of this post, which I was then was gonna just file away in the end. Then I saw this gelatinous cube stuff which is opportunistic and meanspirited now, and what the hell, why not make my stupid contribution:

----

Re: the stupid cube, it’s some real forest for trees stuff. Here we have a prototypical version of something (a zauber) that utilizes a host of representative functions (altering PC’s stats and collisions, casting animations, global speed changes during spell chargeup, object spawning that interacted with bullets, etc.) and instead of it being taken as an instrumental task to complete (for money), it’s an opportunity to engage in endless arguments with the game’s supposed designers about what “good design” (blech) is, what it should be instead, on and on and on.

“there was no design lead,” “there’s too many cooks in the kitchen,” “bhroom talks too much and he doesn’t listen to other opinions.” You start to wonder why.

I would rather not get into this entire subject, so I’ll suggest we cool it with the anecdotes. There are a thousand unfinished things in the game, from people who were getting paid and people who were not. This thread is enjoyable and I think for everyone’s sake, it should not be hashed out. There’s postmortems and then there’s finger pointing. I already told you what my problems were, let’s not hear anybody else’s, thanks!

----

Expected Bhroom defense:

Well, not really. I have criticisms of everyone’s contribution to this game (well, not Frankie ofc) and my brother has infuriated me, over and over. He says as much in tweets and kickstarter updates, I’ll echo it, ok cool.
I spoke with bhroom and GZ at length in January of this year, as something of a mediator between him and my brother. My synopsis:

• GZ, as someone who has been half in and half out on this project since the beginning, was willing to go all in. [cool]
• Bhroom agrees this is good, GZ is the best chance of finishing the game. [agree here too]
• GZ thought that there was no more need for conversation or additional design. [pretty much]
• Bhroom agrees, and says there is no need for conversation or additional design or re-design or changes or reinventing the wheel because these same topics have been talked and documented to death and it just requires someone to have commitment in some direction, and he would like to have input before nearly-functioning parts of the game are scrapped for new ones, which would jeopardize the “GZ is the best chance of finishing the game” part. [ymmv]
• GZ says he’s an idiot and a clown and a liar and a … etc. … and he cannot bear to have a conversation with him again, he essentially needs to gently caress off and die in order for GZ to begin work [dude]

There was a lot of stuff involving contracts and promised points and money and I tried my hardest to get GZ to dial down from total vitriol and for my brother to be as compromising as he could be. Both of these were absolutely necessary for the salvaging of the project, aaaaannnnnnnnd that is why we are here today. They can dispute the accuracy of the above, but that was the gist as I understood it. From my mouth, that is my fair assessment of their relative positions and grievances.

I thought cooler heads would prevail. I floated the truly sane idea of consulting everyone on the project again, finding my long lost Boyardee, who knows… maybe there could be a ToG Renaissance???

That was January 2, and now on June 3, it’s a trip to see literally the exact same words, verbatim and undiluted, coming from GZ as if 6 months haven’t passed, like he blinked and here he is today just as angry. And I understand the motivation if it’s so the backers can hear the truth, etc. Like everyone else, my conscience was too guilty and there were too many other people involved for me to “spill the beans” about the state of the project, as obvious as it may have been already. I suck, ok! Props to GZ at least putting us out of our misery, I thought.

After the initial lament, this thread actually got pretty fun, people enjoyed the dumb stories, ancient ghosts of forums past chimed in, great! Last night, I found out after a 3 year estrangement that my literally oldest friend in the world doesn’t hate me (hi cboy). Then I check this thread again and we’re back to revengeance or whatever.

What’s crazy I distinctly recall GZ pulling cboy and I aside a couple years back and in an absolutely wrenching conversation ensuring us that his and my lack of focused output was the thing keeping this game from coming out, this massive writing hole. That it was a miracle, “just incredible bhroom has kept things together this long, any other project would be dead.” This was like year 3 when we were already deep in trouble. I didn’t think that was the correct take then. GZ certainly doesn’t think that now, because bhroom is actually a svengali who manipulated him for 7 years, ok sure, but he was positive at the time. Before that, the problem was the programming, and the dozen broken, unfinished systems, or the low hanging fruit, the absurd scope, limited money, and dubiously (maybe strangely) talented team. GZ has had severe complaints about most every aspect of this game and who has worked on this game, about how the code is madness, or someone’s workflow is madness, and I have heard every one of them. (We are friends, of course I have heard it).

I guess he has been deprogrammed from the bhroom cult and is viewing the last 7 years he partially attended (GZ refused offers to join the B2 team until well over a year into the project, and presence was intermittent (a month or two on, several more off) but regular since) but the current interpretation is insultingly simplistic, even from his perspective.

Nobody in their postmortems is mentioning 15 minute compile times we were plagued with for half of production, or busted z-height or delta time or lack of a finished boss or any single one of the systems not being ever finished by a revolving door of people who were at least paid more than zero dollars to finish them. I outlined my failures above. How can a single person be responsible when I know for a fact that I am instrumental in the game’s failure???? (Don’t take that from me, please)

GZ, I understand you are upset and understandably so. I think your current perception is inaccurate. If you seriously want to the game to thrive, please just go ahead and start working. “I quit; the game is dead; I’m the game’s only hope; I need to tell everyone how someone else ruined the game” is a strange position for the game. You have the repo. Start working. Don’t talk to bhroom. Steal it for all I care. You will never hear me say he did a great job managing this game. But please loving chill out, unhook yourself from this same ugly conversation and distorted thinking about “secret back channels” and manipulation you’ve been having since January, and let the subject die, thanks.

I’m sure you’ll say “I don’t have anything against you…” but by insisting on undermining the public’s miraculously fond memories of this catastrophe, yes, you are against me. I love your work on this game, I love you like I do all ToGsters, and despite your insistence there’s still some slim possibility we are all pals again, so please stop posting in this thread. (Here is where I get to use that “you were at my wedding GZ” non-meme that actually just makes you feel like dogshit)

----

It takes me loving hours to write things like this because I gave up the ways of the poster. I’m not gonna refresh, but the last thing was about Zaubers Draining Stats which is of course was the great Vance X Kawazu 2012 Collab other people slept on

If this topic is still Good Vibes Only in a few pages I’ll post one hundred of my notebook scans of notes and graphs and things that were never meant to be, really blow ya drat minds aka look like a tremendous amateur idiot, it will be fun

Ciaphas posted:

well that got weirdly personal all of a sudden

Hat Thoughts posted:

can't rly imagine sinistar saying this honestly

Mad Wack posted:

tl;dr

lordosis_gamer posted:

I would rather not get into this entire subject, so I’ll suggest we cool it with the anecdotes. There are a thousand unfinished things in the game, from people who were getting paid and people who were not. This thread is enjoyable and I think for everyone’s sake, it should not be hashed out. There’s postmortems and then there’s finger pointing. I already told you what my problems were, let’s not hear anybody else’s, thanks!

lordosis_gamer posted:

Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:

lmao you badly mismanaged a game and now you want to badly mismanage its thread

Cuntellectual posted:

I think you're confusing him with his brother.

lordosis_gamer posted:

If this topic is still Good Vibes Only in a few pages I’ll post one hundred of my notebook scans of notes and graphs and things that were never meant to be, really blow ya drat minds aka look like a tremendous amateur idiot, it will be fun

lordosis_gamer posted:

You have the repo. Start working. Don't talk to bhroom. Steal it for all I care.

IShallRiseAgain posted:

The project is dead dude. No way are you going to be able to hire a team of programmers for cheap (or for free) that will be willing to work on a gamemaker project (possibly made with an outdated version) with none of the original developers left.