Slitherine

Dan its Thursday, any update?

Any news of the release of the new digital FOG?

If i am reading things correctly Dan's most recent estimate (made on the 9th) indicated yesterday would be the day. Perhaps, there have been additional unforseen issues? I am really looking forward to FOG(u).

Insert ungrateful, pressurizing comment laden with expectations and a touch of mob-frenzy here

I'm sharpening the scythe and warming up the pitch

Getting a little nervous it was just a ruse too?:p

I heard 'FOG U' lol

I was an enthusiastic user of the original FoG from the start until about two years ago, when the 'crapshoot' aspect got too much for me. I'm therefore delighted with all the efforts Dan has made to transform the game into a more skill based version.

I remember at the start of this process it was suggested that owners of the original game could change over to the new one for free. This might have been appropriate if there had been a simple port that took a few months. It seems to me that in the light of the hundreds of hours that Dan has put into this, what we now have is a totally new game. When Battlefront relaunched the Combat Mission series, they didn't offer it for nothing to existing users. It was a vastly improved product that needed to be paid for. I also think that Dan should be properly rewarded for his efforts

If we are to expect FoG in its new incarnation to be properly supported by Dan and Slitherine, with all the new army packs we have wanted for so long, I think it should be paid for, even if there is some sort of discount for existing users. I would be interested to know what others think.

Apologies if this has been dealt with elsewhere.

I think the plan is to provide the game upgrade for free but to charge for the new Army packs. So Slitherine will get revenue from the latter. I suspect int he long term, at least, they will drop multi-player support for the FoG(RB) version of FoG just like their server has only supported the most recent version in the past. So not making the basic game upgrade free would leave players with a game they could no longer play multi-player.

Chris

Can someone please highlight for us, the newer generation, how a FoG (U) update works, if it works at all... are all players going to participate or is it more of a beta?

Asterix_von_TWC wrote:Can someone please highlight for us, the newer generation, how a FoG (U) update works, if it works at all... are all players going to participate or is it more of a beta?

So many things have changed that its probably best to just read Cothyso's descriptions in this thread to get an idea.
If theres more room for scenario design and double size units, then I will be a happy clam.

i've said it before, they made a big mistake by not charging for the new version; people would have been happy to pay $ 20. The result was lack of resource and maybe even indifference from the bean counters, which produced this ridiculous two year delay; a lot of players have left as a result. No small software company can fund the development of a new game in this way, which makes me think the guy may not be working on it full time, having another main gig to pay the bills.

fogman wrote:i've said it before, they made a big mistake by not charging for the new version; people would have been happy to pay $ 20. The result was lack of resource and maybe even indifference from the bean counters, which produced this ridiculous two year delay; a lot of players have left as a result. No small software company can fund the development of a new game in this way, which makes me think the guy may not be working on it full time, having another main gig to pay the bills.

The flip size is why would people want to repurchase the same game with only new code for "possible" improvements down the road, as well as , what 7 expansions? Plus new ones. Not everyone wants that kind of monetary commitment. I think people whom have left fog likely left as : A its a five year old game and all goods thing come to end, and B some just in the end didn't like the mechanics (which fundamentally will not have changed)
Since we havnt heard form Dan in a week, likley he is in his cave doing last minute touch ups.

They could just have packaged the new code with a new book like the long awaited wolves of the sea; a bit shifty but so what, they're in the business of making money and they have a very good product with little competition, and i feel that i have underpaid for the amount of entertainment i have gotten out of the game, by a long shot. The point is with the necessary resources, this could have come out two years ago. Once it was clear that the original release date (early 2013!) was not going to pass, they should have reversed course instead allowing the game to decay for so long, which is the real shame. There is just nothing comparable out there (the stuff from HPS don't cut it) for ancients and medievals despite the fact that the game has many flagrant flaws, which is why i no longer play DAG games but only heavily designed scenarios where I can get the right historical accuracy in terms of flow, something that, in passing, Pike & Shot does not allow me to do. To be able to recreate the battles as I have read them growing up has me still playing almost everyday. I have talked to players on Pike &Shot who said they would have another look but many left because of two things that are easily fixed: crazy combat results (although they don't seem to mind, yet, that the cohesion test in P&S only uses two dices and have produced in my limited experience wild swings in the games) , and the ability of players to crash the game in competitions; the age of the game is inconsequential, the game not depending on flashy technological advances as most wargamers don't care about graphics.

Two things:

* Moddable map graphics. Please! (Even more so than moddable unit graphics.)

* I would be willing to pay for a new, spiffed-up FOG game engine. I don't know, however, that I would be willing to spend another ~$100 to replace the unit/scenario packs I've already purchased. Unless the new FOG is smashingly good, it's not worth investing another $100+ of my money in it.

Fogman: what do you mean by players crashing the game in competitions?

I agree with a lot of what Fogman has said as to why people leave the game. There have been quite a few players who played for a long time but seem to have left in last year thinking the new version would never come. I would've been happy with existing game engine and just adding new expansions and little upgrades.

However, I'm happy they chose to make a major upgrade. I think making it free was the only possible way to reconcile the gap between players who only buy a few expansions and those who buy all of them (casual vs devoted). I feel I've definitely underpaid for my gaming experience even after buying all expansions and fully recognize that because the upgrade is free, the expansions' price will have to make up for it. I just hope they make all the expansions!

it used to be a big issue when i played in loeg where you get the hyper competitive types, who gravitate towards those big tournaments for fame and glory and even money nowadays, who were paranoid about it; in essence if during your turn you don't like the results you can crash your computer (by turning it off) and you get to replay your turn from the beginning on reboot. some people take winning a computer game against total strangers very seriously.

Oh right, I remember when there were discussions of that. My laptop actually crashed one time one of the first few months I as playing and I got an e-mail from Slitherine.

Going back a couple of years there was talk that the FOG Unity version would basically replicate what we already had and then that the game would move on to version 2.0 after that (and we would have to buy version 2 if we wanted it). But from what Dan is saying more recently it seems that there will be quite a few new features in the Unity release and so, to a certain extent anyway, he has produced a new version himself! I would certainly happily pay again for a new base game if I could then add my existing expansion packs to it, but we have always been told by Slitherine that the Unity version will be free for existing players. I am fairly certain that we will not be asked to pay for our existing expansion packs again, just any new ones that we want to add to our game.

Presumably we will all have to do a fresh install when the Unity version is released, will we? I am not very well up on computer things but I don't suppose that you can patch something like this as it is using two different coding systems. It is also not clear to me what will happen to games that are in progress at the moment you install the new version. Will players still be able to continue them? This is important for those of us running competitions. Will Slitherine continue to support the old version in multi-player indefinitely, or only for a limited period, (or maybe not at all)?

Jonathan4290 wrote:However, I'm happy they chose to make a major upgrade. I think making it free was the only possible way to reconcile the gap between players who only buy a few expansions and those who buy all of them (casual vs devoted). I feel I've definitely underpaid for my gaming experience even after buying all expansions and fully recognize that because the upgrade is free, the expansions' price will have to make up for it. I just hope they make all the expansions!

As far as I know they have the artwork for "Wolves From the Sea" and "Oath of Fealty" (which they have indicated will be released in two parts) but not for any of the other army books. So there is a problem about the graphics here. Obviously they cannot do the remaining books with a different type of graphic because those armies would not be compatible with the existing depiction of units (in ahistorical match-ups and some historical match-ups too). So really they need to find a suitable way to do all the graphics again so the other books can be released. Whether this is viable for Slitherine I couldn't really say.

Let's not forget a new engine can be reboxed and sold on steam (for example) and generate sales.... but you need to keep the multiplayer community for a game like this... charge us for the expansions, make the Renaissance and Napoleonic expansions properly prices.... and "farm" the game for more money... game prices are skyrocketing but it also means we all want to spend less.