Aside from the “the game basically can’t be played by the AI, so we’re scaling back our AI plans” post 4 months ago, I’m not aware of much being said anywhere, esp. since it looks like the official forums got wiped at some point.
I’ve seen him described as something as low as “community manager” and as high as “business partner.” The wording of today’s update makes it seem like the latter is absolutely possible, at least :-/
He was a business partner. Fenicks is the guy that has been desperately trying for a year to get the damn dev to talk to him properly, get access to the code, get info on releases/progress. Basically get any info at all from the dev who has withdrawn from basically any engagement - though he claims he is still working on the project
The forums are still alive but barely active.
I’ll put this behind spoilers as to not have it scraped:
[details=Summary]
Joe, aka Fenicks @ Nov 7 2016
Hi,
I am not posting in the other thread because it’s generally a nice place with a bunch of good people chatting away - so I didn’t want to ruin that vibe.
I have a few minor updates.
1 - I got someone to look at the code (not a game dev but someone that at least knows what they are looking at) and Josh still working and making regular updates. Due to the nature of the code being split up among his local machine and the cloud it’s hard to tell if its the equivalent of “food being pushed around the plate” or actual, impactful work - but he is definitely doing 'things’
2 - Despite my many attempts to get in touch it’s extremely clear to me that Josh has no interest in having me be a part of this project.
3 - I left the KDG bank account with about 10 - 12 months worth of ongoing “expenses” but I am officially done supporting this program as I have no insight, communication, or transparency to what Josh is doing.
I don’t really know where to go from here so I am stepping away for now - if Josh officially quits I will take over and try to find appropriate resources to get this project moving again - but due to some difficulties in my personal life and some questions rising in my -actual- work space I can no longer afford to fund this project blindly.[/details]
The differences in ‘how the project should be handled’ I expect come down to Joe wanting to get the community some progress transparency vs the dev wanting to hide away in seclusion after copping some flak from the community for repeatedly missing deadlines.
Before I dig into the details let me assure you that you will have your hands on That Which Sleeps in the next few months. Now that I’ve completely gutted the prior ambitious simulation we’re left with a much more tried and true solution to robust AI needs - meaning that at worst case we’re looking at the AI making some dumb decisions as opposed to the entire simulation collapsing. The silver lining is that in the time that has passed I’ve spent a lot of time refining some of the other components as well as continuing to cram the game full of content.
…
Alright, that’s all for now. It’s been a rocky ride but it’s coming to an end soon - I’ve worked myself to the bone making this as great a game as it can be so I hope you all find that the anxiety we’ve all experienced has been worth it.
I have only a vague idea what is going on in any of these, but it still looks amazeballs!
I mean a good chunk of the opening was, more or less “So the insane AI system we’ve been toiling away on for years and talking up most of that same time actually doesn’t work because it is, in fact, insane. We’re recoding in a normal AI now that sometimes does dumb shit. Sorry :-D”
Which is fine, btw. But the project’s undergone a pretty significant rescope. Which is probably even for the better. Simulating an entire world in the way they were talking about for awhile there was just. . . nutballs.
But if they can manage to scrape all the awesome art assets and procedural stuff they’ve always had together with a halfway entertaining AI to string it all together, I’m still 100% in!
Unfortunately, this developer has been telling flat out lies for years. We were told of the delightful emergent gameplay experienced by the alpha play testers. Who did not exist. We were told in 2014 they had a working game - which did not in fact exist.
One of the two partners has left, and I address his comments in my article -
The big difference, apart from looking much more “amateur indie” and like a smalle scale/less ambitious game, it’s that it’s playable already, he has a demo
I have, and despite a manual, (written) tutorial, and starters guide, I was totally baffled by what I should be doing and why. From the description it sounds like it could be a decent game, but they definitely need someone not so close to the game to go through everything and make it more approachable.
That said, once my show is over next week and I’m not quite so busy/stressed I may take another crack at it.