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[HiFlyer]

Well, I-Novae has been out there at least as long as Outerra, and I've kept a pretty close eye on both projects. Now I-novae has switched focus, and the BATTLESCAPE Kickstarter is about to hit the scene......

https://www.inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

http://www.indiedb.com/games/infinity-battlescape

Honestly, while I-Novae has always been ahead in lighting, particle effects etc, I think Outerra honestly has more to actually offer. Still, watching how this kickstarter turns out might highlight things Outerra needs to look out for when it also reaches this stage.

[Acetone]

As much as I'm interested in their project, I feel like they took some really weird decisions in these kickstarter tiers.

For example, the more you want to be involved, the more you will have to pay. I can understand they don't want to give access to a half-finished product to their base customers, but they have also a beta access tier (so they will have to do continuous bug support for these), costing more (50$ for the beta, 20$ for the final game). As a result, they are basically making the people ready to help testing and improving their project paying more.

It's even worse with the Developer access tier, 250$ to be able to use the dev version is insane. I understand they want to avoid anyone to use unfinished features, but the fact that mods tools are under a (huge) pay wall is a really weird idea. If you want some folks to add content in your game (for free), the first thing you must do is making sure everyone have access to the tools in the full version, because for 100 users there will be a single one ready to put a lot on time in the project and create stuff, even more if it's something in a beta state.
Let's just take a second to think what will be the state of Outerra today if the importer and the editor were under a higher price tier (even 50$). I'm not sure there will be anything outside of base content. The projects are different, so maybe community content is less important for Infinity, but for me, the idea is weird.

It's giving really bad signals to people wanting to invest their time in the project.

Edit:

Performance wise, there are some problematic elements:

[...] The prototype uses unoptimized assets, so it consumes a lot of vram at the moment ( according to my tests, up to 3.5 GB ). A 3 GB video card will be able to run it, but with slowdowns / short random freezes. A 2 GB video card.. will have a lot of trouble to run it at a decent framerate. The final game will be optimized to run better, but we're still far away from that.

According to the latest Steam HW survey, the % of users having more than 2GB VRAM GPUs is around 10%. Even if I have a recent and good GPU, I only have 2048MB of VRAM. Obviously it can change but...

[PytonPago]

Not sure about the BATTLESCAPE ... but that anotations-link from that vid, about d.u.s.t. seems to be werry interesting in handling stuff ...

[bomber]

It's even worse with the Developer access tier, 250$ to be able to use the dev version is insane. ..............................................................
Let's just take a second to think what will be the state of Outerra today if the importer and the editor were under a higher price tier (even 50$). I'm not sure there will be anything outside of base content. The projects are different, so maybe community content is less important for Infinity, but for me, the idea is weird.

It's giving really bad signals to people wanting to invest their time in the project.

The mention of money into the equation will always complicate things... Also you used the words 'invest their time', which in itself is an important 'tell' as to how you value your time and where you see it being spent on a job or a hobby..

I've had a couple of 'money' related incidents in the last month with regards 'my hobby'.... the first was an individual with 3d skills that would be a great asset to the 'early flight years' of flight simming.. I received a luke warm response because not all of the textures were his own and the authors hadn't given permission for their use in a 'commercial' sim...

So they're fine in Flightgear but not in Outerra ?

When did I mention money ?.... I then had to think back and realised I'd handed money over, which makes Outerra a commercial sim...what ! ? !

So all the free stuff that us modders do and give away is not seen as free by others and so the licenses of the artwork doesn't allow it's distribution.

This btw doesn't even go into the fact that in Fligthgear the very modelling and texturing master files are distributed and in Outerra they're not..

Somebodys got the wrong end of the stick here, and I'd suggest that someone in the Outerra crew needs to get 'out their' in the simming community and put that mis-conception right... maybe an article in one of the simming magazines...

The other issue with money that I had was more complicated. When is a hobby not a hobby ?... Well the answer is when you do it for a living, have deadlines, responsibilites and get paid for it. So if someone came along with a hefty wedge you end up asking yourself "what's my hobby gonna be now ?" will being paid to do your hobby turn it from being a love afair into hate ?

Anyway its made me think about how to engage the modding community on the subject.... what's anyone else opinion on it ?

Simon

[Acetone]

The other issue with money that I had was more complicated. When is a hobby not a hobby ?... Well the answer is when you do it for a living, have deadlines, responsibilites and get paid for it.

I have a word for these things, it translates badly, but it's "workun" for work-fun. Basically doing something which is not a job or a life requirement, a hobby you like, but doing it so seriously it may looks like a job. The more time you put in it the more you start thinking "hey, I'm spending a lot of time with this thing, but in the end I enjoy it, and maybe, maybe one day I will have the opportunity to use it.
Every minute you spend doing personal projects and learning is not a waste of time.
I do stuff like this outside of Outerra and some of these projects start to take shape and they may in fact bring some (limited) income.

So if someone came along with a hefty wedge you end up asking yourself "what's my hobby gonna be now ?" will being paid to do your hobby turn it from being a love afair into hate ?

For this very reason I had to refuse a "workun" job proposition, because I had the feeling it may ruin my ability to appreciate what I was doing. I think the best way to generate income for this kind of work is to distribute your content to anyone and let those who wants to help you give you a tip at each new release. Content wise it may be something I will do if Outerra audience go bigger, and if I choose to spend more time working on OT.

In the end I don't think I will ever want to directly charge people for what I do. Of course it really depends of what job you have, what income, and most importantly, what amount of money you need each month to live.

[HiFlyer]

Looking at the Battlescape livestream, I admit to being a bit impressed. Looks like Elite lite.

[HiFlyer]

Not bad......! After all the years I have been watching them, progress has been glacial, and I more then once thought the project was dead. I never knew they had this type of stuff up their sleeves!

[HiFlyer]

Interesting! After little more than 24hrs, Infinity Battlespace is approaching $100,000 Dollars on kickstarter.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/309114309/infinity-battlescape?ref=nav_search

[HiFlyer]

Ok, watching this project, some questions occur. Things I never thought about. For instance, in this game, they are offering incentives for higher contributions: Better ships, stickers, exclusive artwork, custom ships, Beta access, etc.

It brings up the question: what would/could Outerra offer for incentives for larger contributions? What would be an Outerra stretch goal consist of?

[cameni]

Depends on the game. A simulator will probably have to have different incentives than an OT based game. I guess it really depends on the target audience too.
But I don't know what incentives would be motivating for higher tiers in a simulator ...

[Pyroman31FF]

A simulator probably should not have such features at all, because what point is there to simulate a plane/tank/sub/ship/car in high fidelity but offering payloadoptions or engines for extra cash? Rise of Flight or IL2 Stalingrad try to run such features and it works for them but its far from beeing what it should be.
So apart from early acess you cant really offer anything to high tier bakers. (maybe some missions/campaigns or dev board access like they did with fighter ops and their Area52 - which seems to be dead by now...)

[HeadClot]

So -

For those of you who are on the edge of backing Infinity Battlescape.
They do plan on licensing the engine out to other developers. I am not sure if it will be during the development of Battlescape or after it is done.

But hopefully that gives you some Idea what they plan to do with their engine.

That said - The game itself is still in its prototype phase but shows allot of promise. They have some very talented people who have worked on Flight simulator, Gear or War 1 & 2 among other games.

I am really looking forward to it

[HiFlyer]

Closing on $160,000 with less than 3000 backers. Just think about if even a fraction of flight simmers (like some of the more than 100,000 on Avsim) could be encouraged to provide similar contributions, where an Outerra kickstarter might go......

[HiFlyer]

$211,000 Dollars with 14 days to go. I actually think they're going to reach their goal!

To me, this bodes well if Outerra ever goes the same route. 😀

[HeadClot]

$211,000 Dollars with 14 days to go. I actually think they're going to reach their goal!

To me, this bodes well if Outerra ever goes the same route. 😀

They were mentioned by Chris Roberts of Star Citizen and Wing commander fame on the RSI site.