Game News Double Fine to halt development of Spacebase DF-9, cutting features

[Zed]

Tags: Double Fine; Spacebase DF-9

The development page of Spacebase DF-9 has been updated with the following text, indicating a halt in development once the game hits version 1.0.

Future development plans

Spacebase’s 1.0 release will be its final major update. In addition to lots of bugfixing work, it will add the following features:

Tutorial Mode: Start with a basic pre-built base and learn the ropes via a series of tutorial messages.

Goals: Track and work towards various objectives, such as “Reach a population of 50 citizens” and “Research all technologies.”​

Looking at the same webpage through web.archive.org reveals a much longer list of features - many which seem to have disappeared in the 1.0 reveal. One can deduct that they have been cut from the game.

This doesn't necessarily mean that the game will never see any future content updates, as they're giving the community some development tools:

We’re also pleased to announce we’ll be releasing the game’s full Lua source code a short time after 1.0, which will allow the community to create potentially far-ranging mods that add content, new features, and change some fundamental game behaviors. We’ll of course be sticking around a bit for bug fixing and support, but any new content for the game will now be in your hands. We’re eager to see what people do with this game!​

You can read more about the 1.0 update in their Road To 1.0 news post.
Spotted at NeoGAF.

 

[J_C]

This is a little surprising, but since the game looks pretty good even in its current state, I will be happy if they bring out a stable, bugfree 1.0 version.

Also it is funny how they go from alpha to release without doing a beta. Although the game is pretty much in beta quiality in its current state. I don't know why did they call it alpha to begin with.

 

[Sensuki]

The ramifications of DOUBLE FINE ADVENTURE

 

[Metro]

This is a little surprising...

This is not surprising in the slightest. Shit company with poor money management skills.

 

[Haba]

the game looks pretty good even in its current state

The denial is strong in this one.

 

[Ulminati]

Glad I didn't cave in and buy this. I'd be bummed ot receive 1/10th the product I was promised. I guess Clockwork Empires is our only hopw for a decent Dwarf Fortress With Graphics™-like now.

 

[J_C]

the game looks pretty good even in its current state

The denial is strong in this one.

Nothing to deny here. It is looking to be a pretty good base building sim.

 

[Haba]

It is totally worth 20€

I really try to like this game, I really do. But between the horrible AI, UI, and overall game meta, not to mention lackluster developer support over the course of the last year I cannot with good conscience recommend this to anybody. Wait at least until beta to buy this, and only if they significantly alter the meta-game.

Noble effort, very polished for an Alpha, but simply not enough content or player feedback at this time.

It's like feeding space fish right now. You give them food, you clean the filter, and they do stupid sh** like poop on everything and then eat each other. Your pH instruments say everything is perfect and yet they die, doomed to float for all eternity at the top of their little aquarium in the universe.

I bought this game because I support the idea. Long time sci-fi fan, I'd love to build my own Babylon 5 or Deep Space 9.

Much like the premise of this game being in the FAR future, I think the game will reach a playable state in the FAR future as well.

Spacebase DF-9, right now, is a buggy mess of a prototype. It's what I expect a team of developers might show their boss or a publisher and be like "See, with a year or two and a truck full of money, we can turn this into something amazing!"

At the moment avoid this game.

The updates are very very rare, tbh this has all the signs that it will be abandoned, they also ignore the players and put stuff in that we dont want and vise versa, there love for Dwarf Fortress (good game btw) has dragged this game to its lower limits.

It is currently very buggy, pretty much unplayeable, but i dont expect many fixes anytime soon.

Great UI, some good ideas, but current feature set is exremely small, leading to a shallow game where you'll have seen everything it has to offer within an hour. It's also riddled with severe, game-breaking bugs; your station's success usually has more to do with whether or not the game decides to malfunction, and less with the environmental hazards.

Down the road I could see this evolving into something excellent, but in it's current state it's falling short of playable. I would only reccomend purchasing at this stage as a means of supporting the project, don't expect a fully playable game at this point.

This game is like an incredibly dumbed-down Dwarf Fortress in space. Key word being dumb.

The AI has incredibly complex inabilities to solve their problems. They would rather let themselves asphyxiate in the cold of space than finish constructing the airlock that is filled with oxygen. Why? Because the unfinished part is a space suit locker. They were in space suits already.

In a previous run, the builders refused to add onto the life support section because oxygen was running low (for some unknown reason) and so the whole crew suffocated.

 

[Raapys]

I've long since come to the realization that there'll never be a graphical Dwarf Fortress. There are simply no developers with the stamina to take their game even close to DF, even if you cut the leaf simulation.

 

[felipepepe]

Also it is funny how they go from alpha to release without doing a beta.

Funny isn't exactly the word I was thinking off...

 

[J_C]

It is totally worth 20€

I really try to like this game, I really do. But between the horrible AI, UI, and overall game meta, not to mention lackluster developer support over the course of the last year I cannot with good conscience recommend this to anybody. Wait at least until beta to buy this, and only if they significantly alter the meta-game.

Noble effort, very polished for an Alpha, but simply not enough content or player feedback at this time.

It's like feeding space fish right now. You give them food, you clean the filter, and they do stupid sh** like poop on everything and then eat each other. Your pH instruments say everything is perfect and yet they die, doomed to float for all eternity at the top of their little aquarium in the universe.

I bought this game because I support the idea. Long time sci-fi fan, I'd love to build my own Babylon 5 or Deep Space 9.

Much like the premise of this game being in the FAR future, I think the game will reach a playable state in the FAR future as well.

Spacebase DF-9, right now, is a buggy mess of a prototype. It's what I expect a team of developers might show their boss or a publisher and be like "See, with a year or two and a truck full of money, we can turn this into something amazing!"

At the moment avoid this game.

The updates are very very rare, tbh this has all the signs that it will be abandoned, they also ignore the players and put stuff in that we dont want and vise versa, there love for Dwarf Fortress (good game btw) has dragged this game to its lower limits.

It is currently very buggy, pretty much unplayeable, but i dont expect many fixes anytime soon.

Great UI, some good ideas, but current feature set is exremely small, leading to a shallow game where you'll have seen everything it has to offer within an hour. It's also riddled with severe, game-breaking bugs; your station's success usually has more to do with whether or not the game decides to malfunction, and less with the environmental hazards.

Down the road I could see this evolving into something excellent, but in it's current state it's falling short of playable. I would only reccomend purchasing at this stage as a means of supporting the project, don't expect a fully playable game at this point.

This game is like an incredibly dumbed-down Dwarf Fortress in space. Key word being dumb.

The AI has incredibly complex inabilities to solve their problems. They would rather let themselves asphyxiate in the cold of space than finish constructing the airlock that is filled with oxygen. Why? Because the unfinished part is a space suit locker. They were in space suits already.

In a previous run, the builders refused to add onto the life support section because oxygen was running low (for some unknown reason) and so the whole crew suffocated.

Can you provide a source, so I can check how credible are these claims? Because it seems to me that you only picked some user quotes which were made months ago during development.

 

[J_C]

Also it is funny how they go from alpha to release without doing a beta.

Funny isn't exactly the word I was thinking off...

Doesn't matter, it is just semantics. They used the term alpha, when the game already functioned very well on beta level.

 

[Trash]

No matter how you spin it, this spells trouble. It's pretty obvious they're simply letting this one go way before it is ready. And this is not some nobody, this is Double Fine doing that. Not good for Early Access credibility. Not good for Kickstarter credibility. Defenitely not good for Double Fine's credibility.

 

[felipepepe]

Doesn't matter, it is just semantics. They used the term alpha, when the game already functioned very well on beta level.

Beta software is feature complete, it has nothing to do with how well it plays. The game jumped from Alpha to Release precisely because they never finished adding all the features intended.

 

[J_C]

No matter how you spin it, this spells trouble. It's pretty obvious they're simply letting this one go way before it is ready. And this is not some nobody, this is Double Fine doing that. Not good for Early Access credibility. Not good for Kickstarter credibility. Defenitely not good for Double Fine's credibility.

I don't deny that, and I'm no way happy about this. DF is in a downward spiral since their Kickstarter, regarding management. But despite some features not making into the game, it is enjoyable in itself, and will be even more when it reaches 1.0.

Doesn't matter, it is just semantics. They used the term alpha, when the game already functioned very well on beta level.

Beta software is feature complete

Just like Wasteland 2 and it's turn based combat, amirite?

But fine, they jumped from alpha to release, and missed out on features. It is not a good thing, I'm not happy about it. But does the game plays fine? Yes. Does it have a decent simulation mechanics? Sure. Could it be more complex? Sure. I'm not going to be butthurt like those retards on steam who open threads like "DF should be banned from Steam" or "the game should be pulled from Steam" by the dozen. I mean, what the fuck?

 

[felipepepe]

They sold a game for fucking 20 dollars/euros, promising a vast list of features and then simply abandoned it.

That's false advertisement, the game isn't what it was promised, people have all the right to ask for refund and punish the developers, just like happened with The War Z. Hell, it's even worst because it's not that the company went broke and can't keep developing it, they simply decided to abandon it as a business decision. Not profitable enough, fuck the consumers that trusted us to deliver.

 

[J_C]

They sold a game for fucking 20 dollars/euros, promising a vast list of features and then simply abandoned it.

That's false advertisement, the game isn't what it was promised, they have all the right to ask for refund and punish the developers, just like happened with The War Z.

It's even worst because it's not that the company went broke and can't keep developing it, they simply decided to abandon it as a business decision. Not profitable enough, fuck the consumers that trusted us to deliver.

Oh, you mean this list?
http://web.archive.org/web/20131018054131/http://spacebasedf9.com/devplans
Let me tell you, if everything on this list would have made it into the game, it should be a 60 dollar game, because it would have been the most complex simulation ever.

And about false advertising, let me quote the important part of their "promised" features:

Because we have limited time and resources, we have to make hard choices about what’s important. Below is a giant list of all the things we might possibly do at some point. Nothing on this list is carved in stone, and we can’t promise any date for when it might go into the game. We may decide something isn’t worth it, or an idea may mutate into another thing entirely.

If someone really believed that all of those features will make it into the game, than that person doesn't know that this is a small company with limited funds. That was a wishlist about the features they would like to implement. But they never promised it, and they specifically said that they have to make hard choices about what will make the game and what not.

 

[Trash]

A month ago:

Double Fine is not a random fly-by-night indie dev and we are not going to silently pull the plug on Spacebase or any other in-development project. Doing so would be disastrous for our reputation and it would kill us emotionally ;____;

What has happened lately on Spacebase is that we’re trying something different with regard to communication. Our hypothesis is that short, regular, relatively low-value updates (things like in-progress screenshots of new UI) don’t really serve much more purpose than telling people “we’re not dead!” The time cost of doing those is pretty small, but our team has been 3-4 people since Alpha 1’s release and I wanted to see what the impact would be - both on our side and on the player side.

I knew there would be threads like this when we undertook this direction, and we’ve been watching the various forums closely. I completely understand how one can read a lack of response as a lack of concern, but nothing could be further from the truth. We come to Double Fine every day and work hard to make Spacebase better. It’s our baby and we love working on it. Some player criticism just isn’t very easy to respond to - we know exactly what’s happening with the project, and we could either give an extended brain dump of all that, or we could try to sum it up and risk misleading through brevity or making some specific promise we can’t keep.

Valve’s talk from Steam Dev Days about communication with fans and Team Fortress 2 got us thinking along this current line. There are some points in it that make a strong kind of counter-intuitive sense: who wouldn’t want constant communication? Well, maybe constant communication helps people care less and less about something over time. We needed to shake things up a bit.

This isn’t some master plan; we’re learning as we go - for example, I recently started updating the in-game Transmission from Team Spacebase to hint at the game’s backstory (aka the Spacebase Lore Minute)... but not many people have commented on it, because (we suspect) most people are paying closer attention to out-of-game communication like the website than launching the game regularly. Which is fine; everything like this we try helps us learn to do better. I’ll probably still keep doing those messages because taking a short break from coding to write weird/funny stuff is just fun, and we know some folks will appreciate it.

Regarding Alpha 6 specifically… hmm, what should I say? When we DO have something to say, you’ll know it! We don’t have Valve’s resources so don’t expect lush animated shorts for each update, but we do have a surprise waiting in the wings for Alpha 6, and you’ll hear about it pretty soon now. We want to tell you a story, we want to make you curious about things. Please be patient for a little while longer. Thanks so much for your continued passion and support.

source

Quoted coz, well, relevant. And sad.

 

[Haba]

Can you provide a source, so I can check how credible are these claims? Because it seems to me that you only picked some user quotes which were made months ago during development.

Yeah sure.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/246090

 

[J_C]

A month ago:

Double Fine is not a random fly-by-night indie dev and we are not going to silently pull the plug on Spacebase or any other in-development project. Doing so would be disastrous for our reputation and it would kill us emotionally ;____;

What has happened lately on Spacebase is that we’re trying something different with regard to communication. Our hypothesis is that short, regular, relatively low-value updates (things like in-progress screenshots of new UI) don’t really serve much more purpose than telling people “we’re not dead!” The time cost of doing those is pretty small, but our team has been 3-4 people since Alpha 1’s release and I wanted to see what the impact would be - both on our side and on the player side.

I knew there would be threads like this when we undertook this direction, and we’ve been watching the various forums closely. I completely understand how one can read a lack of response as a lack of concern, but nothing could be further from the truth. We come to Double Fine every day and work hard to make Spacebase better. It’s our baby and we love working on it. Some player criticism just isn’t very easy to respond to - we know exactly what’s happening with the project, and we could either give an extended brain dump of all that, or we could try to sum it up and risk misleading through brevity or making some specific promise we can’t keep.

Valve’s talk from Steam Dev Days about communication with fans and Team Fortress 2 got us thinking along this current line. There are some points in it that make a strong kind of counter-intuitive sense: who wouldn’t want constant communication? Well, maybe constant communication helps people care less and less about something over time. We needed to shake things up a bit.

This isn’t some master plan; we’re learning as we go - for example, I recently started updating the in-game Transmission from Team Spacebase to hint at the game’s backstory (aka the Spacebase Lore Minute)... but not many people have commented on it, because (we suspect) most people are paying closer attention to out-of-game communication like the website than launching the game regularly. Which is fine; everything like this we try helps us learn to do better. I’ll probably still keep doing those messages because taking a short break from coding to write weird/funny stuff is just fun, and we know some folks will appreciate it.

Regarding Alpha 6 specifically… hmm, what should I say? When we DO have something to say, you’ll know it! We don’t have Valve’s resources so don’t expect lush animated shorts for each update, but we do have a surprise waiting in the wings for Alpha 6, and you’ll hear about it pretty soon now. We want to tell you a story, we want to make you curious about things. Please be patient for a little while longer. Thanks so much for your continued passion and support.

source

Quoted coz, well, relevant. And sad.

I'm going to be honest. I just started laughing while reading this post. Because it is sad and it is hilarious at the same time.

Game is still good tho'.

 

[J_C]

Can you provide a source, so I can check how credible are these claims? Because it seems to me that you only picked some user quotes which were made months ago during development.

Yeah sure.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/246090

Ahahaha, that was what I'm talking about. All those bullshit reviews just popped up after todays news. Butthurt gamers flooding the forums with their wining. Just check the reviews before 18th September, and you will see the more favourable opinions.

 

[felipepepe]

Let me tell you, if everything on this list would have made it into the game, it should be a 60 dollar game, because it would have been the most complex simulation ever.

So Dwarf Fortress, which is free, should cost $500? TOME should be many times the price of Dragon Age? Civilization should cost hundred times more than Doom? What kind of retarded argument is this? The company itself listed the features and set the price.

Going "oh, we didn't promise anything" is the lamest excuse ever. Did they also wrote "we reserve the right to stop development and release a incomplete product at any moment"? Face it, they are a company of hacks, sustained only by Schafer's smiling face and blind fanbase.

As a guy in RPS comments perfectly said:

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
void main()
{
cout << "Welcome to Dwarf Fortress but with graphics and time travel!" << endl;
// TODO: implement game
// TODO: change engine to Unity maybe?
}

I’m releasing this as open source (the copyright remains mine so I can continue to sell the core product of course.) I can’t wait to see what the community does with it!
Tune in next week when I’ll be announcing another exciting new game.

Add Double Fine's logo and J_C would be first in line.

 

[Murk]

J_C Wut? Dude a bunch of those negative reviews were posted in June and May.

 

[J_C]

Let me tell you, if everything on this list would have made it into the game, it should be a 60 dollar game, because it would have been the most complex simulation ever.

So Dwarf Fortress, which is free,

Oh don't bring that fucking Dwarf Fortress up. That games has complex mechanics but everything else is shit. Shit UI, worst presentation a 1980s game, it is not a fun game unless you are autist who is into crunching numbers while watching a few pixels move on a map that is completely uncomprehensible.

Going "oh, we didn't promise anything" is the lamest excuse ever

Yes, that might be, but it is still the truth. They told honestly, that look, we have a lot of great ideas, but since we are a small company with limited resources, we probably won't be able to implement all of them.

How is that a lame excuse?

J_C Wut? Dude a bunch of those negative reviews were posted in June and May.

So? I'm not saying that the game only had positive reviews. But Haba only listed the few butthurt ones. But if you go back a few weeks, months, you will see that the game also got lots of positive ones.

 

[Haba]

Not to mention that even positive reviews are all talking about "potential".

You know, the potential that will never be achieved. None of the negatives in the reviews have been fixed.

Fuck off J_C, you corporate shill.