Manor Lords - medieval city-building with large scale battles

[Jenkem]

Games published by Hooden Horse:
Empires of the Undergrowth
Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic
NEBULOUS: Fleet Command
Old World
Clanfolk
Terra Invicta
Xenonauts 2
Against the Storm
Sons of Valhalla
Manor Lords

afaik only ML has had the full weight of the publisher behind it, Empires and Soviet Republic both had a ton of substantial work on them before Horse got involved, same w/ AtS iirc. They seem to have already found their niche/wheelhouse, so I wonder why they decided to put in so much work for Manor Lords compared to everything else

 

[IDtenT]

I wonder why they decided to put in so much work for Manor Lords compared to everything else

It went viral. Even here on the Codex.

 

[Gerrard]

This game feels incredibly shallow, cool models and graphics, but the complexity and intertwining of the systems are poor. Showoffware[feels like UE5 advert] i would say. We've entered an era of decline where a flashy stuff is selling extremely well upfront, and then people move on/latch on to other stuff, when the game only captivate you for dozen of hours and needs another 5 year development to be good. Just consume shiny thing, the shiny thing gets matte very quickly, and you throw the shiny thing to buy new[same] shiny shallow trinket.

Oh, what do you know, looks like my hunch was spot on. Thank you, Apollo.

 

[Jenkem]

Comrade Stavrophore when will Soviet Republic be finished?

 

[Stavrophore]

Comrade Stavrophore when will Soviet Republic be finished?

Its already there comrade, idk when it will be finished but it's way more fleshed out than manor lords.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources_Soviet_Republic/

 

[Jenkem]

Comrade Stavrophore when will Soviet Republic be finished?

Its already there comrade, idk when it will be finished but it's way more fleshed out than manor lords.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources_Soviet_Republic/

It's still in EA and they haven't given a time for the 1.0 release and when asked they freak the fuck out and accuse you of being a capitalist.

edit: I agree it's more fleshed out, it should be hitting 1.0 soon but I'd rather wait until it's "out"

 

[Stavrophore]

It's still in EA and they haven't given a time for the 1.0 release and when asked they freak the fuck out and accuse you of being a capitalist.

It will be most likely another never ending early access games, something like project zomboid is.

 

[Tyranicon]

One thing for history nerds: the battles between you and enemy lords are arranged beforehand and the rival lord sends you the location of the battle along with usually a letter. Not sure if modern historiography will approve of this idea. Reminds me of some older books I've read where they did do this, because the alternative was wandering around for days before finding the enemy.

You both march your armies to the location (the AI lord just teleports in some troops on the edge of the map), which means there's a good chance that rival armies will march through your town. I fully expected them to do some light razing, but after some experimentation it seemed like if your army isn't there, they just march through peacefully. They don't even steal anything! Weird, since I know razing and pillaging are mechanics in the game from bandits.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Games published by Hooden Horse:
Empires of the Undergrowth
Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic
NEBULOUS: Fleet Command
Old World
Clanfolk
Terra Invicta
Xenonauts 2
Against the Storm
Sons of Valhalla
Manor Lords

afaik only ML has had the full weight of the publisher behind it, Empires and Soviet Republic both had a ton of substantial work on them before Horse got involved, same w/ AtS iirc. They seem to have already found their niche/wheelhouse, so I wonder why they decided to put in so much work for Manor Lords compared to everything else

I think Manor Lords had their approximately two week open beta before the developer signed on with Hooded Horse. That was probably what did it.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

It's still in EA and they haven't given a time for the 1.0 release and when asked they freak the fuck out and accuse you of being a capitalist.

It will be most likely another never ending early access games, something like project zomboid is.

At least with zomboid, besides all the time and hassles we seeing progressive improvements to the engine and gameplay over the years. One of my main reasons for not touching this game anything soon it's how quick you reach the peak of production/village management after the fist few failures in learning how the mechanics work and burn out from playing the same EA game over and over with barely any progress overtime or a final product. Happened with the other similar abandonware EA games of sorts before.

 

[Alienman]

It's still in EA and they haven't given a time for the 1.0 release and when asked they freak the fuck out and accuse you of being a capitalist.

It will be most likely another never ending early access games, something like project zomboid is.

At least with zomboid, besides all the time and hassles we seeing progressive improvements to the engine and gameplay over the years. One of my main reasons for not touching this game anything soon it's how quick you reach the peak of production/village management after the fist few failures in learning how the mechanics work and burn out from playing the same EA game over and over with barely any progress overtime or a final product. Happened with the other similar abandonware EA games of sorts before.

No NPCs yet though... after 11 hard years.

 

[Maxie]

buy this product

 

[smaug]

buy this product

 

[Dickie]

the dev has stated he has NO plans to release a roadmap.

Let's just hope that with the massive bank this is making, that the dev is able to handle growing from a garage band into a full-fledged studio.

End of the road for this project's development process. Mission completed.

Early Access is like this video if they were taking money from the kids at the same time.

 

[Jenkem]

reminder: the dev is p*lish so ignore any p*les talking about this game

 

[Tyranicon]

This is what the dev had to say on the 7 year dev time and being a 1-man studio, pulled from his public reddit account https://www.reddit.com/user/gstyczen

You have no idea how much time I spent reworking the same things over and over and over and over and over. We had like 6 or 7 marketplace iterations in closed alpha. There are whole cementaries of systems that were prototyped but didn't work out and were scrapped. Hopefully that part is over.

Also there is a bunch of systems that are in WIP mode and are just disabled or need updates before they are turned back on.

Also another thing. it's not that I don't want to hire more developers, but most people looking for a job ... just weren't good enough so far. They fail deadlines or just can't do things on a level that is required even though their portfolio seemed good enough. The really amazing devs have their owns studios or are employed at AAA projects and aren't even interested. Anyone who tried running their company will know how hard hiring and management is. There are many horror stories of fallen studios of people who scaled too quickly, studios which were mismanaged and had to eventually close. Slow, careful growth and looking for great staff will be a better long term strategy.

Honestly, I agree with the not hiring people because they suck perspective. You guys think you know how incompetent gamedevs are.

You have no idea.

There are stories I hear regularly in the biz that make me look like a genius, and that's really damn hard most of the time.

 

[IDtenT]

If he's not going to scale out into a bigger dev then the game will never be released.

 

[covr]

He is extremely competent man, game is already released and will stay probably in EA in 2-3 years until he's ready to release 1.0. Hooded Horse also knows their craft, they won't push him, as doing things slowly + maintaining high quality seem to be working. Look what they did with marketing and release of EA: they took all the burden of communication on steam from him; all the messages, announcements, replies on forums has been published by HH CEO. That's smart and very uncommon for indie devs. So Grzegorz is only focused on development and some rare comments on reddit.

Fun fact: I've browsed credits for Against the storm yesterday, and he was listed under special thanks section. Both games are under Hooded Horse publishing deal, so maybe he helped somehow during beta tests, or earlier.

 

[covr]

And I can surely relate to what he said reg senior developers; during last couple of years I've been managing a 40-60 ppl team and trying to find new experienced .Net dev. Money is not the case, we can afford to employ everyone. 5% of the CV's are moving forward to the interview stage(s). Most of ppl fails at interviews, the rest gets employed and I have to let 50% of them go after 1-3 months of work, as they are incompetent fucks who lied in their resumes and made good impression during interview. Those fucks are skipping code review or basic unit tests, ffs. Communication is also almost always the issue.

A competent and professional developer alone, relieved from the burden of bureaucracy and corporate shit, can do as much as 5-7 ppl team in a corporate structure and probably maintain higher quality of the work.

 

[Gerrard]

This is what the dev had to say on the 7 year dev time and being a 1-man studio, pulled from his public reddit account https://www.reddit.com/user/gstyczen

You have no idea how much time I spent reworking the same things over and over and over and over and over. We had like 6 or 7 marketplace iterations in closed alpha. There are whole cementaries of systems that were prototyped but didn't work out and were scrapped. Hopefully that part is over.

Also there is a bunch of systems that are in WIP mode and are just disabled or need updates before they are turned back on.

Also another thing. it's not that I don't want to hire more developers, but most people looking for a job ... just weren't good enough so far. They fail deadlines or just can't do things on a level that is required even though their portfolio seemed good enough. The really amazing devs have their owns studios or are employed at AAA projects and aren't even interested. Anyone who tried running their company will know how hard hiring and management is. There are many horror stories of fallen studios of people who scaled too quickly, studios which were mismanaged and had to eventually close. Slow, careful growth and looking for great staff will be a better long term strategy.

Honestly, I agree with the not hiring people because they suck perspective. You guys think you know how incompetent gamedevs are.

You have no idea.

There are stories I hear regularly in the biz that make me look like a genius, and that's really damn hard most of the time.

Reminder that the Banished dev made his whole game, including the engine, in less than 3 years.

 

[Stavrophore]

Honestly, I agree with the not hiring people because they suck perspective. You guys think you know how incompetent gamedevs are.

You have no idea.

There are stories I hear regularly in the biz that make me look like a genius, and that's really damn hard most of the time.

He is not one dev, he hired/outsourced couple programmers, tons of artists and some mocap/camera team. It's a big misinformation to call it one man effort.

 

[Tyranicon]

He is not one dev, he hired/outsourced couple programmers, tons of artists and some mocap/camera team. It's a big misinformation to call it one man effort.

Solodev just means one permanent developer. Most solodevs (including me) contract artists, coders, etc from time to time. Unreal 5 is also really easy to use, and it's more plausible than ever for one dude to build a game in it (previously the engine had a reputation for needing a large team and lots of money).

That being said, this game does have a suspicious amount of polish for just one man, and it's made so much money that I'm sure its publisher is pushing for some "more help."

Which can be a good or bad thing.

 

[Alienman]

Honestly, I agree with the not hiring people because they suck perspective. You guys think you know how incompetent gamedevs are.

You have no idea.

There are stories I hear regularly in the biz that make me look like a genius, and that's really damn hard most of the time.

He is not one dev, he hired/outsourced couple programmers, tons of artists and some mocap/camera team. It's a big misinformation to call it one man effort.

Any more info on this? Since everyone keep going on about the 1 dev thing. Would to nice to show them proof he was not a one-man show completely.

 

[kangaxx]

Is this actually good? The Internet is wanking itself to death over it, which is a big red flag. Assume at the very least we're waiting until it's out of EA?

 

[Stavrophore]

Solodev just means one permanent developer. Most solodevs (including me) contract artists, coders

How does it differ from a big studio where a senior programmer gets code snippets from juniors for review? Same for solo dev who get code from contractors and then review it.