Manor Lords - medieval city-building with large scale battles

[covr]

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.

Are you retarded?

 

[Stavrophore]

Are you retarded?

I repeat, how does a overinfalated 100 programmer studio, where 90% are juniors who put code snippets for senior to review, is different than a contractor that sends you a code that you review pull/merge if it suits your need. With remote jobs in many companies, the advantage of having a junior close to you is non-existent, you communicate in same way as with contractor over remote, you use repo/git/docker or whatever that helps setup environment for work across different setups that contractors might come with. Sorry to burst your bubble, the "one dev" stuff is very insincere. It doesn't differ from a lead dev/senior programmer that have to handle 10 underlings, would you say in same situation its a "one man" project?

Anyway, i'm going to ingore you after you reply to this post, as you start your first interaction with me with insults instead of addressing the argument. Have fun talking to yourself.

 

[Lyric Suite]

This thing was in the top sellers of Steam for a bit. It's still high. Visuals look very good which grabbed my eye. Then i saw early access and closed the page lmao.

 

[vota DC]

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?

Game longevity is short for now. You can safely have fun playing the first year ingame but after that you get many game breaking bud and you are starting to reach many placeholders that you can't use.

Farming seems to be more difficult than other colony sims, and unlike some others, it seems like you have to farm.

In my current game I have shit-tier fertility soil so I can't farm effectively. Still manage to survive with berries, hunting, and plenty of chicken and vegetable gardens in the homes.

I have a rich source of animals in the region and took the development point that increases berry amount per bush, so those sources of food are enough to feed me somewhat.

that's because food doesn't rot, the game tries to be like very realistic and has a bunch of stuff in it, but somehow forget one of the most important aspects, you could abstract saying that the berries are turned into jam but that's lame

That is bad because there is honey that could have the unique ability to be immune to time.

 

[covr]

Are you retarded?

I repeat, how does a overinfalated 100 programmer studio, where 90% are juniors who put code snippets for senior to review, is different than a contractor that sends you a code that you review pull/merge if it suits your need. With remote jobs in many companies, the advantage of having a junior close to you is non-existent, you communicate in same way as with contractor over remote, you use repo/git/docker or whatever that helps setup environment for work across different setups that contractors might come with. Sorry to burst your bubble, the "one dev" stuff is very insincere. It doesn't differ from a lead dev/senior programmer that have to handle 10 underlings, would you say in same situation its a "one man" project?

Anyway, i'm going to ingore you after you reply to this post, as you start your first interaction with me with insults instead of addressing the argument. Have fun talking to yourself.

You are, indeed, retarded, so I am going to use explanation you should understand.
Imagine a poor Saszka from Novosibirsk suburbs. Imagine that can produce vodka on his own. Now imagine CEO of the whole STOCK company. They produce vodka as well. CEO just oversees stuff and communicate with his collaborators. They both produce vodka = they are the same = STOCK is one man company.

 

[Galdred]

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

HH signed the game kind of late actually. Roughly one year ago or so. By this time, Manor Lord already had a huge number of wishlists (more than 500k I'd say). Actually, late marketing push was mostly: "look, we have 1 million WL" ... up until 2 millions.
HH helped for sure, but Greg did a very effective job at getting many people to want his game before that.

 

[Stavrophore]

I have no patience for retarded and insulting rabid russophobes, so i'm indeed going to ignore you.

 

[Tyranicon]

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.

Basically, you're on your own. Most regular game studios have completely corporatized where you have several layers of management so decisions are spread out to the point of the term "design by committee" that's usually thrown around.

For solos, you're the only boss and only employee, so you make every decision yourself. For true solos like myself this means accounting, marketing, animation, art, music, sound, writing, coding, design, logistics, customer service, etc etc. But I can barely pay my bills, so I can't say the same for someone who's presumably a multi-millionaire by now, who has much more resources and options than I do.

Another thing to note is that being a successful solo does not always translate to being a good boss. Some people work better alone and/or have no management skills. So pressuring this guy to add a team may result in people putting in a bunch of garbage ideas into his game.

 

[Stavrophore]

What i was trying to convey is that it would be of course absurd to for example say that a company which produces bricks was responsible for building your house and that it was a shared effort. Brick company wasn't responsible for the essence, the very act of building the house, deciding the room, the method of construction, the work done on the house itself. On the other hand if you hired a coder, or as with the house - a building company, that helped make you some part of the house, while you did the rest, then of course it wasn't you, and only who did the house. Therefore, buying 3d assets, and the game graphics and models being outsourced is of not such importance, just like you buying the bricks. But the hard line for me is coding and system/feature design, as its the soul, the engine, the spiritus movens of the game, that animate and give life to all the building blocks, assets, sounds,animations and whatever you bought. The game could be claimed to be a solo dev PROJECT/DESIGN, where he envisioned and plotted all the necessary pieces of the puzzle[we dont know if this is true too], and therefore others had merely task that they could fulfil when he outsourced, just as [pardon the hyperbole] a pharaoh who had a project to build a pyramid, it was his project, and it didn't matter he used 20000 laborers. But if we are talking about solo dev EFFORT, he definitely wasn't pulling the rope alone. But that's how a gaming studio operate too, there's a lead designer, and there are underlings who are section leaders who also have underlings. You would never said that the game was let say made by Tim Cain working in a big studio, solely because he designed how the game will work and all the others were just merely coding and implementing, while he coded very little and reviewed others code. In such situation you or most people would have no problem to say that a let say 100 people studio worked on the game. This is a just like outsourcing but inside a company, a delegation of work is a proper name. That's the misconception i keep reading in comments on steam, on reddit, youtube.

Tyranicon judging by what you wrote, you are a truly solo dev and making an authentic solo dev project. I just don't like when people aren't calling a spade a spade.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

paint me unimpressed.
i expected some grand spectacle, i found just a fistful of buildings and some truly retarded choice, like sheep farms giving only wool, no meat, not even milk. everything is tagged "work in progress", "temporary", "placeholder", but honestly everything feels rather bad, the core of the game is micro shuffling around people until you have enough in a year or two, no idea how that could be fun.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Just say no to early access, kids

 

[goregasm]

Been around the Hooded Horse "brand" since his days as a warband modder. The discord is full of internet shills and (hilariously) the own companies workers just cheering on and celebrating yet another EA "launch"

I wish no ill will to any company involved but I just cant believe people keep slurping up unfinished games like this.

They are scooping up devs to publish, but as soon as their previous launch sons of valhalla wasn't a huge hit they quickly moved to counting this thing down to EA like it was new years.

 

[Tyranicon]

Been around the Hooded Horse "brand" since his days as a warband modder. The discord is full of internet shills and (hilariously) the own companies workers just cheering on and celebrating yet another EA "launch"

I wish no ill will to any company involved but I just cant believe people keep slurping up unfinished games like this.

They are scooping up devs to publish, but as soon as their previous launch sons of valhalla wasn't a huge hit they quickly moved to counting this thing down to EA like it was new years.

I don't disagree, but literally the entire reason of an indie publisher is to be a giant, shameless shill.

 

[kangaxx]

paint me unimpressed.
i expected some grand spectacle, i found just a fistful of buildings and some truly retarded choice, like sheep farms giving only wool, no meat, not even milk. everything is tagged "work in progress", "temporary", "placeholder", but honestly everything feels rather bad, the core of the game is micro shuffling around people until you have enough in a year or two, no idea how that could be fun.

I knew something like this would be closer to reality. Even usually more tempered online critics are wanking themselves silly over this game... it's highly suspicious. Time for the 'aliens' comment rating.

 

[Baron Tahn]

I don't have the alien but you can have a parrot!

Edit: Oh. Im dumb I have alien, but keep the parrot anyway.

 

[JarlFrank]

paint me unimpressed.
i expected some grand spectacle, i found just a fistful of buildings and some truly retarded choice, like sheep farms giving only wool, no meat, not even milk. everything is tagged "work in progress", "temporary", "placeholder", but honestly everything feels rather bad, the core of the game is micro shuffling around people until you have enough in a year or two, no idea how that could be fun.

Spent enough time with this game now to come to the same conclusion.

Some of its systems show more promise than Banished and its clones, but that's about it. Right now it's just way too limited, and the promise of a complex economy is only barely fulfilled. It doesn't go much further than what Settlers did in the early 90s.

I also tried Farthest Frontier yesterday, and that game has a much better economy, with a lot more stuff to do.

One thing Manor Lords currently does really badly is map generation, because every region has one of every resource. No exceptions. Sometimes one or two resources in a province are particularly plentiful, but there's always just one source of it.
One iron mine. One clay pit. One berry patch. One herd of deer. Always just one, never more, never none.

 

[IDtenT]

It's a pre-alpha release.

 

[goregasm]

Been around the Hooded Horse "brand" since his days as a warband modder. The discord is full of internet shills and (hilariously) the own companies workers just cheering on and celebrating yet another EA "launch"

I wish no ill will to any company involved but I just cant believe people keep slurping up unfinished games like this.

They are scooping up devs to publish, but as soon as their previous launch sons of valhalla wasn't a huge hit they quickly moved to counting this thing down to EA like it was new years.

I don't disagree, but literally the entire reason of an indie publisher is to be a giant, shameless shill.

Absolutely. It's merely more annoying than anything, the discord, which was primarily a M&B warband modding community was over taken by them and they initially tried to get the warband folks on board getting a rather tepid response.

Since then they have put all of us in one "room" while the rest of the HH marketing people tell each other how excited they are for -insert EA game- its like a daily bizzare E3 with people who work from home or something.

 

[Raghar]

paint me unimpressed.
i expected some grand spectacle, i found just a fistful of buildings and some truly retarded choice, like sheep farms giving only wool, no meat, not even milk. everything is tagged "work in progress", "temporary", "placeholder", but honestly everything feels rather bad, the core of the game is micro shuffling around people until you have enough in a year or two, no idea how that could be fun.

Spent enough time with this game now to come to the same conclusion.

Some of its systems show more promise than Banished and its clones, but that's about it. Right now it's just way too limited, and the promise of a complex economy is only barely fulfilled. It doesn't go much further than what Settlers did in the early 90s.

I also tried Farthest Frontier yesterday, and that game has a much better economy, with a lot more stuff to do.

One thing Manor Lords currently does really badly is map generation, because every region has one of every resource. No exceptions. Sometimes one or two resources in a province are particularly plentiful, but there's always just one source of it.
One iron mine. One clay pit. One berry patch. One herd of deer. Always just one, never more, never none.

Well it looks like typical one man game. I didn't released my noncommercial stuff I was doing, otherwise you'd see kinda flaws too. (mainly being 5 years late flaw)

But, if he's not doing it in his spare time and doing normal paid jobs elsewhere, it's bit slow attempt. 12 years later, we might see a game if he continues in the same speed.

I wonder if he's not too much on forums. When I was on forums my work productivity dropped to 1/3. But dealing only with stuff had different and worse problems.

 

[motherfucker]

Honestly I never understood why berry patches and animal ares are separate. If animals don't live where the berries grow then what the fuck do they eat?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i gave this a second chance, because as a man of science i doubt everything, myself included first and foremost. i thought the game was daft, then i unlocked a second region and it reached levels of obtusity that shouldn't be possible. i hereby officially rename this game "manure lords".

 

[kangaxx]

i gave this a second chance, because as a man of science i doubt everything, myself included first and foremost. i thought the game was daft, then i unlocked a second region and it reached levels of obtusity that shouldn't be possible. i hereby officially rename this game "manure lords".

Would you mind elaborating old chap? I need some balance to the internet circle jerk about this game. I saw a video today that literally described this as "one of the best games ever".

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

the two adjacent regions are entirely separate entities, they don't communicate in any way. if you want to move people you can't, and the game actually crashes too. if you want to move goods, you MUST take some other back, rather hard with a just founded new city, rather pointless once the new city can stand on its own. also economies are separate, you can't buy stuff with money earned elsewhere. but, just you wait, now i remember you actually have your own money! you ca- no, you can't spend your own fucking money on whatever you like, that's just for mercenaries, a city won't pay mercenaries to defend itself, you have to tax the city first, piss off its citizens and then only with the money coming from skimming off you can pay mercs.

 

[Tyranicon]

Yeah, having more than one region at any time is just like Korean starcraft tier of micro. There's a lot of things missing from the game that are genre staples (work tab so you don't have to click on each fucking building individually, trade tabs, etc) that would make things easier.

Also you get an arbitrary 5 militia unit limit regardless of how many regions you have, kek.

 

[Gerrard]

But at least it looks good!