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Gaming / I worry about Atooi and Jools...
« Last post by Cyartog959 on Yesterday at 11:44:35 pm »I'm not putting anyone down or anything like it, but I truly do worry about Atooi's status as an indie game company and Jools, the founder, managing it and the game projects being worked on, and priorities shifted many times that kept its release being completely settled and finalized.
For one, we were supposed to be having Treasurenauts, the long-developed game still in the belt, but constant delays and priority changes to other projects and matters outside of game development has been hurting so much for the game and the people wanting to play it for so long, it shredded their patience and anticipation for the game in their hearts and minds, even stemming so much doubt in others that game could ever be released as time goes by. Even I feel doubt, too.
Why, even the words about the game being "ready when its ready" really comes into question about the project's well-being in development, as well as other games suffering constant delays without warning nor notice. Hatch Tales suffered too much from delays and slight hesitation about appeal to people, when its meant to be universally applicable. That, and the game's marketing might've been better off handled to someone else that is more experienced at that field, but have hopeful, positive visions in them.
For a lead having too many hats in one sitting, and with so many created IPs, Jools should've handed a few of them to others to speed things up.
I guess for tools Jools has for game dev work on his belt, I believe he uses Pro Motion NG, and Photoshop to put together the games' aspects, mainly because games like Mutant Mudds and Chicken Wiggle are all hi-bit pixel art games in their own right, and other games uses Unity as their engine, but such games uses its own created proprietary in-house engine; that of which was made for Treasurenauts originally, but Mutant Mudds had ghost levels in the works that had alpha transparency in them for its final update, back when Renegade Kid was the IP holder for it, so you know, and the previous engine wasn't capable of that, even on the 3DS, so, work on moving everything to its new engine and testing had to be done first before it can be updated to the original 3DS version, to complete the whole package.
Adobe's Illustrator, I think, was also used for Hatch Tales' content and vector-based graphics, too. Perhaps a better, more efficient program could've made it easier to make vector graphics.
I think Jools' workflow, in my perspective, needs to be improved by using Aseprite, which does pixel art a lot better than Photoshop, Tiled Map Editor, that does a lot better for level editing, compared to Pro Motion NG's capabilities, because by using them, they can streamline a lot, as it does for other devs and studios, so games could be done quite quicker with very minimal delay, especially when it comes to preparing all planned content ready for coding, testing, and then launches.
Communication should've also been better about progress on game projects, because without any form of transparency, how is anyone going to gain trust in these kind of developers, the players, and the games they were looking forward to playing them when they've been delayed and kept in the shadows for far too long?
For one, we were supposed to be having Treasurenauts, the long-developed game still in the belt, but constant delays and priority changes to other projects and matters outside of game development has been hurting so much for the game and the people wanting to play it for so long, it shredded their patience and anticipation for the game in their hearts and minds, even stemming so much doubt in others that game could ever be released as time goes by. Even I feel doubt, too.
Why, even the words about the game being "ready when its ready" really comes into question about the project's well-being in development, as well as other games suffering constant delays without warning nor notice. Hatch Tales suffered too much from delays and slight hesitation about appeal to people, when its meant to be universally applicable. That, and the game's marketing might've been better off handled to someone else that is more experienced at that field, but have hopeful, positive visions in them.
For a lead having too many hats in one sitting, and with so many created IPs, Jools should've handed a few of them to others to speed things up.
I guess for tools Jools has for game dev work on his belt, I believe he uses Pro Motion NG, and Photoshop to put together the games' aspects, mainly because games like Mutant Mudds and Chicken Wiggle are all hi-bit pixel art games in their own right, and other games uses Unity as their engine, but such games uses its own created proprietary in-house engine; that of which was made for Treasurenauts originally, but Mutant Mudds had ghost levels in the works that had alpha transparency in them for its final update, back when Renegade Kid was the IP holder for it, so you know, and the previous engine wasn't capable of that, even on the 3DS, so, work on moving everything to its new engine and testing had to be done first before it can be updated to the original 3DS version, to complete the whole package.
Adobe's Illustrator, I think, was also used for Hatch Tales' content and vector-based graphics, too. Perhaps a better, more efficient program could've made it easier to make vector graphics.
I think Jools' workflow, in my perspective, needs to be improved by using Aseprite, which does pixel art a lot better than Photoshop, Tiled Map Editor, that does a lot better for level editing, compared to Pro Motion NG's capabilities, because by using them, they can streamline a lot, as it does for other devs and studios, so games could be done quite quicker with very minimal delay, especially when it comes to preparing all planned content ready for coding, testing, and then launches.
Communication should've also been better about progress on game projects, because without any form of transparency, how is anyone going to gain trust in these kind of developers, the players, and the games they were looking forward to playing them when they've been delayed and kept in the shadows for far too long?
