SOv3 info. 2

[Meiun]

Does anyone here actually doubt Meiuns word that a great amount of progress has been made?

Honestly, I do. I develop in same software he does, and I know a game like SOv2 isn't anything special code-wise. But then again, who knows how SOv3 will look, and how poorly was SOv2 written.

I wrote 95% of V2 in early highschool when I had zero formal training in programming and knew nothing but self taught Game Maker. I since have graduated college with honors, acquiring a four year degree in Computer Science (which is pretty much a degree in programming). I think it is safe to say that I can do something better than V2 now... I never even mention V2 to most people I know in person, simply because it would be similar to an artist showing people something they drew in kindergarten. But either way, for being one of the very first people to actually use 39dll in any sensible way in the GMC, and doing so all 100% self-taught, V2 is certainly not anything I'm ashamed of (even if it is amateur in a number of ways).

Just for the record, I did a large chunk of my recent development on V3 as my senior project for college, and got the only solid A out of my entire graduating class, which I'm sure counts for something (in terms of progress at the least). And no, we do not develop in "the same software" anymore. [spoiler]Aside from the few updates I've made to V2 since the donor server came out, I haven't used GM for years.[/spoiler]

Normally I wouldn't get so defensive, but due to your less than reputable track record, and the ignorant nature of your comment, it seemed like most rational response here. I do game development as a hobby, and never claim to be any brilliant developer like you apparently are.

I wouldn't blame any of you at all for simply doubting things though, as it has been a long time. I never expected so many of you to stay so loyal to the game, so thank you all for that!

[darkflash]

OMG SO EXICTED  ;D and Meiun v2 is a HELLA good game for bieng self taught experience I find it very amusing and I could play it forever i've been playing it for numerous years and sadly I am one of the only active players still playing it D:

[ARTgames]

First off, yay I am glad to hear what was in your post. That gives the game a much more stern grounding in the community eyes.

And last:

and got the only solid A out of my entire graduating class

So some people got non solid "A's". :P Only kidding glad to hear!

[Scotty]

Does anyone here actually doubt Meiuns word that a great amount of progress has been made?

Honestly, I do. I develop in same software he does, and I know a game like SOv2 isn't anything special code-wise. But then again, who knows how SOv3 will look, and how poorly was SOv2 written.

In all honesty, I think many have from time to time, including myself.  I fully understand the secrecy when it comes to development, not wanting to release a lot of revealing details, plus if a project goes belly up, there's a lot of lost expectations and disappointment.  But at the same time, giving slight tastes of what's to come from time to time is what gets people to come back, regardless of how long it takes to complete.  Look at Wanderlust.  Game took FOREVER to get into BETA.  If anything, they did a little TOO much by giving users an actual materialized client to mess with, yet their fans kept coming back, and upon delivery, they get a lot of praise from the fans.  When one goes silent though throughout the entire life-cycle of a product until release, we're left to wonder if anything is being done, and no one can really say that we're in the wrong for doing so, by doing nothing more than replying "Well you're wrong, we have."  That doesn't really give us anything either, other than going off someone's word, which could very well be skewed to not piss anyone off.

There's pluses and minuses to giving out development details, I think a healthy, moderated amount of transparency is what keeps people interested, and especially will prevent these sorts of annoying topics from springing up every month.

EDIT: Plus I've found that with some of my projects, being transparent also keeps myself honest.  When I release updates to whomever telling them of my progress, they are happy to hear the news, and know that if I go an extended period of time without voicing any updates, it legitimizes the questions.

EDIT 2: I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that Meiun's interpretation of Krele's last sentence was a bit off.  I didn't necessarily read it as, SOv3 is not the sucks, SOv2 was.  I read it exactly as it states at face value "SOv3 has a lot of potential" and "SOv2 may not have had the most solid code-base, we won't know."  May be a little arrogance in it, but I trend towards giving people the benefit of  doubt.

[Meiun]

I intend to be more transparent (as you put it) with my developments once it reaches the appropriate stage to do so. The honest facts are that up until this year really, most developments on V3 were very slow. My primary focus during the past four years was college. During my early years of college, I did work a good bit on the creation of V3 a number of times. But due to some large-scale design changes of the game, the early iteration of that had since been scrapped (as well as some of it being lost in that roberry I told many of you about, regrettably).

The biggest reason however for the long "hiatus" (if you want to call it that) was not just due to lack of time though, but rather that every time I got started on something, I would end up learning a whole slew of new things that could be directly utilized in the development for the game during my next semester of college. As a result of this, it seemed a bit impractical to spend my college years grasping a what little extra time I did have to develop the game, when I knew that by the next year I would be able to do things even better than the one before it (I tried this a couple times in my early years of college, like I said, only to scrap much of it for this very reason). In the long run though, my entire college experience has had a significant and direct impact on the quality of the game that I am ultimately creating, so while it certainly took long enough to do so, it will still help in the long run.

Once I hit my senior year, is when I really began to get much more serious about getting cracking with the real development of V3. Throughout my entire college experience, hardly a day would go by where I wouldn't think about, and often plan for V3. But once I had begun to reach the end of my education I knew I was just about where I wanted to be in terms of my capabilities. Throughout this last year (particularly the second half), I begun to spend a LOT of my time truly working on V3, which has for the most part continued in this way since. My professor practically thought I was a madman for the better part of my senior project semester, due to the time I was clocking into my project many weeks.

What I'm ultimately getting at here, is that while you have all been waiting for V3 for a very long time, the current iteration of the V3 game itself is still rather young in many senses (and a still changing one at that). While many of the previous years there was not much info due to a lack of actual stuff to show, right now I'm mainly hesitant to release info because much of it is still relatively new, and I want to make sure it doesn't change too significantly again before I go getting people all wound up about it. We have had a number of flip-flops with the art style over the past few months, and there are a number of things I want to try and finish off before I go gloating about them. On top of that, a few of the significant components of the project thus far are ones that aren't really intended for the public eye, but rather a select group of people (who actually already do have full access to it), such as a rather powerful level editor tool that I have written from scratch (again, not in GM).

That being said, the current version I am working on is without a doubt the one that you will all end up seeing and playing (eventually). Development on it thus far has gone very well, and it is certainly something I am quite proud of so far. There is no chance that it is going to be scrapped, it is just really a matter of solidifying the current developments before posting.

If any of you don't believe what I'm saying to be true, ask Dan, Jake, or a number of others who have seen, played, and tested the new one with me over the past few months. They can confirm these statements to be true, as well as the new game "existing" for the understandably suspicious among you. Just don't go prodding for details, as I have told them all time and time again not to give them out yet ;)

If you guys want some further example that I haven't just been sitting around twiddling my thumbs when it came to SO over the past few years. Boom, side project I worked on for a semester a year or two ago (this is not V3, but a side project that is currently gone on the back burner since the real V3 has taken main priority. And yes, it was real, and playable.):



Also (as a side note), I assumed the worst in Krele due to the fact that most people here remember him here as a hacker, who time and time again was banned for his lack of respect for the game or its rules.

[Scotty]

Well there ya go, now you can all shut up!  ;D

[Danimal]

I can say with complete confidence that V3 of Stick Online is being developed faster than ever. I've actually played V3 more than V2 recently (although that's not saying much..) and I feel you guys just need to be reassured that Version 3 is making good progress and will become available to you upon a suitable level of completion. Your loyalty is indeed noted, and everyone knows it has felt like forever. You're under no obligation to stick around but at the same time, Meiun is under no obligation to work towards other people's expectations.

Bottom Line:
You wanted to see progress? Meiun is going to show you some V3 info within the month. Untill then? Continue being part of the community, enjoy the donor server and wait for the guaranteed 3rd version of S.O. If you are unhappy with this situation then I'm sorry to say, move on with your life.

[Cactuscat222]

It's all just a conspiracy.

Stick Onilne never existed, and never will. Everything you have been playing has actually just been a reskinned Microsoft Calculator application with some user connectivity. v3 will be nothing more than just a reskinned Properties tab of your latest program.

[11clock]

It's all just a conspiracy.

Stick Onilne never existed, and never will. Everything you have been playing has actually just been a reskinned Microsoft Calculator application with some user connectivity. v3 will be nothing more than just a reskinned Properties tab of your latest program.

Of course that has never existed because no one has ever bothered to make a game with Stick Online's name, but with some letters rearranged! Who would do that, really?

[ARTgames]

If any of you don't believe what I'm saying to be true, ask Dan, Jake, or a number of others who have seen, played, and tested the new one with me over the past few months. They can confirm these statements to be true, as well as the new game "existing" for the understandably suspicious among you. Just don't go prodding for details, as I have told them all time and time again not to give them out yet Wink

Its now starting to feel like so2. Are you going to release a new site with so3 screen shots like in the past.  ;)

[Meiun]

If any of you don't believe what I'm saying to be true, ask Dan, Jake, or a number of others who have seen, played, and tested the new one with me over the past few months. They can confirm these statements to be true, as well as the new game "existing" for the understandably suspicious among you. Just don't go prodding for details, as I have told them all time and time again not to give them out yet Wink

Its now starting to feel like so2. Are you going to release a new site with so3 screen shots like in the past.  ;)

At some point, if/when I find someone to make the site. Web design has never really been an area of interest to me, and is not really my top priority for now. Using Terraria as an example, their site sucks, yet it hasn't done much to impact the games overall success. But yes, I do hope to get a good site going sometime in the future.

[Freeforall]

Thanks for all of the info Meiun! We all appreciate it :)

[Scotty]

If any of you don't believe what I'm saying to be true, ask Dan, Jake, or a number of others who have seen, played, and tested the new one with me over the past few months. They can confirm these statements to be true, as well as the new game "existing" for the understandably suspicious among you. Just don't go prodding for details, as I have told them all time and time again not to give them out yet Wink

Its now starting to feel like so2. Are you going to release a new site with so3 screen shots like in the past.  ;)

At some point, if/when I find someone to make the site. Web design has never really been an area of interest to me, and is not really my top priority for now. Using Terraria as an example, their site sucks, yet it hasn't done much to impact the games overall success. But yes, I do hope to get a good site going sometime in the future.

I would actually argue that I think that XenForo is an excellent software package, minus the licensing cost.  It's quite web 2.0'ish, with quite a depth of customization.  At first, when I saw that minecraft's bukkit's website used it (first encounter with the software), I was rather confused, but once I got the hang of it, which didn't take long, I quickly came to love it.  We're so accustomed to the bland SMF and phpBB that we can't get our minds out of their outdated standards, and it's my opinion that XenForo has done an excellent job at bringing web forums, and site integration to a modern level.

Now if you're talking about the unofficial wikia that the user base for some odd !@#$ing reason still feels obligated to maintain, even though there is an official mediawiki installation on their webserver, I will completely agree that I hate, with the bottom of my heart, wikia.  They've taken the concept of an encyclopedia, and completely over-emphasized the point of user contributions, to the point where you do have to question the legitimacy of the information provided.  In Terraria's case, seriously, I don't need to see the same boss sprite image four times, the only difference in the image being the displayed remaining health of the NPC.

EDIT: If you're referring to their main site that is styled to resemble the retro graphics of the game, then I completely agree.  No website should be styled to match the graphics of a retro-styled game, including SO.  Sure, include screenshots in a graceful and elegant manner, but to use the background tiles of a game as the background images of a website?  No.

[Meiun]

EDIT: If you're referring to their main site that is styled to resemble the retro graphics of the game, then I completely agree.  No website should be styled to match the graphics of a retro-styled game, including SO.  Sure, include screenshots in a graceful and elegant manner, but to use the background tiles of a game as the background images of a website?  No.

Yep, that is exactly what I was refering to. I was talking about their main site as opposed to their forum setup and all of that. Design isn't too great like you said, and in general it just seems pretty simplistic (not that I'm any expert on website critique). But that also sort of contributes to my point that they don't really need much else for their game at the point they are at, and nor do I.

[ARTgames]

Just wondering. You said SOv3 will be free, but what about nonprofit? Or do you plain on having something you buy?