Is it time to accept the inevitable?

[Richard "Snakeeyes11" Walsh]

Well all it's a full month since AW servers were ready to be shut down and I made the first significant donation to keep the servers running. I've made the second significant donation end of March to keep the servers up for April. The first month gave me the opportunity to monitor the reaction of players and to have some discussions with Anti.


The more time passes the more I feel it's time to just let AW die. The thought that so many of you will lose the skills and items that you've spent so much time and in some cases money accumulating fills me with sadness. Having said that if the game had 20 developers tomorrow working on it I still feel the game would die a death. Over the years the core things that made people want to invest time and money have been systematically  removed and seem as though they will never return.


I had made a proposal to Anti for the game rights that has been refused (I can understand the reasoning as there were serious caveats in there to protect my investment proposal). Therefore i'm seriously considering whether to continue to support the servers and use the money along with the money I was willing to invest here in starting up my own game instead.


In the past month I have managed to get a server setup and the fundamentals in Unreal Engine 4 which had I secured the rights to AW I would have used as the building blocks to build Afterworld from the ground up in UE4.


As I said i'm now considering pouring my attentions and money into this and give in to the inevitable that Afterworld is beyond saving.


Thoughts?

[Hugo "Lossehelin" Santos]

If you are pursuing the creation of a new game then go for it. i will be here to test it and donate.
But it is time to let afterworld die. Honestly.....

Maybe anti can help you with the new game.

[oOoOo "Mantra" oOoOo]

I had made a proposal to Anti for the game rights that has been refused.

Do not understand this part. Anti refused your offer as he has some kind of plan with the game?

I like your idea btw!

[Event "Janе" Horizon]

90% of the game rules are known.
If Dedicated Logic do not want to continue - players can reverse engineer AW.
This will not be a small task and needs a commitment of multiple people for at least 1 year.
However, using a more popular engine - more help is available. And frequent, iterative releases will at least keep interest.

[dale "dalewj" ofj]

sadly it died a few months ago.  The IP rights are held tight as they actually could be worth some money.  But since everyone who has any rights to the game have left, letting the game go is part of its normal coarse.   Would it be nice if the IP rights were dropped to the side and let you pick them up.  BY FAR!

There is no value in this game when Vik and Bank left. The game was in them, not coded in Tourque.  Anti holds the rights to the game and probably wont let them go hoping he can recover money.   No game will buy the game code and make it work.  Its trashed its dead, its AWS.  Starting from scratch is smarter, and hell DL will be dead end of year so any other game company can make all the copies it wants as long as they aren't in Russia.   And sadly the rate Russia vs the world is going, they wont even have to wait that long. 

IT needs to be buried with the love that created it.   We all need to celebrate it.      We enjoyed it, it was part of our lifes in so many ways, and well it has to go now.  We need to move on.   We are past the point of having a meaningful game..... all we have is our memory's.....

[Richard "Snakeeyes11" Walsh]

That's the conclusion i'm starting to come to myself.


The intention was to buy the IP and rebuild in UE4. In my mind the game died years ago not months.


Rereading my post it may have come across that I now intend to clone afterworld. That's not what I mean. I mean building a brand new game being heavily influenced by Afterworld and of course whatever good bits entropia used to have.


Having said that Jane does make a fair point that it wouldn't be massively difficult for someone to come along and do a clone of afterworld in the time frames she mentions as the mechanics (apart from the most sophisticated algorithms) are pretty much known.

[Sifalio "Sifis" Kritikakis]

I also cannot understand what Anti has in his mind by not selling the IP of AW.
Is there something here we should be expecting as a solution?


On the other hand, I am looking forward to your project Snakeeyes
Please keep us informed about it!

[Richard "Snakeeyes11" Walsh]

I also cannot understand what Anti has in his mind by not selling the IP of AW.
Is there something here we should be expecting as a solution?


On the other hand, I am looking forward to your project Snakeeyes
Please keep us informed about it!

He probably felt it to low. Or the timings of payments that i'd built into it not acceptable (as for obvious reasons I wasn't willing to hand over a bag full of cash immediately). Either way for the price I offered along with the other funds I was looking to set aside to move it forward  i'd be able to finance small team of people for several months to a year.


Will consider my next move before the AW server payment is due end of April and make a decision on what way i'm heading.

[The "Fifth" Entity]

As i see it, in a nutshell the game is -
- it's code (first of all, the custom code to tweak the engine, to a lesser degree the scripts and algorithms for things like mob AI, skillsystem, microtransactions that make up the economy, etc)
- artwork (3D models, animations, level designs), and
- playerbase.


Well, playerbase is as good as gone. What's left can be easily dragged over to any similar new game.
Engine customizations are unfinished as it is and for any new engine totally useless anyway...
Doubt selling artwork piece by piece would raise any significant money either. It all has quite specific style to it that "works" well if used as a package but if u take it apart and try to use the separate elements in a different environment the magic is lost. There also might be some format conversion problems between different engines.


For a bystander it's pretty hard to imagine what the hopes of making any significant money from whats left are based upon. Well, obviously there is a missing piece to this puzzle somewhere that we don't know about. If there's indeed something going on behind the scenes, it might take time before the dust settles.

[Richard "Snakeeyes11" Walsh]

To be fair all I really need is the code base. The artwork is all publicly available (at a price) elsewhere. So it's just the code needed. The playerbase would take care of itself when there's something worth playing.

[oOoOo "Mantra" oOoOo]

Consider using HeroEngine. Just $100 a year and designed for mmo.
Star Wars and The Repopulation developed using this engine.

[Richard "Snakeeyes11" Walsh]

$75,000 + 7% royalty for the source code. Quite sobering compared to what AW rights would probably cost.

Compare that to $0 + 5% royalty for ue4. And besides ive already made a start in ue

[dale "dalewj" ofj]

the AWS code has very little value since it simply doesn't work.  If it worked or in 2 years was made to work then it would have value.  All it is now is coding for an engine that can't handle its job.   I see no value in that.  Now add in that the 1 person in the world who could possibly make it work, couldn't, then it would be considered a throw away.

Again AWA has value cause it actually worked.

[Event "Janе" Horizon]

Good point, why not ask for the AWA code?
Tell Anti, he can keep the AWS "huge world" version and that you only want the AWA "zoned" version.

[Richard "Snakeeyes11" Walsh]

The offer was for all code. Awa included.