I just saw the thread about Phenomenon 32 on Something Awful, and… whoa. Just whoa. That’s a lot of hate in one place, guys.
Not sure how to react to this, really. I mean, on one level I guess it’s hilarious to see just how absurd some of the comments are. On another level, it’s quite sad – why do these people have nothing better to do than to bash other people’s work? For fuck’s sake, it’s just art – if you don’t like it, say it’s not your thing and move on. And why turn this into some kind of personal issue with me? Apparently I’m some kind of self-obsessed emo wannabe who spams the world with his artistic creations and then whines when people don’t like them. Oh, and my blog is bad because it has a lot of entries. Hey, maybe I even use long words sometimes.
I’ve been asked by several people to reconsider removing my game from GameJolt, and maybe that’s the wiser course of action. After all, the hate’s gonna come from everywhere. My mistake wasn’t putting the game on GameJolt, it was making a game that is labelled “platformer” and thus attracts a different crowd than something labelled “adventure.”
It’s clear that this is little more than trolling, of course. People want to feel big, so they need something to crap on, especially when that something is not exactly what they want it to be (i.e. small and easy and featuring ninjas, zombies or pirates). And they love nothing more than someone articulately trying to explain his or her choices – that’s whining and being emo. It’s the George W. Bush approach to discussion: “huh huh huh, he’s talking about numbers!” And anyone who actually likes the game is obviously just me posting under an assumed name, or someone involved with the game.
In the end, engaging with this kind of stupidity is just lose-lose. But having to deal with these people’s limitless stupidity and self-important anger is also a total waste of my time. Time which I could be using to tell other stories, in a medium where they might actually reach the people they’re meant for.
Those being self-obsessed emos with artistic pretensions, of course. Or perhaps self-obsessed emus with artistic pretensions. You never know with these flightless birds.
I really liked working with GameJolt; the interface is nice, the site owners were incredibly friendly and helpful, and I like the overall concept a lot.
Unfortunately, the players there hated Phenomenon 32 with an enormous amount of passion. They hated it for its graphics, for having a manual, for having voice acting, for its music, and above all for its file size. (Yes, the crime of a free game offering you a lot of content.) Every time I turned on my computer, more bile-filled comments would come in, until I realized that it was simply pointless to keep the game there.
If you’ve read my website before, you know I do love a good intellectual fight sometimes, and I can’t help but defend things I like (even when they are my own). But it’s one thing to set out to provoke people and then react to that, or to write about a controversial issue and then discuss, and quite another to simply hang about in a place where everyone hates you. It’s pointless and ultimately destructive.
So, as much as I like GameJolt, I think leaving Phenomenon 32 on there is too much a case of feeding the trolls. And, as we all know, trolls are perfectly OK feeding themselves.
Phenomenon 32 is now available for download from GameJolt. You can also rate the game and say nice, fluffy things about it. (I like nice, fluffy things.)
Since people seem to think that the latest version is fairly stable, I’d be very happy if people could start promoting the game now. Tell your family! Tell your friends! Tell the naked hobo you met on the street yesterday! Repost it on Twitter! Repost it on Facebook! Tell your favourite sites about it! Tattoo the URL onto your best friend’s bottom! Write a song about it! Write an opera about it! Adopt a pet in its name! Or just play it and have fun.
Also, please help finance my next game and I will trap an avatar of yourself in a strange world full of trolls and people with elastic heads. Wouldn’t you like that? You know you would.
Edit: GameJolt link removed. I like the site, but amount of hatred the game attracted there is a bit too much.
The installer for the new version is up. All the serious problems have now been fixed, except for compatibility issues and similar stuff that I cannot influence.
Now, to get the game to GameJolt (and a couple more mirrors, if possible) and we’re fine.
So. ‘Twas all a mix-up. The previous patch did actually fix the “falling through the ground” problem. In an odd turn of events, I have since then updated the patch with a different approach to solving the problem that had already been solved.
I don’t know about you, but I think this is hilarious. I’m grinning like a loon.
Anyway, now I just need to decide whether to keep this new approach in the code or not, and then I can upload a pretty-much-final version.
Ah, the madness of game development…
The new patch for Phenomenon 32 should fix the rare “falling through the ground” problem (I hope) and the issue where one of the late research fields made another disappear. The save games should also be compatible.
Get it here. It’s 37MB. The new installer will be up tomorrow morning, and then I think we’re pretty close to a final version.
Edit: the (extremely) rare bug is still there, but the research issue is fixed.
I guess you really know you’ve managed to create an alien world when you get a bug report that reads:
One of those mousey things in that area north of the base, with those squiggly spreadshooters, is now on the lower level of the second structure, with the E.T. thing, instead of on the third level with that bulgy thing.
I laughed myself silly when reading it, mostly because it’s exactly the kind of language you’d expect this game to be described in.
Anyway, could someone tell me which area this is referring to? I thought it meant Industrial Area [832|736], but that doesn’t seem to be it, or at least I can’t find anything.
I’m going to do a proper post about this tomorrow, but I wanted to let you know that version 1.1 of Phenomenon 32 is now out. It runs on Windows 7, fixes some issues with the Reconstruction Workshop, and also comes with a changelog (thanks for the suggestion).
I haven’t uploaded a separate patch yet, only the whole installer, because uploading the game took hours and it’s now half past two in the morning. I need some sleep.
So, one little bug has been detected in the game: the Reconstruction Workshop sometimes bugs out. Nothing lethal or game-stopping: just a small, silly error that may make it impossible to complete some projects. And I’ve already determined the cause and fixed it in the code. Later today I’ll upload a patch and replace the buggy version with the new one.
I’m also working on making the game run on Windows 7.
Keep playing.
So, with the game out for less than a day, we have learned the following:
- The game probably doesn’t run on Windows 7. Still experimenting with this.
- The file hosts sometimes don’t work properly. I had to remove the FileFront download because the files were corrupted, and Filedropper seems to work inconsistently (a lot of people had no problems, but some did). I am currently hosting the game on my own website as well, which is rather bad, and am working on more alternatives. Unfortunately, uploading a 240MB game is slow work.
- Not a lot of feedback yet, but the game is big and it only came out yesterday.
In other news, you can really tell what a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Clearly there’s still work to do, but it’s nothing compared to the task of bringing the game to its current state, and I feel much better than I have in a while. In fact, in the last ten hours alone I wrote a new short story and submitted another one to a literary magazine. How awesome is that?
Oh, and don’t forget that you could be in my next game!
