User blog:Sparkdottir/A Response to "To Whom It May Concern" a POR Official Statement

So first of all, I would like to simply state that if there is going to be an inability to contain oneself or not be so overly defensive from those who are against the stating of wrong doings or flaws then I am going to ask nicely to refrain from even responding, and Ive made sure moerators are aware of this post since it could stir controversy if not contained. I want the community to know in depth about a few things.

As many of you have been asking each and every day, where are the updates? We would like to take some time to explain in depth the reasons behind it.

Some of you may not know that we have a highly skilled group of individuals that are actually in the process of starting their own Gaming Company. With degrees and experience in game development. They are handling a lot of the server side work. Building AI and other parts to get the server side client to work. They are not on our forums due to the drama that is caused every day, and they would like to avoid that at all costs. These individuals are working on POR and their own games to be able to fund POR. POR is going to cost money, there is no way around this. They have to pay the server bill, the electrical bill, and other fees that simply cannot be pushed aside. This company has an ex-Disney interactive studios employee working with them along with an ex-Disney interactive studios intern. This company is all co-located in the same area and are actively working on creating updates for POR and building the AI or Artificial Intelligence for the game.

Yes, we have been wondering for a while where those updates are and at last finally an explaination. Were so glad to see finally some kind of reasoning too. Now, to start us off, it must interest many the same devs for POR are also starting their own company and not only that but now they are forming a company to be able to pay for POR bills which would seem a little odd because how exactly do they plan to not only sustain POR with a few games but also sustain those games if the revenue collected for them goes to POR and not themselves? Taking the rent from your morgatged house to pay for your lease doesnt work well. What type of games are they and will they even be guaranteed to make the necessary revenue? Its great and all you have finally found the perfect solution but yet you have to work on more work to see if you can pay for a game you cant make money off of with other games that arent even guaranteed to succeed. It would be a waste of time. Secondly, you mention that they do not want to deal with drama on the forums which is understandable, but yet that being reasoning for not updating isnt a very valid one at all. For weeks you have left a community in the dark when all they had to say was "Today we coded the Player AI, no pictures bla bla bla sorry" I dont think its much more complicated than those forum updates released. Updates dont have to be graphic.

Artificial Intelligence works along with the game source, which we have recently reverse engineered Previously the game was being rewritten by simply connecting the dots and we spend a great deal of time on this, but to our own end we eventually hit a point to where we couldn’t get any farther, our “alpha” which is simply a walking simulator that allows you to walk around the Caribbean again but will not be able to obtain enemies, ships or interactivity. All of that comes with the AI code, which is what is being work on now. Everything that you do is done with AI code, every step, sword swing, and interaction is done with AI. There are over 500 AI files that have to be written in order to achieve our multiplayer system. Each file can contain anywhere from 100-1,000 lines of code. That takes a huge amount of time!

So, basically, everything that POR did up to a certain point had to be scraped and re-done once we finally reverse engineered the game’s source code. Which, should have been the first step to begin with but the team was misguided. Now, we cannot give you updates as what was done before due to the fact that all we are doing is writing AI files. We can’t post pictures of what we have because it would be releasing code that we are building to others that want to make a POTCO remake. Beta will most likely be the whole game without the enemies, because they are the hardest part of any AI code. They have to be taught to interact with you, to follow you, to attack you, to stop attacking you, to die, etc. As we progress through Beta you would see enemies coming up and a lot more. It would soon become a game, only with a ton of bugs that we would need to fix. This is what we would have testers for to help us find bugs and help us fix them. That is what Beta Testing is for, it isn’t early access. We would be looking for people motivated to look for bugs and work for the betterment of development, not just to be in the game first.

There are 500 AI Files to POR to produce which can easily be bunched up into a "technical update" with no graphics necessary. In a sense they can be release no some dont see whats wrong with doing that. It would take a simple paragraph or so and hey we all happy as opposed to updating a site where all you can do is socialize and talk about a game that was completely screwed up and flipped over. Now... I must ask and eventually it will be asked: Why are you so worried about giving out the code? So that other POTCO Remakes cant compete with you or take what you had should you fail and keep going? Maybe Im being over... critical in that sense but its thoughts and questions others will have, might as well spear the fish now. How is it though that you were not aware of the fact that you could not connect the dots and go tada done with game? I mean it just makes me wonder if it can happen again and if it does, would we be continuing on this road of being misled? How do we know that they wont screw up again? Lastly, how do you expect to make a deadline of December to February when 1- Devs are working on other games to fund POR and 2- Theres 5,000 to 5000,00 lines of code to be written?

Now, many have brought up the fact that TTR or ToonTown Rewritten has already completed all of this, so why hasn’t POR? The truth is, the TTR developers are vastly over qualified to remake a game of that size. Which is considerably smaller than POR. To write AI with Panda3D, which is what POR is ran off. You need an OTP server, the TTR team created their own version of an OTP server called Astron. The developers that created Astron are actually helping with TTR and have neglected to help POR. They have over qualified server teams that are writing their AI code and helping them vastly. This is all contributing to TTR’s success. POR will have success, just not as quickly as TTR, because we don’t have the same assets.

Another major topic of controversy is the forums donation system, now this is a very personal section that I have decided to share with you all. I am solely the funder of the forums, and I am simply asking for some help. I barely make enough money to make it from paycheck to paycheck and the forums is simply one cost in my budget book that isn’t as important as car insurance, food, and my rent. So, I talked with the staff for about a month trying to figure out what to do. We really did NOT want to create a donation system and thought about ads, and various other ways to generate a little bit of money to be used on the forums. Ultimately the best way we could think of is to give the community a few benefits that they did want and have them donate for it. I have complete faith in the POR development team or else I wouldn’t be asking for donations. These forums will be open as long as I can fund it. Right now, at the rate that I am going, that would only be about 3 more months. With donations we can keep them going. Now, many from other sites like to claim that we could just use theirs, or just quit. That isn’t an option for the POR staff, we have various issues concerning security, leadership, and drama. To where this is simply not an option. We needed our own place to be able to take feedback and be able to create our own community. There is the possibility of running various in-game contests and events off of these forums and that cannot be done just from another fan site

We can all give you credit for one thing and thats that ToonTown is way much easier to code than POTCO, so nothing on that topic.

A donation system. Well, this comes from the people that say that and I quote, "POR doesn't accept ANY donations. We do not want to have any issues with Disney(DIMG)." (Source: Mike Wass, a Non-Dev POR Rep) Interestingly enough if you have been working on this for a month, how come in a recent post POR said they woupdnt accept donations? "Even if its just for the forums upkeep some dont think it matters, to them it just shows you lied, it doesnt matter if " technically" its for the site not for the game itself because the fprums is associated with the game itself. Charging money to be able to fund a part of the project, is donations to the project in the view of many, and quite possibly even in the view of big mouse. Donations no matter what. On aside note, This is a reason why I am very opposed to the Forums format tht many projects are taking, one it "costs money" thats not enough for them and two it just becomes clouded with "FORUMS UPDATE XIII" instead of "Dev Update XVI". It shouldnt be necessary to fund in this way. Honestly. Another thing that some find a problem with is the fact that Mr. O'Fury has a problem with this in his current day to day bills to fund the site. If it costs this much to interfere then it could go to show that there is not a large margin for errors. The community should not be concerned or have to deal with the fact that at any moment the site will just go lights out because bills are bills and they werent paid. If its such a problem and burden then it probably should not have been started. You went from never accept to have to for just the site we cant be sued for with the donation policy. The timing of this seems as if there is not a lot of planning going on or something else some of us are missing because clearly there is something missing if this is a problem. It shouldnt be, and the community shouldnt have to really feel that it is a burden to you.

I hope that this does help you understand POR’s intentions a little better. My job as Community Developer is to keep you informed with what I can, but you have to understand that a lot of these topics were previously kept within POR’s walls to avoid drama from others. We apologize for keeping all of this from you, and we will try to be more open in the future. All in all, the game is continually being updated and the only thing that we have left to do is the AI code, which is a lot easier since we have reverse engineered the client source.

This sure does help us understand a lot more and more and more some find the project more obscure than it should be. Like it has something to hide that big mouse can get you for. Most of these topics didnt have to be kept within your walls for "fear of drama". If you are afraid of drama then you should probably learn to be able to handle it efficiently (which after my own evaluation you cant handle it any better than POTHS). It wont ever stop and might as well hit it on the head than hide. If you are ever so golden and have nothing to hide then let it out. I question if you have had any experience with even socializing with the community much prior to becoming Community Dev. More and more you look as fishy as POTHS, and just almost without the part where money might be stolen (we may never know and thats not the point). Now it seems Ive completely finished what was discussed but Im going to go further.

Being afraid of taking heat shouldnt be a problem at any point. If it is then there must be a lack of faith, something youre doing wrong, the inability to handle heat, or all of the above. If what youre afraid of is people like me calling out on things we dont see right or people who just plain hate you and just say ********* and wont take the time to write something put, I have to tell you that is just sad. It makes me question what will happen if drama arises in the game. Lets just say okay it works swimmingly! Huzzah, POTCO returns. Great. How will you handle the drama and heat on there? Because, Im going to assume that most likely forum staff will likely transition to be some sort of service or moderation staff for POR on the game. Then what?

PORs intentions seem shady and hidden quite hoenstly. I see POTHS Jr. in the making, if not dare I say worse. Towarss the end POTHS became critical and overly defensive with the POR party of people. They were ready to kill off POR and the way they came off, I wouodnt be surprised if they would have hired hackers. Now you seem like that with anytime you see a new POTCO Remake. Like ots a threat. Going to be real here, youre in the lead with quite a sizeable margin of one, no POTCO Remake has as much done as POR, yet so defensive when theres another, or even aPost POTCO project in general like Golden Seas and Black Flag Online (insert product placement here . Its quite scary and raises my suspicions even more like something there is being hidden. Like not getting official permission from DIMG. Another odd thing to note, is that at various points in time POR lost staff members. From the times of POL to now. Various have resigned or were removed. Some of them I talk to a lot and they tell me of ill intentions and something tht seemed fishy. I believe POR has lost MORE staffers than POTHS did, and mind you they said it was horrible. Especially with the revelations from John Hexskull.

This turned out longer than I expected but, it is what it is. my view and at some points the truth imho.