Bloody Good Time

    Quote from deceiver

    Will all the money be going to Ubisoft or will a portion of it go to Outerlight's ex-staff?

    It's a bit messy really. Until Ubisoft reclaim their costs from the title, they'll be getting all the cash from sales (minus Steam/Microsoft's cuts). Once they've done that (IF they do that), then a cut will start going to Outerlight. Just now Outerlight is just my old boss Chris, who is keeping alive a "shell" of the company so that if there are any royalties to be taken, the company still exists to have 'em The hope is that it'll accrue enough cash that Chris can use it to get Outerlight back up off the ground and return to being a functioning company. The money won't be going out to previous employees though.

    I'll be up for a game sometime, though gonna be pretty busy tomorrow so maybe not then. Think my SteamID is reno84, though it always displays my name as just "ReNo" in the community section, so not sure what to find me as. My steam avatar is Kim Jung Il from The Ship's "World Leaders" update, if that helps you identify me

    That totally sucks

    What happened to Outerlight then? Did The Ship not sell enough to keep the company going? Because that was released a good few years ago. It's a real shame because there is so much potential for Outerlight! Did you guys all get laid off or something?

    Just bought a copy on steam. Does the Xbox live version have split screen at all or is it purely one per system online/lan?

    I hope it does well, I loved the ship and have been awaiting a "sequel" for a long time.

    I absolutely loved the game. It's a lot of fun trying to get the jump on your prey and I can only see it getting better once I start to know the map layouts and weapon behaviours better. The score multiplier is a nice touch since it makes you use a variety of different weapons. The bonus rounds are insanely fun as well, I enjoyed Hunt the leader a lot, since I was the leader.

    Sorry to hear you didn't like it Rick! It's definitely not a game that will appeal to everyone, and we knew it was gonna divide opinion, but more sad that you wasted your money than anything. Still, at least it's cheap right?

    Pogo, yeah, we all essentially got laid off. Ubisoft scaled back the budget on the game, and as a result Outerlight started having to downsize, which meant the game was taking longer to finish, which meant more people had to get laid off in order to stretch the budget, and so on The Ship still sells a bit but not enough to keep the company going. Eventually there were just a handful of us left (from 20 at peak down to 4 in the final month IIRC), and we just had to leave as there was no more cash. Sad, as at this point the game was as good as done, bar bug-fixes and TCR compliance. That was at the end of last year, and Ubisoft took the project over to an internal team in India to finish off. Afterwards, I went into business with a couple of ex-colleagues as Haiku Interactive. We ended up helping out Ubisoft on getting the game to market since we had experience on the project, but it was at that point definitely a case of plugging up the holes rather than any major work on the gameplay or content. Sad end really, none of us would have wanted it to go the way it did. Still, Outerlight is still technically trading - surviving as a one-man-show off The Ship's sales - and hopefully one day will make some money off BGT's royalties. Who knows, it might make a resurgence, but it's gonna take a LOT of sales when we're only selling at £3.50 or thereabouts!

    More info can be read here if you're interested in the story - my old boss Chris gave an interview on the topic recently, think it was linked earlier in this thread...

    http://news.bigdownload.com/2010/10/04/ ... loody-goo/

    It's such a sad story. Outerlight have made innovative and creative games, yet they go under? It's really sad hearing things like that while some games keep being made over and over (CoD) without adding anything new.

    I think the games industry is going or will be going the way of the music industry, in that publishers won't play as big a role any more, and developers will sell games off their own backs (Minecraft springs to mind, as well as Valve with Steam).

    But hey that's just an opinion, not at all backed by facts/statistics!

    i just watched 2 gameplay videos from users on youtube because the trailers didnt tell me at all what this is about but i still cant tell whats goign on in this game

    -its a first person game

    -the maps i saw had a deathmatch layout or sorts

    -there was a picture of a charcter model on screen ... which you are supposed to kill ?!

    i do like the art style but this game is really just not selling itself to me ! D:

    In the hunt, (the main game-mode) it is separated into rounds, each round you are given a target (the name and portrait on screen).

    Your goal is to kill them before round end using weapons or traps without getting caught in the act. The catch is that you are also being hunted by another player, so you have to watch your own back.

    Each round different point values are assigned to different weapons (ones that got used the previous round drop in points) promoting people to change weapons.

    For killing your target and your hunter, you get points that go towards your overall score.

    Some rounds also have other objectives, I've played a Kill the leader where everyone has to kill the point leader. A regular deathmatch, and a zombie match, where one person is infected and by touching others infects them and you get points for surviving or infecting others.

    You also have a needs system of Eating, Sleeping, and using the restroom. You don't need to worry about these too often (depends on the server) but if you ignore them you start to have negative side effects, (Not sure what happens if they hit bottom) when you are filling these needs you cant move until the actions are complete so it leaves you open for an attack so it makes you plan on when to do them.

    I think I covered everything for the hunt and I hope it makes sense

    Probably comparable to the Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood multiplayer too, which is also based around each player being given targets and everyone having to find and kill their target. Have to say that appeals to me much more, especially because of all the NPCs you can blend in amongst.

    I think it's kind of easy to see why Bloody Good Time might struggle — it's not easy to succinctly describe what it's about, even if you watch videos. From the surface it just looks like a fast-paced deathmatch game with a weird cartoon theme, which let's face it isn't going to impress anyone. The theme also doesn't really suit the gameplay IMO: the concept of murders going down on a ship whodunit-style was cool. On a movie set? Not really...

    I also heard the NPCs were removed and identifying the players made too easy, transforming it from the fairly cool concept of observation and discreet killing to nothing more than cat-and-mouse deathmatch.

    Not that I don't respect the team involved, and I understand the production issues must have had a big impact (though I suspect some questionable creative decisions would have remained intact regardless), and obviously I'm only speculating having not played it — but even as someone who's probably more open to unusual gameplay experiences than most I can't help but have a decidedly 'meh' feel about the game.

    Yeah I agree with an awful lot of your comments Thrik. It was an interesting u-turn in design intention through the life of BGT. Right after The Ship we started working on a few different prototypes for other game ideas, but The Ship 2 was one of the bigger ideas we shopped around to publishers. Our ideas for The Ship 2 took pretty much everything from the original game and - while simplifying a lot of the needless complexity as BGT has - also added lots more depth.

    Some of it was really really cool and I'm convinced would be a lot of fun. I don't wanna go into detail, as who knows, maybe one day Chris will get Outerlight back off the ground and The Ship 2 could happen, and I'd hate to let the cat outta the bag prematurely Suffice to say, while BGT made changes such as removing the "passenger" NPCs (technically they still exist as "extras" but the tweaked gameplay makes them less influential) and made identifying player names automatic (mostly in an effort to speed up the gameplay), The Ship 2 would have gone in the absolutely opposite direction. The intention was to make the process of stalking and killing your target (and most importantly, getting away with it!) an even more elaborate process than it was in the original game. Think of how it was in The Ship, but bringing in more elements of "Guess Who?" and "Cluedo" Oh man, thinking back on it now, I can't help but get quite excited about it again

    Easy to see why Ubi wanted us to go more in the direction of BGT though, even if our ideas for TS2 seemed to build a more interesting game for the "hardcore" TS players. The Ship has earned a somewhat cult status with PC gamers and has a good reputation with almost all who remember it, but the sales weren't fantastic. It was just too slow and complex for what people expected in an FPS, which lead to many people trying to play it as a deathmatch game and ruining it for not just themselves but everyone else on the server too. Speeding it up and simplifying it to try and appeal to a wider audience was a no brainer, and it's hard to fault Ubi for taking us in that direction.

    Ultimately, even as a simplified version of The Ship, if you play BGT with a group of like-minded players you'll still find a game that rewards those who play it in a very different way to your average FPS. It's definitely no simple deathmatch game, regardless of how the trailers (that Outerlight had no hand in making) make it appear - and that's a claim that even has merit when you look at the deathmatch game mode!

    Oooh, also, just noticed that we got a Eurogamer review today...

    http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010- ... iew?page=3

    We got a 6/10, which is lower than we'd hoped, but at least they are mostly positive aside from the legit criticisms levelled at the aiming/shooting. There is a lock-on if you click the right-stick in when aiming at somebody, but we didn't do a great job of making that obvious, and hitting people with some of the weapons WITHOUT using that can be quite a nightmare on the Xbox controller. It's not an issue on the PC, but that's not really an excuse, it just says we shoulda done a better job of making the aiming work well on Xbox!

    Ohhh I just noticed this is for XBLA? 400 Microsoft Points or 4 Squids on Steam? If this is still anything like TS (which it is apparently), it's a steal. That game was fun, maybe not for long, but I do have it in good memory.

    I hope you won't be mad at me for mentioning it in this thread, but as far as alternative multiplayer games go, that are more about deceiving and observing than firing shotguns, "Spy Party" looks interesting. It is definitely less casual than BGT by the looks of it and seems to be more in the vein of what TS2 could have been (or potentially become). It is still in development though.

    http://spyparty.com/

    Not at all! I agree, spy party does look very interesting. From what I've read it is a strictly 2 player offering (I'm sure the principle ideas could extend to more players though) but focuses entirely on "blending in" gameplay, similar but more elaborate than that The Ship used. BGT doesn't put as much emphasis on that, so if that was what drew you to The Ship it might leave you a little cold.

    I'm definitely interested to see Spy Party's take on things. My understanding is that it is quite rigid in how it plays out - 1 spy inside the building, 1 sniper outside, and no option for the sniper to do anything but watch and take 1 shot. It's extremely focused gameplay, which isn't a bad thing, but isn't quite what we wanted to go for with TS2 which was more open. I hope it does well when I comes out though, I love games that tread a different path to the norm

    Somebody gave me a discount key for the ubisoft store so I just got the game on PC for $2.50. Only after purchasing I found the game's activated on Steam, lol. The download on the Ubisoft store is just a pdf with instructions on how to install steam and activate the game.

    My Steam name is JSLljk, anyone on Mapcore who wants to play add me on Steam

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