This is directly from The Odyssey. Odysseus is lost at sea, and his wife back home is being forced to remarry...as soon as she is finished with the tapestry she is sewing to honor her "dead" husband. So every day she sews, and every night she undoes the work, guaranteeing zero consequences. Clever girl.
"so he did me a solid and quit" is a Bizarre thing to read in a PR piece lmfao. always love a chronicles of elyria video it's like getting a peek into a fantasy world XD
What exactly was Snipehunter doing there tho? Just buying Unity store assets at this point? His main quality sounds like it was convincing Caspian to give him a paycheck. I don't even think it was that much spin to say losing his last employee was more of a positive thing if the guy was doing sweet eff all.
I imagine it's not as funny for the folks who backed it to the tune of thousands to be a lord or lady or whatever, but... actually who am I kidding that makes it even funnier
If this guy put half the effort in the game development as he's putting in writing his convoluted updates, he would have an amazing game at this point.
As a developer I think it's funny they're using code checkins as a metric for "progress" In reality, you can create 100 commits of small changes such as text formatting, fixing typos, etc. You can also check in a huge amount of change in one single commit It really doesn't tell you anything about progress to look at the number of commits/check-ins. We'd have to see the content of those commits to really judge the amount progress. It's like using lines of code as a metric for anything. Not all changes/lines of code are equal.
As a game developer you can confirm that he could just export his Unity assets into Unreal but he just doesn't want to do it, right? I don't know if the systems put in place can be brought over to Unreal since they use two different programming languages and the two games are built from two different perspectives. It's such a blatant scam it's ridiculous.
Listening to this again, I think in CaspianSpeak, "implementing" is inventing an idea for a mechanic and "engineering" is drawing a flowchart of it. I don't believe he's actually written any code at all. That only comes when all the ideas are "implemented" and "engineered".
Caspian is a grandmaster of fantasy world building. The fantasy world he lives in where these State of Elyria updates are meaningful or have substance must be something else.
1:40 So in America a "snipe hunt" is like a wild goose chase or fool's errand, it's telling someone to go hunt for a bird that doesn't exist. I find this name EXTREMELY funny and incredibly relevant to the project itself. Having your only employee named "snipe hunter" might actually be a god tier meme.
"Snipe Hunter" lol. I mean it's funny like you mentioned cause it sounds like a screen name from 2003. But also it's a term I've heard before. A snipe hunt is like saying something is a wild goose chase. You can look for something but it's not there so you'll never find it, a snipe hunt. So it works on 2 levels
It's very possible to migrate from Unreal to Unity, but it'd be a complete pain that'd take up a lot of unnecessary time. Speaking as a Unity dev (now professionally) for over a decade, there has to be a very good reason to migrate from engine to engine. If the developers use NodeCanvas (or equivalent asset) , they can migrate Unreal's visual blueprint coding into Unity's visual scripting pipelines. Just migrating versions can be awful and introduce bugs. In most cases a migration would be just as fast as creating the world from scratch, so he's probably using as an excuse for taking up more time.
On the other hand, migrating from Unity to Unreal would probably be even more of a pain the arse. Especially if it comes to core components of gameplay-tech or even networking, if that'd be even feasible or possible.
"It's very possible to migrate from Unreal to Unity, but it'd be a complete pain that'd take up a lot of unnecessary time." Not really. I've been working with both engines for nearly over 10 years. This dev behind this game has no chance of success from C#->C++ and the entire engines approach to net code is vastly different. The only thing you could salvage here is art work which it looks like all he's done is raid the Unity Asset store for his 2hr day dream about the game he could build one day.
This guy really needs to run a campaign of DnD, feels like he really wants to make an entire universe when he could begin from a little town and work his way upwards.
@@SkyForceOne2 *_sniffffff_* is that the scent of copium I smell? Camelot unchained is also making visible progress and is playable. Doesn’t change the fact that they both failed to deliver what they promised in anything close to the time they promised it.
@@khatdubell and what about it? ofcourse SC wont be done in 2 years, they stacked the amount of things they wanted to add so high, nobody in their right mind would believe that. They build revolutionary technologies that no other dev studio is willing to try, ofcourse it will take long. It's very ignorant to get hung up on that " they didnt deliver in the 2 years they promised originally ". There is no point in that. Also Camelot's "progress" is nowhere near that of SC, which is kind of sad xD
He's keeping this going just so he can't get sued successfully and everyone knows it. He knows everyone knows it and the way he communicates clearly shows that.
It's not illegal to be incompetent, it's in kickstarter's terms. They do expect a developer to do their best to bring the plan to fruition, but they are very explicit that it's not a guarantee and you are not buying a product. This does create a certain grey area whether some games are scams or not, ultimately at the end of the day people still lost their money, but yeah chances of getting any of that money back (certainly if it's already been spent) is very slim indeed.
And this is why I have never backed a project. People can raise millions of dollars and run off with it and backers get left behind with no product. People really need to stop funding kickstarters and indigogo projects.
@@SoldMySoul45 I mean, there are great projects that have been completed and wouldn't have been without crowdfunding. And if I had the money there are some I would have supported. But you really need to research the people you are giving the money to and what they are trying to do and at a certain level be ok with that the project might not be completed. But let's not pretend that all crowdfunded projects are a bad idea.
If I could live with myself being a massive conman, I would be so wealthy. It is terrible that people got duped because this is a game I would have bought myself.
Caspian ''showing off'' KoE Is still one of the funniest video ever. You can feel the man Is backed into a corner and his lawyers are telling him to keep giving ''updates'' on his content.
Give Caspian premission to use your Videos with his own commentary on your points and allow him to release it on DVD / Streaming Platforms. Split it into seasons 1 , 2 , 3 etc. That way he will be able to raise funds to get CoE finished by 2070 - PS. I would buy it. Just as memorabilia ^^
Dude created a proof of concept and made bank selling hopes and dreams during a time when people were throwing around mad cash to fund every kickstarter and early access game. Its sadly a common theme among many of similar projects that keep stringing people along and keep those devs employed with a steady cashflow. A fool and their money are soon parted. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I worked for the largest credit union in North America for 5 and a half years, I quit June of 2022 because i felt my ethics had been brought to the brink of no return and I chose to not compromise my integrity. FI's are just as at fault for the PPP fraud here in the states because they did little to no due diligence in most cases to confirm that these employees even existed at these businesses. Not to mention how many people started a business online just so they could apply for it as well. In some cases FI's have been able to refuse forgiveness of these loans, so they've had a vested interest in turning away as few people as possible.
And even if they did exist they could just let them go and keep the money...if this never actually happened and I used this for the plot of movie people would laugh at it and call it unrealistic...ain't capitalism grand? 😁
@Memitim everytime there is a major disaster that affects us here in the states, bipartisan support in congress/senate comes out in full swing to approve emergency "systems" (we'll call it) that always seem to have built-in exploits. Funny how this keeps happening.
It is technically possible to write a program, game or otherwise, to be layered, in the case of games, a separate game and render engine that is not tied to the APIs of whatever underlying engine is used, eg Unreal vs Unity. I wrote arcade games back in the 80s - 90s on the PC platform and I can see the challenges for modern games while also seeing how the underlying game engine are fundamentally rather similar to a certain extent. Other than having to deal with a plethora of hardware devices and their drivers, writing an MMORPG is almost like writing an operating system in that each user + NPC are like processes in the OS and need to be managed and synchronised in their interaction. How do you think Windows eventually managed to pull off plug-and-play? They introduced a HAL layer and shipped with tons of device drivers that had to be written for every device and regress tested. Games don't have that nightmare, they have DirectX and engines like Unreal and Unity but it is still not a Hello World program. So unless this guy have a lot of experience writing games, MMORPG or otherwise, being able to write one with a 1-2 man team or even managing one is next to impossible.
there's no such thing as an game engine abstraction layer that is compatible with all game engines. It simply doesn't exist and it doesn't work that way for the simple reason they have their own design and abstractions.
@@Cenot4ph But just because a feature is currently unavailable it doesn't means it's technically impossible. I think there is just no need for this, at least not enough to have good programmers to spend their time on it. The big problem here is that Unreal is based on C++ and Unity on .Net, right? Ultimately, if you own the source code, it's possible to hire a programmer to convert it to almost any other language/engine.
@@Reth_Hard anything is possible under the right incentives. There are no incentives to do any of this. Engines are a business, they're not a compatibility layer
The difficulty of switching from one engine to another depends on how you've designed and coded your game, but also how much you've actually already done. In the best case, you can easily carry over all your non-code work, and already have a well designed code structure that you can relatively easily port into the new engine. In the worst case, you'll have to remake your entire game from scratch, even the non-code assets. The kicker is that "how much you've done"... If you've barely got any usable work, then you aren't losing much with an engine switch.
Not an expert in UE/Unity, but at a surface level, art assets / design decisions / data / back-end stuff "carrying over" makes sense. The back-end can be coded completely engine agnostic, and neither of the aforementioned assets _needs_ to be in an engine specific format. It all depends on how the game is implemented, though. For example, if design decisions were directly coded in Unity entities or code, those would have to be recreated, at least partially. But if they are e.g. in text files and loaded at runtime, all that needs to be recreated is the text file parser. _Something_ has to be recreated either way, but he didn't say that nothing needs to be recreated. So I think what he's saying is plausible, but it really depends on the actual implementation. Is it disingenuous...? I think he's definitely being careful with words here, e.g. he _doesn't_ say what _doesn't_ carry over, so that list could be much longer than the list of things that do. If that's strategic or just incidental, idk.
monthly updates? hmm with him being the sole developer? facinating. and opening discord? even more facinating so all his previous arguments about moderation costs money woah
Just fo let you know Kira: a Snipe Hunt is essentially the same thing as a wild goose chase. The modern equivalent would be sending the new apprentice for some tartan paint or donut holes. Take from that what you will...
Game Dev here, transferring assets from Unity to Unreal is actually really easy, provided it is the art/sound/animation assets. The code/mechanics however would need to be re-done as the engines operate on different programming languages, and that could potentially take ages. Do we know he has not switched to Unity for the main project itself? that would make more sense really if he has switched to Unity for the new game.
Good thing he did zero code whatsoever, so the transfer is really easy. Those $20 unity assets he bought and placed on a tiny map in 2 hours for his one and only video showing the "game" had nothing but assets in it, zero code. There is no game. There never was.
A snipe hunt is a term for a pointless search for a nonexistent thing, done as a prank. Sure feels obvious that Caspian’s only “employee” is a snipe hunter
I learnt something today thanks. By the prank bit do you mean the person has been told to look for whatever it is by someone knowing it doesn't exist & that's the prank? That is basically the same as going on a wild goose chase (a much older saying for nearly the same thing, tho no prank has to be involved).
@@snooganslestat2030 Yeah. As a younger kid in the Boy Scouts, the older scouts would round up some of the dumber kids and tell them that someone had seen a Snipe out in the woods, and would then describe some weird bird and get the kids all hyped up about it. Then, you turn them loose and take bets on how long it takes them to figure it out, and who the last kid to keep looking would be, that sort of thing
I think an MMORPG with god view large scale strategic instance battles would be interesting. But I don't think there are enough of us to justify what this guy is trying to pull.
RE Snipehunter. A snipe hunt is a type of practical joke or fool's errand, in existence in North America as early as the 1840s, in which an unsuspecting newcomer is duped into trying to catch a nonexistent animal called a snipe.
Taking code from Unity and putting it in Unreal is like taking a part of a japaneese engine and putting it in a BMW, perhaps it'll run, but for how long? or how well? The only thing that is more universal is 3D models because they can be exported and stuff.
It is possible to mchange the engine. But it isn't possible to just copy paste everything. It depends a lot how they build their game. If they used like Blueprints in UE, they would have to rewrite this into code. Or try using some converter plugin. Either way, it is not a simple copy/paste. Converting assets wouldn't be a simple copy paste either because both engines save them differently. Depending on the type of asset and source file you would have to reattach/reconfigure some things again (like textures/materials for models). It would be like having a partially built structure with lego blocks and having to build it again with differently colored and sometimes different pieces. Possible but I wouldn't want to do this myself.
The least difficult thing would be to use a standard data format to swing the data between the two programs, but you're right about needing two sets of assets for the two engines. It's definitely a problem.
I'm amazed the guy is still putting out updates. One thing - depending on where this guys business is incorporated (I don't really follow this game that close aside from pulling out the popcorn when Kira brings another video ;) - if it's in the US, if it can be shown that he pieced the corporate veil, he could be personally held liable - and I think one of the items that can do that is committing fraud (I'm not a lawyer, just from reading on liabilities of corps and llcs). It'll be interesting to see.
He's only putting out updates until the court case is closed. Then he will shut it all down and go silent. He's just keeping up appearances for the lawyer.
"I'm optimistic that the transition will be readily apparent" Optimistic? I'm not sure it could be any more apparent...that this game is never coming out.
Oh here's some context: "Snipe hunting" is a practical joke in rural U.S. (at least) where you tell the new kid you're going on a snipe hunt then get them to do something silly to catch the fictional "snipes". About as wholesome as hazing rituals could be. However, it is directly referencing deception/being deceived in your user name, so not sure which one this guy had in mind, but given the context I'd really like to know.
Imagine raising 8 million dollars to develop a game, and after years of "development" have nothing to show for it, while also swearing it's not a scam. And then going even further and "developing" ANOTHER game, claiming it will help "fund" the original project. At worst, people were scammed. At best, the management/developer(s)/whatever are the most incompetent in the gaming industry. In either case, it would shock me if they managed to raise ANY money from people after their history.
There is 0 cross over between unity and unreal besides the assets. Its a full rebuild. Completley different code base with a different engine library. Guess you could argue the server code can be used by both clients, so really only the clients would need rebuilding. Assets are easy enough to move over tho.
Snipehunter is a very appropriate name, does this guy exist? "A snipe hunt is a type of practical joke or fool's errand, in existence in North America as early as the 1840s, in which an unsuspecting newcomer is duped into trying to catch a nonexistent animal called a snipe."
So truth be told... after all these years the IDEA of Kingdoms of Elyria does kind of appeal to me. Maybe it wouldn't work in an MMO setting. But maybe on a smaller scale where you could have servers with a hundred or so people just living their best medieval lives. And that's what always makes me sad and angry when hearing the news of this game's mismanagement. If they had set the bar lower from the beginning with the prospect of multiplayer or mmo expansions along the way, they would've probably been able to get things going rather than all this shenanigans. That said... seeing how they changed games to a single-player setting and still didn't manage to get things started I'm left wondering if what I say would have happened. Regardless. The idea of the game does sound interesting. Starting your own settlement and slowly building out to something bigger. Like a Rimworld, Kenshi, or Dwarf Fortress kind of game
Someone explain to me how any company can say, “We WILL deliver the game by the end of 20XX”, miss it, and not have any consequences? I mean, how can any company say, “we will have X by Y” with such definite language and then not deliver and have no consequences?
Because like he said in the video, it isn't illegal to be incompetent, your punishment is generally the wrath of the shareholders and if you don't have shareholders then nobody really cares. Unless somebody can prove that you knew for a fact it wouldn't be done when you said and you deliberately misled shareholders, then no law has been broken.
Has there ever been any pictures released of soulbound studios? I find it hard to believe they actually have a venue that isnt just Caspian's basement.
Regarding the development side, I'm an amateur and not a coder but migrating between Unreal to Unity sounds highly impractical. Unreal, to my understanding, uses C++ and a node system; believe Unity is built using C++ and runs C++ code in the background but focuses on things being object-based so users and other systems are in C# or JavaScript. Suppose this could mean, if they had a good understanding on C++ code, a good coder might be able to get things transferred but as I said, even if you could it would be super impractical. That being said, I could be wrong and welcome any corrections as I am still learning myself.
Caspian is going to be late to his own funeral. Dude couldn't even make a blog post about making a blog post. Perhaps his first stretch goal should be "make a game".
It is possible to "port" from Unity to UE4, BUT, it's not easy at all. It's time consuming even if you have knowledge of UE4. The code isn't 1 to 1. Looking at CoE assets and KoE assets, they're not compatible at all so this kind of porting mentioned in the blog post is intentionally bad.
How was even 20 people a realistic development team for a game with that alleged scope? I'm personally grateful: every high profile kickstarter failure makes people more cynical about future projects, and everyone NEEDS to be much more cynical.
Even a team of 2000 with unlimited money couldn't deliver what he promised because it isn't technically possible, it's like he asked a 7 year old what his perfect game would be and then just put it on kickstarter...
A snipe hunt is a prank, a joke. It refers to a camping activity. An older person tricks a younger person to go off alone in the night with a bag and a stick, to try and catch a snipe. There are no snipes, its just meant to prank the youngster into going alone in the dark until they get scared. Not saying that one employees name is a clue, but it seems odd.
Yeah, the whole fucked up part of this is that, so long as they genuinely tried to make a product from the beginning, they didn't do anything illegal. Stupid af but the best we're gonna get, like you said, is a reveal of whether the finances were spent as intended. Also, AFAIK, it wasn't legal to get PPP loans then fire employees. Not all PPP loans were forgiven, some people are being asked to repay them in full since they used it for personal expenses, not business, or just misused them in some way. If his expenses are revealed in discovery and theres proof he misused the funds, then 100% he's going to be asked to repay them. (Someone posted in the Leopards Ate My Face subreddit a screenshot of a guy complaining about having to repay his PPP loan, and that no lawyer is touching it. It was pointed out that if his loan wasn't forgiven, and a lawyer isn't willing to do anything with it, then he HAD to have majorly fucked up.)
So, I worked on my company's PPP Loans and there is a whole audit that had to be filled out with backup to show how much your company spent on payroll. If you don't use enough of your PPP loan on payroll, you'd owe part of the loan back. Could he have lied somehow? Maybe but it wouldn't have been easy. Could he have flown under the radar... likely not either because the audits (and the loans) were provided through banks and the bank you got the loan from is potentially on the line as well. Always interesting stuff though.
I don't quite get his point of view: When Snipehunter was present, Caspian had to find other sources of revenue to pay his salary, but now that he's left, it's fine, he can focus solely on developing the game. Does Caspian not eat? Does he not have rent to pay (or fees at least)? How is he going to do all that if he only focuses on KoE?
Passing on this video bc your noise gate is aggravating my brain 😫 ambience turning to total silence every second or two makes commentary videos impossible to watch for me, still love you Kira
I don’t know that person. But a “snipe hunt” is like a joke where you send someone to look for something thats not real. Like if you send you little brother into the store from brake light fluid or you tell the new guy on the job site to ask someone for a “long weight” or a “board stretcher “ that’s a snipe hunt. So I don’t THINK (can’t be positive) that guys name had anything to do with FPS games or snipers or anything.
As someone who has coding and worked in unreal and unity I have several issues with this statement. 1. He stated ".Net" which is nothing really like any coding inside unity or unreal. 2. You cannot really transfer code from one engine to another it's like saying Spanish and English can understand each other as they are both latin based languages 3. I'm not a coding rockstar but been in the field long enough to be called a senior developer and this guy is NUTS. He got caught with his hands in the cookie jar.
Kira is going to have to pass down this duty to his kids one day
Bruh I'm dead
I'll be committing the whole series into a human skin bound necronomicon
@@kirareacts >=]
@@kirareacts As you should.
@@kirareacts and it won't be enough to track star citizen development
Caspian sitting down by his computer to get back into development: "Okey, so, where were we? Ah yes, fog of war..."
Poor guy got lost in the fog of war 😢
This is directly from The Odyssey. Odysseus is lost at sea, and his wife back home is being forced to remarry...as soon as she is finished with the tapestry she is sewing to honor her "dead" husband. So every day she sews, and every night she undoes the work, guaranteeing zero consequences. Clever girl.
That actually takes effort, this guy just do spreadsheet and write fictional blog everyday
"so he did me a solid and quit" is a Bizarre thing to read in a PR piece lmfao. always love a chronicles of elyria video it's like getting a peek into a fantasy world XD
The actual game is the games they play with the backers and trying to dodge lawsuits lol
What exactly was Snipehunter doing there tho? Just buying Unity store assets at this point? His main quality sounds like it was convincing Caspian to give him a paycheck. I don't even think it was that much spin to say losing his last employee was more of a positive thing if the guy was doing sweet eff all.
The Chronicles of "the Chronicles of Elyria" is more entertaining than the game could ever be.
😂 real talk
Can you stop reposting the same joke over and over again, do you need satisfaction on the web that much?
I imagine it's not as funny for the folks who backed it to the tune of thousands to be a lord or lady or whatever, but... actually who am I kidding that makes it even funnier
@@TchSktch I am sorry your lordship
And cheaper for the audience
If this guy put half the effort in the game development as he's putting in writing his convoluted updates, he would have an amazing game at this point.
As a developer I think it's funny they're using code checkins as a metric for "progress"
In reality, you can create 100 commits of small changes such as text formatting, fixing typos, etc. You can also check in a huge amount of change in one single commit
It really doesn't tell you anything about progress to look at the number of commits/check-ins. We'd have to see the content of those commits to really judge the amount progress. It's like using lines of code as a metric for anything. Not all changes/lines of code are equal.
As a game developer you can confirm that he could just export his Unity assets into Unreal but he just doesn't want to do it, right? I don't know if the systems put in place can be brought over to Unreal since they use two different programming languages and the two games are built from two different perspectives. It's such a blatant scam it's ridiculous.
Thanks to Kira; Elyria has kept me more entertained than most modern games.
Maybe you should play different games, as entertaining as Kira is.
Listening to this again, I think in CaspianSpeak, "implementing" is inventing an idea for a mechanic and "engineering" is drawing a flowchart of it. I don't believe he's actually written any code at all. That only comes when all the ideas are "implemented" and "engineered".
Caspian is a grandmaster of fantasy world building. The fantasy world he lives in where these State of Elyria updates are meaningful or have substance must be something else.
1:40 So in America a "snipe hunt" is like a wild goose chase or fool's errand, it's telling someone to go hunt for a bird that doesn't exist. I find this name EXTREMELY funny and incredibly relevant to the project itself. Having your only employee named "snipe hunter" might actually be a god tier meme.
"Snipe Hunter" lol. I mean it's funny like you mentioned cause it sounds like a screen name from 2003. But also it's a term I've heard before. A snipe hunt is like saying something is a wild goose chase. You can look for something but it's not there so you'll never find it, a snipe hunt. So it works on 2 levels
And here I though it was a reference to the yugioh card...
My first thought too. But it’s too easy 😂 I heard it in the movie Up.
It's very possible to migrate from Unreal to Unity, but it'd be a complete pain that'd take up a lot of unnecessary time. Speaking as a Unity dev (now professionally) for over a decade, there has to be a very good reason to migrate from engine to engine. If the developers use NodeCanvas (or equivalent asset) , they can migrate Unreal's visual blueprint coding into Unity's visual scripting pipelines. Just migrating versions can be awful and introduce bugs. In most cases a migration would be just as fast as creating the world from scratch, so he's probably using as an excuse for taking up more time.
On the other hand, migrating from Unity to Unreal would probably be even more of a pain the arse. Especially if it comes to core components of gameplay-tech or even networking, if that'd be even feasible or possible.
"It's very possible to migrate from Unreal to Unity, but it'd be a complete pain that'd take up a lot of unnecessary time."
Not really. I've been working with both engines for nearly over 10 years. This dev behind this game has no chance of success from C#->C++ and the entire engines approach to net code is vastly different. The only thing you could salvage here is art work which it looks like all he's done is raid the Unity Asset store for his 2hr day dream about the game he could build one day.
if they have anything to migrate, other than assets. they were using default player controller, etc.
Your mistake is assuming he's migrating anything besides the $20 unity assets he bought off the marketplace. There is no code, so there's no bugs.
This guy really needs to run a campaign of DnD, feels like he really wants to make an entire universe when he could begin from a little town and work his way upwards.
Earth2 and Elyria are the gifts the keep on giving
Don't forget Camelot unchained and star citizen.
War crimes of the 21st century.
@@khatdubell Star Citizen is playable and making visible progress. No comparison to the rest.
@@SkyForceOne2 *_sniffffff_* is that the scent of copium I smell?
Camelot unchained is also making visible progress and is playable.
Doesn’t change the fact that they both failed to deliver what they promised in anything close to the time they promised it.
@@khatdubell and what about it? ofcourse SC wont be done in 2 years, they stacked the amount of things they wanted to add so high, nobody in their right mind would believe that. They build revolutionary technologies that no other dev studio is willing to try, ofcourse it will take long. It's very ignorant to get hung up on that " they didnt deliver in the 2 years they promised originally ". There is no point in that. Also Camelot's "progress" is nowhere near that of SC, which is kind of sad xD
@@SkyForceOne2 Yep, that's the fresh scent of copium.
Its ok, its another 10 years you might be willing to admit the truth.
It must be really really hard to draft a letter filled entirely with lies to legally cover your ass every fiscal quarter.
He's keeping this going just so he can't get sued successfully and everyone knows it. He knows everyone knows it and the way he communicates clearly shows that.
It's not illegal to be incompetent, it's in kickstarter's terms. They do expect a developer to do their best to bring the plan to fruition, but they are very explicit that it's not a guarantee and you are not buying a product. This does create a certain grey area whether some games are scams or not, ultimately at the end of the day people still lost their money, but yeah chances of getting any of that money back (certainly if it's already been spent) is very slim indeed.
And this is why I have never backed a project. People can raise millions of dollars and run off with it and backers get left behind with no product. People really need to stop funding kickstarters and indigogo projects.
@@mushyroom9569 Which is why I was speaking generally to the question without naming specific cases.
@@SoldMySoul45 I mean, there are great projects that have been completed and wouldn't have been without crowdfunding. And if I had the money there are some I would have supported. But you really need to research the people you are giving the money to and what they are trying to do and at a certain level be ok with that the project might not be completed. But let's not pretend that all crowdfunded projects are a bad idea.
If I could live with myself being a massive conman, I would be so wealthy. It is terrible that people got duped because this is a game I would have bought myself.
Caspian ''showing off'' KoE Is still one of the funniest video ever. You can feel the man Is backed into a corner and his lawyers are telling him to keep giving ''updates'' on his content.
He could probably just get Chat GPT to do it for him at this point.
Give Caspian premission to use your Videos with his own commentary on your points and allow him to release it on DVD / Streaming Platforms. Split it into seasons 1 , 2 , 3 etc. That way he will be able to raise funds to get CoE finished by 2070 - PS. I would buy it. Just as memorabilia ^^
Would it come with a collector ceramic plate?
Dude created a proof of concept and made bank selling hopes and dreams during a time when people were throwing around mad cash to fund every kickstarter and early access game. Its sadly a common theme among many of similar projects that keep stringing people along and keep those devs employed with a steady cashflow. A fool and their money are soon parted. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
**Cough **_starcitizen_** cough**
@@RuSosan *cough* Chris Roberts *cough*
@@RuSosan SC is actually a product. Unfinished, unpolished and unoptimised, yes.. but it's a product.
Basically you described a con artist.
Elyria is actually a hooker in real life
I worked for the largest credit union in North America for 5 and a half years, I quit June of 2022 because i felt my ethics had been brought to the brink of no return and I chose to not compromise my integrity. FI's are just as at fault for the PPP fraud here in the states because they did little to no due diligence in most cases to confirm that these employees even existed at these businesses. Not to mention how many people started a business online just so they could apply for it as well. In some cases FI's have been able to refuse forgiveness of these loans, so they've had a vested interest in turning away as few people as possible.
And even if they did exist they could just let them go and keep the money...if this never actually happened and I used this for the plot of movie people would laugh at it and call it unrealistic...ain't capitalism grand? 😁
@Memitim everytime there is a major disaster that affects us here in the states, bipartisan support in congress/senate comes out in full swing to approve emergency "systems" (we'll call it) that always seem to have built-in exploits. Funny how this keeps happening.
At this point I feel like I owe the developers at least 60$ because this has kept me more entertained than any AAA game ever has.
It is technically possible to write a program, game or otherwise, to be layered, in the case of games, a separate game and render engine that is not tied to the APIs of whatever underlying engine is used, eg Unreal vs Unity.
I wrote arcade games back in the 80s - 90s on the PC platform and I can see the challenges for modern games while also seeing how the underlying game engine are fundamentally rather similar to a certain extent.
Other than having to deal with a plethora of hardware devices and their drivers, writing an MMORPG is almost like writing an operating system in that each user + NPC are like processes in the OS and need to be managed and synchronised in their interaction.
How do you think Windows eventually managed to pull off plug-and-play? They introduced a HAL layer and shipped with tons of device drivers that had to be written for every device and regress tested. Games don't have that nightmare, they have DirectX and engines like Unreal and Unity but it is still not a Hello World program.
So unless this guy have a lot of experience writing games, MMORPG or otherwise, being able to write one with a 1-2 man team or even managing one is next to impossible.
there's no such thing as an game engine abstraction layer that is compatible with all game engines. It simply doesn't exist and it doesn't work that way for the simple reason they have their own design and abstractions.
A very long post on something we already knew (but thanks anyway): Caspian is full of sheit.
@@Cenot4ph
But just because a feature is currently unavailable it doesn't means it's technically impossible. I think there is just no need for this, at least not enough to have good programmers to spend their time on it. The big problem here is that Unreal is based on C++ and Unity on .Net, right? Ultimately, if you own the source code, it's possible to hire a programmer to convert it to almost any other language/engine.
@@Reth_Hard anything is possible under the right incentives. There are no incentives to do any of this.
Engines are a business, they're not a compatibility layer
I'm happy you're settled a bit and able to create content. I hope all is well and that you're feeling ok.
at this point even if he stumbled himself into making an actual game, it probably won't be big enough to recover anything of his expenses.
The difficulty of switching from one engine to another depends on how you've designed and coded your game, but also how much you've actually already done. In the best case, you can easily carry over all your non-code work, and already have a well designed code structure that you can relatively easily port into the new engine. In the worst case, you'll have to remake your entire game from scratch, even the non-code assets. The kicker is that "how much you've done"... If you've barely got any usable work, then you aren't losing much with an engine switch.
Not an expert in UE/Unity, but at a surface level, art assets / design decisions / data / back-end stuff "carrying over" makes sense. The back-end can be coded completely engine agnostic, and neither of the aforementioned assets _needs_ to be in an engine specific format. It all depends on how the game is implemented, though. For example, if design decisions were directly coded in Unity entities or code, those would have to be recreated, at least partially. But if they are e.g. in text files and loaded at runtime, all that needs to be recreated is the text file parser. _Something_ has to be recreated either way, but he didn't say that nothing needs to be recreated. So I think what he's saying is plausible, but it really depends on the actual implementation. Is it disingenuous...? I think he's definitely being careful with words here, e.g. he _doesn't_ say what _doesn't_ carry over, so that list could be much longer than the list of things that do. If that's strategic or just incidental, idk.
monthly updates? hmm with him being the sole developer? facinating. and opening discord? even more facinating so all his previous arguments about moderation costs money woah
Why do his blogposts always sound like me trying to describe to my high school teacher the homework I havent actually started yet.
Ah yes, blessed by the gold tier content.
Just fo let you know Kira: a Snipe Hunt is essentially the same thing as a wild goose chase. The modern equivalent would be sending the new apprentice for some tartan paint or donut holes. Take from that what you will...
Game Dev here, transferring assets from Unity to Unreal is actually really easy, provided it is the art/sound/animation assets. The code/mechanics however would need to be re-done as the engines operate on different programming languages, and that could potentially take ages. Do we know he has not switched to Unity for the main project itself? that would make more sense really if he has switched to Unity for the new game.
Good thing he did zero code whatsoever, so the transfer is really easy. Those $20 unity assets he bought and placed on a tiny map in 2 hours for his one and only video showing the "game" had nothing but assets in it, zero code. There is no game. There never was.
Elyria "Fog of war simulator 2023" is going to be the best.
A snipe hunt is a term for a pointless search for a nonexistent thing, done as a prank. Sure feels obvious that Caspian’s only “employee” is a snipe hunter
I learnt something today thanks. By the prank bit do you mean the person has been told to look for whatever it is by someone knowing it doesn't exist & that's the prank?
That is basically the same as going on a wild goose chase (a much older saying for nearly the same thing, tho no prank has to be involved).
@@snooganslestat2030 Yeah. As a younger kid in the Boy Scouts, the older scouts would round up some of the dumber kids and tell them that someone had seen a Snipe out in the woods, and would then describe some weird bird and get the kids all hyped up about it. Then, you turn them loose and take bets on how long it takes them to figure it out, and who the last kid to keep looking would be, that sort of thing
Lawyer: How many keywords you want in this blog post?
kaspian: Yes.
9:46 you forgot to add "..not your friend.." 😝 It's great to see more content from you again
Like before watching crew checking in. Kira talking about Chronicles of Elyra is like a warm blanket on a cold day
I think an MMORPG with god view large scale strategic instance battles would be interesting. But I don't think there are enough of us to justify what this guy is trying to pull.
RE Snipehunter.
A snipe hunt is a type of practical joke or fool's errand, in existence in North America as early as the 1840s, in which an unsuspecting newcomer is duped into trying to catch a nonexistent animal called a snipe.
Taking code from Unity and putting it in Unreal is like taking a part of a japaneese engine and putting it in a BMW,
perhaps it'll run, but for how long? or how well?
The only thing that is more universal is 3D models because they can be exported and stuff.
It's not possible to just throw C# code from Unity into Unreal and magically convert it into C++ code and be done that's for sure.
It is possible to mchange the engine. But it isn't possible to just copy paste everything.
It depends a lot how they build their game. If they used like Blueprints in UE, they would have to rewrite this into code. Or try using some converter plugin. Either way, it is not a simple copy/paste.
Converting assets wouldn't be a simple copy paste either because both engines save them differently. Depending on the type of asset and source file you would have to reattach/reconfigure some things again (like textures/materials for models).
It would be like having a partially built structure with lego blocks and having to build it again with differently colored and sometimes different pieces. Possible but I wouldn't want to do this myself.
The least difficult thing would be to use a standard data format to swing the data between the two programs, but you're right about needing two sets of assets for the two engines. It's definitely a problem.
the answer is acid.
every time i hear the discription of the game i 'm reminded of wakfu
that mmo has also many of the things he wants
Yes, thank you! Was wondering if I was the only one...
I'm amazed the guy is still putting out updates. One thing - depending on where this guys business is incorporated (I don't really follow this game that close aside from pulling out the popcorn when Kira brings another video ;) - if it's in the US, if it can be shown that he pieced the corporate veil, he could be personally held liable - and I think one of the items that can do that is committing fraud (I'm not a lawyer, just from reading on liabilities of corps and llcs). It'll be interesting to see.
He's only putting out updates until the court case is closed. Then he will shut it all down and go silent. He's just keeping up appearances for the lawyer.
I always forget this game exists until it randomly sends me emails.
Good thing I never spent a dime on it.
COE : the gift that keeps on giving
"I'm optimistic that the transition will be readily apparent" Optimistic? I'm not sure it could be any more apparent...that this game is never coming out.
Oh here's some context: "Snipe hunting" is a practical joke in rural U.S. (at least) where you tell the new kid you're going on a snipe hunt then get them to do something silly to catch the fictional "snipes". About as wholesome as hazing rituals could be. However, it is directly referencing deception/being deceived in your user name, so not sure which one this guy had in mind, but given the context I'd really like to know.
Imagine raising 8 million dollars to develop a game, and after years of "development" have nothing to show for it, while also swearing it's not a scam. And then going even further and "developing" ANOTHER game, claiming it will help "fund" the original project.
At worst, people were scammed. At best, the management/developer(s)/whatever are the most incompetent in the gaming industry.
In either case, it would shock me if they managed to raise ANY money from people after their history.
There is 0 cross over between unity and unreal besides the assets.
Its a full rebuild. Completley different code base with a different engine library.
Guess you could argue the server code can be used by both clients, so really only the clients would need rebuilding.
Assets are easy enough to move over tho.
Yeeeeees! I have been fiending for more CoE. Thanks Kira! ❤️
Snipehunter is a very appropriate name, does this guy exist? "A snipe hunt is a type of practical joke or fool's errand, in existence in North America as early as the 1840s, in which an unsuspecting newcomer is duped into trying to catch a nonexistent animal called a snipe."
So truth be told... after all these years the IDEA of Kingdoms of Elyria does kind of appeal to me. Maybe it wouldn't work in an MMO setting. But maybe on a smaller scale where you could have servers with a hundred or so people just living their best medieval lives. And that's what always makes me sad and angry when hearing the news of this game's mismanagement. If they had set the bar lower from the beginning with the prospect of multiplayer or mmo expansions along the way, they would've probably been able to get things going rather than all this shenanigans. That said... seeing how they changed games to a single-player setting and still didn't manage to get things started I'm left wondering if what I say would have happened.
Regardless. The idea of the game does sound interesting. Starting your own settlement and slowly building out to something bigger. Like a Rimworld, Kenshi, or Dwarf Fortress kind of game
Someone explain to me how any company can say, “We WILL deliver the game by the end of 20XX”, miss it, and not have any consequences?
I mean, how can any company say, “we will have X by Y” with such definite language and then not deliver and have no consequences?
Because like he said in the video, it isn't illegal to be incompetent, your punishment is generally the wrath of the shareholders and if you don't have shareholders then nobody really cares. Unless somebody can prove that you knew for a fact it wouldn't be done when you said and you deliberately misled shareholders, then no law has been broken.
I'm shocked he didn't mention the fog of war again.
I think the only Chronicles of Elyria content that will ever be released is Kira Vids
Has there ever been any pictures released of soulbound studios? I find it hard to believe they actually have a venue that isnt just Caspian's basement.
Regarding the development side, I'm an amateur and not a coder but migrating between Unreal to Unity sounds highly impractical. Unreal, to my understanding, uses C++ and a node system; believe Unity is built using C++ and runs C++ code in the background but focuses on things being object-based so users and other systems are in C# or JavaScript. Suppose this could mean, if they had a good understanding on C++ code, a good coder might be able to get things transferred but as I said, even if you could it would be super impractical. That being said, I could be wrong and welcome any corrections as I am still learning myself.
Some people build RC airplanes, others go hiking. Caspian's lifelong hobby is 'developing' a game that will never see release
I think hes trying to get in the data market game.
Aren't there two guys that have been developing a game together for like 40 years or something?
the game that was supposed to tide people over during the delay for Chronicles is now being split up and delayed. *chefs kiss*
I thought that was a wave cap for a second 😂
Caspian is going to be late to his own funeral. Dude couldn't even make a blog post about making a blog post. Perhaps his first stretch goal should be "make a game".
I'm glad I never joined any of the crowd funding efforts for games, none of the ones I would have supported turned out to be anything but a let down.
His only employee quit, keeps using "we". Lol
'not a financial advisor' , you made my day on that one 🤣
I have hentai images saved to my phone several times larger than any of Caspian's ‘flow-charts’. Definitely means he's going to deliver...
It is possible to "port" from Unity to UE4, BUT, it's not easy at all. It's time consuming even if you have knowledge of UE4. The code isn't 1 to 1. Looking at CoE assets and KoE assets, they're not compatible at all so this kind of porting mentioned in the blog post is intentionally bad.
The implementation of the PPP loans is a video for another TH-cam channel that would probably rival the story of CoE.
...the second alpha test? But the first didn't have anything in it? Man, by that logic I have run fifteen alpha tests for my game.
"Babe wake up", Kira just posted another Chronicles of Elyria video
TLDR : i like to write fairy tails / gib me more money.
Does this mean he's going to cut out the Fog of War now?
How was even 20 people a realistic development team for a game with that alleged scope?
I'm personally grateful: every high profile kickstarter failure makes people more cynical about future projects, and everyone NEEDS to be much more cynical.
Even a team of 2000 with unlimited money couldn't deliver what he promised because it isn't technically possible, it's like he asked a 7 year old what his perfect game would be and then just put it on kickstarter...
@@memitim171 What about it is not technically possible?
The man, the myth, the legend. Glad to see you back!
The game is a
Superb
Creation
Affecting
Millions
A snipe hunt is a prank, a joke. It refers to a camping activity. An older person tricks a younger person to go off alone in the night with a bag and a stick, to try and catch a snipe. There are no snipes, its just meant to prank the youngster into going alone in the dark until they get scared.
Not saying that one employees name is a clue, but it seems odd.
Yeah, the whole fucked up part of this is that, so long as they genuinely tried to make a product from the beginning, they didn't do anything illegal. Stupid af but the best we're gonna get, like you said, is a reveal of whether the finances were spent as intended.
Also, AFAIK, it wasn't legal to get PPP loans then fire employees. Not all PPP loans were forgiven, some people are being asked to repay them in full since they used it for personal expenses, not business, or just misused them in some way. If his expenses are revealed in discovery and theres proof he misused the funds, then 100% he's going to be asked to repay them.
(Someone posted in the Leopards Ate My Face subreddit a screenshot of a guy complaining about having to repay his PPP loan, and that no lawyer is touching it. It was pointed out that if his loan wasn't forgiven, and a lawyer isn't willing to do anything with it, then he HAD to have majorly fucked up.)
The main difference between Caspian and a manure spreader is the manure spreader will run out of bullsh!t.
So, I worked on my company's PPP Loans and there is a whole audit that had to be filled out with backup to show how much your company spent on payroll. If you don't use enough of your PPP loan on payroll, you'd owe part of the loan back. Could he have lied somehow? Maybe but it wouldn't have been easy. Could he have flown under the radar... likely not either because the audits (and the loans) were provided through banks and the bank you got the loan from is potentially on the line as well. Always interesting stuff though.
Man, feels good to get my daily kira video while eating dinner. Missed you man
If the lawsuit gets dropped, we back into the abyss.
I literally made a "gasp" sound when I saw another Elyria video.
I'm so glad you back bro
I don't quite get his point of view: When Snipehunter was present, Caspian had to find other sources of revenue to pay his salary, but now that he's left, it's fine, he can focus solely on developing the game. Does Caspian not eat? Does he not have rent to pay (or fees at least)? How is he going to do all that if he only focuses on KoE?
Chronic Lies of "Elyia" - I see what you did there.
"many years of development" good opening joke for the video. pretty sure there was bare none.
Chronicles of a Fever Dream
Passing on this video bc your noise gate is aggravating my brain 😫 ambience turning to total silence every second or two makes commentary videos impossible to watch for me, still love you Kira
I don’t know that person. But a “snipe hunt” is like a joke where you send someone to look for something thats not real. Like if you send you little brother into the store from brake light fluid or you tell the new guy on the job site to ask someone for a “long weight” or a “board stretcher “ that’s a snipe hunt. So I don’t THINK (can’t be positive) that guys name had anything to do with FPS games or snipers or anything.
Can't wait for february 13th and the much anticipated fog of war update. My money is on "we've made progress but it still doesn't work".
As someone who has coding and worked in unreal and unity I have several issues with this statement.
1. He stated ".Net" which is nothing really like any coding inside unity or unreal.
2. You cannot really transfer code from one engine to another it's like saying Spanish and English can understand each other as they are both latin based languages
3. I'm not a coding rockstar but been in the field long enough to be called a senior developer and this guy is NUTS. He got caught with his hands in the cookie jar.
Oh! Caspian is back. The prder of the universe has been restored.
"KOE is totally finished but we can't release because the launcher isn't ready -- ETA 2027"
Wait, 80 check ins in a quarter? There should be 8 a day! my god...
This is why you don't start with your dream MMO game
New chronicles of Elyria video for my lunch break 😆 today is a good day
I have one takeaway from all these scamware products people may want to consider: only pay for finished/published games.