Mythruna

I did a brief search but came up nil.

Does anyone know how many ACTIVE members are on this forum (not just a total because I'm sure many register and drop off the face of the earth as is quite common in forums).

How many people have downloaded the game? Or donated?

If I missed a stats link somewhere please help me find it:)

Thanks much,

The "active members" is not easy to discern.

The most recent version of the game has been downloaded about 3000 times once I adjust for duplicate clicks.  The stand-alone server has been downloaded over 300 times... though I don't put much stock in that number since the previous release had over 500 downloads before someone finally told me it was busted. :P  I could show the stats on the download page but it is misleading since the raw counts consider every click to be a download and some users seem to have to click it multiple times.  To get accurate counts, I download the logs and dedupe on source IP.

There have only been 9 donators so far.  You are a member of an exclusive club at this point. :)

Did you ever think about jumping on kickstarter.com?

A good marketing strategy could give you the boost to really get more financial support. It could be the difference between success and failure in many cases. Idk just thoughts.

Maybe get in with the humblebundles? I know that doesn't make serious money BUT getting the name out there even more WILL make money in the long run. Just to get the ball rolling.

Kickstarter is an all or nothing thing.  You either raise all the funds or you don't get them.  I cannot think of an amount that I could raise that would let me quit my job while actually being achievable.  On the other hand, without significant life changes, I can keep working on the game indefinitely... and most of the big changes are happening in the next six months, anyway.


I haven't even listed myself on indiedb yet.  I still get about 50% "minecraft hate" on the "open internet" so I wait for a few more distinguishing features.  There is a reason why I don't make my own "game play" videos yet... they tend to take a pretty good beating.  Though at least those winds are shifting a bit.

There are a few features that will be pretty distinctive and then I will put together some teaser videos to spread around.

Still, for an unadvertised game, I think 3000 downloads in a week is pretty good.

You have a very good point about Kickstarter.com - when you state it like that its clear that it isn't really for this situation.

I believe the winds will change about the Minecraft hate. I mean I believe that people will stop seeing "Minecraft clones" and (very soon) see that a new genre has birthed with all kinds of games that on the surface 'look' like Minecraft but are in fact very different.

I believe you even said that this game is (obviously) not based on mining. I mean its something that can be done, but is not the main focus.

People need to stop seeing the voxel concept as 'Minecraft brand' and start seeing it as a (for lack of a better word) graphics set or starting point for a fully editable gaming world.

I will think on this topic more. I still think that somewhere somehow there must be a marketing approach that can help.

Early on, the first problem the gaming community is facing is that at the offset, 'Minecraft clones' are exactly that: an attempt to simply copy EXACTLY the classic mining game. I mean everything from Fortresscraft to Roblox. Its just a copy with NO ORIGINAL CONTENT. This dynamic is working against you - because you are not doing this, but are pigeon-holed in with them... At least to people that don't take the time to look into it.

At the end of the day, if you produce a quality product, peoples minds and attitudes will change. The only thing I would be concerned with is if other teams are doing the same thing.

Well, and right now Mythruna is essentially exactly like Minecraft creative because it's just a test engine.  The best way for me to test my engine was to let players put whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted.

When "game mode" is built out enough that it is the default mode, then things start to get clearer.

But on top of that, a few other features will resonate as "different" when they are included in the stock game, I hope. 

...when I can show a generated city with a thriving NPC population.

...when I can show a video of chopping a tree down... like hack hack hack... "Timber!" as it falls over sideways.

...when I can shoot a video of a house burning down and collapsing under its own weight as the flames sap its supporting structure.

...when there is a bobbing sailing ship at the docks that you can talk to the captain or purser and book passage.

...when you can forge your own sword in any shape you want, etc.

...creating your own magic based devices.

...glimpses of the seven races of Mythruna.

Some of these are not too far off and can be nice 30 second glimpses into "what's different".  Short and to the point.

I have a written story-board for a trailer.  I'm considering turning it into an simple mostly hand-drawn animatic when I have more concept art completed.  Then filling in the sections that get implemented as they come online.  I just have to see where the work takes me.

Everything seems reasonable to me except the following. Please consider I am a complete novice when it comes to coding. And I know this sounds ignorant but the following items just sort of sound a bit of a reach:


...when I can show a video of chopping a tree down... like hack hack hack... "Timber!" as it falls over sideways.

...when I can shoot a video of a house burning down and collapsing under its own weight as the flames sap its supporting structure.

It is funny that you mention the tree falling because the weird floating tree physics is one of the first things I noticed in Minecraft. Its almost like a trademark quark of Minecraft. Because of this, I think you should push for the tree physics. It will seperate you out even more so.

Other than that everything else sounds reasonable. A well-edited trailer released on youtube could go a long way.

You mean "bit of a reach" as in "too hard to do"?

The physics engine can already handle falling over trees... it's only determining that a set of blocks is a tree that is tricky.

Actually, fire is even easier from a "collapsing building" perspective.

The physics engine is quite far along in this case.  It misses efficient networking and it's the object->object interaction that is unstable.  Object->world is about as good as it will get and could certainly handle these cases.  A tree falling over into a burning house might be hard if the house is already collapsing. :)

Physics will probably get included in the game without object->object interaction at first.  The rest is still pretty cool.

That is reassuring to know. That would really be an amazing addition that would set this game apart.

Finally I have to ask. What is your take on piracy? Specifically people illegally downloading and using programs that are normally to be paid for.

It is just an interesting topic that I like to hear different developers opinions on.

I think I've written snippets about this elsewhere but maybe not all together.

First, there are two levels of piracy.  Level 1 is the normal stuff we think about.  Some dude pirates the game for his own use or to pass around to his friends.  Level 2 piracy is where someone sells illegal copies of the game.

Level 1 piracy is bad but mostly because of inertia.  The mistake is believing that a pirate is a missed customer.  It's not like stealing a physical item that not only deprives you of that sale but the real sale of the physical item to a paying customer.  There is no tangible product here and an extra download costs me basically nothing.  So it's only the initial missed sale that is in discussion.

Pirates don't really buy games and you will be unlikely to convert them to customers because of that.  Moreover, the harder you make a game to pirate the more of a challenge it will be... the pirating becomes the game to them.  I don't really want to play that game.

But, if level 1 piracy is rampant then you risk cases where your game is easier to pirate than it is to buy and play.  Games with heavy DRM, or that require "phoning home", etc. are more ripe for potentially legitimate customers trying out a cracked version that they found somewhere.  So that's the inertia I was talking about.

In my opinion, a game on one side needs to make sure that it is as easy as possible for honest, law-abiding players to pay for that game.  And on the other side, it needs to make it inconvenient to casually pirate it... either through value-added accounts or just the most basic copy protection.  For the average user, it needs to be easier to buy than to pirate it and it needs to be reasonably priced.  Mythruna will go with the "value-added" account approach.  With luck, it's also relatively uninteresting to pirate and so you won't find a cracked version of your game on every warez site in the world.

Level 2 piracy is outright theft and covered by any number of real criminal laws including fraud, misrepresentation, etc..  These are the easier ones to prosecute because there is a money trail... well, if it's done in a country where the legal system can handle such things.  (And if not, you are in a similar situation to level 1 piracy anyway.  Someone buying your game for pennies isn't going to be able to afford a many dollar price tag.)

This post from Wolfire games really resonated with me:
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy

It nicely stated (with numbers in some cases) the way I've felt about this for a long time.

Interesting stuff.

Waay back on the original topic, there is the Members tab at the top, along with Home, Profile, etc. If you want more info, you can look at the statistics page. the link is at the bottom of the Home tab, and is labeled 'more stats'.

Yeah I read the link. That seems the most logical approach to statistically dealing with piracy. I honestly hate DRM. As was mentioned I believe it only hurts the honest guys.

Well, I personally do not have any good opinions besides "Copy the minecraft one" where to play online you need to buy, but if you just wanna try feel free to pirate it and play the SP... but I secretly hoping someone can give Paul a better idea :D

My jaw was dropped reading this... literally. The tree bit really hits home with me. Levitating treetops have always been a pet peeve of mine. (On my MC server it is a bannable offense to leave half cut floating trees :P )

Thats funny that you made it a bannable offense LOL. BUT it makes sense and is a good rule. I HATE having floating trees.

You don't necesarilly have to quit your job.    Suppose kickstarter got you $600,000.  You could hire developers to help you make progress quicker.  Just a thought.

Problem with Kickstarter is that it's all or nothing.

It's free publicity.  Plus if you don't get the full amount, you have lost nothing.

hmm.. I didn't even know this post existed..
Those people who have posted on here never get on..

I'm not looking for publicity at this point.

Also, if I can't quit my job then 100% of my free time would be spent managing others.  I'd never get to code again except fixing the stuff they break.

I didn't mean to sound harsh.  I go over this stuff in my head almost every day... so I have quick answers.

No one is more frustrated with the development speed than I am.  I can guarantee that.

Family is more important than Mythruna. If we neee to wait, we'll wait. :)

You know what would be very good for publicity purposes? if you could make a "glimpse into the future of mythruna" video and put it on youtube and your main site. that way you can at least have an example of what will make this game unique. even just one example at a time.

on another note, keep doing what you need to do at home. everyone here understands and no one is pressuring you. and if it seems like that then let me clarify, we are just excited :)

That would be useful for showing to people that say this is just a clone of Minecraft.

also if he does a huge publicity push now...before stuff is actually implemented...who's to say someone from somewhere else doesnt go..."oh crap thats a great idea....lets add that to what we are working on" and then it would appear that paul has just been taking ideas from others...even though its the opposite.

if things get implemented first, and then goes public with those things, then people will see them and see it as an original, not just a copy

If you got $600k, you could hire a project manager.  They are easy to find, and you could spend all of your non day job time coding.  They could have you work on all the stuff you like working on, and the other developers could do all the grunt work fleshing out your ideas (or whatever it is you don't like doing).  Money can buy you whatever you want.  This isn't so unrealistic.  Mythruna, as it stands, is an incredible achievement.   Lots of people would be willing to get behind it.  Myself included.  I've seen some games on kickstarter get over $3 million.  Your game's potential is better than theirs.    Here's the thing, you can ask for $600,000.  Lots of projects get over-funded.  You could wind up still getting $3 million.  Then my friend your day job could be Mythruna.   That would be cool.  

You would have to hire good people, really good developers who wouldn't break things but could help you take Mythruna places you never imagined.  

but what if he likes to do the coding himself (which if you are a programmer, then sometimes you see that additional people mean additional problems) having the additional funds would help yes, but money CANT buy you everything, sometimes money just creates more problems. if you wish to help, why not donate now?

To get that kind of money, I would have to produce a video showing more than just another Minecraft clone.  That's a pretty huge time sink.

And that amount of money doesn't go as far as one might think.  I'd be lucky to afford a staff of three for a year with that (two decent devs and a project manager).  There is also the delay that comes from hiring decent folks... standard metric is 2-3 months.  Given that the situation is risky it's even tougher to find the right people... and bad hires are worse than no hires at all.  That amount would more than find my own time for a year or more but then I run into kind of a weird catch 22 where demand and expectations will still exceed what I can probably deliver.

Organic growth is slow and frustrating but it has it's perks.  The game succeeds and grows on its merits and there is little in the way of risk other than my time and a minimal amount of capital.  The downsides are that it's slow.

Also, people can already donate and already get perks.  It's just not an all or nothing-bandwagon thing.


After alpha (or closer to alpha), I may do a kickstarter to fund getting the real mod store done.  I will have a decent trailer video by then and can more easily speak to a lot of features.  Making decent web sites is not my favorite thing and there are many professionals who would do a better job, anyway.  Also, it's perfect for community funding because for some long period of time, the community will benefit from it more than Mythruna/Simsilica will from any tiny percentage I scape off.  The community gets a game-integrated place to explore and download free and $$ content from other community members, a way for server operators to easily charge subscriptions, etc... and Simsilica gets a tiny admin fee from the transactions.  It has to reach critical mass before it becomes a nice revenue stream to fund game development but from the first day it's useful to the community.  Also, if the project doesn't get funded then it's a good sign that the community isn't there for the feature anyway.

By then I will have a better idea of what that after-market will look like and the risks involved, too.  I can then better estimate the amount of community funding required versus the potential of securing other funding... though I really think it's perfect for 100% community funding.  At any rate, the perceived growth rate will aid in planning for staff and development.  All questions we'll have to wait and see on.

This is a concern.  Opening the kimono (so to speak) too soon has other issues, too.  A feature promised and not delivered is 100x more damaging than never having mentioned or delivered the feature.

Also, from a motivation standpoint, features already heavily discussed are that much harder to implement.  I don't get to ride the "fresh idea" wave anymore. :)  (see other posts on this subject of doers and talk-about-doers)

With organic growth you get to met the wonderful people who fill up your forum, if you just splattered the game out everywhere you might have people try it and then just wait untill its fully finished anyway so it could be tedious publicizing the game :p

Indeed.  I've met lots of nice people and it's interesting to see who comes and stays versus comes and leaves... and sometimes it's nice to see someone come back after a bunch of months totally off the grid.

I've also developed a thicker skin than when I started regarding "haters".  No amount of rationalization can properly prepare you for that... it's something you have to experience and "get over".

Meh, haters gonna hate.

I say take a peek, constructive criticism is always apreciated, hate, just skip over it ;) and maybe apply a suspension for being evil lol

When I first went public with the project, one bad hate comment could wipe out the good feeling of 10 nice comments.  Now, I'm just like "meh".

At some point, I fantasized about including the hate comments as quotes on the game box (hypothetically).  Most of them were so poorly worded that I thought it would be kind of funny.  "Tis game is teh dumbest. -Duduman400" or whatever.  That helped a lot.

Some of my favorites were the ones that started out telling me that I was just like minecraft before pointing out all of the things I did worse than minecraft because they were better or whatever.  "This is exactly like Minecraft except for these 10 significant differences..."  ;)  "The textures are too detailed, it doesn't look like minecraft."  "There are too many block types, it's confusing." ok, maybe now I'm making things up... :)

Anyway, enough of my griping. :)

I could read you walls of text all day.. :) I have total respect in you (positive comment)

Paul's hatin' on his own game. Hehe. Paul sounds a bit like my older brother. He has his type of humor.

Well as long as there are haters, it means you're making a difference.

So, embrace the haters :D

So are you saying that if I start posting hate comments, you'll quote me on whatever possible game packaging there might be in the future?

LOL.  No, I'm over it.  It was a coping mechanism. :)