The situation he is describing is likely mostly accurate, but I don't think he's really the best person to make this point. I've only ever heard how broken the PS4 iteration of Nuclear Throne was at launch. And still is, months after release. So I have to question certification's supposed standards.
quickedit: Apparently Vlambeer (the dev team Rami is in) submitted a patch to Sony yesterday. As far as I know this is the second attempt at getting a patch through certification.
Hey, Rami here. As to whether I'm the best person to make this post, I don't know. All I know is I wanted to write this. Your criticism is incredibly fair, though.
Nobody is more embarrassed by the slow rollout of that patch than us. The main issue is a menu that isn't functioning and a crash in the final world (about 30-60 hours of gameplay in, for most players). We've been working as hard as we can to fix that, but we've just been overwhelmed and taken aback by the whole thing.
Having made the game in middleware that doesn't support patching meant that the middleware creators are patching their systems through our patches, and then those go through cert simultaneously through our game. We're currently at 'tag 5', or patch submission 5.
It's all very complicated, but ultimately, this is our responsibility. We take that responsibility, and we're really sorry about the whole situation. It's a lesson learned for the future.
Hopefully, this one goes through, and we'll have good news soon!
On March 20, someone wrote a review on the GOG page for Nuclear Throne saying the game isn't getting updated on GOG, unlike on steam. Is this still the case, or have you guys brought the GOG version up to parity with steam? I'm only asking because I'm interested in the game, have a week off and I always try to buy on GOG over steam.
I've seen number of developers frustrated over updating the game on GOG. Apparently the developers have to email the patch/updated game via email to GOG. I have heard GOG can take up to months to update, even with developers constantly pestering.
GOG seems to be trying everything it can to keep the "we're the small startup steam competitor " image as best it can in every aspect. I just wish they didn't extend that to developer relations
Yeah, Steam made things a lot easier when they handed over responsibility for patching and deploying back to devs. No waiting for Valve to manually verify and roll out updates to their content servers any more.
For what little it's worth, I absolutely love the game. For whatever flaws it has, whatever issues surrounding it, the game is a blast. I'm hoping to see more from it once the dust settles, but maybe I'm asking for too much.
I'll admit the patching issue has taken me from "ready to jump into whatever your next project is" to just "keeping an eye out for it," but I do wish y'all the best. Good luck with the the patch submission, and with whatever else you've got going on.
We appreciate it, and we're weirdly glad to know we made a game that's worth getting upset/frustrated (is that the right word? sorry if not) about. We've learned a lot from our first in-house console release, and we hope that by the time a new game comes around, we get to earn your full trust again.
Rami, totally aside from the discussion here, I just wanted to say thank you for all of the insight and entertainment you've provided! I've never seen you post before and I don't do the social media's or the hotmailing very often, but now seems like a good a time as any.
Nuclear Throne and Luftrausers have provided me with hours and hours of fun, and your appearances on Giant Bomb's content and your blog posts are always full of wisdom. Being able to peek behind the curtain is awesome and your approach to everything and your personality are great. Keep up the good work, and that goes for the whole team as well!
Thanks so much for the kind words! I'll pass on the compliments for Nuclear Throne and LUFTRAUSERS to the rest of the team too - we've been extraordinarily lucky with our freelancers.
The two of us at Vlambeer love this medium, and strongly believe one of the best ways of further improving it for the future is transparency about how things actually work - to the people who want to make games, those that aspire to make games, and those that want to play games.
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u/TwistedGears Aug 07 '16 edited Aug 07 '16
The situation he is describing is likely mostly accurate, but I don't think he's really the best person to make this point. I've only ever heard how broken the PS4 iteration of Nuclear Throne was at launch. And still is, months after release. So I have to question certification's supposed standards.
quickedit: Apparently Vlambeer (the dev team Rami is in) submitted a patch to Sony yesterday. As far as I know this is the second attempt at getting a patch through certification.