Unity LOK: Rebirth [v0.1.8.0 Test] [The Tribe Devs]

[lonelywolfy]

I have to say, I'm kinda curious about all this drama thing, but that's probably because I just like to be nosy.
If abelius did that much work, why doesn't he made his own game with all of that ?
What was the issue that began all that drama ?

 

[D4n0w4r]

I have to say, I'm kinda curious about all this drama thing, but that's probably because I just like to be nosy.
If abelius did that much work, why doesn't he made his own game with all of that ?
What was the issue that began all that drama ?

You have to remember, Abelius was only the programmer in this project. Kuja holds the rights to all of the art assets. This is why I wish I knew what Kuja himself thinks about all this, but he has remained rather tightlipped throughout the years. When the LoK project got reset, Abelius attempted to strike out on his own with a game about brainwashing high school girls, and Kuja was supplying the graphics once more. That project fell apart once Kuja severed ties since, once again, he's the one who owns the art.

A similar issue occurred awhile back with Breeding Season. When SPurple pulled out of that project, he took all of his art assets with him (along with a huge chunk of the game's funding), causing the whole thing to collapse overnight.

 

[chopolander]

Wow, this reminds me of when you were a kid, you'd get angry with your friends and say "the ball is mine, so I'll take it".

And meanwhile those who have paid to watch the game are left with nothing.

 

[Phanatic]

You have to remember, Abelius was only the programmer in this project.

Just as a note: Abelius wasn't "just a programmer". He also managed the entirety of game design, animations, story, writing, dialogues - everything that wasn't art, was managed by Abelius. Basically he was taking everything that Kuja drew and made all of that work together as a single cohesive world. He was a 1-man-army.
Even though such approach is not a healthy one (nor for game, nor for developer himself), I can only respect him for the amount of work he has invested in the game that is LoK0.8.
He deserves much more credit and respect than common people think.
Which is why it saddens me deeply of how he was handled by people he used to adress as friends/co-workers.

 

[dragonsix6969]

all it reminded me about of poor Indie studios Bethesda and ubisoft

 

[Porn_Jesus]

It's dead, abandon ship and stop feeding people who delude themselves with success that is build on the work of a previous person who is clever enough to go on with life instead of launching a revenge party.

Unless money comes free for the working man, your choice.~

 

[lonelywolfy]

Just as a note: Abelius wasn't "just a programmer". He also managed the entirety of game design, animations, story, writing, dialogues - everything that wasn't art, was managed by Abelius. Basically he was taking everything that Kuja drew and made all of that work together as a single cohesive world. He was a 1-man-army.
Even though such approach is not a healthy one (nor for game, nor for developer himself), I can only respect him for the amount of work he has invested in the game that is LoK0.8.
He deserves much more credit and respect than common people think.
Which is why it saddens me deeply of how he was handled by people he used to adress as friends/co-workers.

Not that I really doubt about that saying, because I don't know much, But it's not the first time an indie game changes artist because of reasons. If he did all that, he should just have changes the asset by searching a new artist and keep the game rolling...

 

[chopolander]

If he did all that, he should just have changes the asset by searching a new artist and keep the game rolling...

Or the new game should have started from scratch, not taking advantage of the success of the previous one.

 

[MightyAltroll]

Damn, it's been almost two years already, since "the event..."

And not a single change. The freakingly long essays, the self-serving theories, the plain lies, and damage control PR... it's all alive and well.

But you know? It's okay.

After the second time I suffered the consequences of taking for granted Kuja had any measure of ethical behavior or empathy for someone he called "a friend", and basically made me, a father of two, lose yet another year of work over his whims, I finally understood I needed to take the exit for good.

But when I come here, as a lurker, and see the essays, the never-ending arguments, and the same "reasons" repeated all over again after... lol... 24 freaking months since you started to conspire to take over the project, you know what I feel...?

Amusement.

At how you're still convinced my project needed something so radical as a reboot.

At how 2000+ people on Patreon seemed to not have any problem at all.

At how people forgot about me in a heartbeat. Because animation, programming, script writing, game design, and the other small roles I filled in were NOTHING compared to drawing.

At how you were completely convinced of calling "professionals" the extremely young undergraduates you hired to replace my multiple roles.

At how you reverted design decisions I argued against on day one, made by one of those "professionals". Obviously. I was the guy that "failed" in making a good game, right?

At how that "professional" jumped ship when his "professional reputation" was at stake (sorry, didn't you know you were making porn?).

At how you fool yourself thinking your initial character concepts and one-liner dialogues made you the main writer for the previous project.

At how you are basically riding on the success of my work, but still appropriated it because the previous game is still on Patreon "just in case someone wants to play that inferior version", but it's okay because you and Kuja were part of it, right...?

At how the previous thread has more reviews and stars than this one, even when people started giving it one-star reviews when you took over.

At how I made a demo and eight versions in the same time you took to do... sorry, what have you done yet?

At how your reasoning for that lack of content is "Yeah, but we have eight angles of motion and a prettier UI".

At how, ironically, I probably won't have the same success when I launch my game, and I'll need to return to a "normal" job to feed my family, while you're living your dream of making an eternal WIP AAA RPG with some porn.

And best of all: at how you are completely convinced you're "the good guys" of this story. Nothing like validating isolation in #the_council, uh? xD

Yeah, amusement. I know it sounds like I'm still mad, but you should see the smirk on my face.

Because all this stuff is mental. A two year long show of truth-bending gymnastics, so surreal that I don't want to fight it anymore. Not even inside my head.

So, just thinking, Vlad, that you've forced upon yourself this burden of trying to justify your poor progress on an uphill battle YOU chose yourself to fight in the first place... I pity you. Seriously.

And me? I was naive. I was betrayed. Two times. End of the story. Nice lesson to learn even though I'm old enough to have known better.

This was just to say my final piece, now that I'm truly free from you guys, and go on with my life.

Now you can write your own essay dismounting every single line of mine. I'm sure you will, having the eternity at your disposal. Not my case.

You were never betrayed by us you conceited asshole. You betrayed yourself. Why do you think Kuja cut ties with you? Because you're an asshole. I tried MULTIPLE times to befriend you. I offered to help you for free on your high school porn project. Kuja was actively helping you.

You spent all that time going off on trips to find love in the Philippines while the project stagnated. You told Kuja he couldn't use half the assets he had made, or create new things. You held control over everything with an iron fist.

You know what the worst part about you is, Abelius? It isn't the fact that you're a control freak with laughably unrealistic expectations of people. It isn't that your pride got in the way of you working with us again, after we went out of our way to make room on our team for you, and ALL took pay cuts in order to pay you.

No, it's the fact that you continuously stew in your own hatred, you hold a grudge for Kuja and I this entire time. You blame me for everything that happened to you when it is entirely your own fault.

How many times did I try to repair the bridge between us? How many times have I tried to reinvite you to the project? You tell me sob stories constantly to make me feel bad, you pissed off Kuja and asked me to reconcile between you two. No. Swallow your fucking pride, Abelius, and get over your grudge.

And don't you dare belittle my work on LOK:R. I made all of your characters except your gary stu of a Chieftain. I'm done trying to mend bridges with you Abel, I'm going to start telling people of how much of a greedy dick you are. About how much money you were making on that project to spend it going on vacations, while your team was suffering. So enjoy the fact that you've pissed off Kuja, and now me.




You know Abelius, do you like this? This feeling in your gut when you push drama to the forefront? When you try to destroy each other's reputations? Do you like pissing off your friends? I thought we were past it, I thought we could be friends again, I tried to keep you happy and would regularly check in on you, and offer help when I could. Yet here you are starting this shit again, here you are holding this grudge again. You said you were done with social media after all the trolls kept attacking you, that you couldn't handle it, yet, here you are again. I'm starting to think you like ruining friendships, because I'm not an easy person to anger. I lied about the real reasons why we restarted the project to keep your reputation intact as much as possible. I only told half truths about why we got rid of you, but the truth is you're the reason why the restart happened. You. What did you honestly expect?

But keep blaming me for all of your problems Abelius. I'm used to it.

 

[MightyAltroll]

I wish I knew what Kuja himself thinks about all this, but he has remained rather tightlipped throughout the years.

You can ask him yourself. I sent him the link to this, because I feel Abel has crossed yet another line.

You can accuse me of being a bad writer, you can accuse me of being a bad dev, but there is one thing I am not, and that is greedy. I care about this project, so much so that I fell into a depression when Abelius first got rid of me because apparently 1/10th of the patreon cut ($1,000 per month) was far too much for a nearly full-time writer. Perhaps I cared about my characters too much. Perhaps what I should have done was walk away and find something else to do. But no, Kuja and I talked about what we wanted to do for the game, things that Abelius wouldn't allow because he controlled everything.

We wanted to expand the team, find a proper programmer that could code something as simple as a fucking sprint key, which exceeded Abelius' abilities. But Abelius said no, because that would have split his precious income far too much, so he wouldn't be able to go on more trips to the fucking Philippines.

And before you ask, Abelius fired me because I wasn't doing 'enough' to 'justify' the $1,000 per month, he started making weird demands of me. He wanted me to make an entire outline of the game, but he held control over the story and everything regarding it entirely. How does one write for something, only for him to say "No" every 5 seconds? There was only ever going to be the Razorclaw species. The monkeys were my idea and I had to fight for that idea. Sure Abelius is very fast at making animations, very fast at producing cheaply made mechanics, and very fast at writing shit tons of terrible dialogue for characters like Cenvir, but he lacks ideas. That is why he paid me, and when he felt he could do everything himself, he got rid of me. Then he had to come back to me when he ran out of ideas.

And if you fucking think, there was going to be a 'slave route', then you're naive as all sin. There was never going to be a slave route.

 

[whatever4096]

Jesus, I'm just stepping back and trying to take in all this drama surrounding a porn game starring a cartoon fox.

 

[MightyAltroll]

Jesus, I'm just stepping back and trying to take in all this drama surrounding a porn game starring a cartoon fox.

Yeah well, I don't really want drama. I don't like coming on here to watch people endlessly complain. I just want to make a good porn fox game. But for some people on here, the drama is more entertaining than any game. An unfortunate reality.

 

[D4n0w4r]

Make the game then

 

[whatever4096]

Yeah well, I don't really want drama. I don't like coming on here to watch people endlessly complain.

Welcome to making a video game.

 

[MightyAltroll]

Make the game then

I'm on it, boss.

Welcome to making a video game.

I legitimately have a lot to learn still about this industry, honestly. The more I deal with shit the more I understand things I never quite understood from an outsider's perspective.

 

[MyLittleTrolly]

Well, finally, the developers are talking openly. And, oddly enough, this story is banal, and similar to many others.

The best way out of this situation is to continue working, because the work done is much better than any words.

 

[kuja027]

Damn, it's been almost two years already, since "the event..."

And not a single change. The freakingly long essays, the self-serving theories, the plain lies, and damage control PR... it's all alive and well.

But you know? It's okay.

After the second time I suffered the consequences of taking for granted Kuja had any measure of ethical behavior or empathy for someone he called "a friend", and basically made me, a father of two, lose yet another year of work over his whims, I finally understood I needed to take the exit for good.

But when I come here, as a lurker, and see the essays, the never-ending arguments, and the same "reasons" repeated all over again after... lol... 24 freaking months since you started to conspire to take over the project, you know what I feel...?

Amusement.

At how you're still convinced my project needed something so radical as a reboot.

At how 2000+ people on Patreon seemed to not have any problem at all.

At how people forgot about me in a heartbeat. Because animation, programming, script writing, game design, and the other small roles I filled in were NOTHING compared to drawing.

At how you were completely convinced of calling "professionals" the extremely young undergraduates you hired to replace my multiple roles.

At how you reverted design decisions I argued against on day one, made by one of those "professionals". Obviously. I was the guy that "failed" in making a good game, right?

At how that "professional" jumped ship when his "professional reputation" was at stake (sorry, didn't you know you were making porn?).

At how you fool yourself thinking your initial character concepts and one-liner dialogues made you the main writer for the previous project.

At how you are basically riding on the success of my work, but still appropriated it because the previous game is still on Patreon "just in case someone wants to play that inferior version", but it's okay because you and Kuja were part of it, right...?

At how the previous thread has more reviews and stars than this one, even when people started giving it one-star reviews when you took over.

At how I made a demo and eight versions in the same time you took to do... sorry, what have you done yet?

At how your reasoning for that lack of content is "Yeah, but we have eight angles of motion and a prettier UI".

At how, ironically, I probably won't have the same success when I launch my game, and I'll need to return to a "normal" job to feed my family, while you're living your dream of making an eternal WIP AAA RPG with some porn.

And best of all: at how you are completely convinced you're "the good guys" of this story. Nothing like validating isolation in #the_council, uh? xD

Yeah, amusement. I know it sounds like I'm still mad, but you should see the smirk on my face.

Because all this stuff is mental. A two year long show of truth-bending gymnastics, so surreal that I don't want to fight it anymore. Not even inside my head.

So, just thinking, Vlad, that you've forced upon yourself this burden of trying to justify your poor progress on an uphill battle YOU chose yourself to fight in the first place... I pity you. Seriously.

And me? I was naive. I was betrayed. Two times. End of the story. Nice lesson to learn even though I'm old enough to have known better.

This was just to say my final piece, now that I'm truly free from you guys, and go on with my life.

Now you can write your own essay dismounting every single line of mine. I'm sure you will, having the eternity at your disposal. Not my case.

I understand yours and some people's concern but we're delivering and posting new art and animations every week. The scope is deliberate bigger than the old version, and at this moment we are still looking to find even more capable animators that can help us with these complex animations (because it's a huge task, no other 2D game is trying to do something similar: complex characters + complex customization + various angles = extremely complex animation).

Now, can you drop the betraying act? You were never kicked out. You decided to leave on your own because I decided to find more people to help us with the project and split the share with everyone involved (because I had dozens of new characters, equipment, clothing and items that could not be used because you were unable to implement them. Every new character I made was a no-no because according to you it could not be implemented because it contained new hair or clothing pieces that were not just recolors of the ones we already had ~ anyone noticed how most characters were just a recolor? ~ so the project could not advance properly), so you got angry because you wouldn't get 2/3 of the income anymore. I could of just expanded the project we had, but not only it was a technical nightmare, I decided to re-do the entire thing/project because of that and out of respect for your hard work and to not get involved with you anymore, since you were very explicit about me not being able to use your work after you decided to leave and this IS common knowledge, please don't distort it.

You are a very talented man, and I say this often. On the old project/version you were the hand behind 50-65% of everything (coding and animating all together is not an easy task) and also very determined, which is great for any type of project.

But I'm tired of your attacks. I never once, made this personal. I wanted you on the team. Vlad wanted you on the team. Everyone wanted you on the team but you didn't cared. How many times we came back to you trying to convince you to join us? Three? Four? Sometimes you even joined back to help us but on your own words, you couldn't "afford being told what to do by others" (More skilled animators in this specific case, also, Abel's own words), which, was just a matter of ego.

The thing is, you don't care about the project at all and please stop pretending you do. I'm tired of your hush-hush attacks and I'm begging you to leave us alone with that (again). I thought delivering one year of free assets for your new project was enough to settle things down and make up for the fact that you were not in the project anymore (even thought that was your decision), but seems not. And yet, after offending me the way you did until, after one year, I left your new project, you DARE say you got betrayed twice? The nerves you have to lie that much. Grow up. The door was still open if you wanted to join us in this project and you freaking knew that, but not anymore, because the share would of still be split between the involved and that's something you cannot accept.

Everyone is working hard to deliver and the art and coding areas are in front of the animation area in terms of releasing, yes, but that's the only thing we are missing at the moment and it's solely because the models are 30 times more complex than the old ones and YOU know all that and still come here with this type of post. We already have almost all of the art of the original game finished. We just need to speed up the entire animation process (and we have two magnificent animators on board working their arses off) , but again, model complexity (watch Mike's stream and you'll get a hint).

 

[Cerneu]

Just as a note: Abelius wasn't "just a programmer". He also managed the entirety of game design, animations, story, writing, dialogues - everything that wasn't art, was managed by Abelius.

Sounds more like he was a control freak. In that case, I'm not surprised he's no longer part of the team.

 

[kuja027]

Sounds more like he was a control freak. In that case, I'm not surprised he's no longer part of the team.

Indeed. We initially started a a three-person team with a proper coder but Abelius assured me a third person wasn't needed and that he could do everything by himself.

 

[MyLittleTrolly]

I understand yours and some people's concern but we're delivering and posting new art and animations every week. The scope is deliberate bigger than the old version, and at this moment we are still looking to find even more capable animators that can help us with these complex animations (because it's a huge task, no other 2D game is trying to do something similar: complex characters + complex customization + various angles = extremely complex animation).

Now, can you drop the betraying act? You were never kicked out. You decided to leave on your own because I decided to find more people to help us with the project and split the share with everyone involved (because I had dozens of new characters, equipment, clothing and items that could not be used because you were unable to implement them. Every new character I made was a no-no because according to you it could not be implemented because it contained new hair or clothing pieces that were not just recolors of the ones we already had ~ anyone noticed how most characters were just a recolor? ~ so the project could not advance properly), so you got angry because you wouldn't get 2/3 of the income anymore. I could of just expanded the project we had, but not only it was a technical nightmare, I decided to re-do the entire thing/project because of that and out of respect for your hard work and to not get involved with you anymore, since you were very explicit about me not being able to use your work after you decided to leave and this IS common knowledge, please don't distort it.

You are a very talented man, and I say this often. On the old project/version you were the hand behind 50-65% of everything (coding and animating all together is not an easy task) and also very determined, which is great for any type of project.

But I'm tired of your attacks. I never once, made this personal. I wanted you on the team. Vlad wanted you on the team. Everyone wanted you on the team but you didn't cared. How many times we came back to you trying to convince you to join us? Three? Four? Sometimes you even joined back to help us but on your own words, you couldn't "afford being told what to do by others" (More skilled animators in this specific case, also, Abel's own words), which, was just a matter of ego.

The thing is, you don't care about the project at all and please stop pretending you do. I'm tired of your hush-hush attacks and I'm begging you to leave us alone with that (again). I thought delivering one year of free assets for your new project was enough to settle things down and make up for the fact that you were not in the project anymore (even thought that was your decision), but seems not. And yet, after offending me the way you did until, after one year, I left your new project, you DARE say you got betrayed twice? The nerves you have to lie that much. Grow up. The door was still open if you wanted to join us in this project and you freaking knew that, but not anymore, because the share would of still be split between the involved and that's something you cannot accept.

Everyone is working hard to deliver and the art and coding areas are in front of the animation area in terms of releasing, yes, but that's the only thing we are missing at the moment and it's solely because the models are 30 times more complex than the old ones and YOU know all that and still come here with this type of post. We already have almost all of the art of the original game finished. We just need to speed up the entire animation process (and we have two magnificent animators on board working their arses off) , but again, model complexity (watch Mike's stream and you'll get a hint).

Perhaps - your team should have explained this situation 2 years ago, so that in the end - everything did not come to the banal throwing insults at each other ( and this explanation could have been made much more delicate, and would be present somewhere on your site, because, even after 2 years - not a small part of users still do not fully understand - why you decided to restart your game )

And of course, if everyone wants to be honest, many people would need to reconsider the assessments given to your game here. Although the project is rather crude, it clearly deserves more than 1 star.