Civitas

[warpus]

Civitas - Establish the perfect city! Terraform the land, plan your city & develop it. Moddable, community driven, DRM free, Single/Multi Player!

That is what is promised on their kickstarter page and if you're not excited by that, then this thread isn't for you.

This game doesn't even exist yet and might not ever, but I figured it deserved its own thread. I am contributing to the project and am going to be checking progress closely, so I might as well report back, and the SimCity thread would not really be appropriate for such updates.

Here's what the lead developer posted a couple hours ago on kickstarter:

Thanks again everyone for the patience and support. We will be updating the front page of the kickstarter with photos of the team, and information to go along with it. We are not the prettiest bunch, so brace yourselves lol.
Also we will be launching the website for the game today too, with the PayPal links, and to start to get the beta area for people who will be taking part in it. We will also be polling people on that site for opinions on things such as graphic style and such.

Thank you all again, and we look forward to the opportunity to build Civitas with your support.

The website hasn't launched yet, but the more I read what these guys are writing, the more I think that they are geeks (and of course game developers) who want to be the next Notch, or whatever. I think these guys are both probably big fans of simcity, love sandbox games like that, where you can just screw around and do whatever, and yeah, in a way wouldn't mind being the next Sid Meier. Hey, it might be a long shot, but if they end up creating *the* next city building game, the one that perhaps usurps sim city, then .. yeah.. that's very appealing, as a developer. Imagine the potential legacy! Not to mention the ability to have a giant gaming community behind you in terms of beta testers, ideas, models, mods.. It's a very attractive prospect. I'm a programmer and the projects that I enjoy working on the most are the interesting ones. Building a city building game would be incredibly interesting. I would consider divorcing the woman of my dreams to be on the team that builds the next standard setting city building game. Maybe

The website is supposed to launch soon, so I will keep you guys updated. A lot of people aren't fully convinced that these guys are legit until that launches and there's more information, and I certainly reserve some judgement myself. I just can't help it but be a bit excited

 

[AlpsStranger]

Hey, best of luck to them. I might even donate.

The more the merrier, right? Bring on the games

 

[warpus]

First update - They now have a facebook page up and the latest is that the website is "just minutes away".

This isn't much, as the facebook page really doesn't have much. The lead developer says that they're pulling an all nighter putting up a website, forums, updates, more info, etc. So we'll see.. I guess this isn't much of an update.

 

[warpus]

Well, I'm officially concerned. They put up a website, but this is all it is. Just a frontpage built using bootstrap, which is very easy to set up.

Then, the lead dev posted this:

We are now working on getting the front page of this kickstarter revamped. We have the website and the facebook page up and going, so now we can focus our attention back on getting more game play demos and information out on here.

We have a few of the bios for the team members about finished, so check back tomorrow, when we do the big update to the front page, to finally start meeting some of the team.

If this is a scam the only way they are going to make it work is if they keep stringing us along for 23 more days without really releasing anything. There's no way we're dumb enough to hold out that long.. I am willing to give them a couple days of "duh we're PR n00bs, we should have had a page up with our bios and other info right at the beginning of this" leeway, but they really need to put up something substantial in the next 2-3 days or they are going to lose a lot of the momentum they got. Plus they might make me look like an idiot for starting this thread and having blind faith in them, which would totally result in a liam neeson type mission to destroy everyone involved

edit: I can't sleep, so I did some digging. Found a guy on reddit who claims to be one of the developers

No, it is not a scam. We are a real team that are willing to drive this title to release. Some of us simply cannot publicly come out right now due to current employment. This is true for me also, yes it reeks of shadiness/scam but it is what it is (I hate that saying).

No this game will NOT be ‘completed’ in 9 months, but we will have the base game playable and have the mod community in full swing helping out (we are going to have to leverage a modding community, being so small). We are stuck between a rock and a hard place seeing as most of us have current full time jobs that we are not willing to leave for a project like this unless we know it is going somewhere (and that means money, sorry but most of us have family’s etc and leaving stable employment for something that doesn’t have a big enough base is just too risky).
Now you're thinking "but that’s a cash grab!!!". Again, this is completely false. AFAIK NONE of us expect to get rich out of game development, I'm a software engineer in a completely different field, I just happen to have been involved in the homebrew game scene especially in my teenage years (10 years ago) and I have worked on a few mobile games. (One I'm about to release that's a bit of a homage to Baku Baku if anyone knows what that is. A modern take on that.)

If we don't make funding (and honestly it doesn't look like we will), we will continue to work on this project in our spare time. The only difference is the speed of development, this will drag it out a lot longer but if that's the case we could look into perhaps open sourcing it etc but we will cross that bridge when we get to it. That's it. We aren't threatening to not pursue this game if we don't get funded, this is a game that WE want to make and see, it's not an elaborate scheme to jump on Sim Citys failure. (If you can even call it a failure, I believe outside the server issues a lot of people love it, which is good because WE loved Sim City too! (the classics).
I'm not really sure what else I can say right now (I'm just a developer). Once I wrap up my current project (this month) I'll be in full swing on Civitas. It's pretty crazy the spectrum of feedback we have been getting, thanks to everyone who has supported us, those who are calling us scammers is a little upsetting (we are small and what we work on is personal to us but I do understand where they are coming from). It does feel a little bit like we can't win though, ie it's a cash grab from one person, then you have another person telling you "it can't be done" with that low of a project fund. It's all complete nonsense/speculation. All I know is we can deliver a modern take on the classic city building simulation, and we will have it open up for modding. That is all we are promising right now, if it has success we will take it further (I have some pretty cool ideas that I would love to get in on future revisions but I will talk about that in a non criticism thread lol).

I am sorry to anyone who still has questions. Those who outright deny us don't have to pay any attention, there are plenty of alternate city simulations out there right now and some of them are great. If it makes you feel better you can wait until the project moves further along, there’s no harm in that.

I will try arranging an AMA with the rest of the team so that we can answer more questions. I would love to respond to each and everyone right now but again it’s one of those tough to balance situations, we have full time jobs so any work we do right now is outside that, and then we have to try respond to criticism/backers etc which takes away from real progress so we are trying to strike a balance there.

Thanks everyone, sorry for the wall of text. I meant to start up a thread on this last night but got side tracked by the family (life's hard etc etc).

Yep, I am giving these guys 2-4 days to prove themselves. Wrote this guy a note saying to release some more detailed info asap before all their momentum is gone. Hope they get some sense and get some good info up

 

[NBAfan]

I hope it works out, more good city builders is always a good thing.

 

[Nintz]

Cautiously optimistic.

 

[bhavv]

I put $25 into this for the beta access, it looks really good.

 

[NBAfan]

Speaking of Kickstarter type games, there is really good looking one called Train Fever, which is supposed to be a modern Transport Tycoon/Open TTD. It helps that they have an actual working game as well.

 

[warpus]

Wow, train fever looks amazing! Thanks for sharing that one

As for Civitas, they just opened up their forums and altered their kickstarter front page by answering some common questions, but that's all the changes so far. No new real info yet.

 

[warpus]

An update from the lead dev on the forums about some details about 2 of the team members (which includes himself, so we've only heard about 2 of the members of the team so far, directly)

Ok, sorry everyone. I finished the forum at 4 this morning. The rest of the team will be dropping in today to tell a little about themselves. Now that we have this forum up, you can talk to them directly, and not only hear from me. Which is good for me, I can finally get a little sleep.

About me:

I graduated in from Full Sail in Orlando Fl in 1999 with a degree in computer animation. After graduating I spent some time working on childrens television shows as a high poly modeler. Then after working a few cancelled console titles, I finally landed at Greylan studios in 2009. Where I lead a growing team building mobile games for IOS and Android. We have shipped several games, and are currently in production on 2 others. I should probably be worried about losing my job with them if word gets out on this kickstarter, but at this point we see a real shot on this game being funded, so I am willing to risk it for the shot to finish what we have started with Civitas.

As for my skills, I am a complete generalist with a core strength in modeling low and high resolution. I can program when needed, rig and animate, but I love to model. I will be running lead Civitas, and will do my best to keep us on track and grow the team to get this project completed and make sure that it is something we can all be proud of. I feel confident in the rest of my team to be able to deliver, and we will get help when we need it. I will be modeling a lot of the game assets, as well as writing the exporters made to get your models and assets into the game. I also handle the terraforming aspect of the game. Lots of hats to wear, but I enjoy it all, and I have a great team to lean on.

I have been slaving over this kickstarter for the last few days, I have literally only slept for one night since Monday (I can see sounds at this point). People severely underestimate how much work goes into these things, just like we did. Thats ok though, we are getting to where we need to be now, and with these forums, the rest of the team can take over some of the heavy lifting, and we can get some good ideas going. I will be adding my photo to the kickstarter today with my bio (as soon as a few of the other team members get in here and tell who they are), but if you want to see my beautiful face immediately feel free to look at my facebook page that I have linked to the kickstarter, I promise you won't be disappointed lol.

Thank you all once again, we hope we can reach funding so that we can deliver this amazing game to everyone!

The other team members will be dropping in throughout the day and telling a little bit about themselves. I hope you will take the time to get to know them. After they post their bios here, we will take photos and get them on the kickstarter site as well. This should have happened a while ago I know, and we are taking care of it now. This is one thing that needed to be put to rest a lot earlier. We have a few that can't talk about their exact current job, because they will probably lose it if it gets out that they are coming onboard with us, and with the publicity we already have there is a good chance of that. Anyone that has ever been in a job switching situation should understand that. If not, then theres not a lot I can do. We would have to know for sure that we had our funding before they could be more open than they can now. Hopefully we will reach that point.

I will be working on a few things today with one of the programmers (hes a hardcore statistics guy, and he has some great ideas on data modeling for the main simulations), Mark George, if you guys want, he and I will make a pitch video and put it up on the kickstarter. He will be posting on here today as well. Just let me know, and we'll put a video together and see if we can get some of the other team members to come out on a Sunday and join in. Sound like a plan?

A quick blurb about Mark George until he gets here. He is a software engineer for a major financial institution, with a hardcore left brain mentality. He is exactly the type of person we need for this project. Someone that can analyze a lot of data. This is what will make or break this game. I will let him come on and tell about where he graduated and has worked and such, just wanted to get a little out on. He does not come from a gaming background (other than playing them hardcore), he comes from a number crunching background, which is perfect for us.

There's supposed to be photos and more writeups soon, so.. it seems like these are real people for now. The scenario that's unfolding seems very plausible at least: a guy who has a real passion for this and wants to make it happen and has some related skills, with other people who want to get involved but for the most part are dedicated to other jobs and other projects right now, but want to jump ship if there's funding.. or not, but just either part-time, at a slower pace, in the evenings only, or whatever.

So so far we have a 3d modeller, a leader, and a software engineer who specializes in modelling data structures and the movement of data. That's a very good start, actually. I am really curious to see what the other guys bring to the table, because this is starting to sound feasible.

 

[SouthernKing]

Watching, but experience tells me it may be too good to be true. We'll see.

 

[NBAfan]

Now that I think about it, this could really work out. Seems to me that these guys have always been thinking about a city game, but the circumstances of the failed Simcity release has forced them right now to start with a good marketing opportunity.

 

[warpus]

The kickstarter went up before simcity launched, so we know for sure that the simcity problems are not their motivation. But.. they might have been inspired partially by the upcoming release and all the talk of drm

 

[bhavv]

They were waiting to see what Sim City was like before putting up their kickstarter so they could compare their game against it. Im sure that some of the people playing this game will have played the betas for Sim City, as well as currently analyzing everything about the released game and thinking of how they can improve it and make something better.

 

[peter grimes]

I haven't contributed to the kickstarter yet, but I plan on it. I like the activity on their forums. That's a good sign, indeed.

Pretty dumb that there isn't a link to those forums on their civitasgame.com page

 

[warpus]

Yeah, they really need to update that site. I think Brandon (lead dev) got wayyyy overloaded with community feedback and expectations once the kickstarter launched. I don't think he thought he'd get such a huge response... maybe partially because the kickstarter launched before sim city was released and all the issues known? It was just coincidental timing that he should really exploit.. I can't imagine what it's like to be in his shoes right now - he must be stressed out of his mind.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Kickstarter ends on April 1st ???????

 

[warpus]

Yeah and the lead dev's name is Brandon Smith - BS. Weird coincidence, huh. I don't see how these things would lend well to a scam though. This has been discussed on their forums and everyone seems to agree that it's just an unfortunate coincidence.

We've been introduced to another team member in their new video as well as a couple others in the forums. I think we know about 4 total team members now. The lead dev is a 3d modeller and leader, one guy is a statistical data modelling / software eng guy, the third is another code, and the last guy was hmm.. I forget now. People have been doing quite a bit of digging - ripping through Brandon's facebook, looking into his past, his employer, the domains he owns..

And so far I have to lean towards the "Poorly planned kickstarter by a guy who is in the industry and knows many people there, but needs to convince some of them to quit their jobs and join the project". Some guy dug up that Brandon's brother has worked on Mortal Kombat and other games, and another one of Brandon's friends on facebook (he linked his FB profile, he has a wife on there, 100 or so friends, etc.) has worked on a bunch of games as well. So there's evidence that these aren't just random guys looking to cash out and that there is indeed a team with industry experience, but that they might be uncomfortably tied to other projects right now - afraid of losing their jobs and such and/or not sure if they should jump ship quite yet.

They are supposed to be posting some gameplay videos and screenshots in the next week or so - I think they said before the halfway point of the kickstarter. I think Brandon has mainly been working on the terraforming tool and that's all there ever was of "Civtas", so I think for the past week, or however long this has been in the spotlight, he has been working hardcore with some of the other people he's been trying to recruit (maybe 1 or 2) to produce something that they can show off as "this is what we have for the game right now". Okay, they might have bits and pieces, just nothing that would impress people.. quite yet. I think that's why they've been dragging their feet a bit when it comes to showing stuff off.

I guess we'll see soon enough. $90k has been raised out of $250k so far, so it is obvious that the community has not been fully convinced yet. I read every single comment on the kickstarter page and keep up with the forums, and it seems like a lot of people are sitting on a bunch of money they'd contribute if the right information is released.. I'm one of those people. There are also a lot of people who say they are going to contribute a lot more than what they've already done, once some screenshots, more dev bios, etc. are posted.

So far there hasn't been anything too substantial to report, but I'm getting a better feeling about this every day.. Still not enough info for me to pledge any money though. I'm a skeptic at heart, I suppose.

 

[warpus]

Well, this was a "big" update Brandon Smith just put up on the kickstarter page.


Link to video.

And.. nobody is really happy with that, mostly because it seems like this guy has no team, a bit of a terraforming tool, and just an idea. Which would have been fine, but that's not what was claimed. It was always claimed that there is a team of 6, that we are going to meet more of the team members and that they are going to interact with us a bit or at least get their mugs up there and talk a bit about what they have ready of the game so far, where they're at, etc. So far we have seen a video of Brandon and another guy who doesn't say anything who is supposed to be a coder without any interaction with the 'engine', and another long video of the terraforming tool.

I'm not really happy with these developments either, and I totally would have been even though not much really exists. All it would have taken was a bit more honesty: "Hey, I'm just one guy, I have others who would join the team once we get funded, here's one guy who would be one of the coders, here's him talking about his credentials and what he would bring to the team - {other guy talks for 2 minutes}, all we have right now is a terraforming tool that isn't complete but is looking pretty good so far. Here's some mockup screenshots of what we want the game to look like." etc.

He is calling the game engine beta, even though it looks like it is just barely alpha, there are promises of a beta release thing happening 2 weeks after the kickstarter campaign is over, which just seems insane.. and.. a lot of other promises over the last 2 weeks that seem like wishful thinking now..

So.. He says he is going to be now posting a lot bunch of other videos, which I don't even know if I believe, because this guy has made a habit of promising stuff and then delivering late and far less than what he promised. We could have used a lot more honesty.

I'm going to continue following this to see how it develops, but the comments I'm seeing from others all seem to point to: "Is not going to get funded". Maybe this guy will manage to pull a rabbit out of his butt in the next couple days.. I doubt it, but I think he could actually do a decent job doing this if we gave him (and once he has a team) 2 years or more.. or maybe even a good job.. I haven't pledged any money yet - but totally will if they post some sort of a video with the team sitting around a round table discussing their gameplay ideas, some mockup screenshots. In-game videos seem like a stretch since the engine doesn't even seem to exist yet. Which again would have been fine if he just admitted that from the beginning.

They have $110,000 of funding with $250,000 and people seem hesitant, so unless that rabbit comes, this isn't getting funded. Which is a shame, but if this doesn't (and it looks like this won't), I hope this inspires somebody else out there to do something like this - but to do it right. I will keep you updated, but I am feeling a big jaded. Like I said it's not that the video is laughable or by itself amateurish, it's just in context it becomes amateurish, not enough given what was promised, and seems to show some rather negative aspects of this campaign.

 

[Quintillus]

Yeah... it looks like they had an idea for this, had experimented with it a little bit before, and then rushed together the Kickstarter once they realized Sim City's launch was probably going to be a disaster. Whereas from an impressive-and-funding-worthy-project standpoint, it probably would've been wise to wait a number of months. And now they're finding out that you need the impressive-looking-project start too, even if SC5's launch went quite poorly.

I agree that that demo is unimpressive. I expected more just based on the screenshots on the Kickstarter... they really don't have much yet. You're right... if they'd been upfront about that and said, "Here's our plans for the games, here's our background and experience, if we can raise $40K/apiece to live off of for a year plus $10K for dev tools, we're confident we can make this happen, otherwise we have to keep our day jobs," expectations would have been a lot closer to reality.