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70Ahem, yeah…
We don’t really know where to start. We were preparing for a long, grueling campaign in which we’d have to fight for every dollar, while in fact it went down pretty much like [this], over before it even started. But now that we look back on how we did things, the long grueling campaign was in fact the three months we spent painstakingly creating the trailer, and filling in the paperwork in order to sign up for Amazon Payments. And boy was it worth it!
But it’s not over! In fact, it’s barely begun. We still have 27 days to go. We have a lot to do to make up for your outstanding and frankly humbling generosity, but let’s start by saying:
The mood here at Sauropod Studio is incredible. A mix of awe and relief. It’s that kind of feeling you get when you work really hard on something, taking the long way around just because you want to do it right, and then somehow you’re rewarded for all that work.
We have a truckload of ideas for new reward tiers, nothing is set in stone, but we’re going to announce some of them really soon.
In the meantime, We’d like to announce some of the new things we’re going to do with the extra funding. The 80,000$ we had put in as our goal, was really just the bare minimum to keep going for a few months more intil a beta release. But now that we have exceeded that goal, her’s what we plan on doing in the near future:
Lots more coming in the next days!
We’re going to post some polls soon to see what everyone would like us to do next, so stay tuned!
Before we go, we’ve made two sweet little desktop wallpapers for those of you who enjoyed the t-shirts we made:
We will upload different sized desktop wallpaper really soon, as well as adding the third t-shirt in all it’s wallpaper glory.
Cheers!
If you guy’s have any of that quarter million dollars left over, can you make me some Bricktron underwear?
Remember to get the taxes taken care of. Hire an accountant stat! Any money you can not burn as an expense before tax day (well I can’t tell you what Canada is tax law is like… but get some help on that now!)
no offence but a good business pays their taxes. spending every dollar earned (and thus reducing your profit to zero) just to avoid taxes is fine when everything goes to plan. but if the sales drop, nobody will lend you any money because you’ve never made any profit, and you won’t have any money as a reserve because you spent it all. this means bankruptcy and possible debts= bad :p
You guys have an amazing idea here, and you very clearly love the prospect and process of bringing it to fruition, and so you deserve every cent! Congratulations on the success! I can’t wait to see how the game progresses, and to finally play the Beta!
haha >.< good comment.
Just remember, this is how Minecraft started out: Small team, small game, indie publication.
I feel this game will go far, or even further than Minecraft or any other Voxel-game if the right support of normal people like me is there to help Sauropod all the way.
I am happy to see this campaign working out so good, and I can understand that you like to compare it with minecraft, but I would love to not see this happen. I ordered minecraft in mid July 2010 (or was it even 2009 when the buyable alpha version was?). I saw a game in which I believed and the guy who made it was kind to every of his friends and made many nice promises about what minecraft will be one day and waht not. And everybod knew it when they bought it to support him. The promises somehow got lost and the game changed in many ways just to reach more people… Not to saticfy the wishes of the early supporters who in fact made the game popular (I selled it to nearly all my friends in year one and advertised it to some online magazines). And noone of these early buyers I know are happy with the way minecraft started to turn out. So since then I am always scared that a great indie project can get corrupted by to much popularity and money.
Btw Minecraft still is great, I just do not like how it all turned out step by step. So many great ideas of the “October Update”, which implemented the nether, just got dropped. And the nether just stayed as a nearly useless world. instead of getting improved. :(
PS: I hope Castle Story will break the million and that every bit of money more will help to make this game as great as possible and make live for the developers as easy as possible :3
Too true, it was based upon lies, it was always “Minecraft doesn’t have an end, you can keep playing and playing”, then Notch added the end, which was actually called the end, just to make things worse. He did it with Wurm too, so I think Notch is more of a one off.
I also follow Wolfire, who are amazing, they listen to the community and they make big changes every single week, here’s hoping that these guys are the same or better.
I must confess that I am a bit confused by your comments about minecraft. I’ve always played it under the assumption that what I paid for in Alpha was just the building blocks of what was to become the game itself. Reading Notch’s tumbler always made it seem that he had big plans for it in the future. if you had played the game at all in the last year you would know that the Nether has been updated and is now the hub for all potion-makers and some other items.
I also don’t think that getting into a big discussion about minecraft on someone else’s page about an entirely different game is really the way to go here so lets just let Sauropod have a flame-fee thread here.
P.S. I am glad that Notch approves of this game.
I just want to eventually be able to control a bricktron directly and help defend XD
Can’t you release the pre-release now?
I think more people would purchase it then..
No no no!
We want them to take their time. This is a fantastic concept, and the potential for further releases after Castle Story are great. Imagine a second game, possibly on console DLC systems where you have your own Bricktron and have an adventure. Could maybe customize them, you know different hats!
I want this game so bad I get giddy every time news is posted, but I want it to be actually finished first. =)
They have said that they will give the “PROTOTYPE soon after the Kickstarter is over!”, and you will get it “Aug 2012″ so it’s a definite that there will be a pre-release, but not during the kickstarter.
They are smart by not releasing it. If they did people would just pledge to get it then cancel out.imagine how depressing that would be to the devs if a huge hunk of their pledges were fake…
I’m so excited that everything is unfolding like how it is! Congratulations again on the huge success, can’t wait to play the game and ty for the desktop background! I’m loving it :D
i will bombard you with one question – about paypal – when will be available?
Yeah I love the Build desktop wallpapers :D…now guys please take your time with the game, do not rush with the release, spend the money in a smart way. Stay awesome, kind and humble so that it all turns out nicely :)
This was the first ever thing I’ve funded on Kickstarter, I have no regrets.
Me too! Cant wait for the pre-release. Castle Story seems pretty amazing so far, judging by the 6-month old video :)
Same, actually. I was looking at the Ouya and then I saw Castle Story somehow, thought “15 dollars isn’t too bad.” and backed it. Now I’m just waiting for the Beta, and thinking of increasing it to $25 so I can get the Prototype early =P
Supporting a Canadian developer :)
Wishing you the best of luck with the project!
Looking forward to hear more from you guys. :)
HINT HINT … on Twitter. HINT HINT
I am very excited to be able to support fellow Candians. Congratulations to you guys for creating such a following in a short time. Just imagine what it will be like when you do have it all out there. .
I cannot wait to play this game. It looks so awesome already.
Exciting stuff :)
If you’re looking for extra avenues to spend your extra funds, I might suggest spending extra time making sure the multiplayer online setup is really solid – nothing is more aggrevating than an exciting new multiplayer game in which you can’t actually connect to other players, or it’s full of bugs. This seems to be a problem that even larger games suffer from, so it’s worth some consideration.
Hey guys
Congratulations on your success.
This was the first project I backed here on kickstarter and it is really exciting that it turned out like it did.
Everyday I’m checking how much more money you guys are getting to bring this awesome idea to life and everyday I can’t stop giggeling and rubbing my hands, glad to be part of the process.
Are you already able to say what your plans are regarding including your community in the process of creating the game, if there are any?
Will there be a way for us to influence features of the game, to help and to shape it?
That would be really awesome…
Really looking forward to testing the prototype and thanks for the wallpapers.
More of that please… ;)
regards
Matthias
The idea of customising Bricktrons a bit is cool, but I don’t want it to get too big with clothes and stuff, a hat would be fine. And it’d be cool if when you naturally found Bricktrons they varied a bit in height, fatness, colour (not like red and blue, but dark yellow, orange-y yellow, etc.)
Also, you’ve probably answered this before, but will you be able to create more Bricktrons or is there a limited amount? If you couldn’t create them then there’d be the problem that Darktrons would be able to one by one, take out all the Bricktrons in a civilisation.
Also another question (sorry :P) do Darktrons spawn at night or only attack at night or what?
And one last question. Actually a request. It would be awesome if say a Bricktron got hit by an arrow but didn’t quite die, then other Bricktrons could try and heal him after the battle was over.
Thanks for reading, can’t wait for the game.
Besides the game I am very impressed how lovely and nice you intereact with your fans – thats the way the big companies leaved long time ago…
However, this convinced me finally to support you via kickstarter :)
Greetings from Germany!
I like how KickTraq says you’re trending towards 2million
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/902505202/castle-story/
Actually, if you look at the “Pledges and Backers per Day” tab, you will see that those numbers are heavily inflated based on the massive downpour of day 1 donations. Overall, I think it will stop somewhere between $1.7 mil at the most, and a minimum of $500K.
Look at the numbers now! Even Kicktraq agrees with me. My guess is that they will get in one good final push in the last few days by people scrambling to get in while they can. Other than that, only some extremely good marketing will push this thing much further.
The only thing i’m going to make a request for is a map generator. Like making a (New World) on minecraft , I hope they add that instead of just a few pre-made maps. They will become repetitive eventually , hopefully on the map generater you can adjust elevation, ore density, forest density,how many islands , and whatever land changes they make in the future.
That sounds awesome!
I think opening to Linux would be a good idea.
Why? Well, I would put my money where my mouth is, and, ANY campaign from Humble Bundle, Linux where the ones that pay the most. Contrary to general idea and comment about wanting all free.
Excellent work on the video. The game seems awesome.
Congratulations.
If you say “We will port to linux with unity 4″ I will trow you my money. =)
On their Kickstarter page in the FAQs at the bottom they say, “The next version of Unity plans to support Linux, so hopefully it will work on that too.” This is about as close to saying that they will support it.
Hey there. I also just wanted to give a quick plea for a paypal backing option. Now that you´ve reached your goal you could do this (like the Wasteland 2 kickstarter did for example). I´d love to chip in, but I´m German and have no credit card as of yet.
In any case, good luck with your project! Looks amazing!
oh yes pleas add an paypal option..
I wan tto buy/bake the game on Kickstarter but i did not own an credit card,
:-(
multiplayer would be nice ;)
Thank you for sharing your project with us. I was more than happy to kick in when I saw what you wanted to do; and I’m glad so many others did, too!
When you have the time, please visit /r/CastleStory over on Reddit– there’s almost 3000 of us over there who’d appriciate your stopping in to say ‘hello.’ :D
What language with Castle Story be written with? C/C++? Java? Thank you!
I too would like to ask that!
I am buying a book next week with game programming in c++ (It teaches both c++ and using it in game programming). However, if there is an easier language to make good games like this, I might need to find a book with that language :P
C/C++ is widely used in console gaming. However, minecraft was written with Java, so a game like Castle Story is up in the air, honestly. Java may be considered “easier” when it comes to syntax. C/C++ supposedly give better tools to game developers.
It’s coded with Unity 3-D, which relies on C# and the .Net framework. As it happens, Unity also accepts a semantically identical Javascript-like syntax that has a lighter feel. Having used both the low-level opengl.h in C++ and the very pretty high-level Unity functions, I’ve got to say that Unity makes all the difference in the world. The benefits of having a high-level tool taking care of 90% of the dirty steps for you are easily underestimated, especially for game development. (although low-level will always have a place in my heart!)
Interesting, I know another piece graphic design software that accepts python, so I’m not surprised. So I take it since it’s through Unity, it’ll be rather difficult for us to break down once we get our hands on it? I still look forward to your AI design.
NO, I wouldn’t underestimate a tool like that considering how much is going to go into this. Thank you for the response, Benoît.
Just wanted to congratulate you guys for this milestone. I fell in love with the idea and the game when I first saw the trailer a few months ago!
Can’t wait to see this game in action hopefully some on screen action of monsters and battles to get other people interested! Behind you all the way!
Any update on Bricktron underwear lulz?
I’m tempted to say “put the fans first, play your cards right” etc. etc. but you look like you know what you’re doing! Really excited to hear that the game will have some work done on sound and ambiance, that’s a key part to making the game stand out and be unique.
Looking forward to trying out the prototype and hearing updates on the game!
I hope you guys decide to do some work on making the builders somewhat independent from the player’s absolute control, I think that’s a really important thing to do. It’ll build character for your workers and make them more human if they interact with each other and the environment when they don’t have work to do. I was excited when you mentioned something like this in a blog, I really hope you follow up on making an artificial “order of needs” for the bricktrons.
Been following you guys since the appearance of your first trailer, I am SO excited for you guys and eagerly anticipate gettin my hands on that prototype! Job well done!
LOL, The moment I saw “This was a triumph” on the homepage I starting singing still alive. :3 Aperture science… we do what we must… because… we can… *hums* and you make a neat gun for the people that are still aliive.. *Cough ahem* hehhe. :)
What would be amazing is co-op and vs. multi-player if you had planed for that :L
Once again, fantastic progress. While I don’t comment around here enough as I should, I’ve been watching all the dev posts from the start and I can’t wait to play the prototype and the eventual game. No game has had me this excited since I was ~twelve and got kingdom hearts on the PS2 for Christmas.
Fantastic work guys, keep it up!
Excellent news guys, I wish I could pledge (and, well, buy the game at the same time).
I hope you use all of that extra funding to create what already looks like a masterpiece of a game.
With multyplayer, of course. ;D
This is so exciting to see the next generation define how new businesses will be established. Great job guys! Back to the forums to make sure you get all my ideas while things are still pliable!
Hey. i was looking on Germain’s picture yesterday and so my sister came and said “Who is that hottie? A freind of yours?” :b
I have followed this project for some time now; I just love the idea of being able to build your own castle brick by brick… (I was initially just hooked by being able to build a castle like that!) From that concept you have made a start to what looks like an amazing game as well.
Also, good work ignoring the comments from people in previous blog posts that are apparently either 12, spoilt and impatient, or both.
Two thoughts/ideas:
1. The kickstarter is doing amazingly, but definitely not without good reason; you have a great concept that looks like it is being implemented very well, and you frequently engage with the community (for every person that posts messages, there would be a lot more that simply read and look forward to it like me!)
You have mentioned that you are looking at adding new pledges for the kickstarter; Have you thought about a programming related level(s)? A good number of your followers seem to be into programming as it is so I think there would be a lot of interest in some kind of one on one/group session on some of the aspects of the game (eg. like the dev diaries but pitched to a higher level?) Also offers a bit of extra variety!
2. I cant remember where I read it but I seem to recall you mentioning that it would look to support modding; there has also been a bit of talk (requests) about controlling bricktons directly. I am assuming direct control of bricktons is not intended as part of the main game but is it feasible to add this in as a feature in the game engine for modders to use? I am sure that a something like a Castle Story RPG (for example!) would be made and appeal to a whole range of people that might not otherwise be interested (similar to what happened with DayZ for ArmaII)
This would be a lot easier to achieve if the basics were coded in already as opposed to modders trying to break into the game engine to add controls?
Great work, look forward to seeing this come to fruition! (I hope the success of the kickstarter doesnt make you feel you have to rush it out sooner though!!!)
I found the “either 12, spoilt and impatient, or both” quite offensive. What does being 12 have to do a person’s ability to make a reasonable, sensible and well thought-out comment over the internet? Seriously hate the ’12 year old on the internet’ stereotype. You people make me wish for my birthday :l
But otherwise I agree with your comment completely.
Please accept my apologies, I am not a frequenter of the internet apart from news (and tracking this now!) and the maturity level and grammar use shown in many posts led me to that conclusion; it is not a shot at 12 year olds, it is a shot at people displaying the maturity of a child. I was not aware of a ’12 year old on the internet’ stereotype (although I can understand the origins of it)
There is nothing wrong with being 12, it is a simple biological fact that it takes time for the human brain to mature (a lot longer in some cases!) You express yourself far more eloquently than I did at 12. (Perhaps I should have said 10 or 8?)
Again; apologies to you and all other people that may have taken offence, it was not the best comment to make I will concede!
Good to hear you agree with the overall intent though! Hopefully it is something that is considered!
You are now more than 400% pledged. Its time to finally announce the full linux support.
They can’t announce the full linux support since the game is base on Unity.
I know this is obvious, but LOVE the portal reference
Awe Yea.
I hope you guys get to a million! I really like the concept of the game, it has that feeling I felt when I was still a little boy during Christmas. Can’t wait to play the game!
you just made a portal refrence..
i think i love you guys more and more every day..
i just bought the game, waiting so much for the beta :).
I for one am thankful so many people joined in to sponsor Castle Story.. this game had me screaming like a little girl… I can’t wait to play the shit out of this game, and to see where it goes. Best of luck, sirs :P
I support this game for 3 Reasons
1) This game look freaking awesome and i want it so bad
2) New Team = New talents and Idea, we always need new ideas and when there is Talent its better
3) They came from Montreal Canada Im living in the same province than they .. I could meet them in real life if they show their project in public, like a Stand or something ( sadly they miss the Otakuthon i would like to see them there)
This game is amazing, and I support it. I can’t wait to download my preordered beta..!!!
Anyway, can you guys upload an higher resolution of wallpapers? I have a 27″ iMac with 2560×1440 resolution… Thanks :D