He’ll be starting very soon. The money just came through - I wanted to make sure I knew exactly how much we had (Amazon’s rates vary) and that he’d know how much we’d be paying him. Our total came out to $8,184.82422 (whooo).
Oh noses, we are being short changed by .00422 of a dollar, that is almost a half penny. Oh noses
kickstarter and paypal took $1300 of our money?
what is the fee structure. we need to switch to something else. That is WAY too much overhead.
not your fault, but thats ridiculous.
[quote=“youtoo, post:83, topic:1854”]kickstarter and paypal took $1300 of our money?
what is the fee structure. we need to switch to something else. That is WAY too much overhead.
not your fault, but thats ridiculous.[/quote]
That’s about 15% overall, using 2 sigfigs. I think that kickstarter is taking the majority for it’s server costs. IDK.
And Sean will be expected to pay at least 15% tax on that when he receives it, since US law requires that if the amount is less than around 110,000. If you make more than that you only have to pay like 2% I think, though I only skimmed over that bit.
Isn’t fundraising amazing.
Mind telling us what state he is in? We could probably find some legal loophole that prevents taxes on either below min wage workers or for crowd funded project like thing.
I am still fucking waiting on paypal. They like to make me do extra spins on my wheelie chair in impatience since I’m in Canada.
PayPal is no better for US residents. They just plain suck.
Pthalocy, don’t worry about it. Just get your comic done, and your contribution will be complete. Considering all you’ve done already you can basically have your choice of tiers in my opinion. 
(And we’ll have a proper update button go up some time next month for the continuation project)
Kickstarter update:
... $7,911. That's a decent amount of money!So what’s going to happen with it?
Well, Sean technically starts work on Monday, tomorrow. I say technically because he’s actually already started this weekend, but tomorrow will be the first day he gets paid for it. He’ll be working until at least November 11th, which is a span of 104 days. He’ll be making $104.09/day, a rate of about $13.01 an hour.
Didn’t you say he will only be paid after he makes what is he supposed to make and if he actually makes it?
Beside main three Kickstarter goals, what other features will be there for that total sum of money in that period of time?
Can you give us more details about upcoming features - in particular, what will be the tile size? Who made or is making the tileset, can you show some example screenshots? How will z-levels fit in the game, what will player be able to do with them?
[quote=“Albert, post:90, topic:1854”]Didn’t you say he will only be paid after he makes what is he supposed to make and if he actually makes it?
Beside main three Kickstarter goals, what other features will be there for that total sum of money in that period of time?
Can you give us more details about upcoming features - in particular, what will be the tile size? Who made or is making the tileset, can you show some example screenshots? How will z-levels fit in the game, what will player be able to do with them?[/quote]
The three main goals are what we are shooting for, and as GG said, they planned conservitively so that once he completes those tasks he will go onto the strech goals (woohoo go stealth).
The tile size is currently disputed IIRC, some people are discussing it over on the Lab forum board, so stop by there and chat with them. IIRC the tileset that will be merged into the game will be a community created set, so I might donate my tiles of zombies along with ABC’s tileset of houseparts, and DEF’s pieces for a car. Then this way everybody contributes.
Z levels. Height. So they will give us the ability to move up and down. This will help with apartments, hotels, trenches, mines and other stuffs. With z levels we can do all sorts of fun stuff like drop grand pianos from the top floor of apartments, or push zombies to make a nice splat on the ground (maybe), jump between buildings (ninja style). But most of the z level abilities are still in the planning phase IIRC, so if you want some feature(s) added suggest them on the drawing board forum board.
Pushing zeds will send them to the ground. That sort of inter-level interaction was one of the reasons an earlier implementation wasn’t acceptable–stuff thrown off a level either disappeared or just floated in empty space.
The three main goals are what we are shooting for, and as GG said, they planned conservitively so that once he completes those tasks he will go onto the strech goals (woohoo go stealth).The tile size is currently disputed IIRC, some people are discussing it over on the Lab forum board, so stop by there and chat with them. IIRC the tileset that will be merged into the game will be a community created set, so I might donate my tiles of zombies along with ABC’s tileset of houseparts, and DEF’s pieces for a car. Then this way everybody contributes.
Z levels. Height. So they will give us the ability to move up and down. This will help with apartments, hotels, trenches, mines and other stuffs. With z levels we can do all sorts of fun stuff like drop grand pianos from the top floor of apartments, or push zombies to make a nice splat on the ground (maybe), jump between buildings (ninja style). But most of the z level abilities are still in the planning phase IIRC, so if you want some feature(s) added suggest them on the drawing board forum board.
Didn’t they say he will only get paid after he makes what is he supposed to make and if he actually makes it?
Why do you expect community will create the tileset, or that it would be any good?
There is no yet design specification for z-levels against which the work will be evaluated?
Not sure about his pay. Could go either way, I would just wait until GG logs in and sees this or until GalenEvil (the hired prgrammer’s handle) sees it. They will know more about it.
They dont expect the community to do so. They could just as easily take an open tileset from one of the other pixel artists out on the interwebs, but the community wants to help, so they did what they could.
There sorta is. They know what they want, they want XYZ* (I am not sure what those are), but they are still open to suggestions from the community.
- XYZ is IIRC something like things will fall if nothing is supporting them (both furniture, zombies and other things thrown into midair. They also have plans to make the Z levels work so that you can go into apartments. I also think that jumping will be added in, so that you can jump between buildings.
GlyphGryph,
Didn’t you say the developer will only get paid after he makes what is he supposed to make, and only if he actually makes it? What exactly is the job specification and features description according to which the work will be evaluated? What is he making, precisely, according to what instructions and under whose supervision?
He’ll get paid after he puts the work in. The project was to acquire developer hours to spend on the projects listed in the Kickstarter. When he puts in those hours, he’ll get paid for that time - the point of what I stated on the Kickstarter was that he won’t just be getting the money upfront, and we don’t have to worry about him running off with it or something. Since the whole purpose of the Kickstarter was to provide him with the funds he needed to dedicate this time to the game, not paying him anything until after his work was finished would be… kind of nonsensical. And doesn’t really make sense with the stated purpose of the Kickstarter.
As for the details and specs, we’ll have full specs for each project as we go - developing those specs is part of his job, albeit one the other devs will surely be helping with. He’s operating under my and Kevin’s supervision.
Tileset-wise, the goal is not to require a fixed size for the tiles, so that you can plug and play any community created tileset you want in. He won’t be making a tileset himself, he’s not an artist, but luckily we’ve got plenty of people supporting the project who are.
i have gotten mixed up with who the developer is now. CAn you post it on the main page? When does he start?
[quote=“GlyphGryph, post:89, topic:1854”]Pthalocy, don’t worry about it. Just get your comic done, and your contribution will be complete. Considering all you’ve done already you can basically have your choice of tiers in my opinion.
(And we’ll have a proper update button go up some time next month for the continuation project)[/quote]
Fixed a lot of problems with it yesterday, gonna art again today and tomorrow. Silently sobbing for a faster art-hand but that’s what life gave me to work with. I appreciate the sentiments, my intention remains unchanged. GONNA DO A DONATE
Do you not know what do you want, and whatever he comes up will be ok? There must certain criteria and specific set of goals according to which you can evaluate the work, or progress. What about specific functionalities you mentioned on the Kickstarter, “mutant buzzards flying far above your head” and “opening up fire on the crowd in the parking lot below”? Is that specific promise or uncertain possibility?
Those are general promises. It might not end up being mutant buzzards, but it will certainly be something flying overhead. The point of the z-level implementation (and the reason why existing implementations aren’t good enough) is to have different levels where you can actually interact between them, a la dwarf fortress. In fact, that should serve as a decent guide for the kind of thing you can expect there.
But here’s, specifically, what we’ll be going for (although this was already explained pretty well in the Kickstarter I think)
Tileset support - we’ll be implementing a graphical system so that various tilesets/spritesets can be introduced into the game by users. You’ll be able to use any tileset that has been made for it. We’ll also be supporting basic animations. Pretty much any detail beyond that is technical stuff and backend stuff that would only really be of interest to developers.
Worldbuilder tool - This has been described in detail in a few places, but you don’t seem particularly interested in this one (and it’s by far the most complicated) so I’ll skip it for now.
Z-levels - Specifically, we will be implementing a system that allows multiple vertical levels that exist in the same “space”, so that interactions between the levels are possible. Things gettings pushed or thrown or jumping off roofs, attacking from above/being able to attack from above, and units that can control movement between z-levels outside are all requirements for this section… in addition to being practically all the requirements. I expect the flying AIs to be pretty dumb, since the AI rewrite is something else entirely. There’s a chance buildings might leave floating chunks, for performance and expediency reasons, since we didn’t get the extra z-level stuff stretch goal which would have focused on construction and z-level architecture handling. But the bits that would primarily impact gameplay, being able to look and interact and move across z-levels, are what’s being promised here. Multi-z-level vehicles will probably not be in, but vehicles WILL be able to move between z-levels.