| title | description | published | date | tags | editor | dateCreated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Development Overview |
History of Limit Theory |
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2023-07-20 16:57:59 UTC |
markdown |
2023-07-17 00:40:26 UTC |
Limit Theory was being developed by Josh Parnell and the result of a sucessful Kickstart campaign and a lot of passion. Limit Theory Redux is a community driven development project based on the open source released code of Limit Theory trying to fulfill the vision Josh Parnell had.
Within his campaign he had 5449 backers, who pledged $187,865.
Besides his long article he also published a set of videos:
- Kickstarter Video
- Gameplay Demo 1 Gameplay Demo
- Gameplay Demo 2 Ship & Station Editor
- Gameplay Demo 3 Interface demo
- Gameplay Demo 4 Procedural Generation of Space stations
- Gameplay Demo 5 Asteroid Bases, Carrier Ships and landing on objects
- January 2013 New render engine, graphical improvements, command interface and hardpoints
- February 2013 Sound & sound effects integrated, ship viewer, command interface
- March 2013 Asteroid base, market interface, ship interface, heads up display widgets, contracts, and power distribution
- Prototype Tutorial: April 2013 General Gameplay, buy stuff and fit it on the ship, contracts, basic fly & cruise mode, power distribution, combat, buying and repairing a ship in the ship viewer, fleet command, asset panel, command interface, fleet battle, advanced fleet control
- May 2013 Graphical improvements in backgrounds and planets. warp lanes, free camera mode, jump gate, region map, jump drives
- June 2013 Graphical improvements in textures, lightening and dust. Battleship, production on ships, new interfaces, hardpoints, guided missiles, Linux port
- July 2013 Mac port, landing and flying on planets, simulation and AI, history
- August 2013 Asteroid field, dynamic entity loading system, interface improvements, music, (abstract) AI
- September 2013 Graphic improvements in dusts, dynamic lightening, lens flares. High level AI, built from smaller pieces.
- October 2013 Graphical improvements in shaders. Double precision engine, larger planets, procedural research, LT data editor
- November 2013 Graphical improvements in explosions. Overhauled AI and node based UI, oculus rift support
- December 2013 Graphical improvements in nebulas, metal, motion related effects and lightening. Holographic 3D rendering, split screening, AI delegation, contracts, new release date
- January 2014 Graphical improvements in ASMA & bloom. HUD, incl. glass mode, overlay, workspaces, scanner and holographic ship viewer deployed. Node interactions
- February 2014 Ice fields, ship & station algorithm, scanner (frequency analysis), (prospecting) drones, dynamic mass system
- March 2014 Local economy including the market and lots of NPC. Self-regulating of demand and supply. ENPC (NPCs with "superior officer" ability)
- April 2014 Graphical improvements general, miners and pirates, UI overhaul, projects, new trade & command interface
- May 2014 Graphical improvements in nebulas. Technology and science, blueprints, assembly chips, missions, database, metaproject AI
- June 2014 Zone tech, planetary colonies, dogfighting
- July 2014 Performance enhancement, zone LOD, ingame script editor, LTSL, UI improvements
- August & September 2014 UI, more zone LOD, colonies and AI traits, LTSL demo, development testbeds
- October & November 2014 Warp rails, planetary rings, rudimentary system map, market interfacemarket-interface, object viewer, text rendering
Recent videos also can be downloaded in Ultra High Quality, via torrent. See this thread within the forum.
After the 21st video update Josh announced that there would be no more video updates due to the stress the format induced. Later, at the start of January, he announced the new update format, called Road To Beta.
The update exists of a small weekly update existing mainly of text and images to convey how LT has grown towards a more complete game in the past week.^1^
- RTB Chapter 1 HUD, Hardpoint control groups and HUD customization
- RTB Chapter 2 Object overview, cargo management and general UI finalisation work
After week 2, no further RTB updates came out. There are indications that Josh was still working on LT, however, since he also went silent on the forums no info on the future of the RTB updates was known. Link
Here's Josh's last post before disappearing, out of which the reader can draw their own conclusions.
On April 8th 2015 RPS posted that they received an email from Josh stating that he is currently working on Limit Theory despite unrelated matters which limit his communication.
On May 31st Josh made a long post on the forum explaining the reasons for his silence (in short, a serious case of burnout and related mental health issues) and announcing his recovery and return, and stating updates will resume at some point in the future when Josh feels ready, but he is working on LT.
On August 14th Josh made another forum post, this time explaining his current way of LT development; he got an office at the Lousiana Tech Park, and is working normal healthy hours, with weekend breaks.
On September 17th he made a new Kickstarter update explaining what he said in the previous forum posts to the backers, and also releasing the full LT flickr album plus some photo's of his new office to the public.
Since then he regularly visited and posted on the forum, usually not getting into specifics but indicating that development was continuing fine.
November 16th Josh makes a post where he explains why there aren't any 'shiny' updates at the moment: the engine has become too complicated so he is currently working on separating the different components of it to make it efficient enough and easier (or, possible) to debug.
December 5th Josh makes a post about why this is necessary, after getting critique for working on the engine instead of on the gameplay.
January 20th 2016 Business Report released an article interviewing (among others) Josh which states he hopes for a beta release in about 6 months. Josh then stated this was not actually supposed to be disclosed, so take that number with a grain of salt.
January 22nd Josh makes a post about him giving a presentation to the LTP (the office he currently works in) which was a success, making him an official tenant now. Some of the board members also volunteered to be his advisors.
February 24th Josh makes a post detailing his engine work, stating it has come to fruition, development is going great and he is working on game code along with finishing the last engine parts.
March 9th Josh makes a post detailing the new structure of the engine, restating game code is being worked on now.
March 23rd Josh makes a post telling about his experiences at GDC 2016.
April 5th Josh makes a post giving more info about the new engine, stating that the new scripting language used in LT and for modding is Python 2.7, and providing proof of development by showing screenshots of his version control.
April 27th Josh makes a theorycrafting post about module instancing.
August 12th Josh makes a post restating development is continuing, explaining recent real-life events that made him appear less (TLDR both him and his gf needing to find a new apartment and moving) and promising a more detailed update at some point in the future.
A daily report can be found in his development logs, reachable through the limit theory forum.
Two summaries exist, one which includes all past devlogs and one which includes the weekly summaries
^1^ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joshparnell/limit-theory-an-infinite-procedural-space-game/posts/1097210
^2^ http://forums.ltheory.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4246#p90241