Halae wrote:

This is something that was addressed quite a while ago*. Due to stipulations in the agreement they have with unreal, they can't actually separate the character creator from the game itself and sell the separately (even if one is priced as free) because they're only licensed for a single product. I do hope they figure out a workaround, but as it stands I can't see this happening as a free demo.

*Bear in mind, i'm working off remembered information. It may be inaccurate because of that, so take this with a grain of salt.

Yeah this is more or less how I understand things are going to work now. I think the "original plan" (many years ago) was for there to be a "standalone character creator" app but I think things have changed enough where that doesn't seem quite as likely anymore.

Of course I'm sure they could (and will) create all sorts of YouTube vids and other promotional material that'll "advertise" the character creator and the game in general when the time comes regardless.

The initial launch of the game will just provide the creator as "enabled". Then a future update will "enable" the rest. By going this route we can start producing standalone stuff under our existing license. We [i]want[/i] to do standalones; just can't do them yet for the legal reasons people have already remarked on. I hit this issue head on when I was working on the launcher. Not fun.

Impulse King wrote:

Something just hit me. If CoT is only licensed for one "product", then how would a beta server work?

It's still the same product. The server won't matter. We are licensed for one [i]initial[/i] product. Things open up for us after that first release. And each team member has a personal license.

Actually I think that will be mostly to our alpha testers anyways.

TheInternetJanitor wrote:

It usually involves having a good PR / community person that is entertaining and an eloquent speaker teaming up with a couple knowledgeable developers. The PR person has to be comfortable putting on the show and playing to the audience. The developers are there to back them up and provide information but the main focus is to put on a show. For this reason the ideal PR person is usually attractive and very often female.

For me it's actually very funny you mentioned this kind of thing in the context you described because what seems like a million years ago (around maybe 1990) I was actually involved in something like this with a friend of mine who was a film major doing a school project.

The "project" turned out to be (if it had been done in today's terms) basically a short YouTube type vid where my friend had gotten this "Barbie cheerleader" type girl playing a PC game (gods I can't even remember which one it was now) and she was explaining how you play it and how much fun it was. Of course like I said this was way back in 1990 so this was pretty much pre-Internet much less pre-YouTube.

Anyway the concept was basically the same as your idea - we were making what amounted to a "promo" vid for the PC game in question.

Halae wrote:

Man, you're old. :P

I was [i]born[/i] in 1991.

I said it "seems like a million years ago" even to me. I graduated from college in 1992 so you can do the math from that. ;)

You probably don't even remember there being a time "before" the Internet. :)

TheInternetJanitor wrote:

When it comes to the presenter being able to engage with and entertain the audience is the main goal so being a "Barbie cheerleader" wouldn't necessarily be ideal. They need to come across as knowledgeable and in touch with the community, able to make jokes and understand references. A pretty face may help get initial attention but more than that is needed to fill that PR role. You'd want them to be a fan first and foremost. Someone that players can accept as one of their own. A paid model could bomb when they have to interact with the crowd and deviate from script.

Well to be clear I never implied the cliché "Barbie cheerleader" would be an ideal PR person for CoT. In fact I used that phrase specifically to imply a sort of negative spin on the notion that this person even -had- to be a cute female. Mostly I mentioned it since I had actually "lived through" the basic scenario you were spelling out in your post.

Anyway I would of course hope that if MWM attempts something like this that they would get a bunch of genuinely cool and knowledgeable people who were dedicated to the game and enthusiastic about it. If they happen to be "cute" people too that would be a bonus of course.

P.S. It turns out my film major friend "selected" this girl he got for our game vid basically because he was hoping to get into her pants. I'm not sure it ever quite worked out the way he wanted. ;)

TheInternetJanitor wrote:

When it comes to the presenter being able to engage with and entertain the audience is the main goal so being a "Barbie cheerleader" wouldn't necessarily be ideal. They need to come across as knowledgeable and in touch with the community, able to make jokes and understand references. A pretty face may help get initial attention but more than that is needed to fill that PR role. You'd want them to be a fan first and foremost. Someone that players can accept as one of their own. A paid model could bomb when they have to interact with the crowd and deviate from script.

This brought to mind a squad of cheerleaders and then Tony Stark dropping out of the sky in an Iron Man suit

Hope wrote:

Lothic wrote:

You probably don't even remember there being a time "before" the Internet. :)

This.

I was trying to explain this to my wife my other day. she just couldn't fathom people buying new sets of encyclopedias every year as the info would be updated slightly.

I recall my parents almost signed me up for a pretty expensive "Encyclopædia Britannica" deal back in the 80s. I think they'd give you the set of books and you'd also get various annual updates and such. Looking back on it now that we live in a "Wiki" world it does seem laughable for anyone to spend hundreds on what amounted to a static "hardcopy" version of a bunch of wiki pages. ;)

[img=420x420]http://e.lvme.me/mlgsroh.jpg[/img][img=400x400]https://www.askideas.com/media/48/Back-In-My-Day-We-Didnt-Have-Cell-Phones-Funny-Old-Man-Meme-Image.jpg[/img]

avelworldcreator wrote:

I actually bought a sub for Britannica back in the 80s...
And I was born in 1967. I'm one of the oldest in our organization.

I think the thing that stopped my parents from getting them was that we just happened to live pretty close to this weird place they called a "library" that I could go to for school work. For those who don't know what a library is it's a place where they kept a static version of the Internet frozen in a bunch of hardcopies they called "books". ;)

Lothic wrote:

For those who don't know what a library is it's a place where they kept a static version of the Internet frozen in a bunch of hardcopies they called "books". ;)

What is this language you are using? Sounds like made-up words from a bygone era, the kind of stuff I would here on History channel. What's next, are you going to tell me there was a time before cell phones? A time when things were done on pen and paper instead of spreadsheets? That people used to actually listen to ball games on the radio?!?! Take your lies from this forum.

Foradain wrote:

Fallout1 wrote:

I think there are a lot of us of a more mature age on these forums. I am also born in 1967.

At that time, I was about two. :)>

I was two, too!

Lothic wrote:

Riptide wrote:

We thought we were pretty special because we inherited my grandparent's set from the 40's AND we had a new set from 1976 (which we still called "new" into the 80's).

Ironically that set from the 40s is now probably valuable as a collector's item if they are in reasonably good condition. The info in those books might be fairly out of date but people will collect anything now-a-days. ;)

We have thought of that, but alas, they were very heavily used by my Mom and her 6 brothers and sisters... then by me and my siblings.
Live and learn :)

I remember my grandparents have a partial set of encyclopedias. Like L-P I think they signed up and then realized they didn't get the whole set for what they paid, and cancelled that. But they kept that partial set on the shelf from the 70s until about 2000. My third grade project on an endangered species was done almost entirely through use of an encyclopedia. I'm not even that old.

I thought the Unreal Engine was free now, and you just paid a 5% royalty after 3k in profits? (https://www.pcgamer.com/unreal-engine-4-is-now-free/) why is there a license problem?

Lothic wrote:

WraithTDK wrote:

I thought the Unreal Engine was free now, and you just paid a 5% royalty after 3k in profits? (https://www.pcgamer.com/unreal-engine-4-is-now-free/) why is there a license problem?

I think the problem is that MWM can currently only have ONE deliverable under that "it's free until you make a profit" deal with Unreal. If MWM tried to release the character generator as a standalone app and then the full game at a later date (both of which use elements of Unreal) then Unreal would consider that two different licensable products. At least that appears to be issue as I understand it at the moment.

I believe our contract precedes the “free for 5%) that is currently offered. We were approached by Epic around the time of our kick starter, before they announced UE4 publicly with it. If I recall correctly, we were one of the earliest adopters of the engine, particularly for an MMO.

For a while, we weren’t even allowed to announce our switch from UE3 to 4 until Epic did their official release and gave the ok for us to say we were using it.

Lothic wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:

Lothic wrote:

WraithTDK wrote:

I thought the Unreal Engine was free now, and you just paid a 5% royalty after 3k in profits? (https://www.pcgamer.com/unreal-engine-4-is-now-free/) why is there a license problem?

I think the problem is that MWM can currently only have ONE deliverable under that "it's free until you make a profit" deal with Unreal. If MWM tried to release the character generator as a standalone app and then the full game at a later date (both of which use elements of Unreal) then Unreal would consider that two different licensable products. At least that appears to be issue as I understand it at the moment.

I believe our contract precedes the “free for 5%) that is currently offered. We were approached by Epic around the time of our kick starter, before they announced UE4 publicly with it. If I recall correctly, we were one of the earliest adopters of the engine, particularly for an MMO.

For a while, we weren’t even allowed to announce our switch from UE3 to 4 until Epic did their official release and gave the ok for us to say we were using it.

Thanks for the clarification. Is it then true that your current Unreal contract only allows for "one product" and releasing a standalone costume creator separate from the "main game" would be considered two unique products as far as Unreal is concerned?

Pretty much. We wanted to release a standanle Avatar Builder but once the contract was checked we had to change plans. Which is why the current plan is to eeelase our Avatar Builder as something like an early release I’d thenportion if the game to which the rest will be added.

Becuase is this we have had to set up certain features and hooks (some of that coding shown in Avel’s vid) to which the rest of the game will connect with via patches. Some integration issues have cause bugs (as has been noted previously in different threads) as well as other issues associated with the additional requirements needed to be in place which is why we set the date for fall of 2018.

Interesting. So you have a "grandfathered-in" OG license. I assume that means you don't have to pay the 5% roylaties?

Although, wouldn't it be possible to release COT under your paid license and the costume creator under the free license? Or would that just confuse things once it was time to combine them?

WraithTDK wrote:

Interesting. So you have a "grandfathered-in" OG license. I assume that means you don't have to pay the 5% roylaties?

Since MWM was likely dealt with as a special "first time" case it's easy to assume they were given special unique terms. But obviously Unreal still wants to get their money from MWM at some point so I would have never assumed they were going to be completely "royalty free" from Unreal. It's likely MWM is simply going to pay a different percentage and/or do it after a differnent threshold of profit.

WraithTDK wrote:

Although, wouldn't it be possible to release COT under your paid license and the costume creator under the free license? Or would that just confuse things once it was time to combine them?

Given the fact that MWM is apparently one of their "first special cases" I'm quite sure MWM would not be able to get away with "tricking" Unreal by pretending to release the Avatar Creator under false pretenses.

Remember when AOL was 30 hours a month and you had to pay for each additional minute !

Lothic wrote:

WraithTDK wrote:

Interesting. So you have a "grandfathered-in" OG license. I assume that means you don't have to pay the 5% roylaties?

Since MWM was likely dealt with as a special "first time" case it's easy to assume they were given special unique terms. But obviously Unreal still wants to get their money from MWM at some point so I would have never assumed they were going to be completely "royalty free" from Unreal. It's likely MWM is simply going to pay a different percentage and/or do it after a differnent threshold of profit.

This is correct, but we are not allowed to disclose the specific terms. All I can really say is that Epic is an awesome group of people and I am proud to display their logo in our game.