Ashes Cricket 2013 cancelled AFTER realease, developer blames Unity for failure

Well another thing about plugins if you ever write useful code and want to give it away you can't. Because, let's face it, probability wise, games is unlikely to earn a living as a sole source of income so you can sit on the code or release it to try and help others.

As far as the predicament the publishing house and the development house goes well I've been in a place that actually had very high level people breathing down my neck and I as a developer was forced to take code and install it on the system that was improperly [linked] (yes if you can believe it!) and would not even boot the system properly yet the CM and an esteemed developer insisted it worked. I flew out way past the original boarding time of 19:00 after arriving frazzled at the airport slightly late because I stayed late at work trying to convince them that the release didn't work, please don't send my there with it, or to find a way myself to make it work. Lucky for me the flight was delayed for hours by a severe thunder storm so I didn't miss the flight to begin with and in which we sat on the tarmac waiting to fly to DC. I arrived, finally at 3AM. LOL, this is when cell phones were for the rich so I arrive at Reagan and then had to walk for an hour to my hotel. Then thank god for the Metro because it's straight to the meeting with these big wigs at 5:00AM and then to install the defective software on the system at 6AM. Well, great, they are all looking straight at the monitor and the release spews out error message after error message and the system doesn't boot. I spend the next week fixing the 'official release', writing build instructions for CM, and then test instructions for the QA. I spent at least 3 days fighting to avoid that release. Sometimes management doesn't listen, particularly when a developer that has a good reputation and been there longer than you insists you are wrong.

 

I got the impression it was very similar. Especially when the latest version of NGUI has a lot of these features:

 

They used 4.3.0F4 i found out in my analysis of the released game. Considering this project has gone through 2 yrs, it makes it even more dubios as they seemed to have switched engines during development. A thing no sane developer would ever do..

I very much believe that trickstar outsourced development to some el-cheapo shop or freelance developers...
Another possibility is that there might have been some kind of developers exodus somewhen during the project, leaving trickstar with a pile of unfinished assets and codes, which they tried to hand over to another team..
But thats all pure speculation of course

The whole thing very much reminds me of another more or less crashed Unity game release with a somehow prominent name and publisher push behind it Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny . Some feedback
It was released with an insane amount of problems and glitches, but it wasn't pulled and the publisher now even dares to announce a "Gold Edition". It's worth to note that the developer still release patches and seems to be quite commited to fix the thing. Would be interesting who pays for that , publisher or developer ?

Seems the accessability of Unity causes some people/teams/small companies to underestimate the effort of such mid-sized game projects ...

 

They used 4.3.0F4 i found out in my analysis of the released game. Considering this project has gone through 2 yrs, it makes it even more dubios as they seemed to have switched engines during development. A thing no sane developer would ever do..

I very much believe that trickstar outsourced development it to some el-cheapo shop or freelance developers...
The whole thing very much reminds me of another more or less crashed Unity game release with a somehow prominent name and publisher push behind it :

Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny .

Some feedback , and the Metacritics ( metascore of 18 from 100 )


It was released with an insane amount of problems and glitches, but it wasn't pulled and the publisher now even dares to announce a "Gold Edition".

Seems the accessability of Unity causes some people/teams/small companies to underestimate the effort of such mid-sized game projects ...

 

A half arsed game is a half arsed game, no matter which engine you use.

 

LOL!!! sought of like this ashes f IC 2010 show it to be a very competent game, which begs the question why did their Unity version end up so bad? If you watch any of the videos for Ashes Cricket 2013 you can see that pretty much everything is bad, the environment are poor, the texturing is poor, the animation is poor, the AI and animation control is appalling, none which could really be blamed on the game engine.

 

Hey guys.

Whilst I have nothing to do with the development of this game, I feel like the cricket community owes the Unity community a sincere apology. If you guys want a laugh, head to planetcricket.net and you'll see a subforum full of Ashes 2013 hilarity. You can also find information on an upcoming, and hopefully awesome, cricket game called Don Bradman Cricket 14. It's not using Unity (they actually genuinely made their own engine, using C++) but the developer Big Ant has sung the praises of Unity and uses it in other projects.

Trickster Games said all along that their existing games were tired and dated, and hence they needed to completely start again. They talked about how they were making a complete new engine, starting from the ground up. They never gave Unity any credit, essentially lying in saying they were making everything from scratch when really they were using an engine that has had thousands of hours put into it.

Only when problems arose did they start blaming Unity, particularly regarding issues on the console versions. Last time I checked the PS3 version was in beta, and may still be. If you choose to make a big name commercial game on a beta engine then what do you expect?

We are yet to hear anything from Mike Fegan about the game. Their publishers 505 games deserve some of the blame, as ultimately they did agree to release the product, but this all came about from the incompetence of Trickster games and their head Mike Fegan.

Also aside from all of the horrendous graphics, sounds and animations, they get the basic laws of cricket wrong. Wickets are attributed to people taking catches, not the bowlers. Seriously?

This is a big middle finger to both the cricket and Unity communities, and I suggest you all write to 505 games and Trickster games to express your disapproval. This story has already made the front page of the BBC online website, as well as many other websites and even some TV stations. People are pissed off, and rightfully so, and so far it's just the cricket community.

 

Here's some interview with Mike Fegan about Ashes Cricket 2013 from back in May 29th
Seem to be pretty convinced

http://stevivor.com/2013/05/trickstar-games-director-mike-fegan-on-ashes-cricket-2013/

 

Contents of the /managed/ directory:



The game is huge 8.6gigs! This is bigger than Skyrim Legend (8 gigs)

 

LOL, WOW, what did they put in there?
The cricket ground PLUS the surrounding area, PLUS the whole city and all the characters, shops, props and buildings surrounding it?

 

Game_Data / - 8,358,450kb

Game_Data / Managed - 15,537kb

Mono / - 2,557 kb

Plugins / - 123kb - contains 1 file PhotonUnity3d.dll

Resources / 1537kb - contains 1 file - Unity default Resources

Streaming Assets / 365,746kb

.AppleDouble / 4,855kb - your game content lives here


There are lots of files more than 5mb each. The main folder contains 8.3 GB alone.

 

So what exactly is in that 8.1 GB game data? I bet it is the running commentary in UNCOMPRESSED WAV FORMAT.
Because I seriously don't believe a cricket ground with couple of characters (most of them probably re-used/instanced) and a ball and cricket bats will take up 8.1GB. Not unless they modeled every single blade of grass individually.



BTW, those videos are comedy gold! I can't stop laughing watching them!

 

OK, you're counting the work he's doing for Unity and then integrating that knowledge into nGUI afterwards as the next gen Unity GUI being like nGUI rather than nGUI being updating to be more like the next gen Unity GUI.

It's splitting hairs but the developer of nGUI / next gen Unity GUI tried to peddle a 'new version 3.0' of nGUI that even I and others that had bought the previous version of nGUI would have to pay for, owing to the massive updates he'd have to make to the old version of nGUI with the changes he'd made to the next gen Unity GUI. A conflict of interest there for sure.

I don't know if the verbose complaining on the nGUI website changed his mind or his boss at Unity stepped in and said you can't do that. In fact, most companies would make a developer such as Aren divest himself of his interest in nGUI for obvious reasons.

As far as I'm concerned I'll use Unity GUI because it's free not because I don't like nGUI (although it can tempt into making things needless busy and cluttered), I own a license to nGUI, or for any Richard Stallman type arguments. Mainly because the code I'm working on now requires no paid or restricted plugins or code outside the restrictions Unity itself imposes.

 

No idea. I'd wish there was some way you could peek what's inside it, like the Doom WAD or Quake ZIP files where they put all the game resources inside big ZIP files.


The main file - resources.assets is 622mb.
There are 74 files that are more than 10mb each., consuming 2.6 GB.
There are 7781 files less than 10mb each, consuming 5.45 GB.


Assuming that the game loads the the main resource 622mb, then 5 of these 20+mb files that would already consume more than 1gig of RAM. No matter how you optimise it, the game is already in serious trouble.

 

Ignoring what game is being discussed here I really don't see the problem with uncompressed assets. In fact I'd welcome it if more people did it.

 

The quickest way would to be have models and assets for all the cricket grounds....but the videos didn't show that type of detail. The assets are much better than claimed but not 8GB worth of better. The LOD textures and meshes could quickly take up that much if the included all the platforms from the newest consoles to the lowliest iPod touch 4G / iPhone 3GS.

 

Yup, Playmaker is definitely there. So I'll assume they're using it, or at least tried to use it. I think Playmaker is a good tool, but as I was saying before, it can hurt you on a larger project if you don't put some restraints on the way you use it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was their use of Playmaker that led to the downfall of their game.

 

I think the size of the whole thing is so huge mostly because of voice overs and video files. I remember discussions about the game mentioning cutscenes with badly masked VIDEOS of animated 3d characters. Maybe they have some real world footage in there too... don'T know

Anyways, the size of the thing wouldn't really bother me if it would be at least a HALF decent game ......

 

And they were probably trying to load most that data all the time. Probably no texture or model optimization based on distance, let alone programming optimization. Sad.

 

Well, it's technically possible to check out at least sound and texture files with DU, but I'm pretty sure it would be illegal to do on a game that isn't yours.

 

Maybe, for added realism, they gave every person in the crowd a unique skin/mesh.

 

Wow. I sort of imagined that the devs were probably highly enthusiastic cricket fans and not great developers, and more interested in the cricket side of things. If they are not getting the cricket part right, it sounds like they were outsourcing/hiring devs with little oversight. Probably even hiring ones the eskimoejoe had already fired.

---

I have to be honest, I am curious as amount of interest around this game. Is it because it is cricket and and highly anticipated game? Is is because of the level of fail? I understand the discussion here, the Unity interest, but even that, there are tons of crappy Unity games out there.

 

Around here it's because this one got a little press coverage that pointed fingers at the engine and zealots feel the need to jump to its defence. Everywhere else, yeah, I'd say it's just how unfinished the released product was - remember that similarly unfinished zombie game rush-released to cash in on the Day Z wave?

 

Any code that transforms the intelligence of men on a cricket field back to the collective intelligence of a hoard of amoebae surely deserves some much needed coverage.

 

I literally laughed out loud when I read this.

This games seems like the Big Rigs : Over The Road Racing of Cricket.

 

It was first reported on gaming websites due to the backlash from the Cricket community and those that bought it on steam. Then it was picked up by National TV - BBC and then every major newspaper in the UK. Hardly what i'd call 'a little press coverage'.

 

Haven't seen a thing about it in Australian main stream media.

 

Do computer or videogames get any media attention in Australia except from when they are seen as too violent or corrupting out children?

 

http://www.news.com.au/technology/g...lawed-ashes-game/story-e6frfrt9-1226771060746

http://www.news.com.au/sport/more-s...ames-of-all-time/story-fndukor0-1226771376400

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/...d-a-cricket-game-disaster-20131203-2ymon.html

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/20069309/ashes-2013-terrible-ashes-game-cancelled-due-to-complaints/

http://www.couriermail.com.au/sport...ames-of-all-time/story-fnii0hmo-1226771376400

http://www.3aw.com.au/blogs/3aw-news-blog/ashes-video-game-unplayable/20131129-2yfup.html

 

I would have thought they might mention it on TV or something, maybe when they are talking about cricket.

 

@zombiegorilla,

My experience was particularly bad and very similar.

Last year, not knowing better, I had cheating, lying developers, modellers and artists work under us. They produced almost the same quality as this cricket game - farcical, broken in every way, animation was off, huge resource files, broken programming, bad graphics, clunky controls, very poor work ethics, disrespectful and insulting behaviour.


After they screwed us, I do know they screwed three other game studios, doing the same works. They crippled one of competitors and delayed their MMO project by 8 months. One game studio collapsed, another had their kickstarter money reduced more than 80% and no game as of today.


Their method of operation was one person would claim needed a programmer, 3d modeller, QA and conspire with each other to kick the other members of the team out, then collude with each other, falsifying QA reports - thus - hiding development bugs, modeller short-comings, poor artworks.


They would say - everything is OK, they would ship, but need a few more months, need a few more months.


They were UDK refugees - they said that UDK was bad, don't use UDK, UDK cannot do this, UDK cannot do that, UDK was not suitable for usage, when these claims were unfounded and deemed to the person's shortcomings and inability to use UDK. If colleges and Universities are teaching UDK, what is the exact problem?


They would do things, like add false academic records to their resumes, put other people's artwork on their portfolio, get their friends to act as a reference, do a bait and switch - you pay them money, they give you a model from TurboSquid, some marked-up asset from the asset store, or ask to buy hardware for them - Wacom tablets - their artist have dozens of wacom tablets, but no wacom tablet even after a dozen people buy wacom tablets for them.

For payment, they needed to be paid indirectly - like send some money to their relatives in Australia, an European country or some 'friend' out of out-of-state, or need to pay by Western Union - which raises considerable red flags.


Even their Paypal name is different from their assumed name, they use proxies to login to Skype, one day, they are from Philippines, another day they are in Australia, another day they would be from Finland, another day in California, another in New York, they use SSN numbers from other people which we get IRS letters asking us to clarify since the name and even gender is wrong, we would get our money back from the bank because no such account exists or the payee account is incorrect.


These people would have dozens of addresses, dozens of pre-paid phones on their name. Just looking at the background reports, the list would go on for more than six pages of prior addresses, prior pre-paid phone numbers for the past 24 months.


We've considerably tightened up our hiring process since then. My competitor has even more stricter hiring process - like making candidates come to their office and do on-site tests at their own expense, not paying them for poor works, double QA - having an independent QA company as well as their own QA staff.

 

Wow, this is why I work alone.

 

I am not being sarcastic whatsoever when I say I really enjoy reading your stories, you should post some to websites like thedailywtf etc.

 

That seems pretty harsh and open to exploitation. Who defines what is poor work?

 

I don't know about my competitors.


Usually I hear complaints about them, from persons who doesn't know how to rig, model and animate, draw stick drawings, code very badly, looking for a job here, expecting high wages.


They bitch and moan about how they were mistreated, abused, and then laid off, could not find a job as game developer, or cannot make a living doing art, and other sob stories...


They want to stay here, and then do the same things. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

 

Or perhaps things went badly because of your poor management? Just sayin ...

 

One post just to say something about him?

 

I didn't make a complaint.

 

They seriously make me wonder what's going on that eskimojoe seems to always have this kind of trouble.

 

I don't know. We've never had this kind of problem for more than a decade. The last time this kind of thing happened was 1996 or 1997.


We are pretty much OK now. The black friday, cyber monday sales are very good.


If you don't have any products for sale... have a nice thanksgiving

 

But you just said this:

 

I think he means the last time it happened until then.

 

That corresponds to the approximate time that we had this trouble. After we got rid of them, we've been more cautious afterwards. Then the thing dragged on and on, because the police investigated, the police took their time to get search warrants, raided several fake gaming companies, and so on.

 

Sounds serious ...

 

They were looking to hire people a few months ago, http://www.tsumea.com/news/130813/unity-coders-wanted-at-trickstar-games

 

6 month contract??

Posted in August so you have to wonder if this was to help finish the game off. 6 months sounds about right. So around August they realised they needed help to meet the game deadline.

Oh well who knows... they could have been working on this...

 

This had me crying of laughter......

 

Nothing new here. It's already known that the Japanese are the strangest people on the planet ...

 

How have I never seen this, I nearly died!

 

Shame on you Unity for creating/releasing such a horrible game!