Chronicles of Elyria - The Roadmap Of A Scam "MMORPG"

Chronicles of Elyria is back, the roadmap for Kingdoms of Elyria is here...A "game" that in 2017 was being developed by their own admission in unreal engine 4, that is now missing almost every feature of a simple single player game and developed in unity is what all backers are waiting for in his own words. He literally says this is what the community wants. I'd say I'm at a loss for words, but here's 19 minutes of them.
Roadmap blog:
chroniclesofelyria.com/blog/3...
GET NORDVPN and help support me:
go.nordvpn.net/aff_c?offer_id...
USE COUPON CODE: kiratv
Want to support me further? I now have a Patreon.
/ kirayt
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Follow my twitch! / kiraonttv
Join My Discord! - / discord
------------------------------------------------------------
#mmorpg #kickstarter #chroniclesofelyria

[@samarkand1585]

Caspian putting more work into avoiding that lawsuit than he ever did into the game at all

[@BreLana]

@Samarkand EXACTLY! Got his ass in gear, only when he needed to save his ass!

[@turtolelegs6831]

@Qeycon what game?

[@conlosmorchitti5832]

@Qeycon this game lore is amazing, i've been following the game lore on youtube since forever, its fun, its immersive, full of lies and plot twist lol

[@Shauma_llama]

@Laputa Mierda Sad too, because this is one of few MMORPG I had on my radar that I thought could be really good and I was looking forward to it.

[@TheRaccoonGamer]

@Qeycon Send me over those reviews from IGN and PC Gamer please.

[@whitney526]

I love that over 4 years and 8 million dollars later, we're still on "the first step." Literally takes the human child less time to take their first step than this guy.

[@alexanderbarrett2635]

this comment is actually gold

[@byteresistor]

Their next milestone for this year: google how to make a videogame.

[@travellingslim]

Developer here: When the wording mentions "mechanics" and "experiences" this can simply just be conceptual ideas written out on a whiteboard of how it's "intended" to be, not necessarily that they are already coded and working in game. Saying that "Kingdoms and Chronicles will share server code" can simply mean they are just starting to write code for Kingdoms and can eventually use it down the line for Chronicles, not necessarily that they had a whole bunch of code for Chronicles already. These are the oldest tricks in the book when trying to look good in a status meeting for your superiors :)

[@tamraztamrazov2616]

what game did you develop

[@devol3829]

@@tamraztamrazov2616 Either league or wow probably. Cause they never got shit done lmao.

[@pokerusfreak8194]

that only makes sense if the COE game is intended to be in Unity moving forward, which they've both not stated and also doesnt seem to be the case looking back either.

[@eckard9597]

@@devol3829 They still don't :D

[@scorpius666999]

@@pokerusfreak8194 they don't have to be in the same engine to talk to a server. However, I kinda do have a feeling they ditched unreal for unity somewhere down the line, my guess would be they probably found some assets or projects on unity asset store they thought they could use, that didn't exsist on unreal marketplace. Although, with a budget of 8 million that would be irrelevant. I don't think any of those games will see a light of day to be honest. I'm gonna take a gues that "npc interaction" will just be a tooltip when a player clicks on an npc, and boom, there you got it's interaction. Or something along those lines.

[@heavymetalmusichead4969]

Me, whos never heard of this game before: "I want my money back!"

[@KiraTV1]

😄

[@grahamwillox]

You won’t get it either. Hahaha

[@Jesse-um1pz]

@@KiraTV1 FYI you can easily convert C++ into C# and vice-versa both manually and via translator. C# is derived from C++ which also makes it easier to use a translator (think google translator but for code) to convert. Either way the game is bs and that's obvious when they claimed to have art and decide to use unity asset packs. The models, and textures would be the easiest to import into a new engine (unless he was using some Unreal exclusive asset packs which are typically provided free).

[@Br1cht]

@@Jesse-um1pz Not as easy as that when you get down to it, no matter what Wikipedia says.

[@Jesse-um1pz]

@@Br1cht It is if you know what you're doing... edit: I mean it's possible if you know what you're doing, not necessarily easy. But still doable.

[@janherfs3063]

Looks like one of some mobile game ads where one guy alone builds an empire

[@fabioamaro320]

Mate I was thinking the same thing 😂 🤣 Like your comment actually cracked me up. "One guy Alone" hahahaha

[@infernaldaedra]

Those misleading mobile ads should be illegal 😂 Those games are always timer oriented city build clickers with no gameplay features at all. Hell sometimes they use gameplay for other games like Age Of Empires, Sniper Elite, or Call of Duty. And you install the game and its either match 3 or time-gates city builder.

[@Jaroen66]

Game developer here: here’s the thing, it can be true that both games might use largely the same server architecture that can partly be used by both clients. But there’s a whole lot of stuff that will be specific to each game on the server side. But more importantly, I don’t think many people here realize how much work and coding goes into the client-side part of those games, which are vastly different between the two games. Moreover, and client-side code that they want to have will either have to be made in common dll’s to be used by both clients (which is no easy task), or have to be converted from one language/architecture to another. Here is a list of code stuff they will likely have to make twice for 2 different engines: Rendering, lighting, shading/materials (including their fog…), terrain, UI, Pawn movement & animation controllers, controls & input, client-side scripting and I can go on. It’s highly unlikely that they can make all these systems engine-agnostic, unless they’re really really good. I think they’ve already shown they are not… They might be able to reuse 20% of the codebase at best..

[@Gruunld]

Caspian is like me in middle school trying to find out ways to tell my mom why I didn't do my homework, when it would have been easier to just do it.

[@stefanocaraci1137]

Yeah, except your homework didn’t cost your mom more then 8 million dollars ....

[@pencilbender]

@@stefanocaraci1137 tell that to the collage dropout's mum

[@scottc346]

@@pencilbender College dropout here....working as an engineer at Microsoft. :-)

[@mrosskne]

@@scottc346 Not really something to be proud of.

[@scottc346]

@@mrosskne No student debt, making 6 figures, what's not to be happy with?

[@Zackers15]

I'm no game developer, but I am a software engineer. You're absolutely right, C# and C++ are not compatible, which means anything written in C# would need to be rewritten to work in C++. Not to mention I'm sure Unreal and Unity have different APIs, meaning gameplay mechanics would need to be rewritten and features available in one engine may not be available in the other. Smells like a scam to me, there's obviously no progress made in Unreal for CoE, no real assets made (or finished), and no code written for Unreal. It'd make more sense to try to show off progress made than to stand up a new game in a different engine.

[@Armoredcompany]

Basically what this devblog said was "So, we're using Counter-Strike to build our World of Warcraft game" The assets might transfer sure, but the game functionality itself will NOT work.

[@brendanconlon8292]

That's true to the extent they expect to literally reuse code written in C++ into C#. But to the extent they are writing two different games that are interacting with the same central server the language of the different clients is largely irrelevant, so long as the servers API can translate the underlying data sent to and from it, which is probably just a string and/or bit array. I am really not defending the developers of Chronicles of Elyria, they might all be con artists for all I know, but switching to a separate engine to build a different game is not dramatically costlier then building a new game in the same engine, if the bulk of the code you had to write is server side anyway.

[@KiraTV1]

There's a line in the blog that says they will be taking features from the 4 year developed ue4 game and putting them into the new unity one. So it isn't just server at all. It also isn't a separate game. There's literally a screenshot I posted on the video showing they were building kingdom's of elyria in ue4 , 4 years ago. Its all there in black and white that they have started again in unity.

[@rojobaSC]

Obviously a "software engineer" that has never heard of language bindings heh?

[@Grandhoy]

@@brendanconlon8292 I second this. The server side code will be able to interact with both Unity/Unreal - provided they have set it up to do so of course. Game engine is irrelevant in that regard, as the engine only covers the front end. From what I can gather, they seem to want to test the server side using the new Unity game, and I believe the reason they chose Unity is because it is quicker to develop a game in Unity/C# compared to Unreal. I would also consider Unity to be a better choice over Unreal for an isometric style game.

[@amyrainbow237]

Idk if anyone else has said this before but the Chronicles of Elyria logo looks like an exact copy of the cover of the book "The Secret" which essentially tells people to fake it 'til they make it... law of attraction, etc... coincidence? I think not!

[@greenli9551]

Hahaha law of attraction is different from fake it till you make it. It's about your inner state which will reflect the outer. The biggest reason it doesn't work for people is subconscious blockages. If you know how to address this this phenomenon works It's an actual real thing. But I get what you mean and this game is gonna flop 😪

[@amyrainbow237]

@@greenli9551 no shade to LOA, a guy literally says that in the secret movie. Either way I was insinuating the guy read the book and was so inspired and took it so literally, he robbed the logo 😆

[@greenli9551]

@@amyrainbow237 I get ya yeah

[@jonathansoko5368]

@@greenli9551 It boils down to fake it till you make it.

[@aresdesiderata8959]

@@jonathansoko5368 Changing your thoughts, thinking patterns, and consciousness is actually not faking it till you make it, it's more like the beginning of free will.

[@nordy259]

I'm amazed he hasn't just fled to a country without a extradition treaty yet.

[@bnet7983]

he is going to wait and see if the court rules against him

[@elGringo69]

@@bnet7983 It doesnt matter, it is a civil suit, its not criminal.

[@tomothybahamothy]

@@elGringo69 fraud isn't criminal?

[@elGringo69]

@@tomothybahamothy Its a civil suit, civil suits are not criminal....they are civil....thats why its called civil....civil suit

[@William-Morey-Baker]

@@tomothybahamothy fraud is criminal, but he hasn't been charged with fraud... Not by a prosecutor anyway. He's being sued... Not the same thing

[@TheNathanNAPALM]

Wow. Are they literally just trying to avoid the lawsuit? Look we are making “a game” technically! Pathetic.

[@KiraTV1]

Aye

[@blah159]

my man napalm joining in the outrage! legend!

[@129das]

feels that way but it never work.

[@twilightparanormalresearch186]

If I had my country he would have to deliver on his promises or be in jail

[@grumpyoldwizard]

It sounds like he is trying to deliver a minimal product to help avoid litigation.

[@Saivailed]

Glad you mentioned it, I've been thinking the same exact thing. This sounds like a big "oh shit" when he realized the public is going to need at least something, otherwise he'll be doing time or at least drown in debt.

[@namesbinge3073]

@@Saivailed But the resulting product is totally different from what the funders was promised. Plus with the 8M funding, it should be enough for unavoidable litigation. Disclaimer: I didn't know about the game until a Video popped onto my recommendation.

[@bluebasementmusic]

That scene of the two guys fencing is literally an animated version of the duel in the movie "the princess bride"

[@MrAlphaMyr]

Holy shit, it is. The entire area is just that scene, remodeled. I can't believe it.

[@bluebasementmusic]

@@MrAlphaMyr unreal eh!

[@AwakeTooLong]

Was it supposed to be footage of a game? I thought it was someone trying to show that they could , or did, re-enact it in a game.

[@maleqaigaming]

@@AwakeTooLong It was the "combat demo" they made for kickstarter to assure backers that there was already enough progress on the game that $900k would be enough to fund the majority of the development and attract investors. Same as the jousting mini-game they made to show that they were working on the gameplay mechanics still. A big ass farce, the original kickstarter page said it had the majority of the gameplay elements already made, but the only thing they ever released was the stupid obstacle course simulator very shortly before they announced they stopped development, for one last cash grab. They even released new purchasable "content" the week of their final announcement.

[@AwakeTooLong]

@@maleqaigaming I was wondering about the jousting thing too. On the surface, those two scenes make it look like it all has a ton of potential. That's some pretty impressive fuckery.

[@Tnargav]

Seems like caspian is making some progress with them unity tutorials.

[@dchippie]

So am I right in thinking , he's had 8million and 4 years and all he's made is the start of a game nobody wants with now less staff to try and fund the game that everyone paid for ? Where did the 8 million go ? I hope he finds himself in prison soon 😀

[@jonathansoko5368]

The money paid the team for all the work. Where that work is, well I'm guessing it doesn't exist

[@dchippie]

@@jonathansoko5368 well paid staff then lol

[@jjstraka1982]

What do you imagine he is going to go to prison for?? A crowd-funded game that didn't come to fruition?? When has that ever ended up in jail-time??

[@kurrwa]

@@dchippie I wonder what cars and houses staff have or where their vacations were? ^^

[@dchippie]

@@jjstraka1982 fraud ?

[@narwhalgamingvariety]

You can have two engines interact if they're both connected to a server, for example.. if the Unity client builds a castle and it saves that info to a database and the Unreal engine client takes that data and places a castle, it's possible. They won't directly communicate but they'd be pulling information from the same place to. Well written games can operate just off of tiny pieces of data from an external source. It can load position data and display things that the Unity client is doing. But while it is theoretically possible, it's a mess and proves to me that the original game on UE4 may have never really existed. I have very little faith that they'll pull any of it off. The demo they've shown is just to fool a court. I am not against the purchase of assets when you're a small indie studio, but these folk had millions of dollars and what they've shown is about a week of work knowing they purchased it.

[@triunestudio]

This answer. I'm guessing Caspian is referring to the persisted database data. So like land prices or various other small data points.

[@itssnoopy333]

Boom 💥

[@ironhammer500]

Thing is that demo will bite them in ass because the court can turn around and say why did you buy store assets if you had millions uno plus they can look at the purchase times. Pretty sure where that money went was into his personal stuff.

[@triunestudio]

@@ironhammer500 you may be on to something here.

[@LcieKJ]

I remember the BnS devs trying to port the game from enrealengine 3 to unrealengine 4 and failing so it must be hard cause they ended up just rebuilding the game, so it must be harder to port a games to a whole new engine.

[@jonathansoko1085]

Caspian is a lowtier batman villain

[@aockrewshi7480]

Even his name sounds villainous

[@bretts8070]

He's the Condiment King of game dev shysters. Condiment King being the lowest tier Batman villain ever made.

[@joejoey546]

Never trust someone named Caspian lol.

[@whoisfrank6051]

😂😂😂

[@xinox73]

This is why i dont pay for things that isnt finished...:/

[@bashamo9363]

My favourite part of day - Watching film about Kira destroiyng Caspian

[@stefanocaraci1137]

Nothing to get your day going go like watching kira making fun of caspian. Great Time to be alive !

[@Narakusin84]

I'm enjoying it with my first cup of coffee. :D

[@stefanocaraci1137]

Btw, regarding KIRA’s question about Unity and Unreal, let me put it in simple words that all of you can understand : The biggest seller of Natural Fertiliser is , right now , trying to sell you another shit....

[@lau4420]

@@Narakusin84 im on my 5th 😁

[@lordmawkish1286]

It's such a shitshow and I am glad to be here for it. EDIT: Though, obviously, sorry for everyone who funded and was excited for this game.

[@bayraktarx1386]

Hold on your papers!

[@Shonnyy]

"While the client for Kingdoms is different, the server-side code which drives the gameplay is the same used for both games" This somewhat true. A game server (server-side code) is written and hosted independent of the client. The client will send requests to the game server and update itself based on what the game server tells it to. The client and server don't need to be written in the same language or framework/engine. However, stating that the server-side code "drives the gameplay" is misleading. Even though the server can be used by both Unity and Unreal clients, each client still needs to interpret responses from the server and update themselves accordingly. This client code isn't shared what so ever so there will still be a massive amount of re-writing. TL;DR: Only some code can be shared but a lot will need to be re-written

[@kencrawford4838]

There actually is an Elyria, Ohio...right next to Lorain. I was born there, and now I want my money back.

[@theyalwayscomeinfall]

I want to see a Kingdoms Of Ohio game, haha.

[@okamifox16]

Ohhh Caspian getting shit on again? Lemme get my popcorn and soda. :O

[@Onus6688]

saaaaaaame

[@xalzor740]

Hey baby 😳

[@twilightparanormalresearch186]

@@xalzor740 lmao

[@blippedyblop]

"And I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for your meddling, Kira"

[@KiraTV1]

Those darned meddling kids

[@AmericanIlluminati]

4-5 years & millions of dollars, all spent on Jeremy Walsh sitting around with his buddies theory crafting. What really pisses me off, is the employees who knew he was Bullshitting, but taking checks anyway will get off scott free because “they got laid off”.

[@johnathanera5863]

They will all get off Scott free lol. Its damn near impossible to prove fraud.

[@AmericanIlluminati]

@@johnathanera5863 I think it's possible to prove there was fraud if there really was, but yes they will get off scot-free. If anything becomes of this case, Xsolla & Jeromy will be taking the hit.

[@MaximumCarter]

Chronicle of Delirium... brought to you by Unreal, Unity, Frostbite and Cryengine!

[@MrHolyheck]

Did anyone else notice that the duel scene shown was literally a scene from princess bride?

[@samuelgrahame3617]

The soul bound engine was written in csharp. Based off really old Dev videos/by people who talked directly to them.

[@zeryphex]

In the four years time of Jeremy Walsh trying to swindle people, his dev studio/team could have pulled a Valheim and released a working mini-game in Early Access ... selling two million copies at twenty bucks a pop. They would have made more money being legit than what little money they made by lying ... minus the money from the future lawsuit.

[@thunderbolt8031]

This is why we tell people to STOP building these BIG ASS games..... and when you have no experience....Its worse ...Making a game like Valheim and COE is apples and oranges.....when it comes to development, I been a developer for 28 years, and can tell you..... I will NEVER understand why people give money to people WHO NEVER made a game before.....and an MMORPG, you are asking for this......foolish...

[@Dustygoodz]

💯💯💯

[@wiegraffolles9822]

STOP making fun of Caspian, leave him alone! My fingers hurt from all the upvoting.

[@UnityMMODevelopers]

I haven't watched the whole video but I am going to stop right here and chime in. CoE's backend is a system called SpatialOS. SpatialOS is designed from the ground up to work with both Unreal Engine and Unity. With SpatialOS you can have a Unreal Client, a Unity Client, a Mobile Client, a Custom C#, C++, or Java Client all playing on the same server interacting seamlessly with each other but with different UIs and user experiences. The Majority of the work that was being done on CoE was on the SpatialOS backend with a basic simple grayboxed client just so they could test stuff out. All of the SpatialOS components could be brought over and used in KoE and allow for further development of the backend along side KoE.

[@KiraTV1]

You're a bit behind on the times here man. They dropped spatialos in 2018 after shelling out hundreds of grand and then designed their own in house solution instead:)

[@dondodo9192]

Imagine Star Citizen run out of money in the next few years before it ever finished....it will be the death of all future kickstarter games.

[@kevinreyhan209]

Dont worry, as a time traveller i assure you that star citizen will deliver their promise. They finally reach beta test in 2051, pretty sure they mention full release around 2100 or smth. But kids these days use VR to play game so im not sure if star citizen will be relevant for you guys.

[@chrisbaker3795]

Love these chronicles of Elyria videos. So addicting to follow.

[@anotherelvis]

Same here. I am still strangely fascinated.

[@anotherelvis]

@Alaskan Adventures I paid around $150 and this was money that could afford to lose, but I feel bad for the ones who paid $10000 for a kingdom.

[@chrisbaker3795]

@Alaskan Adventures I did not. I remember seeing COE on kickstarter and decided not to back because p2w games dont really interest me. I however took a gamble of my own on Ashes of Creation and their kickstarter campaign.

[@KiraTV1]

Glad you're enjoying man

[@chrisbaker3795]

@@anotherelvis could have been worse. It's not your fault they blatantly lied about what the money was to be used for.

[@defiantvalkyrie3584]

Also it's very weird how -- the mechanics of Elyria is like "Free To Play" for like how many months till your character dies of old age and you can buy a new life with real money

[@enricosanti7627]

Game Dev here, first i should mention I am a 3D artist with hardly any experience coding but i do understand the fundamentals of programming, Engines do get swapped out but usually at a very early stage and not half way through as that would generally require redoing all the work from scratch (Programming wise) Art is a different story, when working on a game for 3rd person camera view your texel density (512 pixels) as well as general mesh density will be much higher than a game that is a top down view for it to look good. You can repurpose the art from 3rd person to top down view by simply crushing down your Triangle count and adjusting your texel density (256 Pixels), which already that is a huge endeavor since you have to do it per asset if you want the best quality. Even then not all your models that look good in 3rd person view will work in a top down view since you generally want to exaggerate proportions of things to read better. Going from Unreal to Unity could mean that UE4 was just too hard to learn where as Unity tends to be a lot easier to pick up and integrate marketplace assets. I am developing a game and my programmers say that creating a similar system (Inventory System) would take them half a day in Unity where as with Unreal would take them a bit longer. There could be valid reasons to swap engine but from the sound of it its because unreal too hard and unity will help save face.

[@KanashiGD]

Hello, Game designer on Warzone here, my opinions are my own. You asked what would the logical reason be for changing from one engine to another after a "significant" amount of work has been put into the project. Generally speaking from my own experience you don't change engines mid-project. You really don't even upgrade the engine mid-project (i.e. Change from Unreal 4.25 > 4.26). There are knock-on effects for changing versions so changing engines means you have to start from scratch especially if that engine uses a different code structure. You could more easily transfer text, art, models, etc between the two but the glue and code that holds it all together are not going to be easily "transfered." Something about MMOs that may not be known is that when one is being built, Unreal or Unity is merely a front-end tool. There is a lot of back-end infrastructure that neither Unreal nor Unity handles so integration with the engine is also a reason you wouldn't swap mid-project. So When would you? Prototyping is the only time you may swap engines. A project I worked on, we started in Unity, and an engineer and I sat down and made a prototype of the core game functionality. A white-boxed level with placeholder assets for the characters. We stood it up to get the idea across to the team and after some discussion we decided to build the game in unreal (because unreal is a very strong development tool). We only made the switch because we had no investment in Unity, throwing in some white-box assets is not a lot of work-load and neither is making them move around. To me, it seems like all of the videos released by this game are cleverly placed assets and basic movement controls. You can get a quick 3rd person project template and skin everything to easily have a character walking around the world. Have someone who knows how to make a scene and bam you have these awesome-looking videos of a game!

[@KiraTV1]

Thanks for the insight

[@acetown2263]

I actually thought my phone was going off at 2:00 xD

[@akitsushima_1453]

4 years and still don't have the basic game world is just mad to say the least. Also, that glowing headphone looks cool af.

[@gadeosmad4182]

There's actually a really famous game that underwent mid-development engine change and still delivered: Duke Nukem Forever.

[@khandimahn9687]

I hope when this gets to court it's put before a judge who understands why this is all BS.

[@lpc3109]

he will go to jail right after the CEO of melvin, citadel and the bosses at the DTCC do for the GME manipulation... LOL

[@johnathanera5863]

@@lpc3109 yeah...no lol. He wont.

[@albinonoodle5229]

Caspian, exists* KiraTV, "And I took that personally"

[@KiraTV1]

😄

[@River_StGrey]

"If I never say CoE is dead, there can never be a lawsuit against me! I will take the development of it with me to the watery depths as I proclaim 'Argh! Victory be mine, yar litigation be not materialized nor present!"

[@BarokaiRein]

The guy used to money to pay himself a salary of 200k a year and there are some people who actually believe to this day that this game wasn't a scam.

[@Landes1024rs]

I remember him saying something about making the server able to interface with different clients, with footage of a minecraft styled thing. If that's the case, and the bulk of work is in the server, then the client could be remade without enormous effort.

[@alltrueist1]

As soon as I saw the article on this I thought "I can't wait for Kira's video"

[@SixDeadMice]

I'm not a game developer so I can't explain why Jeremy would do any of this but I don't think Jeremy is one either. =P

[@spiderjerusalem100]

The question everyone needs to ask is "Where the fuck did the 8 million dollars go?". It clearly didn't go into developing a game because they have nothing to show for it apart from some pre-made Unity assets dropped in to an empty map.

[@MidnightSt]

12:50 yes, i'm a gamedev contractor, worked both with unity and UE, prefer unity, but I can tell you that you basically need re-do UI and map almost from scratch when switching engines. even if you have it designed, you still basically need to either code up some custom importer (which I'd say they don't have enough experience to do, and for UI, even I wouldn't know how), or manually build it up from scratch, even if you're just recreating things you already had designed and made in the other engine. You still need to do all the clicks of creating it to "transfer" it to the other one. ESPECIALLY the map and UI.

[@itsagabe]

This is still going?! I swear I thought it ended once everyone came to the conclusion that it was a scam. I mean, wasn't it established that all the footage they showed us of COE were all pre-rendered cutscenes? Wasn't it also established that they did close to nothing since the Kickstarter campaign? What the heck is this?

[@PKNEXUS]

How do you not have more subs? Great quality articulate commentary that is logical, balanced and fair.

[@Niosus]

I'm not a game developer, but I am a software engineer. Some of their arguments could make some sense in a vacuum. It is possible to share some logic between two game engines. It's not entirely out of the question to share something like network code. It would be some work to hook things up together, but it's not entirely impossible. I don't know how often it happens in games, but I've worked on a few codebases with some legacy elements that were in a different language than the bulk of the code. It sucks to work with, but sometimes you really don't want to re-implement the old stuff. The engine switch itself could also be reasonable. A good example is Blizzard making Hearthstone in Unity (IIRC) even though they have plenty of great engine engineers in-house. I can totally see how a spin-off game may have different requirements that make a different engine choice make total sense, even if you have to incur some overhead costs due to that. That being said. I'm still calling BS on all of that. Just because an argument could conceivably be true, doesn't mean it isn't a straight up lie. Your analysis is correct. The dude is in total CYA mode regarding the lawsuit. Sadly I think that all the money is long gone.

[@hungryhedgehog4201]

Dev here, while Unreal and Unity use different languages (C++ and C#) those languages are somewhat related so switching from one to another shouldnt require a lot of time. However you wont be able to copy and paste all that much because Unreal and Unity are structured differently. You could get them to communicate but that isn't really natively intended and also makes little sense. I see no benefit in developing two games that are supposed to work together like this simulatniously using two engines and then in the same studio. You need two workflows basically two dev teams, two support teams etc. Anything that is in both would need to be rewritten and restructured causing different issues on two different engines. If they were like two different studios, I'd kinda get it like Warfighter's multiplayer mode was developed by a different team in a different engine compared to the main mode but Warfighter was also not a good game.

[@Shonnyy]

Unreal engine has only recently become free so the main difference between Unity and Unreal was previously the pricing however now that Unreal is free, confused.

[@infernaldaedra]

Sadly the terms to that is that Unreal owns most of the work you do with their engine.

[@lordmawkish1286]

I KNEW IT! The moment they claimed they would deliver the game after all, I knew they would try to sell some shitty side project!

[@TheLobstersoup]

I can think of two reasons why they did what they did. 1) the models: 3D-artists are hired for a particular game and their models can't be re-used without paying them royalties. Buying models from the Unity cash-shop makes them royalty free (but other games will use them too) 2) The Game Engine: Unity has a strong cashshop with what basically are working base games; Unreal Engines has this too, but not to the extent Unity has. So, they could have just bought a fitting base-pack of their game and then added features. This is a known method to cut down development time, as you already start with a base game. However, it's a method more associated with mobile game development and doesn't leave much room for flexibility or originality. Unity (and Unreal) also have visual coding, so you link together different nodes to affect different actions/reactions in the game. You don't have to be a genius or simply a coder to work with these nodes; imagine you're building something like a switchboard. And most of their editors/tools aren't very different. Often people dabbled with both engines, before deciding on their preference. I think they went the fastest road to make a game by buying assets and a base game pack from the store. And I guess there will be a mobile version next. Because that is the way he can have a cash-shop and reuse this game.

[@FergusDerpson]

You can re-use the backend (which is half the work for a MMO), but yes the client code cannot be re-used

[@feraldrop1634]

I loved the new post made to address people 1-2 weeks after the video he posted that was basically just a script of the video he posted 1-2 weeks prior. With a PS note.

[@TheZealo]

That footage though, looks like NWN 2 back in the day, yikes.

[@davidareeves]

At least they released something, c'mon low blow. But oh god those memories, makes me look forward to getting dementia either way

[@n0cturnal3D]

I am a game dev who uses unity and I found two things, in unity you can switch because it's quicker to get stuff setup and the ui is really easy to understand or (the most likely version) they switched because there is almost an unlimited amount of assets to use some even come with save systems, meaning they can just reskin an asset and release it as a game :) Oh and making something in unity doesn't help when using a different engine due to them having different coding languages

[@quasxen]

I have no knowledge about game engines, however, I am a programmer and within our company we have stuff written with COBOL, C#, Classic ASP, and C++. The C# can call out to a COBOL program to run it. The COBOL can write to a SQL Database and call out to run a C# program (that program can then retrieve data from the SQL). So it is possible to have a program in one language call out to run a program in another language

[@gellcolegado6295]

i think what jeremy is doing here to avoid the lawsuit is just meeting up to the minimum requirements of substantial performance which he clearly does not know anything about. imagine, he had been in contract to deliver so and so mmorpg with so and so features but just deliver a management sim and an unfinished game which is basically unplayable... he's already thinking he's a genius by now

[@johnathanera5863]

He is lol. He doesnt have to do much to avoid fraud claims. When you crowdfund a game you're basically giving you money away for charity in the eyes of the law.

[@Jordan-Ramses]

I don't think he ever even bought an Unreal license. That's why he's using Unity now. I would bring that up in court. Make him produce a receipt or whatever that shows that he bought Unreal at all. If he never bought an Unreal license how could he be developing a game in Unreal for 4 years? I think that would prove fraud. It would be like saying you were building a hotel for 4 years and you never had a property to build it on.

[@Trolol3333]

UE4 is free, but you have to pay Epic 5% of sales

[@Jordan-Ramses]

@@Trolol3333 - ahh, thanks

[@Hrkdntbsid]

@KiraTV so my guess regarding the jump from unreal engine is the fact that they plan sell the game in any state in an effort to dodge litigation. Unreal engine license is free BUT if you monetize your game it is 5%. Now this is just a guess but this could also apply to 8mil they already received as they count as shipped units to people who funded the game to get a copy. Unity is 1800 a year. With that being said I don’t think anything was created in those 4 years, what was shown before this whole fiasco could be done for free in one day in UE and doesn’t resemble anything remotely close to the pre-rendered footage.

[@MagicDragonesk]

Hey man love your vids! Just wondering if you got your name from Death Note or if it was from something else

[@KiraTV1]

It was, thanks bro

[@brendanconlon8292]

Hi, game dev here. I obviously can't know for certain, but my guess as to why they switched engines is the engine cost. Unity and Unreal have different billing structures, and Unity is theoretically cheaper, although the fact they already raised a bunch of money complicates matters. As to how changes in a Unity based game can effect an Unreal game, I would need more specifics, but if they are doing what I think they are doing, not only is it possible, switching to Unity would have essentially no added cost of development, assuming people were already relatively versed in Unity. Frist, while it is true that C++ and C# are technically different languages, they are, as you noted, quite similar and C# (Unity's) is the easier language to learn. Someone who is verse is C++ could learn C# in 24 hours, easily, (and frankly it would be a bit shocking if it took them that long). Furthermore, the conversation between the clients and the servers will have to funneled through one or more APIs, to protect against hacking. Because all of the data has to be translated into a packet that the API(s) can understand, it does not really matter if you have clients written in different languages. And certainly, data you collect in a game written in Unity, can then be used to inform or interact with a game written Unreal, as all the data is being be funneled though a database likely not written in either anyway.

[@KibaPwnU]

Meanwhile I'm watching ashes of creation with interest without having spent a dime on either game.

[@infernaldaedra]

I'm just waiting for E3 so we can see how much progress Halo Infinite has made.

[@primusro]

Game dev here. While C# (unity engine) and C++(unreal engine) are pretty similar, the difference is of night and day when it comes to MMORPGs. The reason is that for this type of games you require an authoritative server, which does all the critical processing for your game in order to prevent players from cheating on client side. It is not possible to mash to different programming languages on server (backend) side. By the way, all the assets you see in the footage are taken from Unity asset marketplace. That guy just thrown in some assets quickly and calls it a game so he staves off litigations for a little while longer.

[@lukenukem8028]

Well actually, the switch from C++ to C# is a hundred times easier than the opposite. You just use a lot of "using namespace" statements instead of "include " statements, all functions go into classes so enjoy making static classes for API creation especially in general C#, and no need to worry about pointers. The language change going upward (Higher Level Language C#) isn't the issue, but being good at Unreal and new to Unity could be an issue for a little while.

[@spud13y]

So they're basically trying to do what Everquest tried and failed to do.

[@mattstansbeary3068]

Yep

[@thehubbleton]

More like pretending to.

[@Tgkjj]

and everquest still has more respect lol

[@regalgiant1597]

* Grabs hand lotion * chronicles news time :D

[@samuelgrahame3617]

It would only effect if it was on the server. Still need to make the client changes/and animation/assets. So the time consuming stuff isn't automated.

[@gixG17]

Not defending the dev but I have some thoughts: C++ (Unreal), C# & Javascript (Unity) are different languages. In the case of Unity, you can have a single project using particular scripts written in Javascript while others are in C# and Unity will compile your project just fine. Usually, when you work on a project, you try to keep it to a single language but in the ecosystem of "Asset Stores", you can't control what the creator of the asset will use. Logic is more important than the language. Unless you're writing your own game engine, if you're developing a game and you got all of the game logic figured out (by kit-bashing different bits of code) then re-writing it in a different language doesn't take that much time to do. So long as you feed variables to a function and that function outputs as intended, you're fine. Using different engines isn't really a "red flag" in my book. HOWEVER, if the dev is known to have used store-bought assets, then they're voluntarily burdening themselves by having to convert the code of every asset for the other engine. Code they haven't written themselves and may or may not be documented. This is much harder and time consuming to do. I've been working on a singular project for nearly 8 years, now. I've gone through many milestones and, despite that, I have nothing substantial to show. Mainly because the work I've done has been mostly "under the hood" and some of these haven't been stitched together yet. Even thought some things have dependencies (like there's no point scripting quests if you haven't written a story for it yet), game development isn't as linear as people think. What's important to note, here, is context: Unlike this dev, I'm not trying to sell anything until there's at least something playable. If I did, I would've reorganized my priorities. I prefer the method of building the systems before assembling them in a game (as you can design the game with the existing feature in mind) but, if I went with crowdfunding, I would've made the game "in order" if that makes sense... you know, what most people think of when they think how a game is done. Chronicles of Elyria never appealed to me as a concept but it is a shame that it's one more example to sours people's views on crowdfunded MMOs.

[@ozzythemighty2767]

The Roadmap Of A Scam! Was there any doubt? hahahahaha

[@KiraTV1]

Never

[@jamesray741]

As a game developer, one of the main exact reasons why they switched to the Unity Engine can only be explained in a very complex manner in which only some people throughout the entire world can comprehend. With that being said the use of the Unreal Engine can easily be translated into the Unity by complex mathematics so i think that the developers of this game switched because they have no idea what they are doing like me.

[@SandroWalach]

I have some friends that are game devs, but I'm to stupid for those things. :P Anyways. They made a building game in one year that ran, it didn't look great in some places and I had to download a video tutorial to spawn in some items. But they had made sooo much, in my eyes anyways, character models, environs etc in just one year. I even remember laughing at a bulding that was a "shredder". It wasn't finished with textures and some 3d stuff but they had a huge image of the character shredder from the cartoon "teenage mutant ninja turtles" to help others identifying what the machine was. :P People who do work has something to show for it, and this just sounds so much like a scam to me. This is the first thing I just randomly was recommended by youtube and I just couldn't beleve what I'm hearing. Wow, just... Wow...

[@victorioussnake]

Well I guess if the two clients written in UE4 and the other in Unity are just communicating to the same server. Then really there should not be any conflict as long as there are no different changes in how the server-client network communication is handled. For example a program I am writing currently has a server written in C++ and a client written in C#. However the communication is just handled over web requests so as long as the client sends the correct information to the server and handles the servers response as it should. Then there is so issue.

[@WesJFin]

I'll see you boyos on the internet historian episode about this! hooooooooooooooooooooo boy this shit just gets better and better haha

[@SAMACSTUDIOS]

Unity Developer here: Porting to another engine mid-development is not unheard of, although 99% of the time it is a bad idea and ends up wasting a massive amount of time and money. In this case, it looks like they switched to Unity due to Unity's massive asset store, which makes it easy to plop a bunch of assets to make something look functional. This would be fine if they were building a prototype, but that is naturally questionable due to... well, them developing a game in UE4 for 4 years and then not porting any of the art. Why they wouldn't do this is beyond me, but I have a few ideas: - The art was in a different style that wouldn't match the unity assets (unlikely, since the current assets don't match well anyways) - The art was unoptimized or unusable - No one on the current team knows how to port the old art assets into the new engine - The art never existed in the first place

[@alwaysfitz9156]

Anyone notice the princess bride fight scene...

[@tacoenvy]

The BEST thing about this game is going back to their KZbin channel and going through the videos and reading all the comments from years ago til now, absolutely hilarious.

[@XobeckleX]

I'm an aspiring and learning game developer. As far as I know there is no way to work in Unity and then export it to UE4. While C# and C++ are part of the C language, the databases and syntax are completely different. I beleive this decision is to try and avoid the UE4 and Unity monetary terms of services. Check out their terms of services and profit percentages. Unity's asset store is much more extensive and cheaper than UE4's marketplace. Honestly, it would not be difficult to make a decent game with assets bought on the asset store. If he buys the code for different systems it would also go by pretty quickly. But there is a lot more to all of it than that. Also, an asset purchased in the asset store is made by someone who than puts it up for sale on the store. Same for UE4 marketplace. Although common game dev decency says to customize purchased assets so they are not the stock asset and have zero personal touch of the game developer.

[@JK-nk6tl]

Well technically you can run c++ in Unity, and in fact developers sometimes use c++ for specific parts of a Unity game in order to increase performance. You will not be able to re-use major parts of the game, but if you had designed your code smart (for example in a Model-View-Controller ish fashion), you *could* theoretically take out the Model part (which should contain engine agnostic code of all the basic functionality and data structures) and re-use that in another game engine - All display, input handling, and much more would need to be re-done and that is probably the majority of the code base. TBH with that team and what they have (lacked) to show so far, and knowing the code mess that is often the result of a bunch of developers working together, I think it is very theoretical that they actually have such well designed code. And also, at a glance I can't really see what they could re-use of said Model code, with all the ideas stripped and basically a different game all together. Art assets are a bit easier to re-use between engines, but since they haven't really shown us any they made themselves .. in either game ..... Maybe they were way over their heads and realized it, learned and backed off to make a simpler game ... which is the mistake and learning process all beginner game dev has to go through. But to do this for a mmo that is just unbeleivable (if that is what happened). One thing I don't agree with though is that you have a right to get a product when you back something. You have donated or invested in a project in hopes of a return, but you have not bought a product. The developers only have the obligation to use that investment towards their stated goals and to the best of their abilities. Not many beleive that they have. Trying to cover it up (incompetence, fraud, or whatever happened) in multiple ways, latest with this single player mashup, doesn't make them look very good either. Shame though, the concepts of CoE would have been actually evolving this sad mmo genre. Hope some other game company picks up some of those ideas and succeed with it.

[@naxieysadventures5506]

is that game footage just a scene from the princess bride made into a game?

[@CStamper]

As a game developer with experience in UE4 and Unity: your analysis is correct. It’d be very very difficult to leverage work from one engine in the other in any meaningful way.

[@nineball101]

LOl i just realised this fencing scene for this game is just an exact recreation of a fencing scene out of the movie Princess Bride

[@HyperMario64]

Dev here. You can totally have the SAME server code for games running under different engines. At long as you exchange data using a standard protocol supported by all clients (TCP), the server can be written in anything you like. So they are not lying here : keeping former server code means they should pretty much reimplement the same features (because the existing data format expects those to exist).

[@goodypundit5666]

This year goal : watching Kira playing Kingdom of Elyria at released OMGGGG will be lit af :D

[@Snowy84557]

Developer here. The Unreal Engine was never going to do what he wanted. They provide the core of the game and many of them, including Unreal, can't be changed. It's like buying a 1.5 liter car engine and saying "we have horsepower, now let's put it in this truck and start delivering shipping containers across the country." Every dollar put into development on Unreal was a dollar thrown away and people in the gaming industry would have been telling him to dump the game and try again with a new game. Great advice if he hadn't already sold the product. He should have just delivered the maximum possible, even if just the equivalent of a parcel delivery company. Normally good advice was exceptionally bad advice for him because he used Kickstarter. He's scamming because he doesn't understand that he can't follow best business practices or take the advice of people who are more experienced.

[@marvinsantana]

Caspian is probably in his shower playing an Ocarina hoping he can rewind time to the "good ol' days."

[@Naeron66]

Mechanics in the sense of the underlying rules are procedural code driven, they are independent of the language you choose to write them in which is not the case with things like visuals. So for instance the rules that determine how weapons, armour and skills interact in combat can be ported from one engine to another to work in the same way. Its not efficient by any measure but it works. That is essentially how you can port games to another system or have cross-platform play. In the same way you "can" write information from one set of software to another via an interface or a database, its clunky and not ideal but again its possible. So yes you could earn something in 1 and see it in the other. Its much more of a problem if you didn't plan for it to work that way at the start of design. An analogy is translating a book, the overall story is the same even though its written in another language and some phrasing might differ. So he's not lying that it works in principle, but I bet he is lying that its really going to happen that way. My scam detector has the needle all the way up to 11.

[@Beauchee]

What do you think of Chronicles of Elyria ? Yes, I will be playing Ashes of Creation.

[@3sgamestudio]

3 years ago I had a call with people from Improbable - spatial os - a server system that would allow Chronicles of Elyria to actually be a thing... they told me they no longer work with devs of COE - because they started using JAVA as a backend for their UE4 project (native C++). On the question "WHY would anyone code backend of a game in language unsup[sorted by the engine?" they answered: "yeah.. exactly". I guess they jumped ship seeing they will be one big scam, to not be tied to this piece of *****project. Good call! :D But hey! they made their own multiplayer backend.. dropping solution that cost literally tens of millions of dollars and years to finish.

[@objectiveasylum]

If you're really curious as to how and why this would make sense as a development strategy tbh I can kinda see it. Unreal is a great engine and one I've worked with for years but it is certainly easier to make some game genres in it than others. Unity is more of a tabula rasa but that comes with its own downsides but if I were to make a kingdom management game I would go with unity. It would certainly be the path of least resistance if you say had a bunch of pissed off backers and wanted to deliver ANYTHING to placate them. but it would rely on some pretty big caveats 1) all their Kingdom management gameplay would have had to be moved into DLL libraries and a c# wrapper made for them in unity. Now this might be on the plausible side as idk much about this game and their plans for the technology they were supposedly building. That being said there are easier ways to do that. Selling an unreal plugin for example instead of a doll but that would cut off potential unity sales, but that's a whole lot of speculation. 2) the art assets wouldn't be easily ported. Unreal uses a 1 cm scale and unity uses a 1 meter scale. The physics or the assets would have to be adjusted and not just scaled. You'd have to check every asset to see if the scaling fucked up something, usually collision box offsets. That being said there isn't alot of assets, that I can see in the koe alpha so only porting a few shouldn't have been THAT difficult. Now just a disclaimer. This post was because you asked for a game dev to explain how that might be a good idea. Until a few days ago I had never heard of most of these games you cover and certainly am not defending them, hell I don't even really like mmorpgs I just got fascinated by the Dreamworld Bull and watched a few other videos.

[@Zanktus]

I have experience with UE4 and Unity and the only reasons I can come up with for the switch is: A) The developers who left the studio were the ones carrying the project in UE4 and with them the knowledge left the house, too. Unity is a more beginner friendly engine and that could be a reason to switch for some people. That being said, it would still be questionable to do that after several years of development. B) UE4 and Unity are the two major engines people use and a switch from one to another is a thing which happens when (especially indie devs) notice that the other engine has features they like more, or the usuability is more like their cup of tea. Again this is not something you usually do after several years, but the first months of development. It makes no sense to "remake" the game in Unity from what they had before. C) Staling time. Everyone knows that switching from one game engine to another means a complete rework. Them not using assets which they had before makes me highly sceptical. Maybe they have no experience with Unity and can't work properly with the new render pipelines (which would be hilarious tbh). Anyways, I think they just stall time to have more excuses why the development will take another 100 years of nothingness. Let's wait another 4 years until they announce switching back to UE5. Also about the topic doing changes applying to UE4 and then "magically" happening in Unity: No that is not happening. It can already be a major hassle to provide features in one engine to different types of devices (let's say you do a PC and mobile version). Having two different engines providing the same gameplay feature means it has to be created from scratch in each. The only thing they share is the idea. The code, handling of animation, assets, or even how data is stored is completely different.

[@Scampcam]

Building on what others have said; you can have a middle-man database server the two games read/write to, to share a common language between unreal and unity. That said, it's much slower as it gets bigger, than a single unified system. Eve online for example, did use this method in a few projects.

[@Donnirononon]

When you start developing and start with games question one is: "What engine can do XYZ?" or "Can CryEngine be used to create an MMO"? This is the question is where the wheat is being split from the caff. Do you remember "EA forcing developers" to use Frostbite? NO, they ALL aked themselves the engine question and failed miserably and choose Frostbite (cause of fancy graphics). That is what happens if someone who only knows engines from their graphics does the decisions instead of someone who does understand an engine, does know how to code and what they are doing generally. I am NOT a game developer even if i have 2 of my Unity projects on my Portfolio. To me the question which engine to use is always answered by what project one is planning. They just took any engine they knew the name off and yeeted their game into it. Destined to fail tbh. You have to know how to walk before you run and they stated that they WILL beat usain bolt in that anology. You do not just choose an engine but a lot more. Do it yourself. Google for "Can i do XYZ in Unity3d?", you will 100% guarantee find a thread with one new dev asking and everyone else telling them that this is not how it works at all. I for my part are a web developer. The question of what engine or framework to use would be to admit i have no clue on my own.

[@ElitePortraits]

The answer to everything I believe is that: There is no dev team at all. There is only one guy doing this bullshit.

[@nathandingy]

This is why transparency is so important and in my opinion any crowd funding game should have a playable demo even if its not a representation of the final product, at least prove that you can actually make something.

[@Unreal_Codez]

I've been scripting for awhile now, 10+ years, and in all the time I ever worked with UE4, the C++ language wasn't an option. It gave the option to download the C++ versions, but you couldn't use them. Instead you'd use a Blueprints system where you could drag, drop, and connect these cards in place of the C++ language. Even if it were possible to easily transfer a C++ project from UE4 to a C# project in Unity it'd be impossible, because C++ isn't an options. This could be different now for all I know though. I for sure know 2 years ago you could only use the Blueprints.

[@voltairespuppet]

I think you mentioned the client was separate from the server. That might explain some of the crossover; simulation of the world vs the visualisation.