The 8 Million Dollar MMORPG That No One Has Played

[@ZendegiLeonard]

Kira is going to have to pass down this duty to his kids one day

[@ROYBGP]

Bruh I'm dead

[@kirareacts]

I'll be committing the whole series into a human skin bound necronomicon

[@ColinTimmins]

@@kirareacts >=]

[@spookyperfume]

​@@kirareacts As you should.

[@mytiliss682]

@@kirareacts and it won't be enough to track star citizen development

[@UberGrunk]

Caspian sitting down by his computer to get back into development: "Okey, so, where were we? Ah yes, fog of war..."

[@yeoseotidle2290]

Poor guy got lost in the fog of war 😢

[@blenstonshandor2204]

The Chronicles of "the Chronicles of Elyria" is more entertaining than the game could ever be.

[@ded2thaworld963]

😂 real talk

[@ANALFISTINGVAN]

Can you stop reposting the same joke over and over again, do you need satisfaction on the web that much?

[@PsyrenXY]

I imagine it's not as funny for the folks who backed it to the tune of thousands to be a lord or lady or whatever, but... actually who am I kidding that makes it even funnier

[@PsyrenXY]

@@TchSktch I am sorry your lordship

[@tappmancollective2483]

And cheaper for the audience

[@BaneHydra]

Kira being the guy covering Chronicles of Elyria and Kingdoms of Elyria makes him... The Chronicler of Elyria.

[@tsumardi]

Elyria is actually Caspian hooker name

[@Neckromorph]

At this point this is more of a social study of how long someone can keep an empty promise going before finally abandoning it.

[@nerdytechgamer7462]

Lmao as long as it's "still in development " he can't be sued

[@Cainb23]

I mean everyone including Kira is saying that like it’s a bad thing and that’s insane to me. I think the fact that he’s still trying even if his attempts are in vain, is more than admirable even if he made a lot of moronic and some shady decisions to get to this point. This video and a lot of the comments to this dude seem kind of mean spirited and not just criticism hoping he can complete the game and that’s not cool.

[@utialtec]

we have star citizen too for that.

[@samgoff5289]

@@Cainb23he is just pretending 😂 bro don't tell me you are that delusional...he is working on a different game than the one kickstarted that nobody gave money for or wants it looks like complete ass

[@xxcu83xxxx4]

@@Cainb23 its like beating a dead horse at this point, isn’t it? The “game” will never be completed. As one person, while probably doing another job, you can’t make an MMO. The only reason to continue, would be for legal obligations. Since he likely will get fried in court otherwise. Rightfully so, however for his and his family’s sake the charade should come to a close. Edit: Typo :P

[@hansjuker8296]

This is directly from The Odyssey. Odysseus is lost at sea, and his wife back home is being forced to remarry...as soon as she is finished with the tapestry she is sewing to honor her "dead" husband. So every day she sews, and every night she undoes the work, guaranteeing zero consequences. Clever girl.

[@tsumardi]

That actually takes effort, this guy just do spreadsheet and write fictional blog everyday

[@EmmaKAlexandra]

"It's not illegal to suck and fail", Kira, 2023

[@memitim171]

If it was there'd be total economic collapse... 🤣🤣

[@ZazooEel57]

@@memitim171 but the prison business would be thriving

[@SoulFreeW]

HHHAHAHAHAH

[@EmmaKAlexandra]

@@mushyroom9569 I mean he got 8 mil

[@LKeet6]

@@memitim171 er, we have fairly regular economic collapses anyway??

[@zardify_]

I think he's role-playing as a game developer.

[@fmo94jos8v3]

Massively role playing as a developer. Online.

[@tsumardi]

All money gone on hooker name Elyria, dope and booze.

[@jessaminehaak8253]

"so he did me a solid and quit" is a Bizarre thing to read in a PR piece lmfao. always love a chronicles of elyria video it's like getting a peek into a fantasy world XD

[@EffieTM]

The actual game is the games they play with the backers and trying to dodge lawsuits lol

[@OhCanadaGamer]

What exactly was Snipehunter doing there tho? Just buying Unity store assets at this point? His main quality sounds like it was convincing Caspian to give him a paycheck. I don't even think it was that much spin to say losing his last employee was more of a positive thing if the guy was doing sweet eff all.

[@jimpaek]

If this guy put half the effort in the game development as he's putting in writing his convoluted updates, he would have an amazing game at this point.

[@eleven0624]

Big info you glossed over: It's no longer a pipeline of KoE > CoE. It's now KoE:Settlements > KoE:Domains > CoE (allegedly). He's already laying the groundwork for failing to meet his own stated goals of KoE and ANOTHER barrier to CoE. This wasn't negligence at any point in the past, it's planned malfeasance.

[@kirareacts]

Not missed, that has been the case for 2 years.

[@LocrianDorian]

I mean, KoE only exists for stalling to begin with, so if he can move those goalposts farther, he will.

[@fmo94jos8v3]

@@LocrianDorian the goal posts are in another galaxy rn

[@MeatMonsterMan]

The reality is, he's probably not at massive risk, malice or negligence, sure. Gonna have to argue and prove that to a boomer judge and if it's in the UK, oof, those wigs. You guys gotta stop all that. Seriously...

[@ZombieApocalypse09]

Lol yeah, that subtle wedging in of "Oh actually there's TWO KoE games now. KoE: Settlements will be released this year." So that he can shift the goal posts yet again. Caspian is an incredible bs factory.

[@richardliu8785]

"The grizzly bear ripped off my legs just now, but this means I'm much lighter so I'm in a great position for the marathon!"

[@snooganslestat2030]

🤣

[@ristopaasivirta9770]

Thanks to Kira; Elyria has kept me more entertained than most modern games.

[@LocrianDorian]

Maybe you should play different games, as entertaining as Kira is.

[@seancpp]

As a developer I think it's funny they're using code checkins as a metric for "progress" In reality, you can create 100 commits of small changes such as text formatting, fixing typos, etc. You can also check in a huge amount of change in one single commit It really doesn't tell you anything about progress to look at the number of commits/check-ins. We'd have to see the content of those commits to really judge the amount progress. It's like using lines of code as a metric for anything. Not all changes/lines of code are equal.

[@HaveButOneLife]

As a game developer you can confirm that he could just export his Unity assets into Unreal but he just doesn't want to do it, right? I don't know if the systems put in place can be brought over to Unreal since they use two different programming languages and the two games are built from two different perspectives. It's such a blatant scam it's ridiculous.

[@legendofthefox86]

The raw 3d assets and texture files would be useable between both engines. There still would be overhead for migrating them to the new engine. Also any programattic interactions, shaders, animations would need to be refactored/reimplemented. Decisions like this ultimately just burn cash and waste engineering throughput. I would love to be a fly on the wall for their daily scrum sessions 😅

[@lemiru]

I'm not so sure about the animations but the rest sounds about right

[@AlphaGarg]

Any transitions or specific importers would have to be accounted for. Especially anything related to IK and the like.

[@Syndarys]

Only thing you'd get accurately is the assets. Unity and Unreal have different animation behaviour models, both are "similar" models which run off state and transition but you have a lot more going in Unreal. You would only get the animations as you exported them from the model, you would have to remake the animation behaviours. Data models are something else and generally would port over easily but if they have "complex types" from Unity (mostly engine bound types like components, vectors... even .net's Type) then they will need to handle that. If its just "healthxD" in a json file then thats achievable just need to use the JsonUtilities rather than expect newtonsoft to handle it for you. Shaders will need remaking because Unreal HLSL is specific to being material editor side where Unity HLSL is either the shader graph or a specific subset in Unity's cg/hlsl crossover... You would be able to migrate some of the specifics in the code (between the vertex and fragment shaders). But even then you have to use some undocumented usf file type to get the engine to detect them as shaders, which is why its recommended to use the material editor. Would spend a lot of time porting, and you may end up with optimization issues or instruction limits. Code needs rewriting. You can do the basic concepts over in blueprints but if you were to port code to Unreal you are looking at rewriting 90% of it in C++, and not just the top level things you would have different ways of writing out physics, raycasting, controls, input. Thankfully the API provides quite a bit of that... Also need to consider object communication which then falls under memory management. Any web backend needs to be manually programmed - there are no shortcuts for this in C++, its libcurl or death. Theres a simple REST plugin for Unreal but anything more tangible would require a lot more work. Databases are more recommended to have an actual web endpoint to handle the operations but since its 1 man and his dog I don't think they will have one of those... Theres a lot in Unreal that you can use but theres also a lot more that you should use your own solution for. Especially when it comes to making an MMO.

[@krazer9515]

As it is just one guy now, it would be you watching a crazy person argue with himself

[@Sam-mx6yh]

I don’t think they have check-ins more than monthly, let alone daily 😂

[@thentil]

As one of the idiots who burned 100 on this, thanks for staying on them and doing what you do. Wish I'd been more critical and skeptical.

[@snooganslestat2030]

The past doesn't define you, It prepares you, as a great philosopher said. 😂

[@tame1773]

-100

[@MrLuchenkov]

I am quite enjoying the 250$ I invested in this. While it hasn't produced a game, it has most definitely resulted in many, many hours of enjoyable Kira content.

[@uuu12343]

​@@MrLuchenkov Transitive investment in the form of Kira, the chronicler

[@FoxyCAMTV]

LMAO,found one.

[@tylerbee]

Caspian is a grandmaster of fantasy world building. The fantasy world he lives in where these State of Elyria updates are meaningful or have substance must be something else.

[@geofff.3343]

It's ironic the guy's name is Snipe Hunter. In America while it's not exactly wildly used there is the concept of a Snipe Hunt which has nothing to do with snipers. Snipe Hunt is a term for sending someone on a useless errand for a laugh or to get them out of your way. It started on hunting trips where you'd tell them to really be a hunter they were doing to have to go out and bag a snipe. It's interchangeable with the more widely recognized wild goose chase.

[@sefyravelvetpaw8166]

No way that's a coincidence. He's jerkin peoples chains.

[@YDV669]

Someone at the office once offered to take me on a snipe hunt, but another person overheard them, knew I was from Canada, took me aside, and explained what a snipe hunt meant. Ah, good times.

[@MickHaggs]

ah, so it's a good ol' headlight fluid run

[@demacherius1]

Didn't know thats what it's called when you send someone to go out and bring you bucket of compression for your car. 🤣

[@BJGvideos]

Wouldn't that just lead people to go hunt actual snipe? The shorebirds?

[@CatharDameth]

The "We" is a modesty we. It's a singular version of the first person plural, similar to the royal We, and it is grammatically correct. It is used in commerce and is extremely common in scientific parutions. Modesty we usually meant as a form of humble bragging and low-key refusing to attribute to yourself the hard work of your team, even if you are the only person in that team. You don't really say "I" in commerce pretty much ever.

[@memitim171]

It also allows you to conveniently distance yourself whenever "we" fuck up... 😁

[@RobertDrane]

Wait the Royal We isn't just a Big Lebowski joke? I'm learning all kinds of stuff today.

[@ian_b]

Listening to this again, I think in CaspianSpeak, "implementing" is inventing an idea for a mechanic and "engineering" is drawing a flowchart of it. I don't believe he's actually written any code at all. That only comes when all the ideas are "implemented" and "engineered".

[@EmmaKAlexandra]

On the PPP loans, it's legal to fire the people you were supposed to keep on for the loan. You just have to have a job listing up to fill that position again. A pretty common technique is making the job posting & saying there's no one qualified to fill the position. Then, you don't have to pay back the PPP loan (afaik)

[@hanspecans]

This is how every bar and restaurant owner got a new boat / house while firing all of their employees. America is trash.

[@rekindledphoenix]

It's very possible to migrate from Unreal to Unity, but it'd be a complete pain that'd take up a lot of unnecessary time. Speaking as a Unity dev (now professionally) for over a decade, there has to be a very good reason to migrate from engine to engine. If the developers use NodeCanvas (or equivalent asset) , they can migrate Unreal's visual blueprint coding into Unity's visual scripting pipelines. Just migrating versions can be awful and introduce bugs. In most cases a migration would be just as fast as creating the world from scratch, so he's probably using as an excuse for taking up more time.

[@deRNmEpRrMm]

On the other hand, migrating from Unity to Unreal would probably be even more of a pain the arse. Especially if it comes to core components of gameplay-tech or even networking, if that'd be even feasible or possible.

[@Dorizdt]

"It's very possible to migrate from Unreal to Unity, but it'd be a complete pain that'd take up a lot of unnecessary time." Not really. I've been working with both engines for nearly over 10 years. This dev behind this game has no chance of success from C#->C++ and the entire engines approach to net code is vastly different. The only thing you could salvage here is art work which it looks like all he's done is raid the Unity Asset store for his 2hr day dream about the game he could build one day.

[@niallrussell7184]

if they have anything to migrate, other than assets. they were using default player controller, etc.

[@Chris-ey8zf]

Your mistake is assuming he's migrating anything besides the $20 unity assets he bought off the marketplace. There is no code, so there's no bugs.

[@piggsquigg983]

you won't be laughing when you see the tech demo for 2023's new crysis engine side project Interiors of Elyria

[@skyefox]

1:40 So in America a "snipe hunt" is like a wild goose chase or fool's errand, it's telling someone to go hunt for a bird that doesn't exist. I find this name EXTREMELY funny and incredibly relevant to the project itself. Having your only employee named "snipe hunter" might actually be a god tier meme.

[@TheNewms90]

"Snipe Hunter" lol. I mean it's funny like you mentioned cause it sounds like a screen name from 2003. But also it's a term I've heard before. A snipe hunt is like saying something is a wild goose chase. You can look for something but it's not there so you'll never find it, a snipe hunt. So it works on 2 levels

[@christofferthorsson607]

And here I though it was a reference to the yugioh card...

[@RealHaydo]

My first thought too. But it’s too easy 😂 I heard it in the movie Up.

[@GreasusGoldtooth]

Imagine everyone's shock if CoE actually releases one day.

[@theRealSlimGordon]

We'll probably be dead by then, but hey, maybe one day they (or HE, I should say) will.

[@sinjin8576]

The only shock will be how appalling and stripped down the final product is going to be. It will look like runescape and play like the minecraft beta

[@iamjackbanditgames]

Even if it does release its not going to have a playerbase...

[@ecyor0]

I mean, Yandere Sim finally released a beta with the fabled first rival, stranger things have happened.

[@philenglish3931]

Nothing compared to their surprise a couple of weeks later when the sun leaves main sequence and begins to transition into a red giant

[@hauntedshadowslegacy2826]

6:17 It depends on what exactly you're carrying over. Unreal Engine 4 works in C++ while Unity works in C#. It's like saying your cousin speaks Mandarin while your grandma speaks Cantonese. They're similar-ish, but they're not the same. The pronunciations, the cadence, little things here and there that add up. They're entirely different languages that evolved in the same 'region' (for programming, the 'region' is the base for those languages; yes, programming languages have 'family trees' like spoken/written human languages). I suppose it's potentially feasible that the devs of CoE could translate the backend stuff of KoE from C# to C++, but it certainly wouldn't be smooth. For non-code assets like images, 3D models, audio files, etc., it'd be way easier. If there's not much backend, it'd be more feasible than if there's tens of thousands of lines. So that's the distinction causing the 3-way split you describe. For non-code? Easy. For some code? Doable, but not smart. For lots of code? Utterly, mind-numbingly stupid.

[@Chris-ey8zf]

Good thing there is zero code whatsoever done, so the switch is just moving his $20 unity assets over to unreal engine.

[@NewbOoyNS]

Whenever a Chronicles video drops from you Kira it's like being 5 again and watching my favourite saturday cartoon. Thanks for all the entertainment you provided so far!

[@shikavlad]

Omg, "Keeping up with the Caspians!" My favourite xD

[@Torque2100]

There's a little context I think Kira is missing that makes the "SnipeHunter" Dev name even funnier. A "Snipe Hunt" was a prank that Boy Scouts would play on younger troop members as a kind of hazing ritual. When I was in the BSA 30 years ago, you would convince the young kids that the woods at your campground was actually infested with birds called "Snipes." Part of the game was assigning all kinds of weird contradictory attributes to this fictional bird like a poisonous bite, giant claws, a distinctive and disturbingly human-like call ETC. Then you would convince the younger kids to leave the camp at night go out into the woods and either waste as much of their time as possible or freak them out as much as possible.

[@khatdubell]

Snipe _is_ a bird. Hunting snipes is where the word sniper comes from.

[@TitusAndromadon]

@@khatdubell both of these things are true. It is a species of bird and also a really popular practical joke

[@appalachiabrauchfrau]

girl scouts trip, was scared to death of the snipe getting me in my sleep. Didn't get a wink of rest, collapsed during our climb the next day and ruined the fun for every other little girl lol. Hope kids are still getting the bajeezus scared of of them by the tale of the snipe lol

[@chillywilly883]

We had snipe sticks. Rub them together to make a call. And giant nets to catch ‘em. Wandered the woods for hours lol.

[@BJGvideos]

It always weirded me out because I knew snipes were real birds so I thought we were legit trying to find some. I remembered from my bird book that they're shorebirds with white feathers and long beaks so I wondered why we were going into the forest. Everyone thought I was an idiot and I still don't know how. If anything surely they would be because they insisted it wasn't a real bird.

[@mnnesotance7004]

You just don't get the vision... It's a video game investor simulator that you get to play in real time as the money gets pocketed but the owner. So you get the authentic experience and for what it is makes it money well spent. The simulation has so far been a success in my book. We are finally in the matrix.

[@KaiWritesCode]

Earth2 and Elyria are the gifts the keep on giving

[@khatdubell]

Don't forget Camelot unchained and star citizen. War crimes of the 21st century.

[@SkyForceOne2]

@@khatdubell Star Citizen is playable and making visible progress. No comparison to the rest.

[@khatdubell]

@@SkyForceOne2 *_sniffffff_* is that the scent of copium I smell? Camelot unchained is also making visible progress and is playable. Doesn’t change the fact that they both failed to deliver what they promised in anything close to the time they promised it.

[@SkyForceOne2]

@@khatdubell and what about it? ofcourse SC wont be done in 2 years, they stacked the amount of things they wanted to add so high, nobody in their right mind would believe that. They build revolutionary technologies that no other dev studio is willing to try, ofcourse it will take long. It's very ignorant to get hung up on that " they didnt deliver in the 2 years they promised originally ". There is no point in that. Also Camelot's "progress" is nowhere near that of SC, which is kind of sad xD

[@khatdubell]

@@SkyForceOne2 Yep, that's the fresh scent of copium. Its ok, its another 10 years you might be willing to admit the truth.

[@dondashall]

It's not illegal to be incompetent, it's in kickstarter's terms. They do expect a developer to do their best to bring the plan to fruition, but they are very explicit that it's not a guarantee and you are not buying a product. This does create a certain grey area whether some games are scams or not, ultimately at the end of the day people still lost their money, but yeah chances of getting any of that money back (certainly if it's already been spent) is very slim indeed.

[@SoldMySoul45]

And this is why I have never backed a project. People can raise millions of dollars and run off with it and backers get left behind with no product. People really need to stop funding kickstarters and indigogo projects.

[@dondashall]

@@mushyroom9569 Which is why I was speaking generally to the question without naming specific cases.

[@dondashall]

@@SoldMySoul45 I mean, there are great projects that have been completed and wouldn't have been without crowdfunding. And if I had the money there are some I would have supported. But you really need to research the people you are giving the money to and what they are trying to do and at a certain level be ok with that the project might not be completed. But let's not pretend that all crowdfunded projects are a bad idea.

[@exe_]

This guy really needs to run a campaign of DnD, feels like he really wants to make an entire universe when he could begin from a little town and work his way upwards.

[@HoldOffHunger]

The reactions on the kickstarter page for the CoE update are insane. Absolutely everyone hates this project over there now and is asking for refunds. It's a treasure trove of Caspian hate.

[@llYossarian]

1:39 - Dude's single mysterious employee is called _Snipe Hunt?_ -- It's like how there's definitely nothing fishy about Dr. Acula's blood clinic...

[@m.ccheddarbox874]

I'm happy you're settled a bit and able to create content. I hope all is well and that you're feeling ok.

[@tomd1209]

2024 update: "I have now laid off myself, allowing me to dedicate all of my time to KoE and CoE, since I no longer have to find the money to pay for food, water, electricity, and a roof over my head. Of course, this will unfortunately mean that all of the remaining staff will have to work on KoE without me, and since there is no one left, it will be down to the universe and to the very concept of game design ITSELF to spontaneously design and create the game I have envisioned. I am checking my computer daily to see if the game KoE/CoE suddenly appears on steam as a fully formed MMORPG, without me having intervened whatsoever."

[@bummers]

It is technically possible to write a program, game or otherwise, to be layered, in the case of games, a separate game and render engine that is not tied to the APIs of whatever underlying engine is used, eg Unreal vs Unity. I wrote arcade games back in the 80s - 90s on the PC platform and I can see the challenges for modern games while also seeing how the underlying game engine are fundamentally rather similar to a certain extent. Other than having to deal with a plethora of hardware devices and their drivers, writing an MMORPG is almost like writing an operating system in that each user + NPC are like processes in the OS and need to be managed and synchronised in their interaction. How do you think Windows eventually managed to pull off plug-and-play? They introduced a HAL layer and shipped with tons of device drivers that had to be written for every device and regress tested. Games don't have that nightmare, they have DirectX and engines like Unreal and Unity but it is still not a Hello World program. So unless this guy have a lot of experience writing games, MMORPG or otherwise, being able to write one with a 1-2 man team or even managing one is next to impossible.

[@Cenot4ph]

there's no such thing as an game engine abstraction layer that is compatible with all game engines. It simply doesn't exist and it doesn't work that way for the simple reason they have their own design and abstractions.

[@onomatopoeia7505]

A very long post on something we already knew (but thanks anyway): Caspian is full of sheit.

[@Reth_Hard]

@@Cenot4ph But just because a feature is currently unavailable it doesn't means it's technically impossible. I think there is just no need for this, at least not enough to have good programmers to spend their time on it. The big problem here is that Unreal is based on C++ and Unity on .Net, right? Ultimately, if you own the source code, it's possible to hire a programmer to convert it to almost any other language/engine.

[@Cenot4ph]

@@Reth_Hard anything is possible under the right incentives. There are no incentives to do any of this. Engines are a business, they're not a compatibility layer

[@fidelperez4837]

If I could live with myself being a massive conman, I would be so wealthy. It is terrible that people got duped because this is a game I would have bought myself.

[@solaryon8711]

As I understand from American law, class actions are basically always civil lawsuits. Civil suits have a much lower burden of proof that they call "preponderance of the evidence" or essentially "more likely than not". This means the question is not really if someone broke the law or not. It is more if damage was intentionally, maliciously, or recklessly done to the class by the defendant. It's probably very difficult to prove any of those, even with the low burden.

[@arkon4707]

basically how translation between ue4 and unitiy works: in ue4: "the roof of the house is burning, run away!" translatet points: "house burns, run!" unitiy: "the house is on fire we should evacuate" aka "the roof of the house is burning, run away" to: "the house is on fire we should evacuate" on short: you CAN translate information, but you will lose a lot of information. and since COE was planned to permanently translate back and forth between diffrent "layers" its like translating german in chines into Korean, into indian, into English into protoguese and back into German and then ... look how much of the first information is still there ..... it WORKS with very basic information ... but not in a mmo

[@fmo94jos8v3]

protoguese? 🤣

[@arkon4707]

@@fmo94jos8v3 ah well ... f my english XD portuguese ( no i will not edit my mistake it shall be there forever

[@ShayRubachOfficial]

the never ending gift that keeps on coming. it is a podcast to my ears.

[@JordanVandy]

Passing on this video bc your noise gate is aggravating my brain 😫 ambience turning to total silence every second or two makes commentary videos impossible to watch for me, still love you Kira

[@grimvisionz91]

He's keeping this going just so he can't get sued successfully and everyone knows it. He knows everyone knows it and the way he communicates clearly shows that.

[@MPSmaruj]

If you're the only person working on the project does "shrinking staff" mean he himself is visibly shrinking?

[@justinwhite2725]

6:52 as someone who has developed in unity and is in awe at Unreal 5 - no these systems are basically different skillsets. Even the coding language isn't the same.

[@johnsarthole]

As someone who's developed in both and a number of proprietary engines. Yes. But You can absolutely carry assets and system/game design decisions from engine to engine and not lose work. It is perfectly normal to prototype in something other than your intended shipping platform where that allows you to answer questions faster. Not suggesting for a moment that this project is legit, I'm just saying this isn't a red flag in itself.

[@UberGrunk]

Well, the things he mentions in the post (art assets, design decisions and data, back-end engineering and gameplay mechanics) can be made independent of whatever engine the game is being built in, but yeah, still a very weird approach since there will be a lot of things that do not carry over that would have saved you a lot of work eventually

[@zvexevz]

​@@johnsarthole Caspian is claiming that ALL work on KOE in Unity is somehow going to carry over to COE in Unreal, that's the total bullshit part. I'm not a game dev, but I feel like the biggest flaw in his claim is just the fact that the two games have totally different gameplay loops. If he was making two games of the same genre in two different engines it would make a bit more sense, but even then, why give yourself all the extra work. I've heard from some developer tutorials on KZbin that Unity is much easier than Unreal for beginners, and that you can make something playable in less time. I think that may be the real reason he switched to Unity when he realized he needed to produce a game out of thin air on his own to use as a defense in court.

[@RealHaydo]

“Great news everybody! Our workforce has been cut by over 90% this can only increase production exponentially!”

[@Fudmottin]

Virtually all major motion pictures these days have completion insurance. If things go south, the insurance company takes over and finishes the picture. They may fire the director, producers, and whomever. It depends on the contract. I wonder if gaming will take up a similar practice. From what I can see, modern AAA games cost as much or more than many major motion pictures to produce and distribute.

[@aurainfocus]

Having done game development since grade school on my own....I can completely relate to this guy. You make some basic games and feel like you can tackle the world. Set these grand ideas and think it will be so easy....just to run into issue after issue and after years, realize...yea....it isn't that easy.. I think that is exactly what this guy did...difference being...I wasn't stupid enough to try to raise 8 million dollars on an unproven perceived ability of mine.

[@thecommakozzi8050]

yep, i agree. I've dabbled with game design and i had experience building applications for engineering firms in the past, so i thought it would be something i could handle on my own. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but i felt like i could wrap my arms around it. This thought process set up completely unrealistic expectations in my mind and caused me to create unrealistic goals for my games. It's a LOT harder than people might believe and, if you're a fresh "developer" (wouldn't even call Caspian a developer at this point, probably never was really), you'll think that you can take on these challenges with just a little "hard work and gumption" NOPE! Think again... definitely don't go out and ask for $8million based on your limited experience... that gives me panic sweats just thinking about it

[@vincenthawke8141]

Caspian ''showing off'' KoE Is still one of the funniest video ever. You can feel the man Is backed into a corner and his lawyers are telling him to keep giving ''updates'' on his content.

[@Mystery_Box-]

Give Caspian premission to use your Videos with his own commentary on your points and allow him to release it on DVD / Streaming Platforms. Split it into seasons 1 , 2 , 3 etc. That way he will be able to raise funds to get CoE finished by 2070 - PS. I would buy it. Just as memorabilia ^^

[@deltasaves]

Would it come with a collector ceramic plate?

[@sinjin8576]

It must be really really hard to draft a letter filled entirely with lies to legally cover your ass every fiscal quarter.

[@andrewbaltes]

I worked for the largest credit union in North America for 5 and a half years, I quit June of 2022 because i felt my ethics had been brought to the brink of no return and I chose to not compromise my integrity. FI's are just as at fault for the PPP fraud here in the states because they did little to no due diligence in most cases to confirm that these employees even existed at these businesses. Not to mention how many people started a business online just so they could apply for it as well. In some cases FI's have been able to refuse forgiveness of these loans, so they've had a vested interest in turning away as few people as possible.

[@memitim171]

And even if they did exist they could just let them go and keep the money...if this never actually happened and I used this for the plot of movie people would laugh at it and call it unrealistic...ain't capitalism grand? 😁

[@andrewbaltes]

@Memitim everytime there is a major disaster that affects us here in the states, bipartisan support in congress/senate comes out in full swing to approve emergency "systems" (we'll call it) that always seem to have built-in exploits. Funny how this keeps happening.

[@BainesMkII]

The difficulty of switching from one engine to another depends on how you've designed and coded your game, but also how much you've actually already done. In the best case, you can easily carry over all your non-code work, and already have a well designed code structure that you can relatively easily port into the new engine. In the worst case, you'll have to remake your entire game from scratch, even the non-code assets. The kicker is that "how much you've done"... If you've barely got any usable work, then you aren't losing much with an engine switch.

[@derula]

Not an expert in UE/Unity, but at a surface level, art assets / design decisions / data / back-end stuff "carrying over" makes sense. The back-end can be coded completely engine agnostic, and neither of the aforementioned assets _needs_ to be in an engine specific format. It all depends on how the game is implemented, though. For example, if design decisions were directly coded in Unity entities or code, those would have to be recreated, at least partially. But if they are e.g. in text files and loaded at runtime, all that needs to be recreated is the text file parser. _Something_ has to be recreated either way, but he didn't say that nothing needs to be recreated. So I think what he's saying is plausible, but it really depends on the actual implementation. Is it disingenuous...? I think he's definitely being careful with words here, e.g. he _doesn't_ say what _doesn't_ carry over, so that list could be much longer than the list of things that do. If that's strategic or just incidental, idk.

[@johnbyrne4256]

He could probably just get Chat GPT to do it for him at this point.

[@matjazzorko4093]

Kira uploading nonstop, feels like christmas

[@lmSheep]

At this point I feel like I owe the developers at least 60$ because this has kept me more entertained than any AAA game ever has.

[@FranticFoxBass]

The channel's release rhythm: Stay silent for three months and then drop three hours of quality commentary content within five days.

[@gartrh]

It is possible to mchange the engine. But it isn't possible to just copy paste everything. It depends a lot how they build their game. If they used like Blueprints in UE, they would have to rewrite this into code. Or try using some converter plugin. Either way, it is not a simple copy/paste. Converting assets wouldn't be a simple copy paste either because both engines save them differently. Depending on the type of asset and source file you would have to reattach/reconfigure some things again (like textures/materials for models). It would be like having a partially built structure with lego blocks and having to build it again with differently colored and sometimes different pieces. Possible but I wouldn't want to do this myself.

[@vxicepickxv]

The least difficult thing would be to use a standard data format to swing the data between the two programs, but you're right about needing two sets of assets for the two engines. It's definitely a problem.

[@fmo94jos8v3]

the answer is acid.

[@Nerathul1]

Honestly even if they delivered everything they promised on time this game would be shit. They took pay to win to absolute new level by just having "Patron backers exclusively get entire kingdoms and anyone who joins later is a useless dirty peasant."

[@Ainianu1]

Game Dev here, transferring assets from Unity to Unreal is actually really easy, provided it is the art/sound/animation assets. The code/mechanics however would need to be re-done as the engines operate on different programming languages, and that could potentially take ages. Do we know he has not switched to Unity for the main project itself? that would make more sense really if he has switched to Unity for the new game.

[@Chris-ey8zf]

Good thing he did zero code whatsoever, so the transfer is really easy. Those $20 unity assets he bought and placed on a tiny map in 2 hours for his one and only video showing the "game" had nothing but assets in it, zero code. There is no game. There never was.

[@LlibertarianGalt]

I'm glad I never joined any of the crowd funding efforts for games, none of the ones I would have supported turned out to be anything but a let down.

[@iank472]

Just fo let you know Kira: a Snipe Hunt is essentially the same thing as a wild goose chase. The modern equivalent would be sending the new apprentice for some tartan paint or donut holes. Take from that what you will...

[@memitim171]

"I'm optimistic that the transition will be readily apparent" Optimistic? I'm not sure it could be any more apparent...that this game is never coming out.

[@Rudipu]

Dude created a proof of concept and made bank selling hopes and dreams during a time when people were throwing around mad cash to fund every kickstarter and early access game. Its sadly a common theme among many of similar projects that keep stringing people along and keep those devs employed with a steady cashflow. A fool and their money are soon parted. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@RuSosan]

**Cough **_starcitizen_** cough**

[@Wanelmask]

@@RuSosan *cough* Chris Roberts *cough*

[@azynkron]

@@RuSosan SC is actually a product. Unfinished, unpolished and unoptimised, yes.. but it's a product.

[@dra6o0n]

Basically you described a con artist.

[@tsumardi]

Elyria is actually a hooker in real life

[@guiltygearalonecompl]

A snipe hunt is a term for a pointless search for a nonexistent thing, done as a prank. Sure feels obvious that Caspian’s only “employee” is a snipe hunter

[@snooganslestat2030]

I learnt something today thanks. By the prank bit do you mean the person has been told to look for whatever it is by someone knowing it doesn't exist & that's the prank? That is basically the same as going on a wild goose chase (a much older saying for nearly the same thing, tho no prank has to be involved).

[@guiltygearalonecompl]

@@snooganslestat2030 Yeah. As a younger kid in the Boy Scouts, the older scouts would round up some of the dumber kids and tell them that someone had seen a Snipe out in the woods, and would then describe some weird bird and get the kids all hyped up about it. Then, you turn them loose and take bets on how long it takes them to figure it out, and who the last kid to keep looking would be, that sort of thing

[@phanteh]

Good to see the content Kira :) I'm a software engineer by trade. No commercial experience with unity or unreal engine, but I've messed around with both in my spare time. Porting assets from one to another is not trivial, and any code interacting with the engine will have to be rewritten, even if they're both written in C++ (unity supports both but I mostly see C# being used). Given Unity is a multi platform engine, his comments about moving to Linux and open source tooling make little to no sense to me, unless he never got around to paying for windows licences for his business...

[@memitim171]

@@MakeSeven They are big costs when you don't have any money. 😁

[@khatdubell]

@@MakeSeven Windows licenses and Visual studio licenses are expensive for business use. Nevermind all the licenses for all the other 3rd party programs that you can usually find something suitable and free on linux. If we're talking 1 or 2 devs, probably not a big deal, but if your idea is to fund an entire development studio, it can be a large cost.

[@azynkron]

@@khatdubell Switching environment is NOT cost free. It's insanely expensive, mostly from a loss of production perspective, to have people to learn a new environment. So.. Switching to an open source alternative could actually be more expensive than staying on e.g. Wintel. Probably not in this case though since this is pure BS and he's just talking out of his arse.

[@EyItsAsh]

Even if hes telling the truth, its like he believes he can design the game into existence, like it just doesn't matter about the whole production chain if you can't play it, thats the hard part, making the MMO not deciding what kinda herbs can be farmed.

[@Majorwindy]

That’s a really good way of putting it - trying to design it into existence. Hence why it so overdesigned

[@TheFreepie]

Guy should've just been a tabletop GM, then he can just design things into existence and worldbuild to his hearts content

[@KeimpeJ]

With my last full designer gone, and i am all alone, i can finally work on the game. :\

[@fmo94jos8v3]

fire self. then can work on game :d

[@killakanzgaming]

@16:28 When the PR fluff even admits the development completion percentages are at "best guess"... That absolutely gives off vibes of "here's some nice numbers I pulled out of my a...."

[@cyborgrhinofromspace1108]

Ah yes, blessed by the gold tier content.

[@BlackAxon]

Why do his blogposts always sound like me trying to describe to my high school teacher the homework I havent actually started yet.

[@firefang225]

The fact they call their updates "state of elyria" just makes me laugh, cause yeah just look at the state of it

[@lennysmileyface]

The absolute fucking state man

[@okamichamploo]

Finally! I saw the enail come in and without opening it I went straight to Kira for the break down. Sadly, it was nowhere to be found. ...until now!

[@patnev9296]

Regarding the development side, I'm an amateur and not a coder but migrating between Unreal to Unity sounds highly impractical. Unreal, to my understanding, uses C++ and a node system; believe Unity is built using C++ and runs C++ code in the background but focuses on things being object-based so users and other systems are in C# or JavaScript. Suppose this could mean, if they had a good understanding on C++ code, a good coder might be able to get things transferred but as I said, even if you could it would be super impractical. That being said, I could be wrong and welcome any corrections as I am still learning myself.

[@triunestudio]

We need to hire Caspian to do our dev update posts. Look at that wall of text.

[@pajamajordan2991]

He’s spent almost a decade and $8 million to fail at making the dollar tree version of an Age of Empires demo. Tune in in 2030 when he will be hard at work on Pong of Elyria.

[@Xithar_tri]

9:46 you forgot to add "..not your friend.." 😝 It's great to see more content from you again

[@SunVKing]

Taking code from Unity and putting it in Unreal is like taking a part of a japaneese engine and putting it in a BMW, perhaps it'll run, but for how long? or how well? The only thing that is more universal is 3D models because they can be exported and stuff.

[@joshuahensley9395]

19:22 that is a very eloquent way of saying we were just coming up with ideas and writing them down.

[@neveridle]

I can express how glad I am that you are releasing so much content again! Thank you so much kira, I love your content and Ive been growing as a 3d animator, I hope to have spare 3rd world country money soon to start supporting your thing. I mean, gotta be paid more for those Earth 2 scam tube successes

[@lucklaster6614]

at this point even if he stumbled himself into making an actual game, it probably won't be big enough to recover anything of his expenses.

[@BoredPodcaster]

Imagine raising 8 million dollars to develop a game, and after years of "development" have nothing to show for it, while also swearing it's not a scam. And then going even further and "developing" ANOTHER game, claiming it will help "fund" the original project. At worst, people were scammed. At best, the management/developer(s)/whatever are the most incompetent in the gaming industry. In either case, it would shock me if they managed to raise ANY money from people after their history.

[@Raainmaker]

Like before watching crew checking in. Kira talking about Chronicles of Elyra is like a warm blanket on a cold day

[@Wanelmask]

Ladies and Gents, time to make bets! Wich one of those is going to fail/go totally rugpully silent first? CoE or Star Citizen ??? The poll is open

[@M4xH4xCentaurus]

So truth be told... after all these years the IDEA of Kingdoms of Elyria does kind of appeal to me. Maybe it wouldn't work in an MMO setting. But maybe on a smaller scale where you could have servers with a hundred or so people just living their best medieval lives. And that's what always makes me sad and angry when hearing the news of this game's mismanagement. If they had set the bar lower from the beginning with the prospect of multiplayer or mmo expansions along the way, they would've probably been able to get things going rather than all this shenanigans. That said... seeing how they changed games to a single-player setting and still didn't manage to get things started I'm left wondering if what I say would have happened. Regardless. The idea of the game does sound interesting. Starting your own settlement and slowly building out to something bigger. Like a Rimworld, Kenshi, or Dwarf Fortress kind of game

[@Tnargav]

Lawyer: How many keywords you want in this blog post? kaspian: Yes.

[@TheGoreforce]

monthly updates? hmm with him being the sole developer? facinating. and opening discord? even more facinating so all his previous arguments about moderation costs money woah

[@nethfellearnspiano9655]

I'm amazed the guy is still putting out updates. One thing - depending on where this guys business is incorporated (I don't really follow this game that close aside from pulling out the popcorn when Kira brings another video ;) - if it's in the US, if it can be shown that he pieced the corporate veil, he could be personally held liable - and I think one of the items that can do that is committing fraud (I'm not a lawyer, just from reading on liabilities of corps and llcs). It'll be interesting to see.

[@Chris-ey8zf]

He's only putting out updates until the court case is closed. Then he will shut it all down and go silent. He's just keeping up appearances for the lawyer.

[@CodingWithUnity]

There is 0 cross over between unity and unreal besides the assets. Its a full rebuild. Completley different code base with a different engine library. Guess you could argue the server code can be used by both clients, so really only the clients would need rebuilding. Assets are easy enough to move over tho.

[@Enclume2]

Oh man Kingdom of Elyria coming in the next month and a half I guess, "they" said it's releasing this year for sure this time!

[@skylar5257]

That feeling when you feel like CoE is describing Bannerlord without the MMO, except a mod was made to make Bannerlord multiplayer lol. Edit: Here’s how I see it, you promise I give you $200 for a durable chair made out of some of the best wood imaginable and show me a picture advertisement of said chair you’re essentially promising me, I give you that money then you go out and overpay for shit wood, easily breakable nails and terrible carpentry equipment (also just paying yourself). Then you come back to me and say I get no chair because you spent the rest of the money on bullshit and couldn’t do it (which is worse than Caspian because he’s still trying to get money out of people to do it at this point knowing damn well it’s not gonna happen). I’m now out $200 and also out a chair I was promised… that’s me gets scammed in a broadened sense of the word, I got no money and no product and you get no consequences.

[@blakel8121]

Elyria "Fog of war simulator 2023" is going to be the best.

[@HangerHangar]

Screeps exists, which is an RTS brought up to MMO scale and uses AI programming to control every unit in those empires. so if you were to take something like Screeps, then having a view where you can be a "hero unit" in a third person view... Such a system does sound technically possible, but the reality is that it wouldn't be worth any Developer's/Publisher's time.

[@falkreon]

The thing with the PPP loans is that a business takes out the PPP loan from an approved lender within the program, and goes through an 8-week to 24-week "covered period" of no interest. When it's all done, if you spent all that money on covered expenses (wages, rent, property tax), and didn't fire anyone, the loan can be forgiven. But you can go on a firing spree immediately after. And yes, there were two rounds of PPP funding that went out. I think it's a strong possibility that Caspian complied with the PPP regs, but the regs are slightly broken.

[@syndrathedarksovereign1609]

Man, feels good to get my daily kira video while eating dinner. Missed you man

[@eleven0624]

It is possible to "port" from Unity to UE4, BUT, it's not easy at all. It's time consuming even if you have knowledge of UE4. The code isn't 1 to 1. Looking at CoE assets and KoE assets, they're not compatible at all so this kind of porting mentioned in the blog post is intentionally bad.

[@maxm2639]

Kaspian's latest update is world class delusional, mostly, seemingly, of the "self" variety, since believing that it would deceive anyone in their right mind would be as out of touch with reality as believing it himself. Either way, outstanding entertainment.