Atavism? whats your opinion?

Considering buying the $70 indie package tomorrow what are yalls opinions on the atavism extension? it looks perfect for my needs.

 

Forget it... Right now it's a waste of money... They are falsely advertising their product. I can't even believe it made it through Unity's Asset Store quality checks...

 

The main problem with Atavism is that it is being advertised as much more than what it really is. Yes, there are a lot of "plugins" that allow you to begin prototyping many of the standard gameplay systems you see in MMOs without the need for coding. You can create mobs, items, zones, etc., using the plugins that come packaged with the asset. You have some cosmetic freedom with those plugins, but no ability to make functional changes. If you need some truly custom features, or even modified versions of existing features, you will have to program them from scratch.

What the game really lacks currently is the core infrastructure needed to support a true MMO. No load balancing or fault tolerance among multiple servers, no server-side collision or movement authority, an oddly implemented area-of-interest management system (based on number of entities, rather than distance), etc.

To a good number of us who bought into the engine at a very early stage (late last year), this seems very much like a backwards approach. We have been told many times that this was a conscious decision, that it was so that customers could start building their game worlds first, and then incorporate the right infrastructure later. But given how much those infrastructure features have been delayed, it's hard not to doubt they will ever build those very key aspects of an MMO engine.

The product is very much unfinished at this point, so buyer beware. Me personally? I'd wait until they actually deliver on those key features first.

 

(sorry for grammar im french haha)
what is that rage quite party .... atavism is under developement . you cant even expect perfection at the start of a developement
everytime that release a new version there is way more content + its super easy to use and im always helping who is willing to learn
but im not here to tell you to not leave becuze you seem so negative and want a complete finished produce so in that case ... use an engine that will ask you money for each income money
atavism goal is a plugin based mmo engine wich is a revolution
especially if you consider the only 70 $

+ if you always stay a nice guy people are always willing to help you so you not only recieve help from atavism but also from the community

i trully hope you reconsider your opinion as im my self a customer

 

Kiugetski, I don't expect perfection... Believe me I was one of Atavism's biggest supporters. The Crafting System is based on my code, Neos uses my custom made Day/Night Cycle unless they have added to it or changed it. I have a UniStorm Integration Plugin made for Atavism, They had been planning on using my Terrain Paging System... Believe me I fully supported Atavism. I've recommended Atavism to a ton of people and am directly responsible for a number of License purchases for Atavism.

I however do not Agree with their false advertising. Claiming atavism is already capable of being used in MMOs when there is no Load balancing and doesn't even feature any sort of Server side Collision or Physics simulation.

 

Hey radar089.

I'm Andrew, the lead programmer on this project. My opinion of course will be slightly biased, but I try to be as straight as I can.

It depends on what your needs are, and how soon you are wanting to release. As mentioned, we are not a 100% complete product yet, we are still getting there. If you're wanting thousands and thousands of players in your game tomorrow I would say try something else. If, however, you are looking for a tool to throw some ideas together, get a small MMO going now that will continue to grow, then I think it should do the job pretty well.

We have proven that we aren't a fly-by-night company trying to make a quick dollar, and we are constantly working on the system and doing releases pretty regularly.

 

Thank you Andrew for being honest about Atavism's current state... This honesty is ALL we were wanting and trying to get you guys to do. Now include something like this to your Advertising as well as what your working on and future goals and/or plans for Atavism and I think you guys would be doing much better...

 

Well said Andrew.. Hopefully in its finished state it can do the huge worlds. I think what has frustrated a lot of existing users the communications coming Atavism making it sound like it can do more than it can in its current state. Appreciate seeing the openness and hope you guys meet all of your intended goals!

 

Andrew, just a thought and this is nothing against Jacques, Like I have said many times I think he's a great guy and I have Respect for him and what you guys are attempting. However with that said Jacques openly admits that he isn't at all technical. He doesn't know much at all about the technical aspects of Atavism. So instead of him attempting to sell the technical aspects maybe you should start writing up the tech details for your Advertising. Or at the very least check out what Jacques is going to be posting regarding what Atavism is currently capable of doing so that all the information is as clearly stated and as accurate as possible.

 

This is a direct snipit from our advertising:

What we are working on and future goals:

"Current RoadMap
Added July 23 2014

Atavism V3: Core Server Functionality ( Beta)
1) Terrain System
- Full Paging and stitching Unity Terrain System
Server Side Collision
- Navmesh collision generation in Unity that can be copied to and run on the server
- Navmesh editing on the server
2) Authoritative Player Control
Authoratative Player Control
- Server implementation of character control to verify characters position and movements from the client input.
3) Pathfinding and Mob AI improvements
Pathfinding
- Mobs pathfinding system upgraded to use server collision to accurately move around the world.
AI
- Improved AI functionality to control mobs with patrol paths, roam radius, combat behavior settings.
- Possible advanced implementation of a system similar to Story Bricks
4) Server Management Tools & Monetization
Server Management Tools
- Manage accounts
- Start/Stop server
- Check on server status & other details
Monetization
- Server side support for Item mall
- Server side support for Subscription based models
5) End of Beta improvements"

State of engine:

" BETA, BETA, BETA which is stated everywhere and yes Beta means different things for different people but its still not a full release.

Please state clearly where we are doing wrong advertising so we can fix it and stop using it as a excuse to trash our product. As for it not being a MMO system , as far as I know you had many players in your test run when you where using atavism and the server never crashed . You might have had low frame rates at some point but that never crashed the server it had more to do with your world building setup and capabilities as that is client based which is Unity and not Atavism. Like Sooms said if you want to make a small MMO with a couple 100 players in it right now you can do it and by the time you are up to thousands of players the engine will definitely be able to support that.

 

All the technical stuff is written by Andrew for our advertising. And to be very honest I am lost at what you are saying most of the time as in one post you say Atavism is a joke and then two posts later you say you want to sell your plugins you are making on it. Decide what it is and stick by it and please stop flip flopping, if people read all your posts they will be more confused about it than feeling they are being helped.

 

well, i have read pretty much all posts about atavism and i regret to say that everytime there is a half technical question about the server or the overall kit, Cookimage is pretty much useless to answer.

he just lacks the technical knowledge regarding atavism, I think this whole advertising and marketing should be handled by the actual developer himself, since the existing PR guy just does not cut it here,
i dont even think he can be of any use when i comes to answering questions regarding the technology,
the sad part tho is that he has been handling the PR very badly that pretty much had led the atavism engine into this spot.

bro, just step aside, let the actual developer take lead on the whole thing, you had your chance and pretty much here are the results,
unless you want to drive down to the ground whats left of integrity of this nice engine, just step aside and let others take over and save what is left of it.


by now you should of known this, ad sooms you need to take over bro, that is if you want to keep the project live.
otherwise it will really sadden me watching vanishing the hard work already done to this product

Cookimage might be a nice fella, i personally have nothing against him or in favour, i don t even know him, but seems that his bad judgement or lack of experience on the mmo industry has already spoken for him hence whats is happening to it.

some say he is the owner? is this is true then you need to focus and learn a little bit of your own product so you can answer and or sell your product by stating features and benefits about it.

not sure if he is the investor or PR or owner, but whatever his title is, you already have proven that PR is not his strength, neither coding or technical mmo knowleadge regarding his own engine.
.

as for the engine i think is coming along ok, but still far for production, way farrrrrrr,
and reason are the followings:
Engine core must have features:
- there is no authoritative server, all is handled by the client, bad business for mmo, since it can be prone to any given or existing cheat or cheat engines.
- no server side collisions
-no real mmo Area of insterest(AOI) this is very crucial in any mmo game a must have
-instance system not finished yet, meaning you can not control how many players can be set to any given instance/world so players can cram in one instance and even worse with no AOI, then is a timebomb ready to happen
- you are only able to hold as many players one world server instance can handle since no server escalation as of yet and do not think any time soon at all.

MMO features lacking:
-no party/grouping
-no guilds
-no friends lists
-no private dungeons since it requires grouping
-no chat channels ie: world, zone, local , just 1 chat mode for the whole world
no harvesting, altho there is crafting but without harvesting then crafting is useless
no pvp battlegrounds, and or arenas, or minigames, since this requires grouping then due of this this will be impossible

i can just keep on going ... but there is no need to do so.

so this will give an idea of the current status then you decide if you want to purchase and wait quite some time for a full setup.

now , clearly the engine is not yet there as an MMO grade. multiplayer pretty much will be well suited since some say they tested it with over 100 ccu and it behaved ok.


so to answer the initial OP in this thread if the question is , is Atavism ready for production?, i would say not really.
but if you want something for right now that can handle 100 ccu in the game then Id go with Ratspell full multiplayer game ready for $25

 

You can now focus on developing the game, not the programming, and have a prototype or full game up within a few weeks, even if your team is very small. You don't need to have a million dollar budget anymore to develop a MMO game as we have already done most of the heavy lifting with pre-designed plugins for every system. All you need to do is setup what stats you want to use with them. If you want systems of your own, you can also code unique plugin systems and even share or sell them to other developers who are using Atavism.

There's a Direct quote from the Asset Store Advertising... Now let's pick it apart...

Being able to have a full game online in a few weeks... lol that's a laugh... Like you are now saying it MIGHT be possible to have a VERY small scale game online in a few weeks but NOT a full game... When most people think of a full game they think of something that they would actually be able to sell not just something for them and a couple friends...

pre-designed Plugins for EVERY System? lol Again I think not... Yes you have alot of plugins but they are extremely basic and you certainly don't have a plugin for EVERY system... Again False Advertising...

Sell custom Plugins? YES once you open the Plugin Store which we have been promised for like 6 months now with no sign of...

That's just a small part of your false advertising... I could pick apart every word you have said... Every thing you told us just to get us to buy into Atavism that is still yet to come true...

 

When one builds a project, whether it be a game or a MMO engine, you start with the foundation. You build the things that are needed to make the engine work and then you add the pretty and fun stuff. Adding trade before server-side collision or authoritative movement is just sad, sorry. Here is what happened...and I speak mostly for myself. We saw the Atavism crew ignoring these foundational features and adding in simple things that we could do ourselves. We wanted the framework, but they continuously ignored that. Atavism has been in our toolbox since March and still, nothing substantial and lots of what was there was very buggy. Yes, we could add data and mobs, but after redoing them several times due to updates or bugs that appeared to be ignored we set aside Atavism until it was more complete. We expected to wait until August at the earliest. But we watched as more and more fluff was added and these important features were ignored. We asked and we continuously told they would be in the next update, and then the next, and finally updates were ignored. Okay, yeah, development is tricky, dates change, we understand. But then the trade system was added....and that was the last straw. We decided to go elsewhere.

When one sees what appears to be fluff rather than the "hard core" stuff, one begins to wonder if the company even has the ability to make the "hard core" stuff. It is a perception and whether that perception is true is yet to be seen.

And yeah, Jacques is not a good communicator and not a good PR guy and he has no business giving out technical information. He is a nice guy and I think he is over his head here. I feel for him, honestly. I did think he might be scamming us...I am beginning to dismiss that idea...I really don't want that to be the case. But perceptions are important. Andrew really should be the one who talks techy with us but he is busy programming. However, a brief note here on the forums from Andrew does wonders as everyone can see. Thank you for being honest, Andrew. I know what it is like to have to tell people things are not going as well as they should but honesty goes a long ways toward trust. Jacques, be our friend but stop trying to explain technical stuff to us. I know so little but at times I know more than you do! That does not make me feel confident in Atavism....because anyone who knows less than me is really not someone I want to count on for an MMO engine. LOL

I have been the PR "guy" for a game team before. It is a tough job. You constantly feel attacked because you are the face of the team, the one assessable to the fans. My trick was to never ever talk about something I didn't understand. Never give promises or say "next week" unless I was absolutely sure it would be next week. Never make people distrust you. If they distrust you, then the entire project is injured. A tough thing to learn and I remember even crying when a disgruntled fan, who had good reason to be upset, went off on me. Yeah, I am a girl, I cry. It is a tough job.

 

I know I said this above but missed Cookimage's post above so wanted to answer him with is quote.

You advertised this as a MMO Engine and yet the engine parts were ignored in favor of the MMO Kit. So those of us who wanted the engine and didn't care about as much about the kit (we could do that ourselves) began to wonder if the engine part, as described above by Mr. Massively, were not finished first. You skipped the hard parts and did the easy parts making us doubt your ability to do the hard parts. Had you developed them together, releasing the foundation of the engine first, we would have felt differently. Missing dates is understandable but giving us the kit before the engine is not. The only reason obvious to those of us on the outside is because you really don't have the capability to make the core engine. This may not be true, but again, perception.

Fix it by working on the core parts of the engine, get those done. I think it is too late to turn things around for many but redeem yourselves by getting the "hard parts" done. Stop talking about technical stuff unless you truly absolutely understand what you are talking about. Send Andrew out once a week to concisely summarize the techie stuff.

Be absolutely honest. Release some of those assets. Those have nothing to do with the engine and at the very least, give us something pretty to look at. That should be your job, Jacques. Make us feel good about Atavism, not the technical aspects, but what we can do with it someday.

 

MrMassively:
Just to clear a few things up with Authoritative Server and yes I have spoken to Andrew about this so it is based on technical stuff:
There is a few things needed for a authoritative server. One is the server must control actions and information like item information, sending of skills and abilities info and so forth so that the players cant hack those things on the client side. The second thing is secure login system witch authorizes a player access to the game world and the third part is movement , being it player movement or mob movement. The first two parts has been in Atavism from the start as all those things like information sending and login system is controlled by the server and the database, the third part is being implemented now with our collusion/nave mesh system we are implementing. So Atavism is not as fully authoritative yet as it needs to be as it needs the third part to be a total authoritative server which is why we have put it in the road map as still coming. But most of it is implemented already when it comes to things like items , quests, stats and so forth. So Saying there is no authoritative server is not totally right.

JamesPro:
" Being able to have a full game online in a few weeks... lol that's a laugh... Like you are now saying it MIGHT be possible to have a VERY small scale game online in a few weeks but NOT a full game... When most people think of a full game they think of something that they would actually be able to sell not just something for them and a couple friends..."

We see things very different, we are not saying you might be able to get a small MMO online, if you know what you are doing then you will for sure get one online. And when we talk about small scale we are saying amount of players as in a couple 100 and not thousands. But having a limit to say 400 or 500 players on one server does not stop your from starting work on your game, and by the next few months everything you are complaining about will be in anyway. There are many MMO games out there that run their servers with a max amount of players and then its full, even WoW does that. Loading up our demo world that comes with the package actually puts you in a playable world right away. Yes it will definitely depend on your skill in building your own world as in assets on how fast you finish your game and have your world running but that is unfortunately out of our hands. What we are saying is instead of you programing everything for 2 to 3 years we have done allot of that already. There is no click button and your perfect MMO pops up. You have to do some work as well.

"Sell custom Plugins? YES once you open the Plugin Store which we have been promised for like 6 months now with no sign of..."
Nothing is stopping you right now to sell your own plugins on your own website. No where there we stated there will be a store for you to sell them in. Yes we do want to have a store in place at some point but still nothing preventing you from selling them now. I don't mind comments from most people as they seem to want to help us with getting this product further, but your comments is just plain rude and trashy most of the time and then you change it to sound like you are doing it for the greater good.

 

I see the post was edited so I edited mine as well.

Good move!

Thanks.

 

Wow did not mean to stir up an argument lol. But all info i can gather is helpful. as far as rat spell goes... well i passed on that. I actually felt like i wasted money on rat spell. out the box it didn’t connect right i had errors during the unity setup for it. that and i don’t speak Russian so emails with the proprietor of rat spell was, painful... atavism has so far looked to be the most promising. Writing everything from the ground up is out of the question and we cannot afford to licence anything more established. Hero engine, realm crafter, pass. I was waiting to upgrade my rig before i purchased atavism and also till my team has produced enough content for the starting area or "noob zone". To be honest i am ok with atavism’s current state. I am more interested in how much is complete and what all can be done. A kickstarter or indiegogo campaign is the next goal, but they cant happen without a trailer, and i need a working prototype of the game for that.

 

This is very simple, the following plugins are completed and works:

• Data Base Plugin: Setup your database information and be able to link directly to it through the editor which allows you to do changes instantly to things pertaining to your MMO game.
• Instance Plugin: Create and setup new instances in your game which can be anything from Dungeons you want players to explore or even a different world in one MMO.
• Accounts Plugin: Control all player accounts from this plugin and set different access levels such as setting certain players as GM's in your game.
• Mobs Plugin: Create any mob template from a click of a button with stats and loot you want them to drop, then spawn these mobs in-game where ever you want in real time. You can even spawn a dragon right in front of other players while they are standing next to you in game.
• Loot Tables plugin: Setup different loot tables and drop chances of items for your mob templates.
• Factions Plugin: Use this plugin to easily setup your different factions in your game as well as what their standings are to one another.
• Quests Plugin: Create different types of Quests for your players which you then add to any NPC you want to give the quest out. Create a chain of quests that can guide your players through your storyline.
• Dialogue Plugin: Create different dialogues for your NPC's. You can also use this system to allow multiple outcomes in the storyline depending on what a player chooses while speaking to a NPC or even allow access to certain quests only if a player asks a NPC certain questions.
• Items Plugin: Create all the items for your game with this, add different stats to items and functionality.
• Skills Plugin: A full skill system which allows you to open up skills when players level up with XP or level up their skill by using it like the old UO style game play. The choice is yours.
• Abilities Plugin: Create different abilities for your players that can get when they have a certain skill. They can use these abilities in a wide range of ways from combat to crafting to professions.
• Effects Plugin: Build your own effects for your game to make it unique like a melee-strike effect that deals physical damage or a magic effect that heals your player.
• Coord Effects Plugin: Setup different animations, particles and more to run on events such as play an attack animation and a particle when you use a strike ability.
• Stats Plugin: Design any type of stat you want for your game with this plugin.
• Player Character Setup Plugin: Setup what races, stats and classes you want your players to start with as well as where you want them to spawn and how you want starter characters to look like.
• Two types of camera controls, click to move and normal wow style.
• Currency Plugin: Setup currencies for your game
• Merchant System: Buy and sell items from NPC in game
• Land System: Setup claims which players can buy and sell where they can place objects like buildings and so forth.
• UMA Character Creation System: a UMA character system which allows you to use UMA morphing customization for players and NPC
• Normal Character Creation system: Allowing use of any model in character creation.
• In Game Chat: basic chat system so players can chat with each other in game.
• Login System: authoritative login system so you can set access to your game.

 

Thanks cookimage, all of that sounds great. In you and neos defence i dont know of any other unity asset (is that what atavism should be called? an asset?) that can do what you guys have. Our project is still in its infancy, but it is growing fast. If i can use atavism to put together a starting zone for the purpose of a crowd funding trailer then im happy. I expected our project to grow with yours after i purchased it.

also, how far along is crafting?

 

Crafting plugin is not yet available but we are working on the system for it. Most likely will be in next update.

 

awesome.

 

It would be nice to be able to work on crafting while Collision is worked on, when is the next update planned?

 

We do not have a specific date yet for next update/fix update yet.

 

do you provide a character controller and camera with atavism or do we need to provide an mmorpg style controller and camera?

 

we have 2 types of camera controller system you can choose from. The normal wow style where you hold both mouse buttons down to move or diablo style click on terrain to move. You can also code your own style if you want something different.

 

cool, i ended up getting a really nice one finished the other day but im going to have to check atavisms out.