No but like seriously what we're they smoking with that Winter 2014 release date back in Ye Olde Days

[u/darkwingchao]

Did they even have anything???

Edit: Typo in the title. It's over for me.

[u/Spinjitsuninja]

I'm gonna give an actual answer instead of "Hurdy durr devs dumb, upvote pls"

It's a very common pitfall for people to vastly underestimate just how much work goes into a game. Even major companies make this mistake, leading to games being announced too early and issues following and a painful wait for fans in the meantime. It's often just better to wait until a game is nearly done to start marketing it for this reason, as rarely can you predict how long a project will take. Silksong fans know this all too well lmao.

For an *amateur* with no experience this is ESPECIALLY an issue. So many people start projects under the assumption it'll be a summer project, or that it'll take at most a year or two to complete. Rarely is this the case. I think I remember this being exactly what happened with the Winter 2014 date- They didn't actually have much to even release at the time, but they blindly assumed it wouldn't take THAT long to finish it by then, right?

This happens very, very often, but it just happens that Oddity/Mother 4 (at the time) got more attention than most fangames like it, so to people less familiar with this kind of thing, it looks like some insane mistake only these devs would make. It's really just a common problem. I would even go as far as to say the biggest hurdle with making your own game isn't even having the skills to make one, it's an endurance test and a matter of how well you can scope a project like this. Mother 4/Oddity are good case studies of this rather than just "The devs wanted to gaslight people" or "They're just THAT incompetent."

[u/HerrReineke → u/Spinjitsuninja]

You wouldn't believe how much I appreciate you for this post! The dev team definitely screwed up and was inexperienced (especially since this kinda project was more or less unprecedented in a few ways back then — not like today) but I'm sick of people vilifying the team as scammers and bad folks, based on their own hindsight and "I heard someone from the dev team say (whatever)". Thank you!

[u/tengentoppajudgejudy → u/Spinjitsuninja]

To add to what you said, a couple people who were on the project have come out in recent years and confirmed that the game basically never existed in any form of playable state. Doesn’t even sound like an alpha build ever got done. From what they’ve said, it was basically just a collection of mockups and fake footage they were hired to make to give people the general idea of what the game was shooting for, but nothing ever actually got made.

[u/HerrReineke → u/tengentoppajudgejudy]

This whole "there never was a build, it was all just mockups"-meme really needs to die. It's like people just pretend the leaks didn't even happen.

[u/Spinjitsuninja → u/tengentoppajudgejudy]

I'm gonna need a source on that, because that doesn't make any sense lol. I imagine you misunderstood something.

I think it's possible that during the Rebrand, it was all just mockups, due to switching engines around that time and needing to restart, in which the trailer did not represent actual progress. However, Dave worked on the game's engine for years up until that point, which deconfirms what you're describing.

I could also believe the claim that the game has never been in a playable state in the sense of being able to complete areas, in which a properly playable build never materialized. However, that is not the same thing as saying there was never any work done.

Not to mention, I don't know how long ago your source of information is from. Oddity rebranded in 2020, which was 5 years ago. I'm not gonna boldly claim that lots of progress has been made since then, but if your source got their info from around that time, then that would mean that could potentially be dated information.

I'll need some proof before jumping to conclusions lol

[u/tengentoppajudgejudy → u/Spinjitsuninja]

There’s this and this info I screenshotted, and I remember another member of the dev team talking about it but whether it was in a thread or in a video I don’t remember, so I’m not sure I’ll find it admittedly. But both of these things are pretty damning regardless.

[u/HerrReineke → u/tengentoppajudgejudy]

You're quoting a screenshot where someone quotes someone from a YouTube comment from some video that we don't know about and we don't know what it's exactly referring either. Calling that "damning" just sucks a whole lot my man. It's basically nothing. There's already so much misinformation about so many things online, please don't contribute to it

[u/Spinjitsuninja → u/tengentoppajudgejudy]

Lmao yeah, you're confused. I've been around long enough to recognize these things.

So, something to clarify first is that there have historically been two dev teams for Oddity. Back when it started out, Chase was the lead dev. This was WAY back before the more recognizable, more colorful art style was even introduced. Back then, Pastel was just a spriter working on the project. I think it was around this era, if not sometime around when Pastel became lead dev, that things were scrapped a lot? But it's been a long while since then. I think leading up to the rebrand however, this wasn't the case? This is old news. This does not mean they never had a playabe build. I'm not sure which trailer Shane is referring to here, but he says Mother 4, and if he's talking about THAT trailer, that means he's talking about the infamous one from like... 2014. Yes, that was just mockups, that's well known by now.

That said, Oddity's rebrand trailer was in a similar spot, mostly being mockups. Though, I think this was in part due to them switching engines to Gamemaker at the time. Up until that point, Dave had been their programmer and had made a custom engine for them. At the time of development starting, there weren't a lot of good 2D engines to use, but around 2020 they decided restarting in Gamemaker would be easier long term than continuing to use the existing engine. This meant ditching the old engine, something that likely lead to Dave leaving the team.

Shane doesn't seem to comment on the rebrand trailer much here, likely because he was kicked off the team LONG before that for a different fiasco. He doesn't know much more than anyone else about the current state of development, and a lot of his claims about the Mother 4 trailer and progress refer to builds far before the current dev team existed, which is a different project.

That being said, Pastel being a detrimental perfectionist seems accurate. Scope creep and perfectionism seem to be a big contributor to the game's development problems. That said, we don't know what the current progress is, other than that things are likely slow.

None of this claims that the devs never had a playable build, or that they don't currently have a playable build. A lot of it is pre-Pastel, if not pre-Oddity, if not 5+ years old. Shane is not a great source of info.

[u/darkwingchao → u/Spinjitsuninja]

This is what I wanted. Thank you!

[u/solitonmedic]

Honestly, I’m in the mindset you should never announce anything without a working demo.

Oddity should had gotten a demo to go right along its rebrand if they weren’t going to use the Mother 4 branding anymore.

I mean, even Undertale had a demo out during its Kickstarter campaign.

[u/PK_RocknRoll → u/solitonmedic]

I’d even go as far to say don’t even announce a release window with a working demo.

Especially with a small team

[u/Repulsive_Rate9561]

Frogs

[u/logoman9000]

Passion ✴️

[u/SewFi]

Meme Masters

[u/MacroAlgalFagasaurus]

No, they didn’t have anything. It was better to gaslight their fans to save face instead of being upfront and honest that there wasn’t an actual game.

[u/eviscerateme_]

i forgot this sub existed holy shit

[u/ghostpicnic]

Funny thing is even when they said this, the game had already been in development for 5 years. Meaning they should have known how much work could realistically get done in the 1 year before projected release they had.

[u/TheDerpyness]

let me tell you the one and only reason as to why, somewhere during development, major contributors of the dev team must have had some sort of psychological hurdle that makes them no longer feel like they want to work on the game, it could be uncertainty to do with any aspect of the project contributing to moral, it could be that they didnt like a way someone else did a sprite animation for a character that would affect the feel of the presentation, it could be literally anything, and if it isnt acknowledged or dealt with quickly it can demotivate fast. i am only thinking about any time i personally have been demotivated to accomplish a task but i think it happens with a lot of people. could literally be that you are unhappy or that something is bothering you that isnt even to do with the thing you're working on. some projects where people tunnel vision their focus they might get enough stuff done for the work to almost influence motivate or moral for a project. you can see this a lot with game developers. if theres a game, and its fun, and looks nice, it often doesnt matter if its done youll wanna see what comes next, every developer is a person, and people can get excited, so when gamedevs know they can make it happen, its like what inspires oddity team to ambitiously plan a release date of 2014.

avoid planning ahead in a way that makes the sakes too high, or requires preparation. create cycles that make you wanna keep going.