Vintage Story: Adventure Mode

[Foe Hammer]

On 7/5/2025 at 7:12 AM, Tyron said:

Once this new project is fully set up, it should be able to run mostly independent from me. The exception being when there are engine changes that would benefit both projects.

I do have a question regarding this @Tyron. What are you anticipating the start up for this group to look like? Think it will be a few weeks for them to get used to the engine and environment getting their legs under them? Or are you anticipating them to almost hit the ground running?

[Rhyagelle]

It really does seem like some people just want something to be angry about, to grab a pitchfork for. It's become extremely clear that a few people in this thread think they have a better understanding of not only game development than the team that is actually invovled, but that they think they know better about the situation--whether financial or progress wise--than the game's creator and dev team. It's quite something...

[DudeBroManGuy]

10 hours ago, Tyron said:

I've updated the blogpost/forum post to respond to many of your concerns, thank you for your feedback!

Okay, let's see what we got.

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It is already a significant struggle for me to put together the devlog posts, because there is so many changes being made to the main game on each update. More people means more opinions, means more possible development directions. We had to split our weekly meetings into 2 subgroups where each group can talk only every 2nd week because there were simply too many voices going on at the same time. I don't like it because I want everyone in the team to have a voice, but due to the team size this is no longer possible.  We in the VS team are not fond of a strongly hiearchical management structures where only the leadership gets to decide what to add. If we want Vintage Story in its full glory AND with its original vision, then we need to stop diluting the vision.

Oh, so too many cooks in the kitchen pulling the project in too many different directions. Sounds like you need to suck it up, put on your big boy pants, and make a hierarchical management structure so that your vision for the game remains within scope and so that features get implemented within a reasonable timeframe. There's a damn good reason that large projects are undertaken with a strict hierarchy of management and responsibility. It's taken too long already. How many people who purchased the game at the beginning of its development have died already without having gotten to play the full version that was promised by you and funded by their payment?
 

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Lastly, finishing Vintage Story to its full glory would take 10 to 20 years more, if ever. There's just so much interesting mechanics that could be added still. This not something that can be done quickly.

Oh, please. VS has already been in development for a decade. AAA games are released in roughly half that time. And if your excuse is "well, those studios have 100 people or more," well then HIRE MORE PEOPLE. That's a major part of why people are angry at your decision. You chose to hire people for a side project instead of hire people to work on the game people already paid you to make. And even after all this time vanilla VS is so devoid of features that without the modding community filling in the gaps by making more content than exists within the vanilla game itself then I wouldn't even play the game. This is just like how Project Zomboid has been "in development" and "early access" for 15 years but is still missing basic features like the ability to climb a ladder. At this point in the gaming industry landscape early access is just a grift where devs can continue kicking the can down the road because there's always new players who haven't discovered the game yet who will buy it in nearly the exact same state it's currently in the following year.
 

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> "Spend that Money on Vintage Story instead"

See above, adding more team members to original VS is very difficult. So if not more team members why not make us of these additional funds for a small side project?
    
Individual contributions to the original Vintage Story experience in terms of common systems as mentioned is a lot easier to manage than 3-4 people doing the same thing but full time.

This answer makes absolutely no sense, and not just grammatically. How is it easier to hire people to work on a completely different project that wasn't a part of your vision for the original project than it is to hire people to help work on the original project that you have 10 years of experience and familiarity with? You want to know why you shouldn't spend those additional funds on a small side project? BECAUSE PEOPLE WHO BOUGHT VS DIDN'T PAY FOR A SIDE PROJECT. We want VS, not VS plus something completely unrelated.

 

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And you got Vintage Story in the very exact form as advertised with many more updates to come. I am not sure how this is not a fair exchange.

This statement alone is grounds for me to request a refund. You are so out of touch and are so disingenuous with this statement. You know DAMN WELL that VS was advertised as an unfinished game with additional features to come, without additional payment. You know it was advertised with a specific gameplay style and with specific features to be implemented later. There's a damn road map for Christ's sake. It is not a fair exchange for people to give money to fund a project that promises A, B, C but then the beneficiary instead delivers X, Y, Z; especially when the reason that A, B, and C have not yet been delivered is precisely because funds that could have gone towards fulfilling those promises are instead diverted to work on X, Y, Z. This is an egregious breach of trust.

 

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> "This is feature creep"

It should be the exact opposite, since its 80-90% a separate project. If anything it would be more feature creep if we were to hire more devs on the main team

I suppose it would be more accurate to say that it is a detriment caused by an opportunity cost. You could have spent that money on hiring people to help with the project that people paid you to produce; instead, you have chosen to spend that money to fund a separate project that few of your benefactors want and will only marginally benefit the original project their money paid you to produce. And the reason you gave for not spending the money on more people for the original project is vague and doesn't hold water when you consider that other game studios do exactly what you claim is too difficult. And those other studios produce their games in shorter spans of time than you have already spent on this game.

 

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When I worked for Hytale in 2015 I really felt their passion for what they are working on. 

I had never heard of Hytale before this whole debacle, but holy shit. You mean to tell me that Hytale is another game where developers were not capable of producing the game they promised after a whole-ass decade? So then you hired these people who have a decade of experience with failing to fulfill the obligations they have to the players who funded them because they seemed like a perfect fit for what you have in mind? Which definitely does seem to be exactly what they did because it's exactly what you're doing. Damn. Now I'm even more insulted by your lack of progress on VS because you claim it's not due to money and you claim that it's not due to staffing levels, so then what is it? Are you just not focusing on the things you should be doing to get this game made because you're too busy doing the things that don't contribute to getting this game made?

Edited July 6, 2025 by DudeBroManGuy
font color issue

[Foe Hammer]

1 hour ago, Rhyagelle said:

It really does seem like some people just want something to be angry about, to grab a pitchfork for. It's become extremely clear that a few people in this thread think they have a better understanding of not only game development than the team that is actually invovled, but that they think they know better about the situation--whether financial or progress wise--than the game's creator and dev team. It's quite something...

"We all make mistakes in the heat of passion Jimbo."
I choose to believe it is misplaced/incorrectly channeled zeal. But I also like to look on the good side of things. Maybe they are just trying to find something to be mad about, anger from something else channeled at that which can be seen and targeted. Or maybe they they took the news bad and their love for the game manifested that way. Emotions, especially despair, feelings of betrayal, or hope lost tend to override rationality to a degree.

I am also very new to forums as a whole and can just be dissecting this far more than I should be lol.

[Khornet]

On 7/5/2025 at 1:12 PM, Tyron said:

Going from past experiences, I doubt it. Let me tell you about two previous side projects:

Vintagehosting: This had a very large initial time investment because I wrote a lot of code for it

Isn't this already a contradiction though? How can you be sure that the new side project isn't going to take a "very large initial time investment" that could be, well, entire years...? Especially since you've mentioned that you meticulously have to quality check everything personally?

On 7/5/2025 at 1:12 PM, Tyron said:

Money is not the bottleneck. 

So if money is not the bottleneck, and human resources (developer studio size) are not the bottleneck... what is? Why is Vintage Story churning out updates at such a slow pace? 
I'll admit that seeing the "confirmation" of Vintage Story reaching formal completion in "10 to 20 years" simply does not sit well with me.

I'm not one to tell anyone how to develop their game of course, but... next year VS is going to be 10 years old already from the first release. Does it really need 30 total years of development time...? That's going to be some kind of global record or something if it truly comes to that.

[Maelstrom]

11 minutes ago, Khornet said:

I'm not one to tell anyone how to develop their game of course, but... next year VS is going to be 10 years old already from the first release. Does it really need 30 total years of development time...? That's going to be some kind of global record or something if it truly comes to that.

Consider Hytale...   Started even LONGER in the past than VS, had a much bigger development team, much larger budget aaaaaaannnnnd... kersplash!

You say you're not one to tell someone how to develop their game, and then proceed to do so.  VS is being developed the way the original devs (Tyron and Saraty) envision it, at the pace they feel allows them to produce the game they envision.  What they have done FAR outpaces what Hytale managed and I'd argue has outproduced even TOBG itself not talking about you @Thorfinn.

[Foe Hammer]

27 minutes ago, Khornet said:

Isn't this already a contradiction though? How can you be sure that the new side project isn't going to take a "very large initial time investment" that could be, well, entire years...? Especially since you've mentioned that you meticulously have to quality check everything personally?

I think the big difference is that those two things required a lot of up front work. Like coding, engine tweaking, networking, etc. (I am not certain, just guessing what was entailed.)
But setting up a small 3-4 man dev team on an already built engine and getting them used to the coding environment is not likely to take too long. I would like to know out of curiosity what that timeline is, but if I was forced to guess, I am thinking a few weeks, maybe a month or two of extra attention as they get used it it, and that is likely an overestimation.

31 minutes ago, Khornet said:

So if money is not the bottleneck, and human resources (developer studio size) are not the bottleneck... what is? Why is Vintage Story churning out updates at such a slow pace? 
I'll admit that seeing the "confirmation" of Vintage Story reaching formal completion in "10 to 20 years" simply does not sit well with me.

I actually sympathize with this to a minor degree. I am not worried about it taking a long time, though I admit I would love to have more content sooner. That all said, I imagine it will be done sooner than that timeline. Maybe he is giving that estimate as the one that CAN be guaranteed, rather than a sooner promise that might get pushed off over and over.

[qbit]

On 7/5/2025 at 6:12 AM, Tyron said:

I cannot emphasize this enough - there is absolutely no intention to ever mix these two game genres. Vintage Story will remain the gritty uncompromising wilderness survival you know today - with more survival mechanics to be added in the future. Saraty would kill me if that were to ever change

I'm happy to hear this.  Tyron's follow up and additional comments in the thread have eased my original concerns.  It sounds like Tyron's wife Saraty will be holding him to this commitment, and that's probably the best oversight we can ask for.

I've updated my original comment to reflect this sentiment.

[dakko]

13 minutes ago, Foe Hammer said:

Maybe he is giving that estimate as the one that CAN be guaranteed, rather than a sooner promise that might get pushed off over and over.

Or perhaps it is in the same context as ConcernedApe continuing to make additions to Stardew Valley, at least that is how I took his comment.

[Maelstrom]

14 minutes ago, Foe Hammer said:

I would like to know out of curiosity what that timeline is, but if I was forced to guess, I am thinking a few weeks, maybe a month or two of extra attention as they get used it it, and that is likely an overestimation.

If it takes more than a week then the coders wouldn't be worth their salt.  It isn't too hard to get up to speed, mostly commenting conventions and error checking protocols. 

[Thorfinn]

3 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

If it takes more than a week then the coders wouldn't be worth their salt.  It isn't too hard to get up to speed, mostly commenting conventions and error checking protocols. 

Dunno. I always expected to lose money on engineers for years. But this is something of a special case. From what I saw, they came from an environment that had many of the same concepts, though probably called them by different names.

The biggest delay will be artwork. Frankly, the API is phenomenal, and there are "official" examples of how to script for the API, plus an entire ModDB of examples of how to script corner cases. Tyron put together a model builder to make it easy to add entities. Once they get a reasonable number of blocks to work with, we will be able to run around in Adventure. And it will feel completely different.

[Foe Hammer]

40 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

If it takes more than a week then the coders wouldn't be worth their salt.  It isn't too hard to get up to speed, mostly commenting conventions and error checking protocols. 

I am not very familiar with the coding world, only recently really starting to dip my toes into it, so I guesstimated the times with more leeway in case the game engine for VS is super different than the one they are used to and there was a learning curve.

[Maelstrom]

My brother is a career software engineer.  IIRC, he was usually up and running within a week or two; depending on how complex the coding situation was for that company.  That includes working for government military contractors.

[Thorfinn]

1 minute ago, Maelstrom said:

That includes working for government military contractors.

I've done work for military contractors. Getting up to speed is not a big deal. Without getting political, you have to be able to accommodate the skill level of anyone who might be in the employ of the contractor. Same with international corporations. Tell me it includes working with small, independent businesses and you have my attention.

[Maelstrom]

I think he may have worked a small company early in his career.  But that was 30 years ago.  Between then and now he worked at a couple a large companies, one of which is HP.

[Thorfinn]

I worked with some HP personnel at a skunkworks out of Vandenburg. '89 or so? I'll figure out exactly when if it's possible.

Edited July 7, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Michaloid]

2 hours ago, Foe Hammer said:

"We all make mistakes in the heat of passion Jimbo."
I choose to believe it is misplaced/incorrectly channeled zeal. But I also like to look on the good side of things. Maybe they are just trying to find something to be mad about, anger from something else channeled at that which can be seen and targeted. Or maybe they they took the news bad and their love for the game manifested that way. Emotions, especially despair, feelings of betrayal, or hope lost tend to override rationality to a degree.

I am also very new to forums as a whole and can just be dissecting this far more than I should be lol.

Personally i think it's because people have heard this type of shpeel many times before an got burned because of it. So hearing it from the game they supposedly love, it's a hard pill to swallow and hard to trust. Though i won't deny some seem to be hating just to hate and nothing more. But i think the main driving force is that they don't want this game to end in disappointment.

[Toksyuryel]

5 hours ago, Oto Nokyo said:

Ah nice, so it's mismanagement of the team and their time spent on their own miscellaneous side quests instead of given tasks or milestones to accomplish that work towards the now pipe dream that is content listed on the roadmap. Glad he, in pic related, got ingot molds to be put onto shelves though because that was so important over a handful of other items the community wants. Going through the suggestion thread I can only find a few relating to pie and cheese wheels being allowed on shelves but that's really a no brainer. The ingot molds on the otherhand...

What a strange thing to be upset by. Literally this morning I was annoyed that I could not place pies on shelves so I am personally very excited about this change.

[Thorfinn]

1 hour ago, Michaloid said:

Personally i think it's because people have heard this type of shpeel many times before an got burned because of it. So hearing it from the game they supposedly love, it's a hard pill to swallow and hard to trust. Though i won't deny some seem to be hating just to hate and nothing more. But i think the main driving force is that they don't want this game to end in disappointment.

Maybe, but there is a huge amount of fear out of ignorance. Not meant as an insult. Just that almost no one understands the extent of the API. Hell, I don't. Just today, I heard that there might be an easier way to add entries to the language files.

To several approximations, NO ONE goes to this extent to make the game customizable.

I think if people had any clue how much control they have over their game experience, they would be absolutely floored.

Edited July 7, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Maelstrom]

7 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Huh. I figured it was doing much better than that.

That info is from my muddled memory and also at least 12 months out of date.  Probably more like 18 by now.  The actual sales were likely from this website only and likely didn't include sales form Humble Bundle or Itchio.  Sales could have easily been double to triple the estimate I mentioned.

[321BoltsOfLightning]

29 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Maybe, but there is a huge amount of fear out of ignorance. Not meant as an insult. Just that almost no one understands the extent of the API. Hell, I don't. Just today, I heard that there might be an easier way to add entries to the language files.

To several approximations, NO ONE goes to this extent to make the game customizable.

I think if people had any clue how much control they have over their game experience, they would be absolutely floored.

I think that's a good chunk of it, yeah. Like for me, one of the first things I saw in Vintage Story that amazed me was that the base-game is built off of 3 mods in the mod loader... That you can even toggle off!!! I recognized right away that the intent was likely so that someone could implement some crazy overhaul like "adventure mode" using the same base engine but completely different everything else, if someone were crazy enough and committed enough to try.

 

That idea excited me, now it seems they're going to experiment with doing it themselves. When they say "mod of Vintage Story", they can really mean anything from a tiny patch to almost an entire game. I don't think everyone understood that with this announcement, which probably contributed to some of the fear. Combined with being burned from past experiences like others have said, I can see why people would be wary. But Tyron seems to manage things well, and I've gotten well over my money's worth from the game already.

I am confused as to why some people feel the updates are "slow" though. We have major updates pretty frequently compared to many other games... What are they comparing it to?? 

[Thorfinn]

20 minutes ago, 321BoltsOfLightning said:

Like for me, one of the first things I saw in Vintage Story that amazed me was that the base-game is built off of 3 mods in the mod loader... That you can even toggle off!!! I recognized right away that the intent

Yeah. I saw that back in, I don't know, 1.14, and thought, "OMG!"

I'm just waiting to hear Tyron talk about how he intends to deal with the engine. He's plainly OK with spinning off ex-Hytalers who create a new game. What about others who develop games using his engine? What terms?

I mean, I'm an old guy. I can just die. Or maybe I can have a last fling, get a bunch of people together to make a game. I've not been as excited as I've been since the Hytale announcement in a long, friggin' time.

Edited July 7, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

On 7/5/2025 at 6:12 AM, Tyron said:

(For context, it was Saraty that defined the art style of Vintage Story)

She did an excellent job!  Somehow it manages to be super cozy and yet scare the pants off me at the appropriate times. I also don't recall seeing anything else quite like it, which really helps Vintage Story stand out from its competitors.

On 7/5/2025 at 6:12 AM, Tyron said:

I started development of Vintage Story because that is the kind of game I wanted to play. It's the kind of game Saraty (my wife) absolutely loves to play. We deeply believe that this game needs to exist. We will continue on this mission unabated.

On 7/5/2025 at 6:12 AM, Tyron said:

Too many companies become risk averse and stagnate, or try to deliver the perfect product and fail. This right here is our opportunity to do something right!

These right here are two big reasons I'm not worried about Vintage Story's development. The devs aren't just there for a paycheck or having to answer to corporate; it's a project they put their hearts and souls into, because it's something they too want to play. And the effort really shows each update! I can't recall seeing anything low-quality, even with all the growing pains of the last update(1.20).

[Tyron]

8 hours ago, Foe Hammer said:

I do have a question regarding this @Tyron. What are you anticipating the start up for this group to look like? Think it will be a few weeks for them to get used to the engine and environment getting their legs under them? Or are you anticipating them to almost hit the ground running?

I don't know yet. We'll figure it out what the most optimal path is as we go.

6 hours ago, DudeBroManGuy said:

and make a hierarchical management structure so that your vision for the game remains within scope and so that features get implemented within a reasonable timeframe. There's a damn good reason that large projects are undertaken with a strict hierarchy of management and responsibility. It's taken too long already. How many people who purchased the game at the beginning of its development have died already without having gotten to play the full version that was promised by you and funded by their payment?

There's a reason why large team structures are slow and cannot innovate. I have not promised anything. The roadmap literally states "no promises"
That being said, we will keep our options open regarding main team growth. There should be ways to add very specific roles to the team that add only little overhead.

I disagree with with most you argued for here, but you are correct that there is still room for growth on the main team.

6 hours ago, DudeBroManGuy said:

VS has already been in development for a decade. AAA games are released in roughly half that time. And if your excuse is "well, those studios have 100 people or more," well then HIRE MORE PEOPLE. That's a major part of why people are angry at your decision. You chose to hire people for a side project instead of hire people to work on the game people already paid you to make. And even after all this time vanilla VS is so devoid of features that without the modding community filling in the gaps by making more content than exists within the vanilla game itself then I wouldn't even play the game

What? Where did I write that excuse? 
You have not have paid me to make the game. You have paid to get the game in its current state, exactly as the product page on our shop states. We have defined very clearly what your 20 eur purchase contains.
How someone can claim VS is devoid of features is beyond me. 
There is a reason why there is so many mods, we spend a lot of time to support modding.

 

6 hours ago, DudeBroManGuy said:

This statement alone is grounds for me to request a refund. You are so out of touch and are so disingenuous with this statement. You know DAMN WELL that VS was advertised as an unfinished game with additional features to come, without additional payment. You know it was advertised with a specific gameplay style and with specific features to be implemented later. There's a damn road map for Christ's sake. It is not a fair exchange for people to give money to fund a project that promises A, B, C but then the beneficiary instead delivers X, Y, Z; especially when the reason that A, B, and C have not yet been delivered is precisely because funds that could have gone towards fulfilling those promises are instead diverted to work on X, Y, Z. This is an egregious breach of trust.

If you bought the game solely on the idea of what the game might become some day, yes you should request a refund. As per refund policy - if you don't like our game then we don't want your money. Please don't buy things based on future "promises", that is always a recipe for disappointment. We will keep working on VS in the meantime. Buy it again once it fulfills your needs. 
 

6 hours ago, DudeBroManGuy said:

And those other studios produce their games in shorter spans of time than you have already spent on this game.

Please do list Studios that build open-world survival experiences with multiple specialized crafting mechanics in a fully destructible voxel game environment with procedural world generation that supports multiplayer, supports Win/Mac/Linux, is built from the ground up with modding in mind, has a base level of visual fidelity and hosts their own gameservers and work at a faster pace than us. VS is a complex game with many interconnected parts.

Last time I checked Minecraft has 20x the employees and releases less main game content than we do. 
 

6 hours ago, DudeBroManGuy said:

I had never heard of Hytale before this whole debacle, but holy shit. You mean to tell me that Hytale is another game where developers were not capable of producing the game they promised after a whole-ass decade?

The problem was mismanagement and too fast growth there, not the devs building content
 

6 hours ago, Khornet said:

Isn't this already a contradiction though? How can you be sure that the new side project isn't going to take a "very large initial time investment" that could be, well, entire years...?

No I literally wrote that was because I wrote a lot of code there. I won't be writing code on that new project.

 

6 hours ago, Khornet said:

So if money is not the bottleneck, and human resources (developer studio size) are not the bottleneck... what is? Why is Vintage Story churning out updates at such a slow pace? 
I'll admit that seeing the "confirmation" of Vintage Story reaching formal completion in "10 to 20 years" simply does not sit well with me.

I'm not one to tell anyone how to develop their game of course, but... next year VS is going to be 10 years old already from the first release. Does it really need 30 total years of development time...? That's going to be some kind of global record or something if it truly comes to that.

Literally what I wrote in my response about "Finish Vintage Story First". 
How is VS development slow pace? Every major update contains 500 to 1000 individual changes. To what game are you comparing us against?
Minecraft is in development for over 15 years already - how is this any different?

 

[Grym7er]

@Tyron I love this game, even though I only got it recently, and I love the update frequency, quality, and volume (since I started playing, which was only around 1.20.3 or so). I love how the game is built for modding and readable open-source, and I am flirting with the idea of getting into making mods myself. I love the dedication to the vision for what you want VS to be, and the refusal to compromise on it, and I really appreciate the transparency with how Anego wants to do things. I also really like the update notes, for some reason. I get so excited whenever an update releases, but I don't even plan on playing 1.21 until the stable build is released (except maybe to check out the ocean waves). Vintage Story scratches an itch that Minecraft has failed to properly scratch for quite a long time now, and given how the development of VS seems to have been handled thus far, I have completed belief in the team's ability to make it pan out for the best. 

Some of the naysayers have valid concerns, most of the naysayers don't - even if Anego Studios shuts down tomorrow and VS development gets cancelled, I'd still consider my 20 Euros money well spent, and then I'd have the motivation to add the missing features myself.

Keep being transparent, keep developing Vintage Story the way you envision. VS is already the game I always wanted to make myself, and so I'm happy to wait and eager to see how the Adventure Mode can complement and enhance what we have already.