Anglo-Australian cricket brawl spills over into coding clash The British publisher behind the game Ashes Cricket 2013 has pulled the product from sale and given up on further development, blaming the Australian developer it contracted to do the job for a buggy and unplayable product. Milton Keynes-headquartered 505 Games farmed out the job of developing the game to Melbourne-based …
Trickstar have tried to blame the game engine, but these developers didn't seem to have any problems using Unity. Seems the real reason for their failure is that those who were left after several walked out were out of their depth.
Yeah, to me (from the video) it looked like the *game engine* was working well enough, but the game tuning and player behavior was incomplete. (I'd guess the falling over might have been due to excessively slick grass?) If it's as poopypants says, that some developers walked out, that plus not enough time for the remaining developers to "get up to speed" could really explain all these problems. edit: That said, I have not used Unity, so I can't say how easy or hard to use it actually is. From what I've heard, some game engines over the years were pretty hard to use (even if the results ended up being pretty nice.)
Maybe go back to the game engine we used to use for classroom cricket (an HB pencil with parts of the paint shaved off and appropriate numbers, etc written in to provide random results). Graphics were non-existent, results were horribly skewed, but you could get through a whole test match innings in a boring geography class.
</grumpy old git>
Elaborate, please - I'd welcome a use for the 2H* pencils I've accumulated. Beyond scoring lines in paper. Thinking on it I suspect you'd write 1-6 on each of the sides and roll to find the runs scored? How do you get out? Hmm... maybe 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, OUT! - yes, that would do it; no one runs five. Well, unless you bring Tuffers out of retirement.
Or I suppose you might toss the pencil and if it rolls of the desk, that's out. Would make sense.
* - I presume a 2H would work equally well?
So 505 Games declares that the developer messed up, but why did they release the game at all? They retracted the game so quickly that they obviously knew it wasn't up to much. 505 Games are as much to blame trying to sell a game they *knew* was not worthy of release. Were they really just hoping the game wouldn't get that bad a reception that they could get away with some sales?
I notice on Metacritic that there are no critic reviews - usually a sign that they hadn't given pre-release copies to the media as the publisher knows its terrible and doesn't want bad reviews before it is released.
Regardless of how bad the developers are, it should be the job of the publisher of deciding whether it is ready for release or not, they have failed in their job.
Played codemasters Brian Lara cricket (I think also called Graham Gooch cricket) for years on megadrive, playstation and xbox. I was looking forward to this game coming out but it's been clear for a while it wasn't going to happen. Everyone though it would be released in time for the England 2013 Ashes, then it was put back to the Australian series and now it's dead.
There is one more waiting in the wings, Don Bradman cricket lets hope that resolves to a playable cricket game, otherwise I'm going to be breaking out the megadrive emulator.
"The return bout commenced last week with Australia unexpectedly lathering England to take a one-nil lead".
Well perhaps some strange things happen in the dressing room these days, but I find it tricky to believe that the Australian team, covered the England team in soapy suds at any point during the test match. Perhaps Mitchell Johnson approaching Jonathan Trott with a bucket, sponge and some fairy liquid is the root cause of his stress related illness. Understandable.
Unity3D is definitely up to the job, and it's a shame the programmers were forced to blame the shambles of a game on the tool they were using. If key developers really did walk out during production, surely it would be better to tell the truth, as I for one have plenty of sympathy for anyone left in that position.
That said it gets my vote in terms of the almost slapstick nature of the AI. I really did lol!
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