Tried that many years ago and it nearly killed the game. The economics of one time purchase simply don't work for a game as niche as this.
SkyCorp
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When you call something someone worked on 'gore', you should probably expect a rude response. Though, other than maybe where I called you a hater -- which seems to be factually accurate given your stated position -- there is really nothing rude in my reply. Certainly less offensive than 'gore' or trying to cancel me. I took the time to explain my nuanced position, even though I'm already bored of AI vs Anti-AI internet arguments, and in response you want to destroy me because I'm not doing exactly what you demand. Not cool.
None of the usual anti-AI arguments even work for this. I rendered the blog image at home, so you can't really make an argument about power usage or datacenters. I'm still hiring just as many (actually more than last year at this rate) human-made commissions, so no one is out of work due to this -- even including a full sequence comm for this very update. Given how many passes of compositing and manual paintovers I still had to do for this AI, it's not even like it was a zero skill or time saving thing for me so it's not even a shortcut. Your argument boils down to 'ai bad.'
Tools and workflows always change. Just like Disney going from hand drawn animated movies to computer rendered movies. Or developers going from custom engines to Unity/Unreal. This does not remove the human from the workflow. I think ai haters imagine AI workflow as just one-shotting prompts and slopping it out and calling it a day. And that's just not the reality for how it works when you have a specific character/setting/pose in mind. But the anti-AI crowd don't invest time into learning AI because they hate it, so they don't ever have these preconceptions challenged.
I endeavor to keep up with current trends and keeping my own knowledge fresh and up to date. I want to use the tools to deliver better and more content. I am not replacing everything in my workflow with 'slop', but yeah, I'm going to take a nuanced and cautious approach of sometimes adopting tools into my workflow when they are useful and good.
The craziest thing to me is my position is not even a hot take. I have a middle ground take on AI. It's like room temperature take at worst. I'm not compromising quality, I'm not cutting back on investment into the project. I'm taking steps to learn these tools and workflows to deliver better quality and maybe hopefully more frequently. But the internet leaves no room for nuance, I suppose.
Take that for what you will -- I have zero expectation it will change your mind, but at least I took the time to explain my position. You can disagree with it and that's fine, but I'm giving you real answers even if they aren't the ones you want to hear.
Yes, the blog image is AI generated with some manual paintover and compositing. It still took the better part of a day if that matters to you. In addition, we're not cutting back on the fully human-made art posts, either, including this recent sequence for the toy tf.
Human art isn't always ready in time for posts and I'm not blaming anyone, but sometimes it just happens that way. And that means my choice is to launch with 1) no art, or 2) delay the build or 3) spend a day making an AI art. And I'm just gonna choose AI in that situation. You can be a hater, but it doesn't change the reality that most people would rather see the post with AI art than no art.
Hello! You might be interested in the PWA or APK builds: https://skycorp.global/install/ As a heads up, they are not local copies but they do run as app icons so they more or less feel like a normal app.
No, it will stay as a sub; I plan to just keep adding content/features indefinitely, anyway. You are right that the main story is almost done, but there's more side content and features I have ideas for.
Also, it's totally fine to only sub for a month or two -- I designed it to be easy for people to sub in and sub out conveniently. I know a lot of people will only want to play for one month out of the year to check on the new stuff and then go play other games and not check back in for another year and let the new content build up in the meantime. I do this myself sometimes, too, so I understand. I still appreciate the support regardless :)
I see there's a problem with DNS. Your DNS server is telling your browser that skycorp is operating on your local network, which it is not.
If you have some kind of unusual antivirus or ad blocking software, that could be the reason. (Normal program like Windows Defender or uBlock, etc is fine, but some unusual antivirus or ad block software may hijack DNS and break things) If not, it may just be a faulty DNS server.
Recommend that if you have an unusual antivirus software / adblocker, try disabling and reboot (to clear caches) and then try again.
If not or that does not fix it, you should use a different DNS server: example steps for setting to google or opendns DNS server on windows.
Got it; I suspect there is a problem with your internet connection, firewall, or DNS resolution. I would like for you to try a couple ping tests to see if that would narrow down the problem.
Please open a command prompt (I think on windows you can do this by pressing Windows Key + R, then type "CMD" in the box)
In the command prompt, type "ping skycorp.global" If it works, it will say something like "reply from 66.42.66.108: bytes=32 time=Xms TTL=127". If it doesn't work, please let me know what it says.
Also, please try just the same way doing a "ping 66.42.66.108" and see if that works or not.
Finally, let's test "ping kiki.bunny.net" and "ping 91.200.176.1"
Thank you for letting me know; we are not having any downtime currently so can you please tell me more about the problem?
1) It sounds like you are using google chrome -- what device are you trying on, also?
2) Do you mean it just times out when you are trying to access it, or do you get a specific error?
3) Do certain pages work, but not others? Like maybe home is broken but blog or builds works?
It doesn't work though if I plan to continue developing the game over a period of years. I agree, everyone would just buy permanent, and then I'd be out of development funding in six months. I tried one time purchase when the game launched, and it was a disaster. Game almost died back then. I'm not making the same mistake again.
I've been updating the game for over ten years at this point, adding new content, features, etc. It just isn't viable to release it as one time purchase if I want to keep working on it over very long time periods.
Steam is a cool platform, and I could even release it as subscription on Steam -- but it'd have to cost more there due to the heavy 30% fee valve charges. I don't think people would realize it was cheaper direct from dev than via steam. Also, I'd have to put up with constant review bombing of people having unrealistic expectations -- for steam gamers value is very important, and so most people there have a conception that indie games should cost basically nothing / wait for massive sales. But that's not sustainable which is why you see so many abandoned early access projects on Steam. The majority of steam devs make extremely little, nowhere near enough to live off for what they sell their games for. Mass market games can do very well, but super niche stuff like this isn't going to perform well there. My options for Steam is that I could price the game unsustainably cheap and be out of business in six months, or price it at sustainable prices and not sell anything there and it be a waste of time with a 0% review score. So I like steam, but I view it as no way to succeed there.
I am certainly willing to add steam-inspired features such as achievements, etc though!


