Urrgh, I always have to put on my disappointed face when devs do this "Kicking it Forward" thing, not that I don't appreciate the sentiment, but in an indie project when every dollar counts, you really cannot afford to be giving anything away.

They are not. Kicking it Forward gives money from the sales, not from KS. So T:ToN uses the full 4.5 million to make the game, and gives 5% of the sales it will have (once it's released) to Kick it Forward.

I see, well that serves me right for not reading up.

EDIT: Also, when is that Space Hulk game they're making coming out, I assume they are going to finish that before starting on JA?

Yes. There are doing more or less what Fargo is doing with Wasteland 2 and Torment. Once the artists are done with Space Hulk, they'll start work on JA:F, while the coders continue on Space Hulk. Once Space Hulk is done with the coding, programming, animations etc, the programmers will already have a story set up to get working on, instead of waiting for the artists to get to work.

As for release date, best they give is 2013. I guess in 6 months or so.

whoa, someone took the highest tier. huge jump on kicktraq

For me it's just simply that they haven't really convinced me it's worth investing; the tone of the kickstarter is off. I absolutely don't get the feeling that they have a clear plan / idea of what their ACTUAL vision is. They come across as making things up in a very vague manner - yes they seem to say the right things, but the actual detail is lacking. I don't want to just know what they plan to do, but how. I want to see that they actually understand what made JA2 work - in detail - I really don't think they do, beyond 'it's a cool game that we love.' That's not enough to actually produce something high quality.

I am not convinced that fog of war, for instance, adds anything - or even improves anything - to the game. There's no clear statement as to WHY they want to implement that. JA2 allowed for tactical gameplay because you could plan ahead where to go next on the map, saw potential paths through it ahead. I'd wager, even in the 1980s, that mercenarys / military definitely would have a map of the area they operate in, ahead of time. Same thing applies to the other two aspects they want to change - stealth and better cover. I don't really feel stealth in JA2 was bad. Neither cover, though the 3D engine was limited. Yet - there's no details - and I mean proper detail - on what exactly they aim for here. WHY is that something they've identified as an aspect of the game that needs changing and what precisely do they aim for?

One of the key things that is so great about JA2 is that SirTech managed to hit that sweet spot between complexity and streamlined features that is really rare. It's complex enough to make it a great game. It's streamlined enough to not be bothered with useless gimmicks and unnecessary detail. Very, very, very few games manage that; very few designers out there deliver something as elegant.

That said: I am happy for them to evolve and change the gameplay; I don't want an exact replica - but if they bother to get the license I'd want the output to at least very close to be on par in quality to what was before. As long as their kickstarter doesn't convince me that they are on that course - than no, that's not enough.

Take a look over at the Bear's Pit for more discussion on those things. As for Fog of War, the idea was that you have a rough idea of what the sector you entered has, but not really sure what is where. You may be able to get better intel, thus reducing FoW effect before entering the sector, or it might be (another) case of their english not being up to par, and by FoW they meant Line of Sight. Let me remind that there are actually 2 fog of war layers, the first being the one used in JA2, meaning you can't see in areas your mercs can't see, and the second being the one used in RTS games, which hides the terrain itself until you first visit it.

As for stealth and cover, I think 1.13 did modify those a bit, even if just noise modifiers and being able to use cover to prop your bipod.

Do ask if you wish for a link to the threads over at the Bear's Pit.

If you Mnemon are a Jagged Alliance fan, you really should consider to invest even the $25. At the moment, there is a lack of supporters or a lack of fans that seem to want a new turn-based Jagged Alliance game. Yes, it's true that everything is not yet carved in stone. That's fine. They're taking feedback and interacting with fans. If you have questions / doubts, join a Reddit session (when/if there is another one) and ask your questions. They will answer for sure (at least their reply% was pretty good with the first one). I think it would be really shame to waste this chance as the principals of Full Control has are right:

"If it ain’t broken - don’t fix it"
"We would honestly rather fail a Kickstarter than try to lure money out of people on false promises or wrong hopes."
"... this proposed project is based on re-using the old JA2 mechanics and wrapping it into a new story."

About the term fog of war. It can be understood in two ways as JMich explained (I was also a little confused with this as well). Here is a reply from the Reddit session:

Q: 2) You wrote: "when entering an undiscovered sector most of it will be black, and is only revealed as you explore it.". This sounds Warcraft to me. Is your plan that all new sectors' maps are black? Should't mercs usually know the outside layout of the area?
A: 2) Fog of War - it totally depends on where you enter and what intel you have. Did you maybe talk to the locals to gain info on sector X? Did you find a map? Did you upgrade your base with some tech that allows for air recon?
But its not something we are 100% fanatic about, but its something we want to try to experiment with to give the game an exploration aspect. Knowing that there is a chest on a small island in a swamp automatically makes you go there. Why not discover each sector first?
But for some sectors it makes no sense to have FoW - definitely!

Let's hope for the best. I would love to see a new PROPER Jagged Alliance title. The old ones are just brilliant.

This whole thread is pretty informative

This is a minor enough difference to be pedantic, but according to Fargo it's 5% of the profits, not the sales, which is a much lighter burden to shoulder. But as you say, it's not coming out of the dev budget either way.

Already backed and looking forward to it.

Yes, I wanted to make that comment. 5% of the profits. This means that if they go $100K over budget they can use profits to return that before even considering that 5%. It means that if a digital store takes 30% of the sale price, they don't need to give 5% of that. If they spend advertising money, they can get that back before giving away that 5%.

Competition Winners and More

New update on kickstarter!

Dear Backers,

We have 2 pieces of great news for you today. So lets get right to it!!

Chris Camfield is joining the Flashback Team

We are super happy to be able to welcome Chris Camfield to the Jagged Alliance: Flashback team.

Chris has worked on the implementation and design of several Jagged Alliance titles and ended up as lead designer on Jagged Alliance 3 that sadly was never released.

He will be joining the team as an advisor while keeping his day job at XMG Studios. Chris’ role will be to help us on essential pieces of implementation knowledge.

WHY were things implemented in a certain way in JA2. Not only HOW. The how could be deducted by most programmers by looking at the open sources.

Understanding the core mechanisms and how they were designed to fit together is essential knowledge to hitting the right balance once we add factions, better AI and other potential improvements/changes to the mechanics.

Establishment of Modding Advisory Team

In addition we are announcing having established a modding advisory and co-design team.

Currently this team includes R@S, creator of the Blue Sun Mod for 7.62 - High Calibre and DepressivesBrot from the 1.13-Crew.

We are also in contact with additional high profile modders to expand the advisory team even more.

Their role will be to work with us to identify essential modding hooks, directory structure definitions, design the templates for modding files and some proof of concept tests.

Having these great modders on board gives us the ability to not fumble the ball on mod support, and will make it easier for everyone to later potentially port their existing mods.

Details on Modding Support

Modding is a wonderful thing and has kept Jagged Alliance 2 alive for many many years. It is also something that takes time to implement right.

If we do not hit some of the higher stretch goals, then we can still support basic modding and hope for adding more options down the road.

Together with the modding advisory team we will prioritize the modding capabilities, that we from initial feedback have grouped into 3 areas.

1) Tweaking of configurations
For example being able to go into xml files to turn on/off line of sight via a boolean, or change the base movement cost per terrain.

2) Adding additional content
Having the ability to add a new mercenary, a new weapon or that “used condom” that you’ve always thought missing as a trash item.

3) Adding additional features
Coding new functionality like wind direction having influence on accuracy while shooting or alternatively altering existing calculations for damage models.

Exactly what is going to be moddable is something that is decided upon during detailed design and ongoing through development with the help of the modding-community.

Our initial thoughts are that we are able to support the first two options here with the minimum budget of our Kickstarter-target. This doesn’t mean the third option is skipped right away. If there’s some spare time in the end, we’ll take care of it as well or will try to introduce this option after the release of the game. In addition to that we are also in talks with other modders who wrote awesome tools for other games and as they will have access to the Alpha version of the game, they will be able to start writing their tools if they feel there’s need to do so.

We have to see how far we can push this with Kickstarter and our own money. Right now, we have to be a bit selective as we don’t know where we will end up yet. This also means that functionalities that have not been planned will drain resources from other parts of the game, and this is not our intention, as we want to deliver a game worth the name Jagged Alliance.

We hope you understand this point, because most of us have been part of a modding community at one point or another, it's important to us! And we will give our best to support it wherever we can and with whatever we can.

We are really excited for the new forces joining the team!

The Full Control JAF Team