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#### Is TS having a funding problem?

I read that TS is letting staff go. I wonder if that means they are having a funding problem. Why else would they let staff go?

Posted 10 months ago by Peachesan | Permalink

### Replies

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- +1 ghost! Onwards and upwards!
  Posted 10 months ago by GreyGoose | Permalink
- Everytime someone types "It's just a game", a jelly donut dies a long lingering death at my hands.... <Buwahahahaha>
  Yes "bored no more", something like that. :)
  Posted 10 months ago by Tibbi | Permalink
- @Stoot ~ Thank you for taking the time to finally actually tell us what's going on and what you're doing behind the scenes.
  Honestly I went from anxious-paying-player-angry-about-lack-of-communication, to squishy-nerd-girl-all-googly-eyed-over-nerdy-computer-post. >_>;
  eh-hem. So.. you know. You had an effect. >_< lol
  Seriously though I really can't stress enough how important it is for us to hear even the small things.. like on a twitter feed or the change log "Nothing new to report, really, everything's fine" or "Still working on it, we promise" or even "Send more coffee! the monkeys are tired." :>
  Now, yes another question (you're probably thinking OH MY FRAKKING GAWD WHY DOES THIS PERSON ASK SO MANY QUESTIONS?? WHYYY - but I swear this one is easy) -- what can we as a user base do to help and support you all during your work? I don't know about others but I get this feeling in the community like we're waiting for something to do. So.. tell us.. what can we do to help you with what you're doing? Is there anything? I mean could we maybe give you feedback on some of your proposed art or ideas? Find the address to your offices and send you coffee and cookies? Flowers? Rhubarb pie??
  <3
  :: hands out donuts and .. apparently.. onion rings .. ::
  :: thinks :: .. onions.. rings.. donuts.. are rings... sonic the hedghog gathers rings.. sonic is really hungry..? :: thinks I didn't get enough sleep last night :
  Posted 10 months ago by ♪♥~ Auren ~♥♪ | Permalink
- Thank you Stoot.
  I think this game means more to you than it does to any of us, however much we love it.
  Really good of you to take up your valuable time to keep us up to date.
  It will be amazing, as always!
  (No reset - please! I can wait) lol ;-)
  Posted 10 months ago by Cassandria | Permalink
- well, its good to see things happening, but better to know extensive work is being done.
  it happens when it happens, if folks want to be impatient they can have an arrow in the knee.
  i'm hungry.
  Posted 10 months ago by ☣ elf ☣ | Permalink
- I know it took time to post, but I (along with others) appreciate your taking the time and in your usual style not giving away the secrets (I sincerely mean that as a complement). Looking forward to it and speaking for myself and a merry band of suspects, are delighted and applaud your work ethic (do you guys ever take vacation without thinking about the game). Merrily singing the song ....my bags are packed, I'm ready to go....(patiently). and thank you TS for all that you do. (We're still here even if we are not playing hours upon hours, that will be soon that we'll start again)
  Posted 10 months ago by AlmostSilver | Permalink
- Wow, just came back from a long trip and read through the comments after Stoot's post: did everyone completely gloss over the juicy tid-bits on what we have in store for us? The lack of comments on specific details makes me think Stoot's very generous and well-written (though slightly technical) post went over some heads... Here are some things that caught my eye:
  "easily cover the whole floor with the same wallpaper or change it segment by segment" : I had no idea it would be that customizable. AWESOME!
  "the imagination menu is not part of this initial release so you won't be able to use that to get to your home or back to the world and we need to have some other temporary way" : Not quite what I had expected. I understand that employing imagination is a big change that will be difficult to implement, but for some reason I thought it would happen in conjunction with getting new houses. It's OK if it doesn't, but that does mean I don't have to work so hard to reach level 60 quite yet...
  And the rest of it describes, to me, a couple of main points Stoot may be trying to make (and re-worded, hopefully accurately, by me):
  1) The next big update will be only partial, and will not represent what the end product will be--we are in BETA, which means you must all think of yourselves as testers, not only players now: you are helping to debug the new content, which will change with time. Your input will be considered in helping to grow and expand Glitch in the best direction possible. So... as a beta tester from the first time around, I hope that all the players that joined after that period can transition into that mindset: everything will not be perfect at first, but we have a very special opportunity to be a part of the creation of something that could be truly amazing.
  2) Apparently my initial assumption that Glitch is Stoot's baby is true: if it's really all that he thinks about while he's lying awake at night, then it is vitally important to him, and he will do his best to make sure that it turns out to be the best that it can be. I think the game, and all of us players, mean a great deal to him (based on his words) and I am proud to be a part of this whole experience. I have been with Glitch for almost a year now, and I plan to stick around for as long as I can. I am not in the least bit bored even now, although I am always anxious to receive shiny new updates. I can wait semi-patiently, because I know that there is a big team of very dedicated people working to make Glitch an even better experience for me in the future. Thank you Tiny Speck! (No, I'm not sucking up, as some here would apparently claim--I would totally voice my opinion if I wasn't happy, as a good tester would, and should.)
  Posted 10 months ago by Shepherdmoon | Permalink
- @Shepherdmoon:
  +1 :-)
  Posted 10 months ago by Stormy Weather | Permalink
- +1 Shepherd
  Posted 10 months ago by Rook | Permalink
- +1 Shepherdmoon. Well said.
  Posted 10 months ago by GreyGoose | Permalink
- @stoot
  After reading this i wondered what questionable choices i made in gaming, like even considering games from sweden (they all suck) when you and the entire TS team has a game that is never going to get old, even if i get to 60 and complete all the tasks, you will continue to raise the bar, keep the game interesting, and for that i give you a great big +100
  Posted 10 months ago by Seriandeur | Permalink
- @Stoot
  Thanks for the big long explanation, I appreciate it a lot
  Must admit I'm one of those who have pretty much set Glitch to one side for now as I've learnt most of the skills and was having trouble staying engaged with the world. Hanging out for the updates to be released and would far prefer to wait a little longer for the bugs to be ironed out than have my game experience blotted by any technical problems in-game...
  That said, I wouldn't mind another big reset when the changes are introduced if it meant that it was easier for the new techo aspects to be implemented then I'm all for it, just so long as I didn't lose my senor funpickle that is...
  Posted 10 months ago by Arietty | Permalink
- +1 to Shepherdmoon
  I didn't mean that it's not important to us (or we wouldn't be here!), but that sometimes we all need to take a step back and breathe before we rant and rave in the forums, and give TS a break :)
  Posted 10 months ago by Lady Cailia | Permalink
- Chrisray408- But surely Northern Lights in Sweden can be considered a classic!
  (Sure, it's been *mumble* years since I actively played it....)
  Posted 10 months ago by kevbob | Permalink
- Yeah to what Shepherd said too.. I love that our houses will be *that* customisable.. I just hope that for things like decoration, we won't have to pay through the nose in currants for every single board, for instance.. ~O.o~ there I go worrying again lol.. But I hope we will be able to customise to our heart's content without worrying tooo much about how many currants we're spending on each board, for example.. or each like, segment of wallpaper. :p
  Posted 10 months ago by ♪♥~ Auren ~♥♪ | Permalink
- OK, now you all have me nervous! I have finally settled in and calmed down, begun to enjoy myself as a Glitchen and not a Fauna and now THIS!!! Why did someone HAVE to throw a wrench into the works??? Whey did someone have to put just a small grain of doubt in my mind regarding the stability of Glitch and Tiny Speck? I simply cannot stand to lose another game that I have come to love! PLEASE!!! Sure, I would LOVE a donut, but I want my game more!
  Posted 10 months ago by Fstra | Permalink
- I think, based on what has been said in the past, and inferring from what Stoot said above, that some housing customization in the future will require credits (i.e., the kind you get for real money). This is consistent with T.S.'s vision that nothing necessary to game-play advancement will cost real money; only unnecessary aesthetics such as clothing and housing decorations will. From what Stoot said above, we are very lucky right now as second beta testers, because we will get to play around with the new housing customization without having to spend any credits on it. This will change in the future.
  Posted 10 months ago by Shepherdmoon | Permalink
- The things that will be needed to be bought with credits will probably be eye-candy decor or something that can be used more with tokens. But that's just me guessing. Either way, I'm sure that it'll be "fair". :D
  Posted 10 months ago by Rook | Permalink
- Thanks for the extended post stoot...appreciate the communication update - looking forward to the game update.
  *sniff* do I smell onion rings and donuts?! mmmm...
  Posted 10 months ago by ~Pink Flamingo~ | Permalink
- As a person who has been involved with complex software development several separate times, I must say I've been frustrated that many of my fellow players seem to have no idea how incredibly difficult, complicated, and time consuming even the most modest of changes to a game like Glitch can be. ("Why can't TS just...[insert trivial sounding, but in fact ridiculously hard, change/idea here]?")
  I was highly skeptical of the original "8 week" estimate for delivery of new housing and new core game mechanics. If TS manages to deliver even a working subset of such a massive overhaul in that time frame, I'll be very impressed.
  Stoot took a great stab at it, but it is really hard to explain to people who haven't been through it just how really, really challenging the development of complex software truly is. And it's not just the software, it's the story, the art, the animation, and etc etc etc etc etc etc. Everything depends on and must be integrated with everything else. This stuff is TOUGH, people.
  I'm looking forward to seeing how Glitch develops, and am enjoying being part of the process.
  Posted 10 months ago by Pascale | Permalink
- +1 Pascale. I'm also a software developer and have been involved in a lot of moderately complex projects. Nearly everything is much, much more difficult to change than it appears from the outside.
  While it's not a perfect analogy, for a sense of it imagine that you're building a really big castle in your living room out of playing cards. You carefully stack them, make plans about how you'll build it higher and wider and more complex, and keep building. After a bit you realize that the way you've built part of it isn't going to support the bigger structure so you take part of it down, rebuild the area, and then proceed with your plans.
  After it gets to a certain size you discover that parts of it are becoming unstable and you're concerned it'll collapse. You realize that in order to build the kind of thing you're now envisioning that part of the structure's going to need to be incredibly stable. You get out some glue and take the time to carefully glue all of the cards in that area together; woot, that section is really strong now!
  You build onto it and man, this sucker is really getting big and awesome! You show it off to people and wow are they ever impressed! One of them bumps into a part of it that you haven't reinforced and boom, a section collapses! With this new information -- that part of your carefully-built structure is much weaker than you imagined -- you rebuild that part in a new, better way, and it becomes pretty bump-proof. Excellent!
  Several people have commented that adding a new tower over here would be super cool, and you agree, they're right. It's more complex than it appears, but hey, it would be really great, and you build it. Fantastic! Some others suggest that moving this one card from this top spot to this other one would be a nice improvement, and hey, no worries, you do it. Others yet suggest a change that looks simple from the outside but would actually require you to rebuild whole chunks of the underlying structure in order to make it work, and you decide against doing it.
  Over time you add more things here and there, spicing it up and making it better and better. At one point, though, you realize that all of these little additions are making one tower really creaky and are making it nearly impossible to add a whole new tower at all, with all the frills and stuff getting in the way. And a bunch of people you've shown your card castle to are actually getting pretty tired of you bringing it up, saying they've seen it all before and while it was impressive once, it's not so amazing anymore.
  Frankly, you've started to feel the same way. You take a couple of steps back and realize that you could actually expand the whole thing into the dining room, too, with some changes to the base structure. It would support more towers in the future, and would provide the basis for all kinds of cool frills, too. Ok, you'll do it!
  You carefully shift some towers -- you really don't want to rebuild all of that -- and get ready to expand the base. Aw, crap, remember when you glued some cards earlier? It really did help, but man, now you've got to separate them, replace them, and re-glue them, along with the new ones, all without destroying any of the existing towers and frills and such. Oof.
  In the process you discover even more stuff that has to be restructured in order for the grand plan to actually work, parts of the structure you couldn't really see when you started the expansion and that you'd largely forgotten about. This is going to take a while.
  Meanwhile, though, many people who've seen it are complaining that not only is the old castle boring, but you're not adding any of the frills they've been asking about, you're not adding any surprise frills or new towers, and even though you've told them about your vision for the expanded and rebuilt castle, it doesn't look like you're actually doing anything.
  Heck, maybe they even contributed some decks of cards in exchange for an opportunity to paint some of the surfaces and make part of it their own. You offer to give them brand new decks of cards to replace the ones they contributed, and though some of them take you up on the offer, others don't, and frustratingly, many of them are the biggest complainers. All you can really do is keep doing the rebuilding and hope they'll be patient enough for you to finish.
  TL;DR: Glitch is an incredibly complex card castle, and all you can see is the outside layer. If you think making the little changes or additions you want is easy it's simply because you have no idea what's under the surface.
  Maybe it sounds like an excuse, like it's BS, but it's only because you've not built a living-room-sized card castle before.
  Posted 10 months ago by Credulous Ralph | Permalink
- +1 to Pascale and Shepherd Ralph
  Posted 10 months ago by Mal'akh | Permalink
- +1 to shepherdmoon and shepherd ralph....are you guys a married couple? If not, maybe just two glitchen with very smart insight.
  Thanks Stoot for your post, I for one was not worried, perhaps just a tad bored, but I know that great things take time, and I will gladly wait.
  Posted 10 months ago by miskey | Permalink
- Thanks for the thoughtful, assuasive posts, Staff! :)
  Posted 10 months ago by Stuv | Permalink
- No relation to Shepherd Ralph, miskey, but I agree that he sure is smart! Excellent analogy, Shepherd Ralph!
  Posted 10 months ago by Shepherdmoon | Permalink
- I sincerely HOPE Glitch is in no respect similar to a 'card castle.' Software should be designed from the bottom up, which is what seems to be happening at Tiny Speck. When software is cobbled together 'by the coders' like a house of cards it means that engineers were not involved, and yes, a collapse IS inevitable.
  Stoot implied in his recent response on this thread that the game's development wull be continuing on for years to come. That implies they're not just piling on more code, which is to their credit. There's a plan, an architecture they are working toward.
  There has to be a specification, and coders need to stick to that specification, for anything of substance to come out of a coding effort. Some of us wish that specification were more visible to the player base. But games are supposed to be puzzles to a degree, and it would probably be chock full of 'spoilers' for the specifications to published for us to see.
  So life goes on. Code monkeys weave their noodles. And as outsiders we can just hope someone in charge is helping them stay on task.
  Posted 10 months ago by Polo Reede | Permalink
- No amount of engineering or specification can plan for the growth and evolution of a game like Glitch. Of course the core is well-engineered and was originally designed from the bottom up, and the analogy is imperfect. However, that doesn't mean big portions of it don't have to be rewritten when you substantially change how something works.
  It's not a software development treatise, Polo; it's an analogy designed to help non-engineers understand how complex such a thing can be.
  Posted 10 months ago by Credulous Ralph | Permalink
- and I thank you for the analogy Shepherd Ralph - it clearly made me make heads and tails out of what Stoot wrote.
  Will sit next to my gnome, at my front door, and dream grand visions of things to come - I know TS won't disappoint me.
  Posted 10 months ago by MzMunchken | Permalink
- The point I was trying to make is that there is a specification, and that it would be less fun for us to see it, because it would spoil the surprise.
  People have spent a lot of time in the past reverse-engineering the data structures of Glitch, in fact that's obviously one of the main fascinations for some players. Even if they don't know the jargon term for what they're doing, that's the nut they're cracking.
  'Evolve' is a term that is almost universally misused. Probably one of the least understood terms in modern language. Software can't 'evolve' because any changes that are made in it happen because the specification changes. An outside agent makes those changes. Ur is not a real world and it doesn't run on it's own.
  Posted 10 months ago by Polo Reede | Permalink
- + Shephard Ralph! Excellent analogy for peeps like me with a very limited knowledge of tech stuff. Thank you!
  Posted 10 months ago by GreyGoose | Permalink
- Thank you Shephard Ralph for the wonderful analogy! It brought a big smile to my face. I know nothing about what is involved to produce such a wonderful game but my son writes code and I do know the long hours (weeks or months) that go into his work :-)
  Thank you Stoot for the update and we really do appreciate what goes on behind the scenes even if it may feel we don't at times.
  Posted 10 months ago by Breezy Meadow | Permalink
- I now love Shepard Ralph too.
  I am right in the midst of a HUGE (many many millions of dollars) software implementation in a giagantic company with lots of resources and the ability to throw programmers and other technical people at anything we want done. We are implementing a well known and robust product that comes to us already tested and implemented at hundreds of other huge companies. Not starting from scratch, as TS is doing.
  Even with that, it is not easy. Just as in SR's fantabulous analogy, if we put a door in here to make it easier for Joe, that will make Jane's job harder because we can not use that space as a wall to support her zip line across the platform. Nothing stands in isolation, so we design, test and test again. But even then, we do not see all of the consequences of design elements until the whole castle is built. Rules we put in place to make things work more smoothly in one component, limit out flexibility in another.
  I too am astonished at the speed of implementation and quality of code TS puts out. TS is a small company and they must all be working and thinking about Glitch constantly in order to keep the game moving forward. Giant kudos to all of the TSpeckers.
  Posted 10 months ago by Kookaburra | Permalink
- /giant post that sums everything up.
  +1s plox
  Posted 10 months ago by Volkov | Permalink
- Thank you for your lengthy answer, Stoot!! It's always good to know that there's a lot going on behind the scenes, and that forward progress is being made :)
  (And thanks for the well-worded posts, Shepherd Twins!)
  -- A <3
  Posted 10 months ago by Ashbet | Permalink

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