Feral Heart

Quote from: Ame88 on March 12, 2025, 09:38:55 am

Quote from: Gargantor on February 08, 2025, 02:46:52 pm

Well, this is what happens when you dont listen to the community, I guess.

The entire issue with that is the staff did listen. Painstakingly staff would pester Raz into doing anything, but he is the soul reason nothing truly happened beyond some small (or big depending on how you look at it) things here and there. Yes, we did get some updates, like fresh new maps with more content within them...but the presentation of such maps was extremely poor and way too fast. I too still miss the old maps, and I believe there was a better way to go about the whole map issue. Despite this, I do agree with some reasons behind their removal, such as server strain, the maps themselves having little to no meshes, and little to no continuity between them in regards to a realistic world (as real as you can get with talking animals, anyway). Not to point blame, but the truth of the matter is the entire reason nothing was done was Raz. In all fairness, Raz had his reasons behind not allowing much of anything to happen update-wise, and I believe he was completely valid in not wanting to move things too far forward.

We have to remember that at the time, despite Kovu offering the game's source over back in 2013 (me thinks), the offer was not taken, therefore Kovu remained the owner of FeralHeart, and in all technicality if we were to make changes to the game without his permission, legal action could be taken if he so wished. I don't blame him for wanting to avoid it and it's issues, but also because it's just not right. Even to this day he remains the owner of this game as he hasn't given it to anyone.

Now, before you say anything, yes I am well aware that FU/FBO claims to have gotten the permission from Kovu himself to continue on with their project. If I remember correctly, they even claim to still be in contact with the guy past the initial interaction that xSpirit claimed he had. Personally, I'm convinced this supposed "Real Kovu" is just xSpirit or a friend of his who's hiding behind an email, especially since the "evidence" they had was obtained and provided by xSpirit himself, who's proven to be an absolutely terrible person on multiple accounts. Now, I have a number of reasons on top of this as to why I do not believe that's the real Kovu, and I'm still not convinced after a handful of years that it's actually him. The only way I would be convinced is if this guy who claims to be Kovu proves to Raz he's actually him, since Raz is the only one still around who's directly worked with him (to my knowledge). I'm very much a believer that after FeralHeart and his short-lived Facebook game Feral Tales, Kovu just did not care and moved on with his life and projects. To be quite frank, I'm happy for him if that's the case. Now before I move on from this, I want to make it clear that I have no ill will towards FU/FBO or any branch of game from that pool of people. They love this game just as much as we do, and if they want to make a spiritual successor, they have that right. I just don't agree with how the project originally came into fruition. It came from a place of frustration, anger and hate. Greed can be listed too if you want to loop what xSpirit did in the end when he "moved on" from the project.

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I agree that this game is still on a decline, if there is even anymore sinking it can do. But, in all truth, as long as there is even just one person who will try to keep this game alive, there's a chance that it can come back.

I recall being one of the few that was able to actually get contact with Kovu personally on Skype back then(2013), in an attempt to get any information about the game's future. I think its important to note that Kovu didnt offer the game to anyone on the FH staff team at that time, that WAS actually the major issue on why nothing could be updated; only new maps could be added. We tried very hard, we loved the community so much. They were basically radio silent. There was little contact there, nearly no way to gain it and frankly Kovu was disinterested in talking about the subject for long mostly because it just wasnt an interest for them. Not in a negative way but because they never planned on it getting that big, and is true that their intentions were to move onto different things. From what I gathered they were open to passing the "key" over to anyone who was willing to take it in a promising direction, or simply if they liked you enough--thats if you could find them. They dropped the game and then put it in their past, it mightve been different if it was revenue orientated but it was more like a college project.
I dont know whether the claims by xspirit were true going forward. After the conversation I had with Kovu it honestly felt very "out of the blue". The code has now been distributed past anyone's control or copyright capability(I see feral meshes in other games).  At this point its about how much effort people are willing to put into it, and if those very people have the resources/coding capabilities to match. Enter FHU/FBO.

Hoping for a brighter feral future. I still have hope. Im playing today.

Also I'd like to take this chance to apologise for a few things. I do have a few....

Firstly I'm sorry that we didn't have the source when LKD left. He actually offered it for Reds keeping back in the day. I told Red that if we take it now LKD will have passed it on and that would be the end of the updates. I didn't anticipate that he would just leave regardless.

Moving on I feel you should be aware that getting a copy of the source code is not a new thing. In fact I have been sat on a copy of the source for years now even the rest of the staff were not aware I had it. It probably would have remained that way if I didn't feel that the servers needed certain security updates that could only be achieved with alterations to the client also.

Is your server master even responsive? Is there any kind of eta on these fixes?

Unfortunately I have no ETA of when they will be back up again. Please bear with us as I have informed our server master of this issue. He is unfortunately very busy and will get to it when he is able.

We can't control what is to happen or what is to be done in the future; however, we can focus on the now and what us, member and staff, have in front of us. We know the issue lack of activity from not only the forums, but the game as well. I think what most failed to realize, is that this isn't 2011 and time has changed drastically. In other words, steam, pc, ps5, etc etc, has involved and taken over the gaming world. Communication wise, discord is also another factor of this.

People in communities rather form there than on forums, which leaves the forum to rot a great deal. So, whether you look at it, there's nothing much that can be done. Perhaps the game develops, aka the staff, can transfer the forum into an official discord and make everything "easier'. I say this with quotations because not everything will be easier - it will just trend nicely with today's society.

Lack of game updates is to blame, which leads to the main elephant in the room. While I am sure people are patient, people are tired of waiting for false narratives. I believe the staff try their best, but again, there's little things that can be done. One thing for sure, we do know the game is being developed/in progress, however, another activity in community is lacking: the staff.

It's a slow process, but, the game does have a very small development team behind it. Our plans for the game extend past general hot fixes and quality of life updates. In regards to what exactly those plans are, we unfortunately cannot say. Raz wishes to keep our plans quiet, so despite staff's disagreements with it we kinda have to adhere to the request since he's the head guy of all this. Regardless of how frustrating it is, we're happy with it because at least we can be chipping away at something in the background instead of waiting for a green light to do anything or a miracle activity/interest spike in the game.

My unpopular opinion: While staff have lives, I also think they are/should responsible to keep things afloat, such as: MoTS awards, Seasonal holidays party, bringing the community together. With having power to work on the game and being representative, they should be leaders. Again, validating everyone has their own lives; but if leaders can't help run, then start finding another way. What way is that, I don't know. If there's no other way, I'd say close the game.

Has an idea for new activities been implemented?