I just want to give a nudge to DylanCheetah and say congratulations on becoming and MIT this evening! Your care and dedication to this game and community is very admirable, and we cannot wait to work alongside you.
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.
Very neat you were able to speak with him back then. I wish I was around at that time but I know I was but a very awkward teen and I could never catch registration lol
Redlinelies was offered the code for his keeping back in the day, as explained by Raz in an older post of his. I'll quote it real quick:
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.
To be fair I don't know exactly when he first obtained it, so exactly when we would have been able to develop further varies. I won't argue that I don't know too much before when I officially joined this game, and I don't know who all was in charge over where the game went past Kovu or where those staff members stood as I never interacted with them. All I have to go off of is accessible threads and what people say. Regardless, I do know that Raz had been sat on a copy of of source for a good while now. I don't know when he obtained it, but I do know that none of the staff even knew he had it. I'll quote what he said about it for you as well:
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.
Speaking in context of the staff I knew, i.e. Sura, Morg, Kiki, Nyx, etc. I know they wanted to update this game, but Raz was always that barrier.
On a side note, this is another reason why I don't believe xSpirit obtained the code through legitimate means. While working on an update for us, he had access to the code for developmental purposes of course, and I have no doubt that he took a copy for himself. This, or he just obtained a copy from someone else. This is besides the point but I wanted to express that.
It is unfortunate (imo) that the code has been so spread out as much as it has, but I agree to an extent that it does come down to how much work people are willing to put into it.
I know that all I want for this game is to keep it going for those who never gave up on it. This game is very special to so many, myself included, and I really want to see it shine once again.
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