ACD games... feasible?

[Arkhan]

That would be either

A) Never be completed

or
B) be complete garbage that is on SGX ACD "just because"

[runinruder]

Are there really all that many people out there who not only don't own an Arcade Card at this point, but also would be unwilling to spend a mere twenty or so dollars on one or simply play the game on an emulator?  Maybe there are a lot of people like that...  but if there are, then they're a bunch of tools.

From a player's perspective, I think Rover proved with Mysterious Song that he really knows what he's doing when it comes to programming RPGs, and if he has a vision for something lengthy and magnificent, I'd like to see him follow through on it.  I don't think he should compromise his vision or ditch the idea entirely just because a few people out there who don't own an Arcade Card are unwilling to take advantage of some very convenient solutions.

Someone mentioned the possibility that the project would take an extremely long time, but it's not like there aren't a few hundred other PC Engine games people can play in the meantime.  Mysterious Song took like seven years.  Everyone managed to survive, and everyone is happy to have the game.  The amount of time it would take is more a concern for Rover than for the people waiting: if he feels this project would be just as or even more fulfilling than a couple of "normal" ones that could be completed during the same span, I don't see why he shouldn't go for it. 

[vestcoat]

Arcade Cards are cheap and plentiful. There is no excuse for anyone not to have one. If a game is massive enough to require the Arcade Card, then people will line up to buy it. Plus, like half the sales of any game will be collectors who have no intention of ever unsealing the game anyway. Noobs are always complaining about how it's way too expensive to play PCE CD games at all. What's another <$50 on top of their $150 - $300 "investment"?

+1

A few years ago, I would have said no, but some things have changed of late:
1) 150+ copies of Sapphire were recently given away and "new" copies are readily available. The Arcade Card has gone from the province of diehard fans to a must-have accessory for newcomers. No one has had any problem finding Arcade cards and prices have barely changed.
2) Region protection isn't a problem. Virtually everyone's system has needed repairs and many have opted for region mods in addition. The Chopsado has also changed the playing field. Sky-high prices for U.S. Duo's, U.S. 3.0 cards, and rare Turbochips have created an arena where all but the most casual gamers are PCE-capable, with region mods, Chopsados, Duo-R's, etc. And the casual gamers... well, they don't buy homebrew.

That said, Arkhan is right - it's probably too much work. I hate to say it, but it may be best to make a normal game and include a "bonus level" or something that uses the ACD.

[Bernie]

I seriously doubt this next project is going to take as long as MSR did. 

Far as the ACD option, I say go for it.  A lot of peeps do already have an Arcade Card, and I am sure others would pick one up to play this.  Sure, there will be those that will not go for it, so there will be sales lost there.  However, I'd rather see Rover give it his all, than reduce the game to fit into Super CD specs. 

[Arkhan]

its mostly uncharted territory, and we already had enough CD issues with one homebrew RPG. 

Its also work/time investments on the artists who have to do all the doodlin' for it.   Lots of effort.

[runinruder]

its mostly uncharted territory, and we already had enough CD issues with one homebrew RPG. 

Its also work/time investments on the artists who have to do all the doodlin' for it.   Lots of effort.

Those might all be fine points, but they're not what's specifically being asked about here.  Certainly, it's up to Rover and the people he'll be working with to decide if they're willing to take the risks and devote the time.  If they are, I'd hate to see the issue asked about in this thread get in the way of them trying to achieve their goals. 

[Arkhan]

He asked two things, one of which was:

"So I'm wondering how feasible it is to invest massive amounts of time in a game designed for the arcade card..."

Even if the entire world had an arcade card, I personally don't think it's suitable to waste that much time on it.

Given things that have been said in chat before, I can only assume an ACD game would involve an RPG larger than Mysterious Song from Rover, or some sort of multidisc or hybrid game.

Taking into account the problems with Mysterious Song, the length of time the project took, and the now current list of projects from Rover, I don't think it's a good idea to add another project that will undoubtedly take a great amount of time and effort that will ultimately just take away from the current projects that people are already interested in.


Maybe 5 years from now, if all the other stuff is out/almost out, I'd say go for it.  but right now?  Hell no.  Monolith or GTFO.

[nodtveidt]

This isn't something that's going to be done right now... but it is something that will be done. I already have a working prototype, based on a fusion of the MSR and Monolith game engines. Utilizing the ACD will limit the market, but it will allow me the opportunity to really make the game the way it's supposed to be made. This isn't about the money anyway, it's about making good games, so the marketability is more of an afterthought than anything else (I'm not Watermelon ). Don't forget that a good portion of MSR's development time was finding people willing to do the work, and plus the learning curve of the system. We also had a lot of real-life issues to resolve along the way. None of that is an issue anymore... I know the system very well now and can produce working game engines very quickly by simply improving on what's already done (Monolith and JB are both based on VM's game engine, for example), I've got assets already in place, and I even have a local apprentice who will be lending a hand in making it. JB is at a standstill at the moment for technical reasons which I'm still ironing out, and Monolith's just waiting for me to fill in some details so Paul can finish the tile graphics work. Dragon Arm is also now an active project, as we have a dedicated character artist for it. That game engine will take less than a month to code since a lot of things from previous projects can, again, be reused... some of Monolith's code can be directly ported over, and writing finite state machines is something I've become quite experienced in.

[SamIAm]

Further food for thought:

If a future translation project is made more feasible by depending on the ACD, should they go with it?

LoX2 looks like it will all fit, but that's because it uses dynamic loading. Emerald Dragon, Tengai Makyo II, and a few others, by contrast, load up almost everything in an entire sub-continent at once and run the whole thing from the system card, so there's very little room to spare for an English script.

[Arkhan]

Don't forget that a good portion of MSR's development time was finding people willing to do the work, and plus the learning curve of the system. We also had a lot of real-life issues to resolve along the way. None of that is an issue anymore...

You just jinxed the whole thing, lol


I personally would rather see all the other stuff get squared away before another cock tease project gets shown and shoveled under the rug for awhile. 

[Arjak]

My advice is that you do NOT sacrifice from your vision of the game. Make it an ACD if that's what it will take to get it done right. I will gladly buy an Arcade Card if it means being able to play an awesome new RPG.

[nodtveidt]

I personally would rather see all the other stuff get squared away before another cock tease project gets shown and shoveled under the rug for awhile.

...which is exactly why I'm only jawing about it right now rather than showing it off. Frozen Utopia has two active projects, and Eponasoft has one... taking on four projects at once isn't a smart idea. Three at once is my limit.

[Bonknuts]

@ 'Ol Rover - Screw the naysayers and do it!!! If given enough exposure, I can imagine the majority of ACD owners would buy it just for being an ACD soft. If you need support for ACD, I can help. If you're using that old ACD lib I wrote, it doesn't support all features of the ACD. Probably not even half. I just wanted to see generic ACD support in HuC. Of course, you could probably just write your own too.

@ SamIam - The ACD has a the drawback that it lacks memory that you can execute code from. So you still need to find free areas in the original CD ram layout, etc. It would have been nice if they had added something like 8k of direct accessible ram, if only for us translators/hackers. I've been wanting a new system card with more direct code accessible ram for a while now, for translations. Tail Chao's hucard can do this. Its specific mapper can allow 512k of ram easily as well as the original system card 3.0 ram. It's a real card and mednafen started adding support for it. That would be extremely ideal for translation hacking. Though a card made from the ground up would work as well (no mapper needed, just a few discrete chips to handle memory layout. Also mirror the first 1k of the ram to open bus space of bank $ff. That would allow the hooks to be static/fixed in memory layout and code to map in new banks of hook code from there).

[nodtveidt]

Oh and yes, btw... it will be multidisc. Like PS1 Final Fantasy 7, it's three CDs in size. I do believe that it will be the first multidisc PCE game ever. I have already implemented its disc swap code. It's broken into three large chapters; one per disc. Discs are only changed once a chapter ends, and they're never revisited, so there's no back-and-forth crap like some other old multidisc games. It will cost about $3800 to manufacture it.

Bonknuts, yeah, I'm going to use a version of your ACD lib for it, but I think it already has everything I really need... iirc, it does disc-to-ACD and ACD-to-VRAM, and that's all that's required.

[sirhcman]

My advice is that you do NOT sacrifice from your vision of the game. Make it an ACD if that's what it will take to get it done right. I will gladly buy an Arcade Card if it means being able to play an awesome new RPG.

I feel the exact same as Arjak!