Magical Game Factory Official Thread

[Zebbe]

It can be used for anything.

[sheath]

Neato, than I vote for a Giga power!

We've got to put those austentatious NEO GEO carts to shame eventually, just be careful that the plastic shell looks nothing like a mushroom. People hate that.

[Barone]

How can you group the people who voted history into also asking for spells etc. and multiple paths? Have you asked all of them?

I was grouping what has been asked on the MGF forum. I should have use "people" instead of "they" and pressed enter one or two times to make it clearer but I wasn't worried about that.

I like to see that now you actually have sometime to "moderate" what people say in other forums since you said before that you didn't have time to answer questions about MGF and the new projects.
Unlike the MGF forum, you can't control everything that happens here. You can't put an end to a debate that is not good for you, you can't close a poll in the middle of the road, you can't justify the fact that a fourth playable (not related to the number of players) character will cost 4 times what the 3rd character cost without been severely pushed to explain what the fuck is going on... Be careful, you may get pushed to reveal some "sensitive" information.

And after all, don't act like Gestapo 'cause you are not entitled to do that and I'm not an asshole fucking your business. I'm just not as mindless as you seem to like. Sometimes I can say bad things about MGF, sometimes I can say good things... But, surely, I'm entitled to decide when and how I will express my opinions.

Is my signature hurting you too?

Also, 32 Megs is already eight Megs bigger than SoR3 and would be the biggest brawler on the system.

Thanks for telling what I already knew.
But that's just numbers... Something like Historical setting + time traveling + 4 playable characters + RPG elements would be difficult to be accomplished with only 32MEGs. SOR3 is just 80's/90's decadence all the time and its 24MEGs delivered tons of recycled sprites, samples and palette swaps.
I hope that WM can use some newer/better compression algorithm that would allow more content than 32MEGs in the 90's would.

[djshok]

Calm down guys. By my numbers we just need around $220-250 to make the cyberpunk reach the same level/pass a bit the historical choice.
I'd recommend to put the money in the last minutes to try to avoid a massive counter-attack by the crazy German guy.

Yeah that's what I'm thinking. Though that German might have the same idea. Who's to say he's not going to drop another $1000 last minute.



This whole factory thing had me feeling pretty excited, but now the experience is starting to get soured by one of two things: Either a super rich German that just wants a game made for just for him. Or by the little voice inside me that won't stop speculating that this whole voting thing is a sham and WM are just making the game that they want, and this whole factory is just a way to rile people up and get money. We'll never know the answer and I wouldn't expect that sort of information to come out, but ultimately what's bothering me the most and what might stop me from investing any more money in this project is that I might end up paying for a product that I really don't want.

I know it's way too early in the development process to tell just what the game will be. But like I said before, I would've been cool with pretty much any of those theme options except historical. Then I made my peace with historical because that can include some cool ideas. However who's to say that the crazy German will vote for anything interesting he's already voted for something that's my last preference once, chances are he'll do it again, and given his voting power, he'll likely end up getting what he wants in the next poll as well.

I'm all for supporting development of Genesis games but I've already invested approximately 3 times what I paid for Pier Solar and now I run the risk of getting a game that under normal circumstances I would never have paid for. I'm cool with gambling some of my cash, and taking a risk, but the there has to be a reasonable chance of a good payoff at the end. So I'm a little torn on this...

I'm glad that WM exists and I love what they did with Pier Solar, but this whole factory thing is slowly starting to alienate me because it has me feeling more powerless than if WM just outright made a game and said buy it if you want.

I haven't given up yet, but these are the thoughts that I just can't help having.

[StarMist]

you can't justify the fact that a fourth playable (not related to the number of players) character will cost 4 times what the 3rd character cost without been severely pushed to explain what the fuck is going on... Be careful, you may get pushed to reveal some "sensitive" information.

But agostinho they really must keep some information to themselves.
I'm going to try an evaluation here= Every character programmed costs MGF so much time and effort. That time/effort costs money they will only have a finite amount of (let's not pretend these gems are raking in a fortune) and to work extra hard on any one aspect of the game they will have to shift priorities from another aspect of that game or from another game altogether (Project SF or game #3). Now, they never had any intention of making the brawler with only 1 or 2 eligible characters; that would mean essentially no choice for a 2P game since both characters would be used every play and it'd get old very quickly. So 3 eligible characters is MGF's true default and thus the point where the money scaler truly begins. If so, why make a pretence of beginning the scaler lower? To draw investor interest. The more areas to affect with one's money the more investor interest. Believe it or not there will be some investors who will be fine with a brawler of any setting, and before the genre was determined with a new Genesis game of any genre; such people had to be encouraged to spend money on something, hence the other fields like this one and the MEG size however much you and I might disagree with them (I despise the thought of the game's having even theoretically had the potential to be less than 32 MEG and still feel it ought to be more like 128). So, to round this off, that 4x gems increment represents the true increase of time/effort/manpower/inspiration and everything else that goes into making a game.

I'm glad that WM exists and I love what they did with Pier Solar, but this whole factory thing is slowly starting to alienate me because it has me feeling more powerless than if WM just outright made a game and said buy it if you want.

But this is the tradeoff to investing. The option to invest is MGF's way of saying buy something if you want it soon, save your money if you want something 5 years down the road. Gems are pretty much an assessment how much you want to get a new Genesis game sooner. Not that I'm fobbing you off here, I do expect to see a hoard of these on Ebay within the first week from sellers with broken hearts.

[Barone]

But agostinho they really must keep some information to themselves.

Sure.

I'm going to try an evaluation here= Every character programmed costs MGF so much time and effort. That time/effort costs money they will only have a finite amount of (let's not pretend these gems are raking in a fortune) and to work extra hard on any one aspect of the game they will have to shift priorities from another aspect of that game or from another game altogether (Project SF or game #3). Now, they never had any intention of making the brawler with only 1 or 2 eligible characters; that would mean essentially no choice for a 2P game since both characters would be used every play and it'd get old very quickly. So 3 eligible characters is MGF's true default and thus the point where the money scaler truly begins. If so, why make a pretence of beginning the scaler lower? To draw investor interest. The more areas to affect with one's money the more investor interest. Believe it or not there will be some investors who will be fine with a brawler of any setting, and before the genre was determined with a new Genesis game of any genre; such people had to be encouraged to spend money on something, hence the other fields like this one and the MEG size however much you and I might disagree with them (I despise the thought of the game's having even theoretically had the potential to be less than 32 MEG and still feel it ought to be more like 128). So, to round this off, that 4x gems increment represents the true increase of time/effort/manpower/inspiration and everything else that goes into making a game.

IMO it represents the "true increase of time/effort/manpower/inspiration and everything else that goes into making" something different than what they had previously planned.

By the scalers, it's clear that they would go with 3 or 4 playable characters and a 32Mbit cartridge.
C'mon, $12,000 for extra 16Mbit? And the increments were: 4-8-16-32-48(???)! This progression has some "problem".
IMO it's not fair to sell a playable character for $800 and the next one for $3200. It just makes sense according to what you said (and I agree with that for the most part) but it goes against the whole "we'll do what you want" concept; at least it shows that WM's concept is full of expensive "tendencies".
It's more like: "You can pay to have what we want or you can pay tons of cash to have what you want!".
I think I got the whole "WANT" meaning now... Maybe it should be read as "WANT³" or something...

[djshok]

It really makes me wonder if that's what they're doing with the game genre and theme. Ie: regardless of how people vote the game was set to be a brawler and will probably have a historic theme. Unless they get SO much cash that it's worth it for them to change it.

I should probably just stop caring about this now, and just accept whatever game they want to make. Keep it if I like it, if not, I'm sure I can get my money back on ebay. They're good devs, chances are whatever they make will probably be good. I just wish I hadn't got all excited about thinking that I could actually make a difference in what sort of game this would be. Oh well, I never got to choose what games were made in the 90s so it's no different.

So for the time I'm out, I don't really care what they make. I'll check back in when there's a playable demo or something.

[StarMist]

Originally Posted by StarMist

But agostinho they really must keep some information to themselves.

Sure.

MGF is a business; that's business. Nor did they promise to disclose everything.

By the scalers, it's clear that they would go with 3 or 4 playable characters and a 32Mbit cartridge.

Either that or they anticipated larger investments.

IMO it's not fair to sell a playable character for $800 and the next one for $3200. It just makes sense according to what you said (and I agree with that for the most part) but it goes against the whole "we'll do what you want" concept; at least it shows that WM's concept is full of expensive "tendencies".
It's more like: "You can pay to have what we want or you can pay tons of cash to have what you want!".

You make this sound as if each interval is entirely separate; are you certain they aren't just totals? ie $800 each character with the total requisite tallied $800, $1600, $3200, &c. Even if it is the costlier method you're making it out to be I think it fair considering the labour involved--unless they shut the fundraiser down prematurely; there's no reason not to keep this area open longer since it's something that can be progressively programmed, whereas milieux are not.

C'mon, $12,000 for extra 16Mbit? And the increments were: 4-8-16-32-48(???)! This progression has some "problem".

Indeed that looks wrong. This is an area MGF could well be frank about--rather ought to considering how many gamers there are who can name chip costs off the shelf. They need to justify so high an increase. Nor should 48 be ruled out, as it effectively is by such pricing: they might want to put some very big sprites in the game at some point and, hey, 8 MEG bigger than SoR3 is nice but nothing good can come of measuring a new brawler against crappy SoR3.

[Barone]

It really makes me wonder if that's what they're doing with the game genre and theme. Ie: regardless of how people vote the game was set to be a brawler and will probably have a historic theme. Unless they get SO much cash that it's worth it for them to change it.

I think that they still deserve some credit. I don't want to believe in something like that and I used to consider Zebbe one of the finest guys in this board before this whole MGF thing... So I really don't believe that he would do something so dirty like that.

What can be more questionable is how they grouped the themes for that poll. Example: Why historical is there, merging so many possibilities while cyberpunk and futuristic settings were split?
Even so, I think that is still acceptable enough to not think about any bad/dirty stuff around the poll.

I should probably just stop caring about this now, and just accept whatever game they want to make. Keep it if I like it, if not, I'm sure I can get my money back on ebay. They're good devs, chances are whatever they make will probably be good. I just wish I hadn't got all excited about thinking that I could actually make a difference in what sort of game this would be. Oh well, I never got to choose what games were made in the 90s so it's no different.

So for the time I'm out. I'll check back in when there's a playable demo or something.

Maybe we get the whole thing wrong... Maybe we should be expecting one more SOR/FF or Dynasty Warriors clone than something really new and breathtaking. Maybe we should have ignored the fact that Pier Solar used a 64Mbit cartridge without the need to invest so much money (Project Y has something like $6,500 invested now and it's asking for more $12,000 for a 48Mbit cartridge with WM's staff using production costs to justify that... So Pier Solar got more than $30,000 ($6500 invested + $12,000 for more 16Mbit over 32Mbit + (at least) $12,000 for more 16Mbit over 48Mbit) invested during the pre-order???).
Maybe we should see the things as they are: Magical Game Factory.

[djshok]

I think that they still deserve some credit. I don't want to believe in something like that and I used to consider Zebbe one of the finest guys in this board before this whole MGF thing... So I really don't believe that he would do something so dirty like that.

What can be more questionable is how they grouped the themes for that poll. Example: Why historical is there, merging so many possibilities while cyberpunk and futuristic settings were split?
Even so, I think that is still acceptable enough to not think about any bad/dirty stuff around the poll.

I agree, they do deserve credit. Despite this business with the MGF, they're still making Genesis games, and that alone is rare and commendable. I don't really think of this stuff as that dirty or sinister or anything. I understand that making games costs money, and they need that money ahead of time in order to produce the games, and this is a pretty smart/sneaky way to get investment cash (at the risk of alienating their fanbase). I imagine it is much more successful than basic pre-orders would've have been. Zebbe is still cool in my books, and so is WM for the most part.

I just feel kinda stupid for making the assumption that I had an honest chance of having any effect on the development of this game. Anyway, I wish them well and I hope the game will be good. I'm just gonna avoid looking at those polls, until the game is somewhat finished and then I'll see how I feel about it.

And yeah, you're right, it is pretty odd how they grouped those polls. Historical does leave it pretty open to many options, while the other choices are much more limited. It's a little biased towards that one isn't it.

[Barone]

MGF is a business; that's business. Nor did they promise to disclose everything.

Actually I really agreed with what you said, I was being serious about that. They really shouldn't say about everything they are doing/planning.
The "sensitive" is just a term that Zebbe used on the Pier Solar's thread. That's why I used it there.

You make this sound as if each interval is entirely separate; are you certain they aren't just totals? ie $800 each character with the total requisite tallied $800, $1600, $3200, &c. Even if it is the costlier method you're making it out to be I think it fair considering the labour involved--unless they shut the fundraiser down prematurely; there's no reason not to keep this area open longer since it's something that can be progressively programmed, whereas milieux are not.

Well, did you see the scaler when it was just opened? What I said is how it worked until now, I'm not inventing anything about that.
You had to put around 8000 GEMS to go from 2 playable characters to 3 playable characters. Now you have to invest more 32000 GEMS to go from 3 playable characters to 4. That's it.

Indeed that looks wrong. This is an area MGF could well be frank about--rather ought to considering how many gamers there are who can name chip costs off the shelf. They need to justify so high an increase. Nor should 48 be ruled out, as it effectively is by such pricing: they might want to put some very big sprites in the game at some point and, hey, 8 MEG bigger than SoR3 is nice but nothing good can come of measuring a new brawler against crappy SoR3.

Exactly. People are waiting for SOR3+ game standards? Or people are waiting for the same improvement level that Pier Solar meant over the previous Genesis RPGs?
I think they miss the point that a bigger cart would be great not only for the players/investors but also for themselves, for their brand.
Any new Genesis game is an interesting thing. Any new brawler with 32Mbit by serious guys is a very good thing. But to be awesome, IMO, it would have to show something like more fluid animations or bigger sprites or almost no sprite and sample recycling or a 3-4 players mode or the likes of 5-6 playable characters or an average superior color counting than we got on SOR2/SOR3/FF/Splatterhouse 3/...; or a bit of all those improvements.
The sound part can be vastly improved with the usage of Sega CD, AFAIK it's possible to use the Sega CD to play the voice samples, for an example, while using the mode 1. But it would still be limited to Sega CD owners.
IDK about you, but Pier Solar had some sort of "awesome" aura about it and I think that would be great for us and for them to be able to produce the same aura for the new game. And I can't see that occurring using a "common" 32Mbit cartridge. We didn't got 32Mbit brawlers but we got several 32MBit games that were not all that better than the 24Mbit ones.
If they really go with a 32Mbit cart I hope that they have already developed a godly secret compression scheme.

[old man]

Would any of you give Microsoft or Apple money to be able to give your opinion of what their next OS will be like? What if you gave them $2000 dollars to get better DOS support? Do you think you would get it? This whole idea that MGF presents is so out of whack and doesn't make a bit of sense to me. I just don't understand why so many people would throw money at something that isn't even a promise, but a maybe. You guys would be screwed if Fonzie suddenly killed over. You could have all gotten together, formed a committee, decided what game you wanted, made a kickstarter project for it, then hired some koreans to make the game you wanted without having to worry about mysterious Germans scalping you. Maybe I'm just out of touch with this whole thing.

[Barone]

and this is a pretty smart/sneaky way to get investment cash (at the risk of alienating their fanbase).

That's the risk they assumed when they chose to not take the risk of a bank loan. And I'm OK with what they did.

I just think that they could managed a bit better their fanbase and avoided this "war" between us in some extent. Just some observation and opinions:
-They could have clarified a bit more how the polls and scalers would work from the very beginning. They didn't need to promise fixed periods for the scalers, for an example, but they could have explained that they would be opened depending on the amount invested/number of investors like they had to do a bit later on their own forum. No, I'm not saying that they should have make no mistakes (that would be pretty unfair) but the decision of hiding all the reasons behind the decisions as much as possible wasn't a good one. And the community, on this board, advised about that when the whole thing was triggered.
People would be more likely to contribute if they were more likely to act like our partners.

-They shitted on other forums at first. Shitting over Sega-16 would never be wise if you are developing a Genesis game. They ignored the boards where the 16-bit/old school/retrogaming community use to live and that was a great missed opportunity to grab much more investors than they have now.
Prior to MGF they could have told us about new games on the horizon, opened some discussions/polls about the new projects without telling anything concrete but just to attract our attention. Then, in some point, they could have said something like: "OK guys, now we have the real deal for you. Go there, invest your money and make your new game.".

-They could have also opened a pre-order system as well but with different advantages between this and the investors system. Like StarMist said, I'm pretty sure that some guys would give their money without having any idea about how the game would be, especially if it would guarantee an exclusive version (different form the investors one) to them with lower price compared to the final product or pricey but with extras like an exclusive extra soundtrack CD that would never be re-released. Limited run, of course, to attract the more avid collectors.

-They could have offered a permanent promotion system for the investors that, somehow, convinced/attracted their friends/forum mates to invest in the game. A referring system is not something new in this world... They could have some special type of GEMS for that, something that would not be valid to convert into games later on but that would give you more power on the polls and some minimal conversion to be able to scale a few more GEMS for the scalers. That would be pretty exciting IMO.

-They could have grabbed many good ideas for free if they had asked about how the community would like to buy any new game from them.
...

A bigger base of investors would provide more money to them and it would also make things easier to us, like reach our goals on those scales.
It would probably lead to clearer results on the polls...

I imagine it is much more successful than basic pre-orders would've have been. Zebbe is still cool in my books, and so is WM for the most part.

He seems to hate me now but I still love him. No, I don't need to get a room since I'm saying that I love him, I'm not saying that I want to have sex with him; totally different things.

I just feel kinda stupid for making the assumption that I had an honest chance of having any effect on the development of this game. Anyway, I wish them well and I hope the game will be good. I'm just gonna avoid looking at those polls, until the game is somewhat finished and then I'll see how I feel about it.

And yeah, you're right, it is pretty odd how they grouped those polls. Historical does leave it pretty open to many options, while the other choices are much more limited. It's a little biased towards that one isn't it.

Several guys, including me, might have felt the same "let downs"; don't feel stupid.

[StarMist]

I think they miss the point that a bigger cart would be great not only for the players/investors but also for themselves, for their brand.

The counter argument is that if the extra MEGs aren't conspicuously used investors and gamers might complain they were swindled and MGF can't code. However this is well beyond the point of timidity now.

IDK about you, but Pier Solar Phantasy Star II had some sort of "awesome" aura about it and I think that would be great for us and for them to be able to produce the same aura for the new game.

Agreed!! Imagine a brawler like that!

And I can't see that occurring using a "common" 32Mbit cartridge. We didn't got 32Mbit brawlers but we got several 32MBit games that were not all that better than the 24Mbit ones.
If they really go with a 32Mbit cart I hope that they have already developed a godly secret compression scheme.

They'll have to do a lot of new things. Let's not overlook level size and count. Sprite swaps and recycling will be fine if there are many levels; if there aren't, individualised sprites and background objects won't be worth all that much. I'm thinking something the size of SoR 2 + SoR 1 or GA.

Originally Posted by djshok

I imagine it is much more successful than basic pre-orders would've have been. Zebbe is still cool in my books, and so is WM for the most part.

He seems to hate me now but I still love him. No, I don't need to get a room since I'm saying that I love him, I'm not saying that I want to have sex with him; totally different things.

Wait wait wait wait wait. Hold on a second. I thought that was the point of these comments. Don't tell me I'm the only poster here trying to get Zebbe into bed.

[Kamahl]

Starting the character scaler at 1 was a total dick move.
Shame on WM really. 2 is the MINIMUM number of character's on a 8bit brawler (unless it's single player). Only 1 character in a 16bit game? Come on now...

Wait wait wait wait wait. Hold on a second. I thought that was the point of these comments. Don't tell me I'm the only poster here trying to get Zebbe into bed.

So that's the way it is huh? You just gonna jump on a (substantially) more attractive man? And what of me StarMist? Don't I mean anything to you?