#24999 - SimonB - Sat Aug 14, 2004 7:54 pm
I was planning on selling the manufactured cartridges at a loss (for gbadev.org), but it appears as if some people would rather sell the games and make a small profit.
Please only vote if you are planning on entering the competition. Thanks.
The poll prices are only rough numbers.
#25002 - abilyk - Sat Aug 14, 2004 8:19 pm
I'd suggest breaking even or shooting for a minimal profit ($1/cart). Personally, I can't imagine losing too many potential customers by selling at $12 or $13 instead of $10.
However, though I don't know how concerned you are about possible interference from Nintendo, I would guess that they'd be less likely to frown upon it or try to shut the operation down if you sold at cost and not for profit.
#25006 - crossraleigh - Sun Aug 15, 2004 12:20 am
Even if $10 breaks even, I think it's too low. I say at least $15; perception of quality is correlated to price. To me, a $10 game sounds too shoddy to be worth playing. The cart will have a box and manual just like professional game, why not price it something closer to a professional game?
That said, I also think it would be nice to allow entrants to buy the cartridges cheap. That way they can sell them to friends and family?at whatever price they see fit.
#25011 - yaustar - Sun Aug 15, 2004 1:22 am
I reckon that some profit should be earned by gbadev.org for their effort and time.. almost like a donation...
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#25012 - dagamer34 - Sun Aug 15, 2004 1:51 am
| crossraleigh wrote: |
Even if $10 breaks even, I think it's too low. I say at least $15; perception of quality is correlated to price. To me, a $10 game sounds too shoddy to be worth playing. The cart will have a box and manual just like professional game, why not price it something closer to a professional game?
That said, I also think it would be nice to allow entrants to buy the cartridges cheap. That way they can sell them to friends and family?at whatever price they see fit. |
I don't know... The more the chances increase of people profiting from this competition, the more I think we loose sight of our basic goal. I mean any homebrew developer would give his right foot (hand is too important) to have their game on a published cart, the money, if any, is sort of a bonus.
But when the focus begins to start earning money from such a compo, not only do teams start getting worked up over missing deadlines, but Nintendo might start looking in our direction a little bit more and pay attention to what we are doing.
I haven't voted yet, as I am still wondering whether it is worth my time at the moment. I am still waiting for the completely finalized rules and regulations before commiting some energy to my entry.
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#25041 - Vex - Sun Aug 15, 2004 10:10 pm
I think little profit ($1-$2) will make no harm to anyone. And also this can be new dimension of this and future compos. For the people who would like to get into touch with game industry that can be good entry point. The submitted material will maybe start looking more like professional games, which at the end, deserve at least some profit.
#25046 - SmileyDude - Sun Aug 15, 2004 10:41 pm
I voted break even, though I wouldn't be opposed to gbadev making a bit of profit. Given the risk in buying a large order of carts, boxes, and instructions, I wouldn't mind gbadev making a bit of money as well. It's not like we pay to use this site, and all of that bandwidth and time costs money.
If sold at a profit, there could be an option for everyone who either competes or wins one of the entries the chance to buy one at cost -- this would be in addition to the one that would be given to the winners. I know that I would want to purchase a couple of extra copies if I had won, and I'm sure that other people might want to as well -- especially those games done with a team :)
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#25048 - shenmansell - Sun Aug 15, 2004 10:52 pm
I voted for a $10 price point.
My guess would be that the majority of the carts will be bought by the people who end up getting their games on the cart.
They are going to buy them to mail out with CV's and give to family and friends and maybe also try to sell to others, so why try to make a profit off of the people who made the games in the first place.
On a tangent it would be cool if the information about getting carts made could be posted, especially minimum run sizes and so on. Several people in the past have expressed interest in getting carts made, maybe people could band together outside of the contest and make some carts of their own as well.
Shen
#25050 - sgeos - Sun Aug 15, 2004 11:03 pm
| SmileyDude wrote: |
| I voted break even, though I wouldn't be opposed to gbadev making a bit of profit. |
I did the same and I agree. If sold at ~20% profit, only ~85% of the produced units need to sell to break even.
profit * sales = income
1.20 * 0.85 = 1.02
| Quote: |
| I know that I would want to purchase a couple of extra copies if I had won |
Me too.
-Brendan
#25102 - Deanonious - Mon Aug 16, 2004 11:59 pm
I am fairly new to GBADev, I decided to start getting into Console developement way late into the game, before I was primarily PC/Windows, and until recently had no intention of changing that. That being said I would like to make a few comments.
Personally, I don't know who is the owners/maintainers of GBADev.org and it's other affliated sites but it seems like they are already doing the community a tremendous favor by keeping this wonderful site up and running. Which I am very grateful.
With everything GBADev.org already does for the community I couldn't possibly ask that they sell the Competition Cart at a loss, I don't think that would be fair to them, running a lot of carts is already risky as it is.
Now by Published, I *Assume* that it will be a small run privately published game cart IE: by GBADev.org and that it's not going to be officially licensced by Nintendo and that it's not something that I am going to find at Software Etc. by those assumptions I would have to agree with the arguement that most likely the people buying the game will be friends or family of the developers as well as the developers themselves and I can't see making them pay too much for there own work.
I have not totally decided if I am going to compete, I have many years of general programming experience but I am totally incompetant when it comes to graphics and my graphics muscle is too busy right now. If I did compete (and win) I would most assuradly buy multiple copies, not just to give as presents to my family and friends but also a few to keep handy for my resume and for future job applications.
Thus I would have to say that it would be best to either sell them at cost or for a small profit.
I would also like to say that I am extremely interested in seeing more information and numbers relating to the cost of self publishing a cartridge.
Dean
#25123 - warsong - Tue Aug 17, 2004 4:00 am
A 1$ profit is better, and voting for it does not mean that the majority is right. Lets look at all the good and bad to breaking even and getting 1$ for each game.
So what are the good and bad for each?
-To break even
1 It is 1$ cheaper
-An extra $
1 A 1$ is not a big difference
2 What if the game does sell 1 million copied eventually and you miss out 1mill because of 1$
3 If would help in the next contest and everyone would benefit for a better prize maybe
4 Maybe use that extra money to help sell the game.
5 most will pay the extra 1$ since it still is a cheap price compared to most games.
6 you can make it be $12.99 :D lol hey some people call that $12 and do not round it off to 99 cents. ;)
That is my opinion, I could be wrong but what are yours?
#25128 - dagamer34 - Tue Aug 17, 2004 4:52 am
| warsong wrote: |
A 1$ profit is better, and voting for it does not mean that the majority is right. Lets look at all the good and bad to breaking even and getting 1$ for each game.
So what are the good and bad for each?
-To break even
1 It is 1$ cheaper
-An extra $
1 A 1$ is not a big difference
2 What if the game does sell 1 million copied eventually and you miss out 1mill because of 1$
3 If would help in the next contest and everyone would benefit for a better prize maybe
4 Maybe use that extra money to help sell the game.
5 most will pay the extra 1$ since it still is a cheap price compared to most games.
6 you can make it be $12.99 :D lol hey some people call that $12 and do not round it off to 99 cents. ;)
That is my opinion, I could be wrong but what are yours? |
The problem comes in when you start to focus on doing serious profiting from this cart. Nintendo's eyes start to look this way a little more because we are making quite a bit of money from their console without them getting a cut of it.
I think a $2 profit would be most we should shoot for. I don't think any of us will get any money that will last us for a lifetime (or even a month) but it's better to think of it as a reward for your hard work, not to mention having your game on an actual published cart! That is the REAL prize, to me!!
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#25129 - pollier - Tue Aug 17, 2004 5:00 am
Just on a tangent, isn't that odd? The average music CD that might sell for, oh, say, somewhere between 10 to 20 dollars only makes the artist a nickel or so, and they have millions in production--whereas we've got small numbers of units produced and larger margin possibilities. Take that, middle-man! In any case, breaking even sounds good to me, especially if breaking even means allocating a small resevoir of funds for the next competition.
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#25151 - Tetsuo - Tue Aug 17, 2004 1:14 pm
I have been lurking this forum for a while but have never posted :o
I think this competition is a great idea and I have recently joined a very small team for a competition entry.
To come back to the discussion about the price...
Instead of raizing the price to make a profit I would rather see the price getting raized to get a cartridge with more space on it.
For this competition the goals if to have full games with a menu, sounds, music multiple levels (or whatever) maybe all with their own look/graphics.
I know that for the project I am on we have to make sacrifices because of the allowed size and I can image that there will be more people that will be struggeling with this.
The end product is a cartridge with fun and intersting games on them.
I think that the fun and quality of the games will only be increased if this allowed size is bigger.
#25155 - FireOut - Tue Aug 17, 2004 2:11 pm
| Tetsuo wrote: |
I think that the fun and quality of the games will only be increased if this allowed size is bigger. |
I agree with that. I've almost given up on trying to submit my ongoing project to this year's compo because of the size limit. For instance, there should be music composed just for this game, so I don't want to ignore the work put on that by the musician just because I want to strip down the size. The game wouldn't be the same after that.
Well, either way it is a competition and I don't intend to fight to alter the rules just so that my game can fit in. Hopefully there will be other competitions without that limit next. I love the idea of winner games getting "published".
#25159 - tepples - Tue Aug 17, 2004 3:12 pm
| Tetsuo wrote: |
| For this competition the goals if to have full games with a menu, sounds, music multiple levels (or whatever) maybe all with their own look/graphics. |
Then how did the NES manage to fit so much game into so little cartridge?
How big was Contra for NES? 128 KByte.
Super Mario Bros. 2: Mario Madness (the NES version of Super Mario Advance) was 256 KByte.
Super Mario Bros. 3 was 384 KByte.
In fact the only single NES game over 512 KByte was Kirby's Adventure.
| Quote: |
| I know that for the project I am on we have to make sacrifices because of the allowed size |
Imagine the sacrifices they had to make in the NES CNROM era, where 64 KB was all you got.
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#25161 - Tetsuo - Tue Aug 17, 2004 3:27 pm
Ofcourse there are a ton of games that you can make with 512 KByte.
And I have good faith that we'll be able to pull it off.
If you want a menu with nice background graphics, different music tracks, lots of different animated sprites etc. that will cost valuable KBytes. The game concept/gamplay/etc are important but there are a lot of things that add to the quality of the game. People like to play a cool game with great audio and visuals much more than the same game with "beeps and dots". And the end result of the competition is something that people will need to buy and like.
I don't see how the size of NES games is relevant for this competition or any other console than the GBA ;)
#25164 - lordmetroid - Tue Aug 17, 2004 4:21 pm
I don't see a reason why not 512kByte should be enough... one just has to go with the zen of this cartridge, a smaller game which can be picked up and played in a few minutes...
Noo, I don't say the lifetime of the game should be a few minutes I'm saying one doesn't need to play more then a few minutes if not necessary, or so I percieved the Zen of this compo...
I sure will have no problems fitting my contribution in a 512kByte memory, in fact I'm trying to get below 256kByte of the most neccesary contents, as I want to add one cart multiplayer support as well!
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#25165 - tepples - Tue Aug 17, 2004 5:18 pm
| Tetsuo wrote: |
| If you want a menu with nice background graphics, different music tracks |
OK. Even given a console with capabilities more similar to those of the GBA, how was Nintendo able to fit Super Mario World into 512 KBytes? "Different music tracks" doesn't mean some huge GSM soundtrack; you can fit a lot into a 128 KByte .s3m file.
| Quote: |
| lots of different animated sprites etc |
GBA sprite cels are only twice as big as NES sprite cels, and the GBA can use more powerful compression to store them. (NES games were limited by the slow CPU to either verbatim or RLE.)
Bottom line: Pollyanna wants you to be glad you're not in the 4K competition.
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-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#25169 - abilyk - Tue Aug 17, 2004 5:28 pm
I'm surprised to hear complaints over the size limitation for the competition. You're limited to 4 Mb, or 512 KB if you prefer to look at it that way, which I consider a lot of space.
| Tetsuo wrote: |
| I don't see how the size of NES games is relevant for this competition or any other console than the GBA ;) |
Perhaps the size of a SNES game would serve as a better example, since the GBA is arguably a glorified SNES? Mega Man X is 12 Mb, only 3 times larger than the space we're allowed. A game with a bit less than 1/3 the content of Mega Man X (which would still be more content than I think I've ever seen in a homebrew game) would fit within the available 4 Mb.
Edit: Tepples beat me to it and has more information to boot, d'oh. ;)
#25172 - warsong - Tue Aug 17, 2004 6:55 pm
If you ask me the poll is a tie!!!!
19 say to break even
19 say to get a profit
and 2 says to loose
Getting a 1$ profit wins I think. This will help benefit future compos or this compo more. ;)
#25179 - FireOut - Tue Aug 17, 2004 7:53 pm
I don't think it is fair to compare sizes of commercial games with homebrew ones, given the human resources available to us. Please release Super Mario World Homebrew (tm) for this competition and prove that I'm wrong. Either way, I mean no offense and understand your point. I see the possibility of developing great games with this size, but also the possibility to make these games a lot better with more space.
Anyway, with all due respect, I think we are all missing a point here: this topic is not about one's ability to crunch games into the cart or not, it is a poll about the cost of the cart.
Tetsuo posed something interesting in his first post I'd like to know - how much more would a 64mb cart cost? Wouldn't it be interesting to have a US$15 break-even for a 64mb instead of a US$12 break-even for a 32mb one? You could keep the actual "huge" size requirements and be able to fit twice as many games in it. I don't wish to discuss what to do with the extra size, I'm just curious about how much more would it cost.
#25180 - poslundc - Tue Aug 17, 2004 8:20 pm
| FireOut wrote: |
| I don't think it is fair to compare sizes of commercial games with homebrew ones, given the human resources available to us. |
It doesn't take any extra time or manpower to delegate your resources intelligently. If you wind up having to compress your data, it is not at all difficult to do so, and there is plenty of information on the forum explaining how.
| Quote: |
| Please release Super Mario World Homebrew (tm) for this competition and prove that I'm wrong. |
Conversely, one might ask you to prove that you are skilled and capable enough to create something on the order of Super Mario World and yet are incapable of using the resources frugally enough to meet the restrictions. Super Mario World is not so easy to make that compressing the data would dwarf the rest of the project.
Honestly, people, it's just a rule, and a sensible one at that, considering the winners will have to share a limited resource. If you can't be bothered to compress, maybe you should think about scaling back your design.
Dan.
#25184 - CATS - Tue Aug 17, 2004 9:29 pm
The GBA comes with a built in decompressor, you have no excuse.
(since we're on the subject, super mario world stores the levels in a rather cunning way, rather than dividing the map into a grid, everything is stored as an object. floors, pipes, koopas, everything then they're just arranged with (x,y) co-ordinates into a big list.)
#25191 - FireOut - Tue Aug 17, 2004 11:43 pm
I did not say it could not be done, I did not ask for a size limit change.
| FireOut wrote: |
| Well, either way it is a competition and I don't intend to fight to alter the rules just so that my game can fit in. Hopefully there will be other competitions without that limit next. I love the idea of winner games getting "published". |
Please read before taking any assumptions, as right now I feel ridiculous for just having quoted myself ;-)
Saying a game can have more content/become better with larger size is different from asking the competition rules to be altered.
I just gave an opinion and asked a simple question, out of curiosity.
Sorry for posting this useless crap, being contradicted is always interesting, while being misunderstood is not. I'm really sorry for what I didn't say.
#25194 - nomad40 - Wed Aug 18, 2004 4:12 am
I think you need to consider that if profits are taken then
they need to be accounted for and distributed.
This in it self is a extra level of work that will then needed
to be accounted for in the project. Also when you take
profits Uncle Sam will want his due. Unless your running
this operation under the table;)
#25207 - tepples - Wed Aug 18, 2004 4:28 pm
| nomad40 wrote: |
| Also when you take profits Uncle Sam will want his due. Unless your running this operation under the table;) |
Or unless gbadev.org becomes a not-for-profit and invests net earnings back into operations.
_________________
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-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#25208 - chrisrothery - Wed Aug 18, 2004 5:25 pm
I voted to break even. I'll give it a go. Would be nice to see my entry on a cart (not presuming anything about winning!).
A small profit would be nice as prize money (could go towards a DS!), but none of us are going to make a fortune out of this are we?
bumping it up to $2 profit, the top end of what we can expect is ?100 (I'm in the UK), which for most of us will be about 20p an hour for what goes into an entry.
Of course if running and publicising the competition can benefit from a cash input, then 50c - $1 a cart would also be acceptable. (I agree with an earlier comment about buying a couple of carts to send out/show mates etc, and we don't really want to make profit out of ourselves do we).
#25214 - funkeejeffou - Wed Aug 18, 2004 10:27 pm
Hi,
I really think this 512K ROM size is too severe, and I agree with tetsuo.
Even though I understand the point of putting more games on a cartridge and I'm totally OK with it, we should be realistic on the output of it : There will certainly be less entries, with a less good games I think.
Now everybody know that WarrioWorld, Tetris, and more(thks to tepples) are less than 512K, but people here maybe do not have the experience of designing as good, and maybe have never used compression. And maybe some wanna do more than a platteform game...
The goal of this compo is to do a full game in less than 4 months with certainly less experimented teams and less people(and the deadline is really soon, it isnt 9 monthes). How can we realistically achieve this level with so much constraints?
Maybe we should have a poll on it? Could we have a bigger cartridge in terms of space? Could we reduce the number of entries?
This poll seems important to me and certainly to others, so please just give it a try.
Cheers, Jeff.
#25215 - poslundc - Wed Aug 18, 2004 10:54 pm
| funkeejeffou wrote: |
| Even though I understand the point of putting more games on a cartridge and I'm totally OK with it, we should be realistic on the output of it : There will certainly be less entries, with a less good games I think. |
I'm inclined to believe almost the opposite: that there will be higher-quality games because people will be forced to be less lazy in their design.
| Quote: |
| but people here maybe do not have the experience of designing as good, and maybe have never used compression. |
I strongly suspect that most of the people who are afraid of this size limitation have not even bothered to look into how to compress their data, and have no idea how simple or difficult it is to do.
Do some research. There is already an excellently written FAQ on the matter. There are free tools available to compress your data for you, and it should take you less than an hour to figure out how to decompress your stuff with the BIOS calls. Less than an hour!
That's even assuming you need compression in the first place.
| Quote: |
| The goal of this compo is to do a full game in less than 4 months with certainly less experimented teams and less people(and the deadline is really soon, it isnt 9 monthes). How can we realistically achieve this level with so much constraints? |
Have you programmed an entire game for the GBA before? Do you know how long it will take you? Trust me, if size limitations are all you are worried about then you are worrying about the wrong thing.
Dan.
#25216 - funkeejeffou - Wed Aug 18, 2004 11:31 pm
What are you talking about? It is not because we have more space that we will do graphics that sucks ! The point is that a 32*32 images does takes place and it doesnt reflects what is inside in term of quality !
I know aout compression and maybe I wasn't talking about myself here... Compression do makes data smaller but find me a compression algorithm that encodes 100MB of random raw data into 1MB...
If I was sure the game could enter the compo once compressed there wouldnt be any problems. The thing is that I've been coding for two weeks tools and we have been keeping changing the design and some other stuff to lower and lower the data...
I'm even gonna compute on the fly some data to use less ROM space...
But that still doesn't seem to do it, even with taking into account compression.
That is why after two weeks of thinking and redesigning I'm posting here, cause I'm begining to realize that we might not fit the size limitation, and this would be really sad for our team.
I also wanted to know if others had the same problem.
I know that programming a game takes long and that is why before jumping into the codel we are setting all the constraints on paper and that we are thinking, so we wont have to realize an error the 1st december. Plus, the code on the project doesnt scares me as I know it can be achieved in time. But size is something we must think of, as anybody entering the compo.
Good luck with your entry, and I'm looking forward to it.
Cheers, Jeff
#25222 - yaustar - Thu Aug 19, 2004 12:35 am
In our case, we wont know until it happens, size limitation was never a constraint before so in effect we left 3/4 weeks to counter the problem..
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#25228 - tepples - Thu Aug 19, 2004 2:28 am
It isn't that hard to generate waveforms to represent musical instruments. I've posted a few synthesis techniques.
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-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#25235 - shenmansell - Thu Aug 19, 2004 6:59 am
In general you make a trade off between size of the program and speed of development.
It is all well and good to say that you can compress things, or make sounds from waveforms, but consider:
Compressing graphics will only save you so much space. Maybe you can save heaps of space by coding a little demo of the game to show the user how to play rather then having a bunch of static screens, but that will take a week of coding.
Maybe you can save space by storing all your music in some funky format, but if you were planning on using krawall, or some other music player that doesn't support the super compressed format, then you will need to code your own, which is a significant time sink.
If you have a musician you are working with, you can ask them to make their songs using only waveforms, or with samples as small as possible, but that will take more time, and it might mean the difference between 6 good big songs or 2 good small songs, since the artists are probably not going to be used to working with space constraints.
Even if you do these things to compress everything possible, there is still the fact that if the limit was more then 512k you could fit more into your game.
I'm don't really mind what the limit is in either way, just saying that the issue isn't as simple as tepples makes it out to be.
I entered the 4k gba coding comp, so I do know a bit about the issue.
However there are going to have to be constraints no matter what, if there are going to be several games on a cart. You aren't ever going to get 100 Mb of data in a GBA game (like a poster above was talking about).
I would say that if you think your game is going to win the comp (have a look at the past winners), then you could limit yourself to 1 Mb in size, otherwise keep to 512 k, or at least have a plan as to what you will remove to get down to that size.
That said, if I enter some cool 4k games am I pretty much guaranteed a spot since space won't be a issue? ;-)
I'd love to see a break down of the costs for producing the carts. Maybe the people who want to make big games can form a self funded group and self publish.
Shen
#25237 - shenmansell - Thu Aug 19, 2004 7:16 am
I just noticed that the whole ridiculous size conversation is duplicated over in the huge competition thread.
Sorry about that.
Has anyone written to the Ham and Krawall people about license / pop up screen issues yet?
I know that Sebastian the krawall guy was good when we were getting stuff with Datel sorted out. Hopefully gbadev.org can come to a good arrangement with him.
Getting krawall licenses sorted out would be a big step towards getting good quality games for the cart, unless someone has released a wicked free sound and music player for the GBA that I'm not aware of.
Any takers from gbadev.org to approach Sebastian and report back? Updating the compo rules with the info would be good too, as well as a news item when we find out what is happening.
Shen
#25238 - cocole - Thu Aug 19, 2004 7:29 am
| shenmansell wrote: |
Has anyone written to the Ham and Krawall people about license / pop up screen issues yet?
|
That has been discussed with HAM man (tubooboo) here : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hamdev/
I am not aware of such a public thingy with Krawall people.
#25239 - cappeca - Thu Aug 19, 2004 7:44 am
| poslundc wrote: |
| funkeejeffou wrote: | | Even though I understand the point of putting more games on a cartridge and I'm totally OK with it, we should be realistic on the output of it : There will certainly be less entries, with a less good games I think. |
I'm inclined to believe almost the opposite: that there will be higher-quality games because people will be forced to be less lazy in their design.
|
But then you assume too much. I'm doing a version of my poker game for the compo, and so far I had to cut from 10 to 2 partners. It's a big loss to my game, but I had to do it because even compressed, there's no way I could fit 92 full images in only 512k. Also, you expect good games to automatically come from good programmers, which is not a thumb rule. Good games are not related to how well a designer can handle a bunch of data in small spaces - we leave that for good demos.
| Quote: |
| Quote: | | but people here maybe do not have the experience of designing as good, and maybe have never used compression. |
I strongly suspect that most of the people who are afraid of this size limitation have not even bothered to look into how to compress their data, and have no idea how simple or difficult it is to do.
|
Or maybe, some games ARE that big.
| Quote: |
Do some research. There is already an excellently written FAQ on the matter. There are free tools available to compress your data for you, and it should take you less than an hour to figure out how to decompress your stuff with the BIOS calls. Less than an hour!
That's even assuming you need compression in the first place.
|
And after all that and lots of actual cuts here and there, you come to realize that your game has come from 3.8MB to a bleeding 720Kb. What now?
In a compo with ROM size restriction, the matter is as important to the design as any other decision. I find your judgement over bigger ROMs to be badly designed and your advice to do a research before complaining as misinformed and offensive.
#25247 - poslundc - Thu Aug 19, 2004 12:44 pm
| cappeca wrote: |
| But then you assume too much. I'm doing a version of my poker game for the compo, and so far I had to cut from 10 to 2 partners. It's a big loss to my game, but I had to do it because even compressed, there's no way I could fit 92 full images in only 512k. |
You probably couldn't fit 92, but with JPEG compression you could fit about 70 or so full-screen images (more assuming you don't use the entire screen). Given that knowledge, if you can't strike a compromise between size of your assets and game features in something like a poker game I think you ought to reconsider your design. I know that I would rather play another game on this cartridge than have another set of fullscreen images in a poker game.
| Quote: |
| Also, you expect good games to automatically come from good programmers, which is not a thumb rule. Good games are not related to how well a designer can handle a bunch of data in small spaces - we leave that for good demos. |
I don't expect anything so blindly automatic. But I do believe that in the aggregate a size limitation will result in better design, not worse design.
| Quote: |
| Or maybe, some games ARE that big. |
Then, they will have to be made smaller. In the case of your poker game, there is no technological requirement that forces you to change your fundamental design (in terms of player numbers) because you can't have as many fullscreen pictures as you would like for each. That tradeoff is your decision. There are plenty of other possible tradeoffs you could make that wouldn't ultimately affect game design.
| Quote: |
| And after all that and lots of actual cuts here and there, you come to realize that your game has come from 3.8MB to a bleeding 720Kb. What now? |
Revisit your design. Programmers do it all the time. If you don't want to have to do that, then plan better. In your example, a well-designed poker game ought not to be broken if it turned out to have more assets than could fit. You should be able to modify it to use fewer or simpler assets.
| Quote: |
| In a compo with ROM size restriction, the matter is as important to the design as any other decision. I find your judgement over bigger ROMs to be badly designed and your advice to do a research before complaining as misinformed and offensive. |
It's a shame that I don't care what your opinions about me are.
Dan.
#25248 - Tetsuo - Thu Aug 19, 2004 1:02 pm
| shenmansell wrote: |
| Has anyone written to the Ham and Krawall people about license / pop up screen issues yet? |
I posted about this in the other competition thread today and I had forgotten that this was raised here too. Sorry for the double post :o
Anyways, I emailed today with Krawall about using their non-commercial licence for our competition entry and this is not a problem if no profit is made. I had asked them since the cartridge will be sold and I wanted to know if this wouldn't violate the non-commercial licence agreement.
These are the conditions that I asked them and that they (Sebastian from Synk) agreed to:
- I can use the $17 non-commercial licence for my competition entry as long as no profit will be made.
- I don't have to show a Krawall splash screen.
- I will list Krawall in the credit.
#25249 - CATS - Thu Aug 19, 2004 1:15 pm
cappeca, it's simple, if you have a 512k limit, then don't design a game that uses high definition photographs. Your problem is that you created a game with no regard for the size, then complain that you can't cut it down. You should have designed it taking into account the size limit from the ground up.
#25254 - funkeejeffou - Thu Aug 19, 2004 3:28 pm
Shenmansell, the 100MB data was a metaphore in the case you couldn't figure it out by yourself...
Anyway, it would be cool if SimonB or another Admin posted to tell us if the size limit could be changed. I'm sure that we could find a solution, I pretty much like the one where the profit will go to gbadev.org so we can have a 64MB cartridge.
Cheers, Jeff.
#25255 - SimonB - Thu Aug 19, 2004 3:51 pm
Lets try to discuss the compo in just 1 thread....
Ill reply in the original compo thread and then we can leave this open in case anyone would like to comment on their voting.
Simon
#25391 - ScottLininger - Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:06 pm
dagamer's thought got lost in all of the bitching about the cart size. I'd like to second him:
If the cart makes a profit, it's more likely to get Nintendo's legal attention. I'm not too concerned that anyone is going to get sued for damages, but we could certainly be staring down the barrel of a cease and desist that ultimately leads to no cart and no compo. :(
I think the $10 price point is psychologically nice, but psychology only becomes relavent in the mass market, which this product is NOT hitting. Most of the people who would buy it for $10 (that's all of us) would buy it for $12, I believe.
-Scott
#26197 - SimonB - Thu Sep 09, 2004 1:44 pm
So its settled. We will sell it to break even. Thanks for voting. I will update the compo rules asap.
Topic closed.
Simon