Coding a CPC game: motivation and feedback.

[mr_lou]

I can't believe we're talking tax problems now....

But fine, you can, as a developer, waive your right to the prize. Your own decision. Problem solved.
No prize, but still get the publicity. Happy?

[andycadley]

Maybe refine the idea? Take the money out and just have a "game club" thread each month where a recent release is picked and everyone plays, comments and maybe competes for the best score or something. With a poll to rate the game overall as a kind of game club score?

[AMSDOS]

Just give it to Public Domain if you don't want the Cash!

[Rhino]

A few observations:


1) It rasied over $100K, it didn't make over $100K. There are going to be a lot of costs in fulfilling some of those offers.
2) They're targeting PC/Mac as well as the C64, that puts it squarely in the mainstream of game development (even if it's a retro-styled) game. People that don't want the "hassle" of messing around with emulators and such become part of the target market.


But, fair play to them, if they can actually make a living providing retro games then good for them. It will be interesting to see when the game is actually released.

They have given details about costs:



More than 50% for development.
But Kickstarter does not have to be the only funding source. In fact, they continue on megafounder and go for $137k:

https://www.megafounder.com/unknown-realm

They are also trying on Steam and other platforms, and they could have significantly increased revenues including other platforms like NES, so more than $100k exclusively for development is perfectly feasible.

If you see the detail of the payments made, it is very fragmented, but what most money has reported on Kickstarter seems to be the COLLECTOR'S EDITION (C64), 154$ or more x 142 buyers, which gives an idea of the number of people willing to pay large amounts of money for cartridges.

Adding PC version seems like a good idea, and PC version looks exactly the same as the C64 version, so I do not think it will involve a lot of additional work.

[Shining]

For me the whole thing here is going into the wrong direction. Like keith56 mentioned, it is all about the feedback. Also don't forget about the tool, hardware and demomakers out there, they also don't do this for the money. They do it for the fun of it and to get a little feedback about their products. When you are now talking, giving some gamecoders money, what about them. I don't think you can draw a line somewhere. If one want to spent any money, then do something like cpcretrodev (but also for demos, tools, hardware,...). Perhaps a cpcwikiretrodev  .


Some posts above, one wrote that if he dislikes a production he'll better not give any feedback. And in my case, I was very disappointed (and still am) about the Pentomino-feedback because exactly that is what I think about Pentomino: It seems (not for everyone) to be a too bad production. I'm continuously improving my skills, today I'm not able to code something like PinballDreams or SMB but I was proud of it. During the end of Pentomino development Hal6128 and I began to plan our next production. Cause I wanted to do something with hardwarescroll (to improve my skills) we wanted to do an action-RPG (druid, diablo, etc...) but after the release of pentomino we lost motivation. I'm very bitter about that.


You want more from Shining, give feedback. You want more from keith56, give feedback.

[AMSDOS]

CPC-Power has the facilities for feedback, though I think Kukulcan only accepts French comments. 

[Rhino]

About motivation, in the Amiga Spanish demoscene of the early 90's there was a diskmag called "Fanzine" which included a section "Vote or Die". With each issue was published the results of the votes to the top 10 productions, groups, coder, graphician, musician, etc ... This Hall of Fame motivated the people a lot to do things. Seeing the name of your game, or your own in the rankings is another way of feedback.

[reidrac]

CPC-Power has the facilities for feedback, though I think Kukulcan only accepts French comments. 

I've read comments in English too.

[Puresox]

I'm sure the CPC can shoot its self in the foot and do nothing ,and end up like  What Lawrence of Arabia said about the Arabs 

[roudoudou]

If you see the detail of the payments made, it is very fragmented, but what most money has reported on Kickstarter seems to be the COLLECTOR'S EDITION (C64), 154$ or more x 142 buyers, which gives an idea of the number of people willing to pay large amounts of money for cartridges.

I do not think there will be 150 cartridge buyers at 150€ for a CPC+ cartridge. But we can try 

[Puresox]

But thats unfair cos there is some awesome programmers doing it and succeeding already here


Only the fittest survive in CPC land

[Puresox]

If you want feedback then be prepared, cos as people say . Not everyone feels positive toward certain games etc.

[Shining]

Deleted

[Shining]

Only the fittest survive in CPC land

Ok, i understand and that is what it seems to be. When this is really the case,and i hope that others will prove me wrong, i am out.....

[mr_lou]

For me the whole thing here is going into the wrong direction. Like keith56 mentioned, it is all about the feedback.

No, what keith56 is asking for is publicity. That you talk about his game, mention it on other forums and on your Facebook page etc.
And that kind of publicity is exactly what a site like that will do. First of all it will send out mails to all members when a new game has been submitted, making sure everyone (interested) is informed. Then they will try out the game.
This part of the idea solves the "I can post something on the forum - and it's gone from the frontpage the next day!" problem.

Also don't forget about the tool, hardware and demomakers out there, they also don't do this for the money. They do it for the fun of it and to get a little feedback about their products. When you are now talking, giving some gamecoders money, what about them. I don't think you can draw a line somewhere. If one want to spent any money, then do something like cpcretrodev (but also for demos, tools, hardware,...). Perhaps a cpcwikiretrodev  .

Of course I can draw the line whereever I want to. That's exactly what CPCRetroDev is doing, and this site could easily do it too. Who are you to decide such things?
Of course, you could make categories if you absolutely wanted to. One for demos, if there is anyone who wants to donate to demomakers the same way. One for hardware stuff to, if someone out there thinks it isn't enough to pay the creator for devices when they buy them.
But for now, the idea is about game-development - just like CPCRetroDev is.

[TMR]

The biggest retro market is USA, and the most extended 8-bit machines there were the C64 and NES, if I'm not mistaken. Collectors of both systems are accustomed to paying large quantities per cartridges, which have much greater profit margin than tapes or discs.

The price tag of cartridge games on the C64 at least is higher than tape or disk because it costs more to produce cartridges - they're not recycled copies of Music Maker or International Soccer and even if they were it'd still cost money to desolder the ROM and replace it with a burnt EPROM of the game!

Loosely speaking, i believe the profit margin is slightly but not significantly higher for disk-based C64 games since 5.25" disks are a little easier and cheaper to source, so for the CPC that probably means tape is the cheapest option i think...?

Apart from digital downloads of course but those are usually priced down to make up for the lack of physical product.

More on the original topic and if anyone wants my advice (and i'm not sure they do but hey ho, you're getting it anyway) then a moderated, sticky thread on this section of the forum just containing posts about new releases with a screenshot, links to the relevant discussions and a download would be a good idea; it's harder for a release to get lost in the general traffic that way.

[mr_lou]

More on the original topic and if anyone wants my advice (and i'm not sure they do but hey ho, you're getting it anyway) then a moderated, sticky thread on this section of the forum just containing posts about new releases with a screenshot, links to the relevant discussions and a download would be a good idea; it's harder for a release to get lost in the general traffic that way.

Or it should just be a sticky that authors are allowed to make one post in for each new game. No discussion in that thread. Only posting when a game is new.

[arnoldemu]

And that kind of publicity is exactly what a site like that will do. First of all it will send out mails to all members when a new game has been submitted, making sure everyone (interested) is informed. Then they will try out the game.

Sounds like a CPC "new releases" RSS feed I would subscribe to that.
I already get the CPCWiki RSS feed.

Doesn't the front page need better visibility? I think also, it's a bit boring to just see a link on the front page as it is now, it needs screenshots and youtube links.

The CPCGameDev is a great way to both teach new programmers that optimisation is still important for "next gen" AND gives good publicity for the CPC

[TMR]

Or it should just be a sticky that authors are allowed to make one post in for each new game. No discussion in that thread. Only posting when a game is new.

i'd limit it to posting when something is complete and the reason i said to make it moderated was to avoid those topic rambles that are bound to happen because someone didn't read the first post in a sticky thread which laid down the rules... =-)

Sounds like a CPC "new releases" RSS feed I would subscribe to that.

Yes, that'd be good for me too as someone who tries to keep up with countless forums and feeds to cover releases on a range of 8-bits.

The CPCGameDev is a great way to both teach new programmers that optimisation is still important for "next gen" AND gives good publicity for the CPC

And having a deadline is good for some programmers too, something specific to aim at rather than the nebulous "when it's finished". i tend to work best under those circumstances myself... sometimes. [Ahem]

[Gryzor]

Arnoldemu pointed me in the direction of this thread-I had followed it, but not the last several posts...

For our part, please do let us know how we can help with concrete ideas. We can easily create a subforum for new releases and announcements and we can see (if people want) how to lock posts so that only OPers can update (tho you'd need other threads for discussing them too?). After all the structure of the forum is not set in stone!

We can also (naturally) post on the wiki front page. I've been asking people to help with that for ages, but only a handful have (thanks!) and lately, with the amount of work I have I've neglected it even more.

People can mention me on Twitter (@krakout) and I'll relay the news.

Or we could do a dedicated Twitter feed for new releases (sounds like a good idea to me).

Or people could post in the CPCwiki Facebook page.

If someone can code the page discussed (which, frankly, sounds like Steam, only more complicated), please do,and we can host it if the community wants us to.

Or we could have a subforum only accessible through microdonations and do it a bit more manually.

Anything we can do to help

Oh, and I'll see if and how specific subforums can have their own RSS feed.

Sent from my HTC 10 using Tapatalk

[Octoate]

Well, as someone who tries to write news about the Amstrad CPC releases for the last decades, I was always trying to get information about new releases by reading and visiting all the different forums and websites. It is very seldom (maybe once in a year) that someone drops me a mail or a PM about a new release and since I don't have the time to read all forums / websites anymore I might miss some of the releases. That's a shame, because in my opinion every title deserves some attention. However, I decided not to write news about productions where I have to translate their website or the production itself, so I am limited to english and german productions.
All my news are also cross-posted to Twitter and are sometimes mentioned by Bitfellas or Pouet if they are scene related. Sometimes I also post news about CPC related productions on the german "Retro" magazine website.
Anyway... if there are threads about the progress of a production and the release is mentioned on page xx, it is hard to notice it for me, since I don't have time to read every posting. It would absolutely help me, if the author drops me a line and I guess it is the same for Genesis8 or the CPCWiki website - like Gryzor already mentioned. Keep us informed and we will also try inform others about it, as good as we can.
For my motivation: I take my own website statistics. They are ok for me to keep it up and running...

[Gryzor]

All very true. Same here, it's very seldom that I get an email or pm about a release...and, actually,I often get sad because some people (like the Spaniards, especially, or the French) choose not to share the news outside their own communities. Not all of them, of course, but there's been lots of stuff I had to translate to find out.

Sent from my HTC 10 using Tapatalk

[Rhino]

Ok, i understand and that is what it seems to be. When this is really the case,and i hope that others will prove me wrong, i am out.....

I think I've never told the Batman Group story here. The beginnings were not easy (as it often happens), but in our case there were some quirks. Two of our members had ripped a couple of intros a few years before BG was founded and that gave us a bad name in the beginning. In the Amiga diskmag I mentioned above, Fanzine, we were mentioned in articles titled as "The lamers of the month". For a while, the feedback from our productions was questioning our authorship and being called lamers.

So we decided to do a demo with which to settle the matter and went to one of the first spanish demo parties. There were contests of many categories and we released prods for all of them. One of the first was the graphics contest, and an amazing pixelation work of Mac was disqualified on suspicions of being scanned. The last one was the demo contest, where we were in the last position, but at least it served as evidence that we were not lamers:

http://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=1129&when=1993

At that time there was a spanish group called Darkness (1st in the demo contest) that was considered the "elite" of the spanish scene. During those years we worked hard to improve them, but the top of the Fanzine's "Vote or Die" was always for them.

When you see that the feedback from your work is not the one you desire, you can give up, or go on to improve and demonstrate to everyone what you are capable of.

[villain]

Ok, i understand and that is what it seems to be. When this is really the case,and i hope that others will prove me wrong, i am out.....

I really don't hope you take this into account. As I already told I found Pentomino to be a great game. It's neither SMB nor PD probably, from the technical point of view. But it still remains a very polished and addictive game. So I hope to see other releases in the future!

And all you devs, I think you should not underestimate the number of pure "consumers" who never appear in the public, since the don't participate in forums or anywhere else.

[AMSDOS]

We can also (naturally) post on the wiki front page. I've been asking people to help with that for ages, but only a handful have (thanks!) and lately, with the amount of work I have I've neglected it even more.

I suggested something like that on Page 1, but it didn't even receive a reply let alone a Like!!