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STEAM | April 2017 - Fly me to the Moon

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Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Member
Freeza Under The Shower said:
But ehm, on a serious note it is kind of odd that they didn't just put DC on gog since it was released on PC before, so there's nothing holding a rerelease back. Maybe there are license issues or Capcom just doesn't want to confuse RE fans (or insult them perhaps).

Wait, why am I talking about this?
Click to expand...

The games are up on PSN, so I don't think there's any particular licensing (at least in the US, the games aren't available in the EU). Only thing that comes to mind is eitherthey don't want to pay the original port team any sort of royalties, or they just don't want to bother for whatever reason. They haven't even brought RE1-3 classic on pc either for whatever reason.

Everyone always succumbs at some point to DC talk.
 
S

Syphon Filter

Member
Jawmuncher said:
The games are up on PSN, so I don't think there's any particular licensing (at least in the US, the games aren't available in the EU). Only thing that comes to mind is eitherthey don't want to pay the original port team any sort of royalties, or they just don't want to bother for whatever reason. They haven't even brought RE1-3 classic on pc either for whatever reason.

Everyone always succumbs at some point to DC talk.
Click to expand...

Did that capcom guy ever acknowledge the old RE games on steam talk?
 
A

Anteater

Member
it's been 30 years since i've played dino crisis but i remember you can walk and shoot at the same time

it was ahead of its time
 
Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Member
Syphon Filter said:
Did that capcom guy ever acknowledge the old RE games on steam talk?
Click to expand...

Not that I recall. Wbacon actually stays pretty quiet and has never once gotten into specifics on any sort of ports. I don't even think he's ever quoted a game in a post (at least not doing so and acknowledging it).

It's always just "there are more ports and surprises coming!" Which makes sense, since he doesn't want to lose his job. But still would be nice to get even a hint of what's going on.
 
C

Chance Hale

Member
Silence and Syberia 3 are both beautiful games that randomly insert awful quality prerendered videos. To clarify they're rare but I don't know why devs still think it's acceptable to have such jarring transitions to jaggy banding filled abombinations in visually focused story based games.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
project phoenix continues to be worth my pledge on the basis of the story of the game's development alone

Production Situation
Daniel here, I have been working now just over a year at Creative Intelligence Arts. I want to be the one who presents our situation. There is lots for us to complain about but I am not going to play the blame game here. Instead let's talk about money.
As everyone knows the headline figure received between Paypal and Kickstarter was 1.14Million USD. As we have mentioned in the past this figure is misleading because it ignores how 0.26M of that disappeared even before we received it. That 0.26M is split between Kickstarter's fee, Paypal's fee, and something we had not expect: unfulfilled pledges.

So now that leaves 0.88M right? Well not yet, you see we did not plan to give out cheap backer rewards. We planned to give physical rewards backers the best quality figures, boxes, and all fantastic things Japan makes. Which meant our planned expenses for backer rewards are significant. We set aside a further 0.35M to deliver these rewards. This money cannot, has not, and will not be touched for development.
Now it is important to note that being generous like this with backer rewards was common practice during our era of Kickstarter. It was common thinking that generous rewards were what motivated backers. While many other projects have said the same thing as if they failed to calculate the costs that is not what happened to us. We fully calculated the costs of commissioning high quality figurines and high quality prints. We set this money aside because we knew it was a major cost. In practical terms what this means for backers at high dollar values is a majority of their backing funds are locked up for delivery of the rewards.

So our development budget is a still pretty impressive 0.55M USD. That is about enough to hire 5 full time AAA developers for almost 12 months. Ok I will drop the sarcasm, we all know 0.55M USD is not a significant budget for developing a game like Project Phoenix. Instead we had a plan, and it was realistic plan, but it relied on a few things.

All the AAA developers we worked with were going to be contracted, many contracted at reduced rates with royalty share. The 3d assets were going to be done by the same company which later did work for Blizzard's Overwatch. They are great modelers, and we are thankful they worked on Project Phoenix. Plus they did so at a work rate which can only be described as insulting. The programming was going to be done by a genius, once he finished up work on this other major indie game. I mention those two aspects because those are where we think production was the most troubled.
Now you might wonder what the budget would have looked like with the original smaller Project Phoenix envisioned for the 0.1M USD minimum goal. The truth is such a budget would have been easier to pull off, almost all developers were committed to working on royalty basis. The workloads for the 2.5d & reduced scope project would have required only partial dedication of developer's after hours time.
Yet when the funding exploded we did the same thing every other project of the era did, we exploded the scope. Gone was 2.5d and instead the plan was multiple high grade 3d worlds each with unique environmental assets. Now there was an overworld and cutscenes. The game got longer, the story more detailed, gameplay more complex, and the world larger. What also got larger was the commitment required from developers. Thus the portion of labor the budget needed to cover expanded. Gone was the idea of developing after work, now Project Phoenix needed people to work full time in their office. More art and for every piece of art the project needed to pay more in cash.

This was not a failure, we had an expanded budget from the kickstarter and Hiro's professional work. Accounting only for contracting outlays we have invested the 0.55M USD development budget plus 0.48M USD we earned from his professional work. To re-iterate, the 0.26M and 0.35M USD we mentioned earlier were not used for development. This 1.03M USD counts only out of company outlays, it does not include our own salaries or any rent. **Of every $1 of development money from your backing, $2+ was spent on development.** We have not taken publisher money, or sold interest in project phoenix to investors. Hiroaki Yura himself is Project Phoenix's biggest backer to the tune of almost 500K USD. We are not complaining. Every game developer wants to do their best. Every developer dreams of a bigger budget and larger game. We expanded Project Phoenix because we were hyped along with our backers.

We are still hyped. We are still committed to Project Phoenix, but as you can guess the original production plan did not work. We know that production plan did not work because when we released the vertical cut players were not impressed with the art. Now of course not all of the 1.03M USD was invested on 3d models, we commissioned concept art for a full world. Yet if the 3d assets were not acceptable to our backers this left us in a hard spot. Building higher detail assets requires not only spending more money and time per asset but also throwing out the existing assets. Of course the loss of our original programmer means we must now finance all programming out of a budget which was never designed to accommodate this. Hence, even less professional revenue going towards financing art.

Which put us into our current position. We expect to make our backers happy will require higher quality assets and more programmers. To this end we stopped investing the returns from our music business into art assets and instead drove them into a different smaller production, with further assistance from private investors. Should this tiny product succeed those private investors have promised to invest significant capital into Project Phoenix. In this way we have been able to expand our in-house development staff and work towards a bright future for Project Phoenix. Instead of financing salaries and running costs out of Project Phoenix we have been building a team out of the budget of this tiny project.Work has continued on Project Phoenix, but only things for which budget existed. If you have been wondering why the past few months have had lots of story updates, that is the reason why. We are very excited for this tiny project which will be announced in May. It is fun to play and we are proud of that.

Should it hit the success we are hoping for it will set our team in a position to deliver Project Phoenix anything we had hoped for. This is not a plea to support that project, please consider it but understand it is not Project Phoenix.

In closing, the problems facing Project Phoenix have been the same problems facing other large kickstarters of the era. We have seen other projects release at quality below fan's expectations and we are putting our all into avoiding such a fate.

Daniel Dressler - Lead Programmer
Click to expand...

i would've rather gotten a game by now instead but as someone that backed it for the bare minimum i find it pretty fascinating to read their story first hand every couple of months. i really wish the story gets a happy ending, even if they have delivered zero so far they seem very committed to the project which is a bit encouraging, tho my expectations are very low.

for now i'm pretty content with just reading this stuff, it's been really interesting insight in context of that torment interview and such
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
7NBCcrP.png


killer is dead went by pretty quick

was kind of iffy about it cos i didn't like the characters much and idk, boob missions are dumb, but finished it as a fan

i never played killer7 or no more heroes tho i've watched let's plays of all of them and while i liked lollipop chainsaw a lot it didn't feel like a proper sude51 game, it wasn't weird or dark enough

killer is dead is pretty fucking weird and just as dark, and i like it cos it's both in a way that's pretty approachable despite what your initial reaction should be. fact that after you complete the story you unlock what's pretty much a story guide down to the symbolism, it makes it really enjoyable if anything to catch a glimpse at all the meaning that could be hidden beneath all the yelling and the fanservice and the blood.

it's auteur nonsense, so i like it a lot, it's got a lot of personality to it and despite the jank and padding (what i also feel is trademark suda51) it's very fun to play, the action feels good and while it's no bayonetta it's an enjoyably deep puddle. coming from nier 2 which also had a fairly shallow and mashy combat system, i just enjoyed killer is dead's flavor better

and speaking of which, i'm going back and forth over replaying the entirety of nier 2, all those people being crazy about it make me pause and want to give it another chance. specially today listening to the beastcast about how affected they felt by a sidequest i hadn't even seen, i feel like it wouldn't be such a bad idea. i reckon being all leveled up means it wouldn't take another 50 hours

edit: oh btw i still have no idea what those boobie missions are for lol
 
R

Rizzi

Member
zkylon said:
7NBCcrP.png


killer is dead went by pretty quick

was kind of iffy about it cos i didn't like the characters much and idk, boob missions are dumb, but finished it as a fan

i never played killer7 or no more heroes tho i've watched let's plays of all of them and while i liked lollipop chainsaw a lot it didn't feel like a proper sude51 game, it wasn't weird or dark enough

killer is dead is pretty fucking weird and just as dark, and i like it cos it's both in a way that's pretty approachable despite what your initial reaction should be. fact that after you complete the story you unlock what's pretty much a story guide down to the symbolism, it makes it really enjoyable if anything to catch a glimpse at all the meaning that could be hidden beneath all the yelling and the fanservice and the blood.

it's auteur nonsense, so i like it a lot, it's got a lot of personality to it and despite the jank and padding (what i also feel is trademark suda51) it's very fun to play, the action feels good and while it's no bayonetta it's an enjoyably deep puddle. coming from nier 2 which also had a fairly shallow and mashy combat system, i just enjoyed killer is dead's flavor better

and speaking of which, i'm going back and forth over replaying the entirety of nier 2, all those people being crazy about it make me pause and want to give it another chance. specially today listening to the beastcast about how affected they felt by a sidequest i hadn't even seen, i feel like it wouldn't be such a bad idea. i reckon being all leveled up means it wouldn't take another 50 hours

edit: oh btw i still have no idea what those boobie missions are for lol
Click to expand...

Did you beat Nier, or did you beat Nier?
 
H

Hektor

Member
The gigolo missions were how you unlocked new weapons.

I loved them because of how shameless they were even if the minigame itself is pretty terrible
 
R

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
dot said:
I wonder who actually thought the game ended at route A and stopped playing it lol

i finally unlocked chapter select and uh...yeah. I might as well go for all the endings...
Click to expand...

Thats what I did with Nier back in the day. I had no idea and I dont think the game gives any indication that you should restart like Automata does, but its been ages.
 
V

Vazra

irresponsible vagina leak
dot said:
I wonder who actually thought the game ended at route A and stopped playing it lol

i finally unlocked chapter select and uh...yeah. I might as well go for all the endings...
Click to expand...

It was nice to get the Chapter Select for the other endings and to clear any quests you may have missed in the past.
Plus exploits for quick money
 
C

Chance Hale

Member
Unrelated but how far are you into Syberia 3? Just got to town and there hasn't been too much game halting progress other than the ship floor disappearing. You're the only person here to post impressions and I want to make sure the game isn't about to explode like the user reviews imply lol.
 
S

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Chance Hale said:
Unrelated but how far are you into Syberia 3? Just got to town and there hasn't been too much game halting progress other than the ship floor disappearing. You're the only person here to post impressions and I want to make sure the game isn't about to explode like the user reviews imply lol.
Click to expand...

I'm in the town. The main issue everyone agrees on is the controls and the lip syncing. I do see some sporadic crash type bug reports but they don't seem consistent across the board. I haven't had anything break so far. Hope to get back to it soon, but kinda tempted to hold off for a patch.
 
A

Arjac

Member
zkylon said:
7NBCcrP.png


killer is dead went by pretty quick
Click to expand...
Man I need to get around to that at some point...
pity my 360 pad broke, the 3rd party replacement is serviceable for things like driving but for character action (especially Devil May Cry) the xbone-style shoulder buttons are terrible
 
D

Durante

Member
Snakethesniper said:
I summon Durante! Does the quality of the items crafted in sophie only influence the price?
Click to expand...
There are some traits which have the extent of their effect tied to quality. And of course it affects the quality of the resultant item when used as an ingredient, so aiming for the highest quality makes sense since lots of items will ultimately end up in ingots and/or fabrics.
 
R

Rizzi

Member
dot said:
I wonder who actually thought the game ended at route A and stopped playing it lol

i finally unlocked chapter select and uh...yeah. I might as well go for all the endings...
Click to expand...

Vazra said:
It was nice to get the Chapter Select for the other endings and to clear any quests you may have missed in the past.
Plus exploits for quick money
Click to expand...

But how are you supposed to use chapter select when the correct option is to
sacrifice your save game?
 
C

Chance Hale

Member
Stumpokapow said:
I'm in the town. The main issue everyone agrees on is the controls and the lip syncing. I do see some sporadic crash type bug reports but they don't seem consistent across the board. I haven't had anything break so far. Hope to get back to it soon, but kinda tempted to hold off for a patch.
Click to expand...
It's been long enough since Syberia 2 that I didn't remember Kate's voice so I tried playing in French but incidental npc dialogue isn't subtitled and I had to switch back.

Steam big picture really needs some major improvements, still doesn't list 4k as an option, can't search by dev, no way to easily get to the community discussion while in a game, and often gets stuck in the screenshot or achievement sections until you quit the game. Are there any user versions like main steam?
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
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t1cxE6r.gif
Backstage Pass -- MB-E949D545F5C1483F - Taken by Anteater
Akihabara - Feel the Rhythm -- MB-BBFE917310114AC5 - Taken by Loptous
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C

Chance Hale

Member
Durante said:
You have to launch Steam with -fulldesktopres. I agree that they should fix that (or make it hardware-dependent).
Click to expand...
Didn't work for me sadly, maybe because my monitor is plugged in? Although I have it set to where I'm only using the second screen (which is the 4k tv)

Shadow Tactics is incredible, have never played the Commandando games or anything like that which I e always considered one of my last gaming blindspots.
 
D

Durante

Member
It's interesting how relatively unexplored the commando-like subgenre (isometric real-time tactics) remained in the decade after the games.
 
C

Chairmanchuck

Member
Durante said:
It's interesting how relatively unexplored the commando-like subgenre (isometric real-time tactics) remained in the decade after the games.
Click to expand...

Wasnt there some Samurai game last year that was similar like that?

But I agree. I just dont know how popular that genre itself was outside of Europe.
 
H

Hektor

Member
My favorite in the genre was Desperados 2 because it allowed you to fluidly switch between the commandoslike gameplay and third person shooting whenever you wanted, even if it wasn't very polished at being either

It felt very unique and fresh
 
K

kionedrik

Member
Durante said:
It's interesting how relatively unexplored the commando-like subgenre (isometric real-time tactics) remained in the decade after the games.
Click to expand...

The whole RTS genre went into hibernation during the second half of the 2000's apart from a very few games (I personally can only think of SC2), so it's only natural that that particular subgenre also disappeared.
It seems the marked shifted heavily towards Turn-based games. The reason why that happened is anyone's guess but I think part of it is due to mobile and facebook gaming where real-time isn't really an option.
 
P

patapuf

Member
Shadow Tactics: Blades of Shogun is a fantastic entry in the "commando genre".

Quality of life changes and UI work that make the game feel modern without loosing the depth the genre is known for.

If anyone wants to scratch that itch it's great and pretty meaty.
 
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