Due to the lack of updates, i’d like to ask if one of the admins would be able to post the completion percentages of the current items in production, similar to what was given during Anime Expo.
During Anime Expo the completion percentages were at:
Princess Waltz (80% complete)
Family Project ~Kazoku Keikaku~ (60% complete)
Cosplay Fetish Academy (40% complete)
Cat Girl Alliance (35% complete)
Lightning Warrior RaidyII (10% complete)
I’m not an admin or anyone who works for PP, but I’d say it’s probably safe to add 15-20% to all your existing stuff. Since PW is now 100%, that would seem to make everything else increase about the same percentage wise. We’ll just have to see what they reply with.
Princess Waltz is complete. They’ve sent it off for duplication, which means it will be available for sale or shipped to everyone who pre-ordered it fairly soon (in a few days to a few weeks).
opticalsky, I wouldn’t say that. Games advance at their own rates. PW going 100% could represent a steady rate of work, so the other games advanced at the same rate as they had been— OR it could represent a final “push” to get the game finalized before Dec 2008, and therefore no work got done on the other games. We just don’t know enough on the workings and manpower allocations.
Plus, new games in the pipeline like LWR2 probably only advanced another couple percent in the first place. From what we’ve been told, they usually have to make some changes to the engine or do other inner workings changes. I doubt that work goes as quickly as translating actual japanese text to its english equivalence.
On top of all that, we don’t know PP’s system of marking completion. What if beta testing is 80%? How long does that take for the average game?
And that’s not even getting into the differences in actual game lengths, and all the other things that can happen (ie— waiting on recieving that last “uncensored” artwork to plug into the game, and all those other “minor” items that have held up games from being completed for months at a time in the past).
I’m gonna take a small guess, but the more games they are working on, probably the slower the rest go.
When you think about it they are splitting up workers on each game making the group working on it smaller and smaller till one is completed.
Princess Waltz
Family Project ~Kazoku Keikaku~
Cosplay Fetish Academy
Cat Girl Alliance
Lightning Warrior RaidyII
Downhill Night
Cleavage
Thats roughly 7 groups there.
6 if you don’t count the completed Princess Waltz.
And the Downhill Night series is 3 games, so that could be one whole team, or 3 separate teams.
So roughly 6-10 groups working on there own game ( or games if 1 group does more than 1 )
So there would be less people to work on it slowing down the process.
Actually thats not exactly how it works, usually obtaining the license is only a start to the project, it then turns over seas, who ever owned the license then needs to provide all the original data, all the files, all the differnt texts lists of problems, and this is where the delay will lay for a while because ususally a project like that is given to a guy/girl who is already working on 2-3 differnt projects for the company… so he/she will find all those things as he needs to hit deadlines, and most of the time, he/she will produce these items when the deadline comes.
So after that part is done it can finally come over here, its then placed into the hand for the next people on the project, be it debuggers or translators.
So yes i know its frustrating, but i remember when Jast was the only one trying to produce these games and they started strong, but after that it was 1 a year or so, So for not im happy to wait just a bit for 3-4 games a year, and with megagamer, though not 100% on translations i can live with it, and mostly i can get past the translation just read through it… move on knowing that if i dont support them, we lose another company reducing the # of games we will see a year.
I’d like to address this issue a bit.
The numbers we put out at AX this summer were more or less accurate according to a certain (admittedly inaccurately linear) view of project workflow. “Percentage of components converted” might have been a more accurate way to explain what the numbers meant. The problem for us is that even after we’ve completely produced the individual parts of a game conversion there are still obstacles to completing the project that are beyond our control. Namely: the extent to which the cooperation of the original Japanese creator is required to finish the project, and the timeliness with which that cooperation is provided.
In the case of Princess Waltz, we had the script finished for awhile. Our translator was able to compile the script file for incorporation into the game, so that part of the final production was relatively painless. What held things up were a series of issues with the game visuals that needed to be resolved through several iterations of communication with the Japanese developer (ranging from a glitch in the appearance of the copyright information on the title screen, to odd spacing in the game-rendered font, to all of the event CG still being censored) that took several unanticipated weeks of back-and-forth to get resolved.
This X-factor is the big reason why we’re reluctant to provide concrete release dates or timeframes until a product is complete. We’re dealing with an industry where the degree of professionalism varies widely, and each company we cooperate with has its own idiosyncrasies that can either ease or hinder the production process.