It’s hard to put me feelings how I mean it into correct english gramma. But I feel some anger about that the game, I preordered, take a lot of time to be ready for shipping. Okay it’s probably not your fault (the CG’s must be redrawn and so) but me as a customer it’s depressing to wait for a long awaited game and the only answer is e.c. 1Qtr 2002. Can I ask you when you ordered something, say in a bookstore, a book they say it will take 2 to 5 days to come. Why took it ever 5 days and not 2? Same is it here. Why is it not ready in the first month of 2002. I think it will be nearly April or Mai when it’s out. Okay eventually I overreact a little bit but you must understand me. I’ve preordered quit a lot -Little my Maid -Gibo -Critical Point -Brave Soul -Transfer Student from Jast USA
and before they come out -Tokimeki Check-in -WC -Viper V16 -Viper M1 and some others
and for some games the preordertime is reeeeeeeeeeeeeealy long. LMM and Transfer Student for e.x. Transfer Student was orginally shipped in summer 2000-in words 2K’I’ve write right. I wait for the game nearly 2 years and it was delayed and delayed and delayed. But now Jast said it come out 1 Qtr 2002. I can tell you that I’m happy but it isn’t already here. I think I have to wait until April at least.
So Kumiko don’t take it wrong but please, and that is only my opinion, when you’re not sure that the game come out Jan. so don’t say 1Qtr say in example April and when it’s coming earlier I’m happy. And second try to shorten the time between order and shipping. It doesn’t mean that I will no more preorder something from you it mean only that when you wait for a long awaited game it’s really hard to wait one or two days or a month more.
Errrr, Rammstein-san… Delay is so much usual in the software industry, it’s almost a norm… Look at games like “Star Wars Galaxy” or “Warcraft III”… Delayed, delayed, delayed… As far as PeachPri games are concerned, it’s even much worse, because they’re not the company “making” the game. It’s all up to the Japanese companies, for whom the sales of US version are just “pocket money”, meaning low priority… Alas, I don’t think there’s anything PeachPri can do about that, except hope for higher sales until the day they’ll provide the Japanese companies so much money their opinion will count… So do us all.
[This message has been edited by olf_le_fol (edited 01-29-2002).]
I was thinking Diablo 2 actually. I know my friend was close to foaming at the mouth each time a new delay was announced.
But Rammstein-san, don’t worry, we all feel that frustration. But like Olf-san explained, it’s rather common occurance nowadays. Hmm, come to think of it, it’s not even always software. The project I’m on at work was supposed to have been ready by June 1st, last year! I’m still waiting for it to even get to the half way point!
Kumiko-san does a good job of giving us the most up-to-date projected release dates. Which is still better than some of the other sites. (I forget which site but one of them still had TCI listed as “to-be-released” a month after it had been released.) We just have to hope for the best.
Well, delays can’t be helped sometimes. I am myself watiting for Morrrowind, and it was meant to be out by now, but it has been delayed three months instead .
Besides, Peach Princess have even less control of how “quickly” all their games take to get edited for the english market… if just various things were different, the games would have been here long ago, but as you know, those “various things” aren’t much different for the time being…
What are the stages at which the games are at right now? I don’t mean the expected dates as posted on the main page but just where along are they?
Ie, Kumiko-chan said that Little My Maid had this huge number of files that needed to be translated, checked and cross-checked. How much is done and what still needs to be done? I understand the delays that Kumiko-chan spoke of but I am very curious as to the status of the games. Afterall, Little My Maid was originally supposed to ship, what was it, summer or fall last year? Now, it is estimated for release during the 3rd Qtr of this year.
So what are the current status of: * Little My Maid (est. release 3rd Qtr 2002). What is its status. Is it in playtest? Final edit?
* Critical Point (est. release 1st Qtr 2002), whose initial edit is complete. Is it still awaiting final edit and playtesting? Or is it in playtest now?
* Critical Point - Limited Collector’s Edition (est. release 1st Qtr 2002), same question.
* Brave Soul (est. release 2nd Qtr 2002). No status is reported. What is its status? Is it in playtest? Final edit?
Well, personally if I was translating these games, I’d re-write an entirely new engine that would not require any of the original source code from the original game, rip out the images (should be easy with print-screen), rip out the music, voices and sound and put it all into the new engine, but then again, I’m a programmer.
Actually, thinking about that, if I knew enough Japanese I could actually attempt to do that with a Japanese game, I did once attempt to write a Windows version of Season of the Sakura… the length of time that would take is a scary thought though, but I guess that it’s still worth a try sometime in the future.
why not build your universal game engine, then sell it to PeachPrincess? you’d personally make a business for yourself, and at the same time we’d all be happy to have fast game porting
i am totally in sync with complaining about Transfer Student being so delayed…i really really really want to play that game!!! it looks so so so neat! yes, i triplicate things when i’m excited
quote:Originally posted by Kumiko Kamiyama: One other thing you can do to promote is to ask us for some of our catalogs. Anyone who is buying adult anime or manga (or other adult products) should get a catalog, right? That consumer might be interested in knowing about bishoujo game products, and Peach Princess. We can send some catalogs for conventions or fanclub showings or whatever... all you have to do is drop us a line. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img]
Actually, I think this is probably a good way to get interest up. I know that at last GenCon I ended up picking up several catalogs and then looking through the catalogs later and going "oh, cool!" Hmm, too bad there really aren't any appropriate conventions here and I still havn't figure out whatever happened to a couple of local anime clubs I knew about from a few years back...
quote:Originally posted by ladyphoenix: i almost cried when Slave Bazaar was suspended!
As did I *bawls*. But there's still hope. After all, it's only "temporary suspended" not "permantly suspended" or soemthing like that. Still, this makes us to realize how important it is that we help Peach Princess to grow, otherwise that'll be changed to "permantly suspended" instead... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/frown.gif[/img]
While I agree that the products need to sell better and that we need to support you and the Japanese companies by buying the products, I myself only own two of the four games that you currently sell (Snow Drop and Tokimeki Check-in), the problem for me is not that I don’t want to buy the games, but being a college student, don’t have much money so it would be impossible for me to own all of the games (let alone any merchandise). I’d really like to though and I will as soon as I get a job.
quote:Originally posted by exoarchaeologist why not build your universal game engine, then sell it to PeachPrincess? you’d personally make a business for yourself, and at the same time we’d all be happy to have fast game porting.
I believe that I could quite easily write a game engine for visual novels based games, I very much enjoy programming and don’t believe that it would pose much of a problem, but I also don’t believe that it would be useful to Peach Princess either. Of course, if I’m wrong and Peach Princess would find it useful to have their own bishoujo games engine written, I could give it a shot. I wouldn’t charge anything for it as the satisfication of helping bishoujo gaming would be more than enough for me. Of course, I would also be able to provide tools for putting games together, but even then as Kumiko said, it would require the original CG, music and sound, as it would effectively be an entire remake of a game. Some games this would be a problem for (i.e. Will’s games have all of their sound files encrypted and extracting them would be a very time-consuming task), but others such as Tokimeki Check-In wouldn’t cause too much hassle. The wave files are already there (though, in one long 300MB .wav file containing ‘end-of-file’ markers after each sound clip (Try opening the file “packwav.snn” with something like Wave Studio and you’ll see what I mean)), the music is normal CD tracks and normal MIDI files and the CG would have to be screenshots (Which, as Kumiko said, is somewhat time consuming, though I don’t think to too much extent as I’ve used this method before to create large maps of some older 2D platform games that contain around 500 screens, which took me a total of about 8 hours). Still, even if it was possible to do the games this way, it would be up to the Japanese developers as it’s their content that is being used.
quote:Originally posted by Kumiko Kamiyama: Anyway, first of all… there is no such thing as a “universal game engine” - remember that even huge domestic companies (or Japanese) such as Microsoft or Sony or Sierra or EA have never, ever created any such thing. The reason one is not possible is consumers - that is, the consumer market will not buy games that don’t offer different features and such. Keep in mind that even if an interface looks similar, that doesn’t mean anything behind the scenes. Any programmer knows this if they’ve worked in the “real world”. It’s scary when you start looking at how the real world “runs”… sort of…!
I’m not sure that he meant a universal game engine that could run any type of game, but one that could run be used to create and run any (or most) visual novel (or similar) games, as I believe that this would be quite feasible.
quote:About the conversion… no one can simply pull CG out of a game with screen snaps - for one thing, there are various CG that you cannot do that with (for example, background CG for various menu interfaces or installation processes). For another thing, it would take literally forever to do every single pic that the game requires. Even if you had all the source CG, you then have to manage to get all sound files - voice, sound effects, BGM, etc. You’d have to figure out how to generate all effects in the game - whether CG transition effects or sound effects or script branching or whatever.
It is true that the CG from menu interaces can’t be pulled out because the Japanese text would need re-drawing in Englash, but I don’t really think that it is too much of a time-consuming task to pull the entire graphics out of a game into bitmap format, believe me on this as I have done it before for a few games. Sound files may or may not be a problem, it just depends on how the game was originally developed. Some bishoujo games that I have played have all of their sounds in .wav files, which is pretty much like giving them away, then others have sounds in one large package, sometime encrypted as in the case of Snow Drop and sometimes not as with Tokimeki Check-In. The none encrypted ones would be no problem, a few lines of code could extract them into seperate .wav files but the encypted ones would be very time consuming as each would have to be played back in the game and the data intercepted and directed to a file when it reaches the soundcard. Music is the same situation really, some is encrypted, some isn’t, some is normal MIDI, some is a special MIDI format, as with Season of the Sakura, this was my main reason for stopping development of the Windows version of Season of the Sakura as the MIDI files are in a strange format; it was either work out the format through guesswork, or re-create the entire game music by ear, which I started to do, but only ever got 4 of the songs done. As for the effects, it’s just programming, most of it is taken care of now by Direct X, such as playing back a sound file isn’t the tedius task it once was. If any programmer says that something can’t be done, they’re not trying hard enough or simply can’t be bothered.
Oh, nearly forgot , if anyone wants to see examples of my current game programming work, you can find them on my website, www.avalon-one.net (I hope I’m allowed to post my site here )
[This message has been edited by TurricaN (edited 01-30-2002).]
Let me first introduce myself, i’m a idiot…Turrican don’t ever post somewhere that whatever a company will not start work unless the volume is met, it will harm that company because people will be scared to order that title… an universal game engine, well impossible? I don’t really know about that(I’m don’t know a single line of code) Is it worth the effort? How big will that program be? How they convert codes and stuff, languages, how accurate they are? How will it change the engines. How to input new engines and make them auto change? What to turn to what…I don’t think there is anything much to impossible, Now you can find encoders that change avi to mpeg(I know this is two different things) and I know that extending writtings long enough will make some stuff hard to understand and I know that I’m beating around the bush. maybe running a 1zillion metres in a sec using your legs and not a map…but I agree it is beyond difficult…people can encode vids into 100k, 6 mins of runtime, good quality… (Everything I say doesn’t mean that i know how to do it) Well about Specator Beholder(I don’t know if I have spelled your name correctly or not), I know a lot of you have the time to write those long long long long lines. Who knows I might be arrested by police the next day(Oh and someone may thank me for this comment of advisement that they are entittled to do or maybe my com can’t start tomorrow because of some unknown reason, maybe some virus, maybe a sniper? I know my ip is logged there…well most would just say i have lots of imaginating power) Personally I think that scf030 has played the snow drop, or he wouldn’t know the format of the game(I know I’m getting out of topic), as about snow drop i just know it is a game that needs a walkthrough…unless you like to save every now(which is no much of a use) and then or you know where your little cute partner is… and how to get to the end I haven’t been here for a while but sometimes you might have to view the world in different kinds of views…i’m refering to a lot of people, here it might even include myself to why am I doing this here…Sometimes people get mad…People ignore you, these are all we have to accept(Sorry I haven’t met up with those people who haven’t have people get mad at or not ignored at). I know some people might even ignore this post…Who knows, if this topic might get closed or my post deleted…I’m just as childish as ever, for those that think i might be. If someone ever sees one serial that this pharse if from well you’ll know "People laugh at me cause of my insanity, I laugh at people cause of their seriousness" I haven’t thought that i might be banned yet, well I can’t think of everything head of me. Sometimes people who are poor turn into million or even trillion airs just because of an idea. Hehe, everyone who thinks I’m wrong can post back. In the end, this post I wrote in carelessness, there are points you can rebuke me back with hehe, and Turrican is innocent…
Has everyone forgotten that story is important to a game as well? I’ve read many of these threads on building game engines, composing music, drawing CGs, but all of that is inconsequential if the story is poor. At least, to me anyways, and I think I am not in the minority. Writing a compelling story takes just as long, if not longer, as writing computer codes.
Well how do you think people who were eagerly awaiting Torn from Black Isle Studios feel. (For those not in the know, Torn was a Fantasy RPG using the Lithtech 3.0 engine and it was cancelled. Not Delayed or Temporarily Suspended like certain PeaPri titles, Cancelled.)
Also think of how people who have been waiting for Neverwinter Nights feel. Bioware won’t even announce a release date until they feel it’s ready. Any release dates you see on the Web are the distributors best guess, because Bio’s sure not talking (about release dates that is, the developers will answer questions about the game itself, though.)
quote:Originally posted by bokmeow: Has everyone forgotten that story is important to a game as well?
Seems like that... and ywt.... Well, in PC gamer one or two moths ago, there was an article about the fact that "the gaming industry desperatly needs to re-disover the valuteof a story in a game!"... or something like that anyway. They mentonied that of all the games out at the market at the moment only a handfull of all those have a good story. But the majority of the market doesn't seem to care. Nowadays it seems to be all about good grapics and things like that - and some people aren't even interested in the story, they're just interested in how many people you can kill in a game (might be kind of similar to how some people doesn't ccare for the story, they're jsut interested in how many characters you can have sex with ^^;;; )
[This message has been edited by Spectator Beholder (edited 01-31-2002).]
I think the biggest problems with Pc games today are that most developers don’t want to make a good story but they are forced to make some kind of story for their games because the market has gotten a taste for it (because of several great games with great stories). Just look at the majorites of first person shooters today,most of them have a story that is just laughably bad and that affects the gameplay alot.You can see in those games that the developers haven’t put their soul into the game it’s just like they’ve been forced to try to make a story and an intelligent game just because the market wants it. They should either just make a really good story or they should do as Croteam did,don’t make a story and just make it a really braindead shooter =) (Serious Sam if you don’t know wich game i’m talking about)
Patience has it’s rewards many will say but it also has it’s limits I guess . Well if you ask me, as long as they keep me posted on the progression of the game I don’t really mind waiting .
no one claimed a universal engine would be simple there are tons of factors to be accounted for, and to to really universal it would have to account for all, even though for each individual game many would go unused
programmers are just really optimistic and ambitious people its kinda a required personaity trait, most who arent go insane and quit
quote:Originally posted by exoarchaeologist: programmers are just really optimistic and ambitious people its kinda a required personaity trait, most who arent go insane and quit
You've got that right, if I was able to draw, I'd already be writing my own fully self-developed bishoujo games. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img]
