AlarCity: Development Thread

[earok]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

Just a note that the images included as part of the quoted post below are now inaccessible: :'(

Eeep. Serves me right for linking directly to photos on facebook.. I should gather them all up and repost them sometime.

Reworked the controls recently, so that now the character direction sticks when you hold down fire. Feels really natural, like strafing in an FPS

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by earok

Eeep. Serves me right for linking directly to photos on facebook.. I should gather them all up and repost them sometime.

Reworked the controls recently, so that now the character direction sticks when you hold down fire. Feels really natural, like strafing in an FPS

The more time passes, the more having any relation with Facebook looks like a bad idea in many ways.

Also I realized that I had not pre-ordered the game yet, so just did that.
(I would prefer funding you guys through an official crowd funding project though. )

[Tsak]

Thanks!
In regards to preorders or crowd funding, I think for our next game we'll follow what we recently did with Worthy if possible. I.e. go directly for the release.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Tsak

Thanks!
In regards to preorders or crowd funding, I think for our next game we'll follow what we recently did with Worthy if possible. I.e. go directly for the release.

...yup, screw crowd funding rubbish; time and time again this hasn't worked on the small Amiga platform and you probably then won't get the desired sales.

Stick with what you know works best

[Tsak]

True, however it's not unprecedented in the Amiga scene. Viddi managed to gather 200 presales thrice with his 3 TOG titles. He seems to be very much on top of this game

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Tsak

True, however it's not unprecedented in the Amiga scene. Viddi managed to gather 200 presales thrice with his 3 TOG titles. He seems to be very much on top of this game

Yeah and that's awesome; but he didn't use crowd funding. That's my point...

[Predseda]

With Gorluth Viddi applied the same model like AlarCity IIRC.

[idrougge]

Crowdfunding is yesteryear's buzzword. Use blockchain for your new project instead!

[Clydos]

Originally Posted by Tsak

... I think for our next game ...

This "simple" statement is wonderful to read. The Amiga world needs lot of Pixelglass games!

Any hints on what the next game will be?

Regarding Alair: Great to read the progress on the controller front. Sounds good that fire direction is then locked! Looking forward to play that.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by DamienD

...yup, screw crowd funding rubbish; time and time again this hasn't worked on the small Amiga platform [...]

I am not sure what gives you this impression but looking at available data, it turns out that things have worked quite well on average for serious Amiga related crowd funded projects:

• The Commodore, the Amiga years book from Brian Bagnall.
• The The Amiga Works CD from Allister Brimble.
• The Story of the Commodore Amiga In Pixels book from Chris Wilkins.
• The Commodore Amiga, a Visual Compendium book from Sam Dyer.
• The Turrican Orchestral Selections soundtrack from Chris Huelsbeck.
• The From Bedrooms to Billions: the Amiga Years from Nicola and Anthony Caulfield.
• The Viva Amiga video from Zach Weddington.

The vast majority of the KickStarter Amiga projects which were not serious never reached their funding targets so no "funder" ever lost their money on them.

Most of the successful ones delivered their promise, so overall this is working quite well just looking at KickStarter data.

The biggest recent fail was the re-release of the Cinemare Defender of The Crown edition, but overall this is still an outlier.

Vidi delivered on Gorluth even though he was also crowd funded, just like Alar City it is crowd funded, except on an individual basis with zero guarantees. Platforms like KickStarter at least allow backers to cancel their pledges and offer more guarantees overall.

Originally Posted by DamienD

[...] and you probably then won't get the desired sales.

If the funding pledges are the same as the pre-order prices this should not decrease the numbers a bit, on the contrary, KickStarter gives higher visibility on average just because it draws a large public in which knows about the Amiga but does not necessarily reads/follows Amiga related sites.

Originally Posted by Tsak

True, however it's not unprecedented in the Amiga scene. Viddi managed to gather 200 presales thrice with his 3 TOG titles. He seems to be very much on top of this game

Originally Posted by Predseda

With Gorluth Viddi applied the same model like AlarCity IIRC.

Originally Posted by DamienD

Yeah and that's awesome; but he didn't use crowd funding. That's my point...

He did, he relied on the crowd to pay for pre-orders, this is exactly the same as for KickStarter except that people had to rely on him being trustworthy and able to track all these pre-orders reliably.
KS essentially centralizes all this work for you but the result is the same: people pledge their support and this funds the project.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

I am not sure what gives you this impression but looking at available data, it turns out that things have worked quite well on average for serious Amiga related crowd funded projects:

• The Commodore, the Amiga years book from Brian Bagnall.
• The The Amiga Works CD from Allister Brimble.
• The Story of the Commodore Amiga In Pixels book from Chris Wilkins.
• The Commodore Amiga, a Visual Compendium book from Sam Dyer.
• The Turrican Orchestral Selections soundtrack from Chris Huelsbeck.
• The From Bedrooms to Billions: the Amiga Years from Nicola and Anthony Caulfield.
• The Viva Amiga video from Zach Weddington.

I don't see any game projects listed above; these are all books, audio and video that will appeal to the wider Amiga audience.

...and also there are some pretty famous Amiga people associated with the above i.e. Allister Brimble and Chris Huelsbeck. It really wouldn't matter what method these guys chose; they were bound to be successful

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

Platforms like KickStarter at least allow backers to cancel their pledges and offer more guarantees overall.

This is a very good point actually. The problem is that crowdfunding an Amiga game with kickstarter also poses a risk for developers themselves: failing to reach your funding goal means loads of lost time, lost confidence, lowering your morale, lost funds (obviously) and a serious chance to cancel the project.

If Alarcity went kickstarter it would have also failed imho. Seeing our presales campaign in hindsight, we didn't managed to reach half of our target goal and this despite the positive feedback from the video, the latest demo and PR efforts. I seriously doubt kickstarter's guarantees could have turned the tables.

Originally Posted by DamienD

[/LIST]I don't see any game projects listed above; these are all books, audio and video that will appeal to the wider Amiga audience.

Exactly. The overarching issue here isn't the lack of Amiga supporters in general but the underdeveloped market for new games speciffically. The reality remains that any Amiga games developer could only hope to sell a few hundred copies at best with a finished title (how many exactly remains a wild guess, depending on the game and it's reception), while fewer still would go as far and risk to fund a project under development. And it's this lack of a solid customer base (beyond a small mass of maybe 60-100 people) that makes ANY kind of crowdfunding venturing or prediction really difficult.

Could it be any different? Perhaps. Just see the Amiga hardware market in comparison. The supply is excellent, the demand is great and there's a steady flow of people, ready to reach deep into their pockets to equip their miggies with the latest x, y, z gadget or peripheral. It trully amazes me f.e. to see more than 2900 Vampire cards sold already! Kinda makes you wonder, why 2900 Amigans haven't preordered Alarcity yet?..

Joking aside, (and away with whining) I trully believe we're in a turning point currently. The Amiga gaming scene is expanding, the quality and quantity of new titles is raising and the community is always here to support!
Worthy is already proving to be a success story for us and I'm positive Alarcity will also follow in it's footsteps!

[earok]

I need to apologise. I haven't been very good with keeping the game rolling at a reasonable development pace. My heart hasn't been in it so working on it has been a chore lately, and the anxiety from letting everyone down by not having it done already has been putting me off working on it.

But I've had a good talk with Tsak about it and I feel a lot more reassured about the development of the game. In fact, I'm rather excited about the possibilities of where we could take it.

So I just need to let everyone know - yes, it's still coming, and yes we'll get it finished, but it's almost certainly not going to be by the end of the year. Please keep the faith!

[Clydos]

Thanks for the info, earok, and no problem. Take your time; maybe even take a break. I think it makes more sense if you are fresh and motivated, then the work will be much better. And taking some time off could help with getting motivated again.

[Gzegzolka]

As much as I would love to see this game finished I understood that sometimes it is good to take breaks. I only hopes they won't be too long. It is good for passion and hobby to not burn them, take a break and back when You know what to do next Just do not abandon this game, pretty please

[mcgeezer]

A break does you the world of good from coding which is all of thr below:

Time consuming
Tiring
Frustrating
Addictive (if the right project)
Rewarding

Many people (i’m not saying the EAB) under appreciate the effort involved in game making.

On the subject of funding, my next project will be offered as pay something or download for free. Any payment would go toward my next project.

You have to do it for the love. There’s no money in retro game making.

Geezer

[spacey]

yeah game dev can be a bit of a rollercoaster.. don't feel bad about hitting a difficult patch - happens to all of us.

[earok]

Thanks @gzegzolka @mcgeezer @spacey, I appreciate the support

I've started developing a fresh codebase for the project to build it ground-up with what I know about Amiga development now that I didn't when I started (which isn't to say that I'm abandoning the old one - I'll take parts across when necessary). Will get back in touch once I've got a bit more to talk about.

[MartinW]

Is there any kind of completion guess for those that have pre-ordered? Delays are unavoidable but a ground-up fresh codebase sounds a little alarming!

[earok]

Honestly, no I don't have a completion guess - though I'd be extremely unhappy with myself if it didn't come out next year.

Things are progressing in the background. The scrolling has been rewritten to support larger levels (Chaos Engine size). Graphics are interleaved now so more can be blitted during a frame. We've developed new tools to support converting maps from Tiled to Alarcity's map format in a single drag-drop operation for streamlining the level development process. And Tsak is working on a whole new set of graphics for both the player and enemies.

We're going to get it done, and it's going to be up to the PixelGlass standard, we just don't have a definitive completion date right now.