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Hello everybody.

Sorry if it's not the right place, I was looking for a presentation thread or a better place to post this topic but it seems you don't have it.

I am director of a french publishing house, dedicated to video games and computing. We make books about video game history, we publish games and we even published an OST about an Homebrew game for the famous Dreamcast.

We like games and homebrew (proof: we have 2 magazines and each one shows dozens of pages about homebrew !).

But, I am not here to advertise ^^

In fact, we have a project, perhaps you'll find it crazy, but we want to make a game for the SMS and publish it on a cartridge.

Yes, I know, impossible, we'll have to destroy old cartridges !

But hey, it's one of the funny part of this project. We want to use the game to try to produce a Shell and then share it (mold or else) with the community.

We are studying various ways to produce this cartridge, but it's not simple, you all know that.
Perhaps we'll not make a mold, but in the end, all that imports is to have the possibility to make these cartridges with good quality.

It is why I am here.

We are recruiting people for the game (and later we'll see for the cartridge/pcb etc even if we already have people to work on the pcb).

At this moment, we have:

-a programmer (he worked on various homebrews)
-an assistant programmer (from the new prisonner 2 project)
-a graphist (he worked on various homebrews)
-a bug tracker (he worked on various homebrew)
-a musician (he worked on various homebrew)

we also received a kind support of SVERX.

But if we want to have money to produce a cartridge, we'll have to publish an ambitious game. I don't tell it has to be like tanglewood on genesis, but we have to offer something that SMS fans will want.
I mean: good graphism, plot and gameplay and long enough to enjoy.

I'll be direct from now : WE NEED YOU ;)

We are looking for programmers and graphists and we would really appreciate to have one (or more) illustrator.

Our idea is to base our graphisms on the illustrations, this to offer goodies with the game and make a KS campaign to help making the cartridge.

I know it's crazy but believe me, we really want to share this project with the community and help the SMS to have more physical releases.

I can give you details about our publishing house but I am afraid it'll look like an advertising. If you want to know something, just ask ;)

Regarding the people involved in the project, they are ok to be paid with games and books we'll produce and to have a part on the campaign we'll make once the project near complete. If you want to be part of this project, have in mind there is nothing guarantee about money, but you'll have our books and games.

Sorry for my poor english but I am french and you all know we are not good in english haha.

Maybe not exactly what you seek, but FYI furrtek who I believe is in France made a non-commercial 3D printing design for SMS cartridge shells, I have used it twice myself for personal projects with success. Maybe you can contact furrtek to seek commercial licensing?

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2138257

https://twitter.com/furrtek

'SVERX' all caps LOL ;) :p

BTW I guess you should come with some specific idea,as simply saying 'an ambitious game' is actually not giving enough info that are needed to those who might be interested in joining the team. Even something like "we'd like to do something like 'Pier Solar' or such" might suffice...

IMHO

Hello.
I don't really want to get in deal to earn "books and games" but I could provide help on specific issues for free nonetheless, just e-mail me.

About the cartridge model, I could provide it for commercial production for a reasonable fee (one off, not related to quantity). I can also modify the model to accomodate different PCBs or manufacturing processes.

Thanks bsittler and Furtek.
In fact we already have a 3D printing design of our own as we have a pro of 3d printing in our team. It's not the big deal. The big deal will be to have a molding design to fit with the constrains of a factory. This and the amount to pay to produce the mold.

To come back on the "books and games" deal, let me explain :
Perhaps the project will be a success, and we'll be able to pay everybody but nothing is sure. As we offer to give all the games and all the books we'll produce, everybody can be sure to have at least hundreds of dollars of "gifts". It's not to rip of anybody but to say everybody w'll have something for his work. But again, the true reward will be to see that good quality cartridge (and pcb ?) will be available for any sms homebrewer. I think everybody is intelligent enough to understand we'll not make any profit with this project ;)

Quote

SVERX all caps LOL ;) :p

Haha, yes, sorry, i forgot to include "MISTER" before your name ;)

You are right, let's talk about the project. Please understand it's only a WIP design brief.

At the moment, we are thinking to make an horizontal adventure game like Monster Boy in Monster World but with our own ideas and athmosphere.

As there is a lot of Metroidvania recently, we don't want to make something like that but, instead, use "original" gameplay to offer a "variation". As you know, video game is 50 years old, we know we'll not revolutionize anything, but we want to try something different.

Our ambiance will be SF-fantastic or SF-horror as there is hundreds of medieval games but not so many SF-horror.

We want to finish the game somewhere in 2020.

Alright, understood.

After having seen so many projects fail because people have ideas and good intentions but no money, I just wanted to make sure you realize that those who will dedicate time to the project won't be able to buy food or pay rent with books and games.

I also understood that you didn't expect to earn money with this project, as producing physical releases is never simple nor cheap, especially in small runs. But that doesn't change the fact that you want to rely on people who would have the same "goal" as you: to not earn money, but to -give- to the community.

I'm not against that. If people accept that as compensation for their work, or even work for free, then it's great ! Just be aware that you can't expect professionalism and exclusivity/reactivity from people you gave $300 worth of merchandise.

I'm not trying to be mean or pessimistic, just realistic. I've been through that sort of scheme and don't want to see another project fail because of false expectations.
I honestly hope that your project will become a reality (and my proposal for help still applies) and that others will benefit from it :)

For what it's worth, if you're going to have multilingual manuals and whatnot, you now know where to look for the Italian translation.

I don't have too much to offer this sort of a project - alongside being distracted by something else.
My own artistic skills aren't as good as they seem to be by my past posts!

But I wish you guys the best of luck. The prospect of a commercial Master System game happening is extremely exciting!

Funny name, by the way. I wonder what it is with Tanuki suddenly becoming a popular animal.
Maybe a testament to a certain attribute required to get a new Master System project underway. :)

Good luck!

For making carts the real only way to go is to get an injection mold made. So we can get volume. 3D printing is slow and expensive and would really add to the price of each cart made. You want to get the costs down to at least below ~€10 (we are able to make 512K C64 carts for about this much) as once you add manual, case, cover, slip assembly, flashing the cart etc it really adds up fast.

Quote

Regarding the people involved in the project, they are ok to be paid with games and books we'll produce and to have a part on the campaign we'll make once the project near complete. If you want to be part of this project, have in mind there is nothing guarantee about money, but you'll have our books and games.

It's ok but considering the eventuality that you end up selling them you need the contractualize the involvement and rewards of everyone involved ahead of time. The actual developers making the software are likely to spend more time/energy than the producing/publishing work, expect to compensate them in % fairly.

As a general software engineering practice, and even more so in such a specialized topic, here's my advice:
You can't add more people to a project and magically improve the pace and quality of the project. If you already have 2 programmers you probably already have all the programmers you need and shouldn't add more. Every homebrew project ever that involved picking random people from different backgrounds and putting them on the same project went nowhere. Keep the same small and closely tight with each others!

And what about a book on the history of sega 8-bits (a bit like the "Bible de la Pc engine" published by pix'n love) ?

Hello everybody.

Thanks to all those who support us ;)

We know that everything has a cost, As I explained, we publised books, games etc, so we know where we are going ^^.

About the contract: of course everything is contract-related, from the use of artworks, to money/gift everybody will receive.

Regarding the number of people in our team, yes it's true that we need to avoid to have too many collaborators, but we also need to have people to help on various tasks.

@Flygon : haha, Tanuki is my nickname since I am like 20 years old, I am a very old tanuki now (41 yo).

@Tom : in fact it's a good idea to translate the manual. We always have bilingual manuals (fr-uk) but why not italian too ! If we can publish our game, we'll see with you if we can translate it, thanks.

@Kenneth : in fact a book like this already exists.

Well, if you do translate the manual, I'm sure you can find some Spanish and German people on this forum, too, not to mention the obvious Portuguese and Japanese. I don't think there are many Russians around here, however. It all depends on how much multilingual you want to get.

I could help with the spanish, I already helped Kagesan with the spanish translation for his manuals :-)

Tom wrote

Well, if you do translate the manual, I'm sure you can find some Spanish and German people on this forum, too, not to mention the obvious Portuguese and Japanese. I don't think there are many Russians around here, however. It all depends on how much multilingual you want to get.

Portuguese (Brazilian) and Japanese would be wonderful, and surely useful. As for Russian, if it's needed, I can (find) help.

I can help you for spanish too

Thanks everybody ! It's good to know we can can have help !

@kusfo & law81 : great ! By the way, could you be interested to help to translate our books.

@Sverx : portuguese could be great too ! Japanese and russian, I don't know, I think it'll be very difficult.

I can help with a brazilian portuguese version, if needed.

tanuki wrote

@Kenneth : in fact a book like this already exists.

Never heard about such a book ??

I think he means this (not sure though).

tanuki wrote

At the moment, we are thinking to make an horizontal adventure game like Monster Boy in Monster World but with our own ideas and athmosphere.

To not reinvent the wheel you could ask efry permission to use his code - did you see MonkeyLad?

law81 wrote

I can help you for spanish too

Same here.

tanuki wrote

Thanks everybody ! It's good to know we can can have help !

@kusfo & law81 : great ! By the way, could you be interested to help to translate our books.

@Sverx : portuguese could be great too ! Japanese and russian, I don't know, I think it'll be very difficult.

Which books we're talking about? It's quite a lot of work translating 200-page books...not as easy as an instructions booklet.

about the history of the master system, nope, I mean this one: https://www.retroland.fr/home/22-l-encyclopedie-des-jeux-video-vol1-master-syste...

We are not retroland, it's not a link to our shop ;)

@sverx : thanks, I take note, I'll have to see with our programers, perhaps we'll contact efry

TichoDJ: thanks

@kusfo : We are thinking to translate our books for the spanish market. We make massive books (more than 300 pages and our articles/texts are hudge ^^). But it's only something we would like, not something we are doing. We are on the english versions first.

tanuki wrote

I'll have to see with our programers, perhaps we'll contact efry

another option might be to use psidum's wonderful GSlib, which is a library to support multi-directional scroll and much more. OrlanRod is already using it :)

Thanks Sverx for the sharing. Of course we take note of everything.

Regarding the shell, we are in relation with someone to study an original solution. Will 2020 be the year of SMS ? ^^

Author	Message
tanuki Joined: 31 May 2016 Posts: 6 Location: France	Recruiting for a new project Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2018 3:12 pm
tanuki Joined: 31 May 2016 Posts: 6 Location: France	Hello everybody. Sorry if it's not the right place, I was looking for a presentation thread or a better place to post this topic but it seems you don't have it. I am director of a french publishing house, dedicated to video games and computing. We make books about video game history, we publish games and we even published an OST about an Homebrew game for the famous Dreamcast. We like games and homebrew (proof: we have 2 magazines and each one shows dozens of pages about homebrew !). But, I am not here to advertise ^^ In fact, we have a project, perhaps you'll find it crazy, but we want to make a game for the SMS and publish it on a cartridge. Yes, I know, impossible, we'll have to destroy old cartridges ! But hey, it's one of the funny part of this project. We want to use the game to try to produce a Shell and then share it (mold or else) with the community. We are studying various ways to produce this cartridge, but it's not simple, you all know that. Perhaps we'll not make a mold, but in the end, all that imports is to have the possibility to make these cartridges with good quality. It is why I am here. We are recruiting people for the game (and later we'll see for the cartridge/pcb etc even if we already have people to work on the pcb). At this moment, we have: -a programmer (he worked on various homebrews) -an assistant programmer (from the new prisonner 2 project) -a graphist (he worked on various homebrews) -a bug tracker (he worked on various homebrew) -a musician (he worked on various homebrew) we also received a kind support of SVERX. But if we want to have money to produce a cartridge, we'll have to publish an ambitious game. I don't tell it has to be like tanglewood on genesis, but we have to offer something that SMS fans will want. I mean: good graphism, plot and gameplay and long enough to enjoy. I'll be direct from now : WE NEED YOU ;) We are looking for programmers and graphists and we would really appreciate to have one (or more) illustrator. Our idea is to base our graphisms on the illustrations, this to offer goodies with the game and make a KS campaign to help making the cartridge. I know it's crazy but believe me, we really want to share this project with the community and help the SMS to have more physical releases. I can give you details about our publishing house but I am afraid it'll look like an advertising. If you want to know something, just ask ;) Regarding the people involved in the project, they are ok to be paid with games and books we'll produce and to have a part on the campaign we'll make once the project near complete. If you want to be part of this project, have in mind there is nothing guarantee about money, but you'll have our books and games. Sorry for my poor english but I am french and you all know we are not good in english haha.

bsittler Joined: 22 Apr 2018 Posts: 530	Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2018 4:14 pm
bsittler Joined: 22 Apr 2018 Posts: 530	Maybe not exactly what you seek, but FYI furrtek who I believe is in France made a non-commercial 3D printing design for SMS cartridge shells, I have used it twice myself for personal projects with success. Maybe you can contact furrtek to seek commercial licensing? https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2138257 https://twitter.com/furrtek

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3827 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2018 12:40 pm
	'SVERX' all caps LOL ;) :p BTW I guess you should come with some specific idea,as simply saying 'an ambitious game' is actually not giving enough info that are needed to those who might be interested in joining the team. Even something like "we'd like to do something like 'Pier Solar' or such" might suffice... IMHO

furrtek Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 53 Location: France	Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2018 4:40 pm
furrtek Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 53 Location: France	Hello. I don't really want to get in deal to earn "books and games" but I could provide help on specific issues for free nonetheless, just e-mail me. About the cartridge model, I could provide it for commercial production for a reasonable fee (one off, not related to quantity). I can also modify the model to accomodate different PCBs or manufacturing processes.

tanuki Joined: 31 May 2016 Posts: 6 Location: France	Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2018 5:47 pm
tanuki Joined: 31 May 2016 Posts: 6 Location: France	Thanks bsittler and Furtek. In fact we already have a 3D printing design of our own as we have a pro of 3d printing in our team. It's not the big deal. The big deal will be to have a molding design to fit with the constrains of a factory. This and the amount to pay to produce the mold. To come back on the "books and games" deal, let me explain : Perhaps the project will be a success, and we'll be able to pay everybody but nothing is sure. As we offer to give all the games and all the books we'll produce, everybody can be sure to have at least hundreds of dollars of "gifts". It's not to rip of anybody but to say everybody w'll have something for his work. But again, the true reward will be to see that good quality cartridge (and pcb ?) will be available for any sms homebrewer. I think everybody is intelligent enough to understand we'll not make any profit with this project ;) Quote SVERX all caps LOL ;) :p Haha, yes, sorry, i forgot to include "MISTER" before your name ;) You are right, let's talk about the project. Please understand it's only a WIP design brief. At the moment, we are thinking to make an horizontal adventure game like Monster Boy in Monster World but with our own ideas and athmosphere. As there is a lot of Metroidvania recently, we don't want to make something like that but, instead, use "original" gameplay to offer a "variation". As you know, video game is 50 years old, we know we'll not revolutionize anything, but we want to try something different. Our ambiance will be SF-fantastic or SF-horror as there is hundreds of medieval games but not so many SF-horror. We want to finish the game somewhere in 2020.

furrtek Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 53 Location: France	Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2018 6:26 pm
furrtek Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 53 Location: France	Alright, understood. After having seen so many projects fail because people have ideas and good intentions but no money, I just wanted to make sure you realize that those who will dedicate time to the project won't be able to buy food or pay rent with books and games. I also understood that you didn't expect to earn money with this project, as producing physical releases is never simple nor cheap, especially in small runs. But that doesn't change the fact that you want to rely on people who would have the same "goal" as you: to not earn money, but to -give- to the community. I'm not against that. If people accept that as compensation for their work, or even work for free, then it's great ! Just be aware that you can't expect professionalism and exclusivity/reactivity from people you gave $300 worth of merchandise. I'm not trying to be mean or pessimistic, just realistic. I've been through that sort of scheme and don't want to see another project fail because of false expectations. I honestly hope that your project will become a reality (and my proposal for help still applies) and that others will benefit from it :)

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2018 1:29 am
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	For what it's worth, if you're going to have multilingual manuals and whatnot, you now know where to look for the Italian translation.

Flygon Joined: 30 Jun 2016 Posts: 196 Location: Melbourne, Australia	Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2018 6:17 am
	I don't have too much to offer this sort of a project - alongside being distracted by something else. My own artistic skills aren't as good as they seem to be by my past posts! But I wish you guys the best of luck. The prospect of a commercial Master System game happening is extremely exciting! Funny name, by the way. I wonder what it is with Tanuki suddenly becoming a popular animal. Maybe a testament to a certain attribute required to get a new Master System project underway. :) Good luck!

oziphantom Joined: 14 Mar 2018 Posts: 19	Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2018 4:01 pm
oziphantom Joined: 14 Mar 2018 Posts: 19	For making carts the real only way to go is to get an injection mold made. So we can get volume. 3D printing is slow and expensive and would really add to the price of each cart made. You want to get the costs down to at least below ~€10 (we are able to make 512K C64 carts for about this much) as once you add manual, case, cover, slip assembly, flashing the cart etc it really adds up fast.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8651 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2018 7:30 pm Last edited by Bock on Sun Aug 26, 2018 6:53 pm; edited 1 time in total
	Quote Regarding the people involved in the project, they are ok to be paid with games and books we'll produce and to have a part on the campaign we'll make once the project near complete. If you want to be part of this project, have in mind there is nothing guarantee about money, but you'll have our books and games. It's ok but considering the eventuality that you end up selling them you need the contractualize the involvement and rewards of everyone involved ahead of time. The actual developers making the software are likely to spend more time/energy than the producing/publishing work, expect to compensate them in % fairly. As a general software engineering practice, and even more so in such a specialized topic, here's my advice: You can't add more people to a project and magically improve the pace and quality of the project. If you already have 2 programmers you probably already have all the programmers you need and shouldn't add more. Every homebrew project ever that involved picking random people from different backgrounds and putting them on the same project went nowhere. Keep the same small and closely tight with each others!

Kenneth Joined: 20 Dec 2004 Posts: 739 Location: Lyon, France	Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2018 5:19 pm
	And what about a book on the history of sega 8-bits (a bit like the "Bible de la Pc engine" published by pix'n love) ?

tanuki Joined: 31 May 2016 Posts: 6 Location: France	Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2018 2:55 pm
tanuki Joined: 31 May 2016 Posts: 6 Location: France	Hello everybody. Thanks to all those who support us ;) We know that everything has a cost, As I explained, we publised books, games etc, so we know where we are going ^^. About the contract: of course everything is contract-related, from the use of artworks, to money/gift everybody will receive. Regarding the number of people in our team, yes it's true that we need to avoid to have too many collaborators, but we also need to have people to help on various tasks. @Flygon : haha, Tanuki is my nickname since I am like 20 years old, I am a very old tanuki now (41 yo). @Tom : in fact it's a good idea to translate the manual. We always have bilingual manuals (fr-uk) but why not italian too ! If we can publish our game, we'll see with you if we can translate it, thanks. @Kenneth : in fact a book like this already exists.

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2018 5:10 pm
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	Well, if you do translate the manual, I'm sure you can find some Spanish and German people on this forum, too, not to mention the obvious Portuguese and Japanese. I don't think there are many Russians around here, however. It all depends on how much multilingual you want to get.

kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 886 Location: Spain	Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 7:18 am
kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 886 Location: Spain	I could help with the spanish, I already helped Kagesan with the spanish translation for his manuals :-)

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3827 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 9:02 am
	Tom wrote Well, if you do translate the manual, I'm sure you can find some Spanish and German people on this forum, too, not to mention the obvious Portuguese and Japanese. I don't think there are many Russians around here, however. It all depends on how much multilingual you want to get. Portuguese (Brazilian) and Japanese would be wonderful, and surely useful. As for Russian, if it's needed, I can (find) help.

law81 Joined: 21 Oct 2015 Posts: 303	Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 9:40 am
law81 Joined: 21 Oct 2015 Posts: 303	I can help you for spanish too

tanuki Joined: 31 May 2016 Posts: 6 Location: France	Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 5:39 pm
tanuki Joined: 31 May 2016 Posts: 6 Location: France	Thanks everybody ! It's good to know we can can have help ! @kusfo & law81 : great ! By the way, could you be interested to help to translate our books. @Sverx : portuguese could be great too ! Japanese and russian, I don't know, I think it'll be very difficult.

Melanogaster Joined: 16 Aug 2005 Posts: 102 Location: Brazil	Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 6:20 pm
	I can help with a brazilian portuguese version, if needed.

Kenneth Joined: 20 Dec 2004 Posts: 739 Location: Lyon, France	Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2018 5:34 am
	tanuki wrote @Kenneth : in fact a book like this already exists. Never heard about such a book ??

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2018 7:47 am
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	I think he means this (not sure though).

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3827 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2018 11:46 am
	tanuki wrote At the moment, we are thinking to make an horizontal adventure game like Monster Boy in Monster World but with our own ideas and athmosphere. To not reinvent the wheel you could ask efry permission to use his code - did you see MonkeyLad?

TinchoDJ Joined: 12 Jan 2005 Posts: 187 Location: Reconquista, Santa Fe, Argentina	Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2018 12:57 pm
	law81 wrote I can help you for spanish too Same here.

kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 886 Location: Spain	Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2018 1:17 pm
kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 886 Location: Spain	tanuki wrote Thanks everybody ! It's good to know we can can have help ! @kusfo & law81 : great ! By the way, could you be interested to help to translate our books. @Sverx : portuguese could be great too ! Japanese and russian, I don't know, I think it'll be very difficult. Which books we're talking about? It's quite a lot of work translating 200-page books...not as easy as an instructions booklet.

tanuki Joined: 31 May 2016 Posts: 6 Location: France	Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2018 1:50 pm Last edited by tanuki on Wed Aug 29, 2018 3:27 pm; edited 1 time in total
tanuki Joined: 31 May 2016 Posts: 6 Location: France	about the history of the master system, nope, I mean this one: https://www.retroland.fr/home/22-l-encyclopedie-des-jeux-video-vol1-master-syste... We are not retroland, it's not a link to our shop ;) @sverx : thanks, I take note, I'll have to see with our programers, perhaps we'll contact efry TichoDJ: thanks @kusfo : We are thinking to translate our books for the spanish market. We make massive books (more than 300 pages and our articles/texts are hudge ^^). But it's only something we would like, not something we are doing. We are on the english versions first.

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3827 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2018 1:57 pm
	tanuki wrote I'll have to see with our programers, perhaps we'll contact efry another option might be to use psidum's wonderful GSlib, which is a library to support multi-directional scroll and much more. OrlanRod is already using it :)

tanuki Joined: 31 May 2016 Posts: 6 Location: France	Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2018 5:05 pm
tanuki Joined: 31 May 2016 Posts: 6 Location: France	Thanks Sverx for the sharing. Of course we take note of everything. Regarding the shell, we are in relation with someone to study an original solution. Will 2020 be the year of SMS ? ^^

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