Been thinking a while about a way to bring forward a project that would be suitable for community, collaborative development - a sort of HBGames project for us to get behind. The more I think about this, the more I can see how it could play out as a project.
What I propose is an RPG project for the Gameboy Advance and with this I also propose a route to move the project into a commercial production.
Why Gameboy Advance?
Why not Gameboy Advance?
(Each of these points will be addressed).
I don't think anyone in their right mind would see Gameboy Advance as a smart market to invest in at this day-and-age, BUT I think there's a clever way to go about this. The retro game collector's community has a moderately good YouTube presence (for example https://www.youtube.com/user/MetalJesusRocks) and these niche communities are quite receptive to being catered towards. Making a retro game is also a notable thing in the general gaming social community (this shit tends to get noticed by fucking Lad Gamer on bloody Facebook all the time).
There are other modern retro games that have blazed the trail here - Micromages is a notable one.
For the tools/engine, I've already been working on some GBA related tools. Been doing some veeeeeery interesting tests too related to GBA <-> PC connectivity (I'll discuss this further down). I think we can cheat here massively. We know RPG Maker, so why not use RPG Maker to produce this? I see a few issues; tile sizes in MV are shit, map editor is restrictive. I have planned a TileD compiler that will free us from RPG Maker's map editor and be tailored specifically for GBA hardware. We'd build maps in TileD and use RPG Maker MV to create events, animations, battles, databases, whatever in its JSON format and compile those to a GBA binary format.
The limitations of the GBA will restrict what can be done. An immature person would chime "limitation breeds creativity!". What I will say is the restrictions will provide a rather interesting, mentally stimulating environment. Imagine getting an entire RPG crammed into a GBA! There's also some limit-breaking we can do here; GBA <-> PC connectivity that I mentioned a moment ago (more on this later). SD Flash Carts also give access to 256GB(!!) file systems, we could do something cool like optional FMV videos and high quality streamed music for owners of flash-carts.
I believe there's smarter routes to a commercial release. I will discuss this later, however in short I think a free ROM release is okay - if we cater to the passion of the target audience (note; I am not describing begging or pandering) we can hopefully get a response from them that will support the commercial viability of this.
Other concerns.
Yes I am passionate about GBA stuff. I also acknowledge how bloody useless a lot of what I do on it is. This isn't my "personal passion project"; that would be a project that costs so much money that it will likely never get built. This isn't another project re-branded either, that project has very specific goals centred specifically on the MV market. I am definitely building on my research and lessons from these prior investigations, but this is specifically not any of those other projects. I've said before that I want to try and find a good model for a collaborative project before presenting it, rather than attempt to shoe-horn in any pre-existing ideas, I think a GBA RPG is a nice fresh concept to look at.
Managing the collaboration would need discussion. I have my own ideas on project development: I believe everyone has something important that needs to be maintained in a team environment, so discussing and finding out what that is would be important.
Why an RPG?
RPG Maker is in most of our blood at this fucking point. We've got an entire forum filled with fucking hundreds of games to look at and learn from, this is probably the richest community describing development of RPGs out there.
Are we actually any good at it? Who knows! But I think it's what we've been training ourselves for over the past 14 years, it makes sense to investigate this rather than attempt a "short" or "arcade" project. I definitely, definitely, definitely spent time looking at other game genres and ideas to see if anything can be done in a short amount of time that would be worth it, but I do think RPG would be the right genre for this community at this time.
I definitely feel that RPG would be the best genre to represent the history of this community. We've also got some unique examples of ideas that I'd absolutely love to build upon; I see a unique opportunity to bring some of the concepts of online play onto the GBA, Amy has done a lot of work here that we can lean on.
Beyond that, I think the gaming community would be most receptive towards a GBA RPG over any other genre on this specific retro console. Would people be excited for a new GBA racing game? I don't think so. Pier Solar makes a good case study: http://www.piersolar.com/
What makes this special? Unique Selling Points.
The existence of a modern GBA game is pretty special in itself, but I think we can do even more than this.
GameCube Link Cable + GameCube USB Adapter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameCube_ ... link_cable
https://store.nintendo.co.uk/nintendo-s ... 93689.html
These are two official Nintendo products. With these it is possible to connect a Gameboy Advance to a PC. We can do something that wasn't possible in the mid 2000s; make a GBA game that connects to a PC to access services such as DLC or Online functionality. I'll discuss this more in terms of the commercial viability of this project.
Not only this, but GameCube controllers can be connected to this adapter along side the GBA. This opens up the option of single-system multiplayer (a little weird, but okay).
Imagine playing an RPG on your GBA, hooking up to a PC, then selling your gear to an online market. Or jumping into a room that asynchronously has other players in it to interact with and battle.
SD Flash Carts
These are more modern devices that are popular in the current Gameboy community. They allow ROMs to be copied to an SD card and then easily played. More importantly, SD card file system access is possible from GBA games. SD cards these days are massive in size, a GBA game can be 128 Gigabytes in size if a suitably sized SD card is used.
I don't propose we make a massive GBA game, but this gives a unique ability to provide additional content to flash cart users. So if you do not have the cables to connect to a PC, but do have a flash cart, then DLC can be loaded via the SD file system. We can also put streaming FMV videos or music onto SD. There's possibility for a modding mechanism too (custom textures in an SD card folder?).
Those playing on an emulator would need their save file to be patched to load DLC; the PC app could sort this out. Those who have the game on a GBA cart and only have a DS flash cart could load DLC via a DS app.
Real time clock
This is available on some flash carts and emulators. A ticking fall-back should be available when RTC isn't there. Random weather, day/night cycle. It's small things like this that make a GBA game rather exciting (showing a sped-up time of day cycle and random weather might make for a charming promotional video).
Games have evolved!
My personal opinion is that we should not be discussing this as a "retro styled RPG" or any of the other tropey shit other RPG projects claim to be. Nor do I think this should be a "modern take of the genre".
What I believe would be right is to ask "what would a 2019 GBA game look like?" and then answer that question. Golden Sun's battle system looked pretty impressive at the time, but why not do a "mode 7" style battle system with a camera that moves around? I can easily imagine translating something like this into GBA 3D with a moving camera: https://imgur.com/YM0Z5W2
I remember older Final Fantasy games having a multiplayer aspect where characters can be assigned to controllers. That would probably work well on the GBA with an ATB system, where each players on their console sees the battle from their own perspective and they need to communicate in-person with their friends, who are controlling other party members, to take down enemies or the boss.
Modern tools are way better than what they used to be. TileD as a map editor with a custom GBA map compiler will produce content that was never really seen before on the GBA.
Route to Commercial.
GBA ROMs these days are expected to be pirated (therefore free). I believe it would not be effective to put a ROM binary behind a pay-wall.
What we could do is focus on the collector's market. Produce a poster, a box, a manual and load the basic ROM onto a blank GBA cart (custom label) and a USB stick with the PC app and flash cart bonuses (ROM file, FMV addon, DLC?). This would be expensive, I realistically foresee selling this collection at or above the $200 mark - a price I think collectors would be happy to pay as what they will be getting is the full monty. It's no longer about the game, it's about the fact that a high quality game exists on a cartridge, with a box and manual, a poster, plus a USB stick to hold everything else.
As for those who aren't collectors, there's the free ROM, but also they could purchase DLC content to show support. Their purchase could generate a unique key for them to unlock their DLC, which would be delivered in one of the methods described above. Emulator users would get their save file modified. We have the means to protect DLC content by signing it for each individual player.
The online system could also be designed to unlock additional features for those with a paid account. Maybe even a special room or badge for Patreon supporters - so ongoing support.
"That all sounds lovely and great, but how would we even get to this point?"
This is the part where you all throw up your arms and call me crazy. I think crowd-funding in this case would be acceptable. This is by no means after mass-market appeal (that era of crowd-funding I believe is completely dead). The crowdfunding projects I've been part of have been most successful when they've targeted specific audiences and generated conversation for this audience.
Micro Mages is a good case to look at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mo ... or-the-nes
After building a working ROM demo, we can switch gears and focus on a crowd-funding endeavour. This involves talking to gaming communities & press and getting them interested in this project before we launch crowd-funding. Crowd-funding requires 100% focus from everyone, so it very much would be switching gears. Ideally, one of us would become a dedicated writer for the crowd-funding campaign, keeping up with monthly updates.
We should be able to think of rewards and stretch goals.
For rewards, things like "your name as an NPC" or "your name in credits" or "you get to work with our artists to make a character". We can ramp up to things like "boxed copy of game" and then further on "custom built GBA + flash cart + boxed copy of game".
For stretch goals, there's some technical things we can limit until they become realistic, such as GBA Wireless Adapter support. We can set a high stretch goal for something like a Nintendo Switch port of the game - we have a few choices here as we can use a GBA emulator or port the game proper as it would be written in C.
If the crowd-funding is a flop, then we have a nice GBA demo of an RPG that we can be proud of and walk away from. I'm not going to say it's a win/win situation, but we'd have a graceful exit plan and that's something I always want to account for.
Crowd-funding requires a lot of skill and effort in itself to pull off. This includes promotional material, writing, contacting press and community, keeping up a social presence and making videos. Don't imagine it will be easy or can be sorted out in a week, it will need focus.
What the actual fuck?
I wouldn't present this idea if I didn't think it was viable. Personally, I'm about 40% invested in this idea myself and I'm still in the phase of writing tools and testing ideas (discovery phase). So far, everything looks surprisingly good and possible which is why I've given it some thought as to how to bring this to market.
Now, about the structure of this all; a proof of concept/demo would pretty much tell us a lot about this project. I am not willing to get financially involved until it clearly makes sense, I don't want anyone else to risk anything either.
What would be best right now is for me to build out my TileD map compiler so we can actually fiddle around with mapping and at least moving a camera around in a GBA emulator, that will shed some light on what can be done.
The game would be built from scratch, so a story, characters, system design, would be needed. I would want us all to agree on these things, but I want strict design rules to keep us doing the right thing. If the player is button mashing through a 30+ minute intro cut-scene and spends a full hour before a battle happens then something has gone wrong. Too many existing GBA RPGs do this and it is painful. This is also something MV projects are massively guilty of.
We should probably be incredibly critical and harsh of our own content "be our own worst critic".
After playing a few GBA RPGs on actual hardware I do think it's worth being mindful of what real hardware feels like. Squeezing the direction pad for an action battle system actually gets physically painful. Will an action battle system lock out potential options for online play? This is partly why I think ATB would actually be best, but it's this kind of stuff that would need discussing and debate.
As for theme/setting; I've been thinking about this and I personally believe we shouldn't be surprising anyone in this regard. 2D RPG I think people expect a fantasy setting. I see that it is trendy and hip to set an RPG in a modern setting, many MV games are doing that right now, but I think this would be a harder sell. It's weird to say, but I think a fantasy setting would set a project like this apart from other RPGs right now. It's also the theme that I see most representing in the games from this community, so I argue that we have more fantasy themed sources to look at and learn from. Would it be a risk attempting a modern or sci-fi setting? I believe so, but again it's up for discussion and debate.
Check out these gorgeous GBA RPGs:
What I propose is an RPG project for the Gameboy Advance and with this I also propose a route to move the project into a commercial production.
Why Gameboy Advance?
- Automatically avoids being "RPG Maker". A lot of the RPG Maker fatigue likely comes from the fact that everyone is using the engine, nothing feels special or unique.
- Hardware capabilities are pretty good. Sprite scaling/rotation. Modes 1 and 2 feature background scaling/rotation. HBlank can be used for 3D effects.
- Gameboy Advance is ARM which can be targeted with modern tools. Doesn't need Assembly, can be written entirely in C or even C++.
- GBA emulators are everywhere. Build the ROM and automatically it is available on many platforms.
- Asset demands are more relaxed compared to modern games. 16x16 pixel tiles is a common size on the GBA (technically it is 8x8), this is versus 48x48 pixels with RPG Maker MV.
Why not Gameboy Advance?
(Each of these points will be addressed).
- Who the fuck plays Gameboy?
- We need to build the tools (seriously I will address each of these points).
- Very limited, restricted embedded system. 32M ROM size, 256K RAM, 32K IRAM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy_ ... ifications
- Commercial viability is unlikely due to ROM being pirated.
I don't think anyone in their right mind would see Gameboy Advance as a smart market to invest in at this day-and-age, BUT I think there's a clever way to go about this. The retro game collector's community has a moderately good YouTube presence (for example https://www.youtube.com/user/MetalJesusRocks) and these niche communities are quite receptive to being catered towards. Making a retro game is also a notable thing in the general gaming social community (this shit tends to get noticed by fucking Lad Gamer on bloody Facebook all the time).
There are other modern retro games that have blazed the trail here - Micromages is a notable one.
For the tools/engine, I've already been working on some GBA related tools. Been doing some veeeeeery interesting tests too related to GBA <-> PC connectivity (I'll discuss this further down). I think we can cheat here massively. We know RPG Maker, so why not use RPG Maker to produce this? I see a few issues; tile sizes in MV are shit, map editor is restrictive. I have planned a TileD compiler that will free us from RPG Maker's map editor and be tailored specifically for GBA hardware. We'd build maps in TileD and use RPG Maker MV to create events, animations, battles, databases, whatever in its JSON format and compile those to a GBA binary format.
The limitations of the GBA will restrict what can be done. An immature person would chime "limitation breeds creativity!". What I will say is the restrictions will provide a rather interesting, mentally stimulating environment. Imagine getting an entire RPG crammed into a GBA! There's also some limit-breaking we can do here; GBA <-> PC connectivity that I mentioned a moment ago (more on this later). SD Flash Carts also give access to 256GB(!!) file systems, we could do something cool like optional FMV videos and high quality streamed music for owners of flash-carts.
I believe there's smarter routes to a commercial release. I will discuss this later, however in short I think a free ROM release is okay - if we cater to the passion of the target audience (note; I am not describing begging or pandering) we can hopefully get a response from them that will support the commercial viability of this.
Other concerns.
- This is just Xilef's personal passion project.
- How can we manage a collaboration?
Yes I am passionate about GBA stuff. I also acknowledge how bloody useless a lot of what I do on it is. This isn't my "personal passion project"; that would be a project that costs so much money that it will likely never get built. This isn't another project re-branded either, that project has very specific goals centred specifically on the MV market. I am definitely building on my research and lessons from these prior investigations, but this is specifically not any of those other projects. I've said before that I want to try and find a good model for a collaborative project before presenting it, rather than attempt to shoe-horn in any pre-existing ideas, I think a GBA RPG is a nice fresh concept to look at.
Managing the collaboration would need discussion. I have my own ideas on project development: I believe everyone has something important that needs to be maintained in a team environment, so discussing and finding out what that is would be important.
Why an RPG?
RPG Maker is in most of our blood at this fucking point. We've got an entire forum filled with fucking hundreds of games to look at and learn from, this is probably the richest community describing development of RPGs out there.
Are we actually any good at it? Who knows! But I think it's what we've been training ourselves for over the past 14 years, it makes sense to investigate this rather than attempt a "short" or "arcade" project. I definitely, definitely, definitely spent time looking at other game genres and ideas to see if anything can be done in a short amount of time that would be worth it, but I do think RPG would be the right genre for this community at this time.
I definitely feel that RPG would be the best genre to represent the history of this community. We've also got some unique examples of ideas that I'd absolutely love to build upon; I see a unique opportunity to bring some of the concepts of online play onto the GBA, Amy has done a lot of work here that we can lean on.
Beyond that, I think the gaming community would be most receptive towards a GBA RPG over any other genre on this specific retro console. Would people be excited for a new GBA racing game? I don't think so. Pier Solar makes a good case study: http://www.piersolar.com/
What makes this special? Unique Selling Points.
The existence of a modern GBA game is pretty special in itself, but I think we can do even more than this.
GameCube Link Cable + GameCube USB Adapter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameCube_ ... link_cable
https://store.nintendo.co.uk/nintendo-s ... 93689.html
These are two official Nintendo products. With these it is possible to connect a Gameboy Advance to a PC. We can do something that wasn't possible in the mid 2000s; make a GBA game that connects to a PC to access services such as DLC or Online functionality. I'll discuss this more in terms of the commercial viability of this project.
Not only this, but GameCube controllers can be connected to this adapter along side the GBA. This opens up the option of single-system multiplayer (a little weird, but okay).
Imagine playing an RPG on your GBA, hooking up to a PC, then selling your gear to an online market. Or jumping into a room that asynchronously has other players in it to interact with and battle.
SD Flash Carts
These are more modern devices that are popular in the current Gameboy community. They allow ROMs to be copied to an SD card and then easily played. More importantly, SD card file system access is possible from GBA games. SD cards these days are massive in size, a GBA game can be 128 Gigabytes in size if a suitably sized SD card is used.
I don't propose we make a massive GBA game, but this gives a unique ability to provide additional content to flash cart users. So if you do not have the cables to connect to a PC, but do have a flash cart, then DLC can be loaded via the SD file system. We can also put streaming FMV videos or music onto SD. There's possibility for a modding mechanism too (custom textures in an SD card folder?).
Those playing on an emulator would need their save file to be patched to load DLC; the PC app could sort this out. Those who have the game on a GBA cart and only have a DS flash cart could load DLC via a DS app.
Real time clock
This is available on some flash carts and emulators. A ticking fall-back should be available when RTC isn't there. Random weather, day/night cycle. It's small things like this that make a GBA game rather exciting (showing a sped-up time of day cycle and random weather might make for a charming promotional video).
Games have evolved!
My personal opinion is that we should not be discussing this as a "retro styled RPG" or any of the other tropey shit other RPG projects claim to be. Nor do I think this should be a "modern take of the genre".
What I believe would be right is to ask "what would a 2019 GBA game look like?" and then answer that question. Golden Sun's battle system looked pretty impressive at the time, but why not do a "mode 7" style battle system with a camera that moves around? I can easily imagine translating something like this into GBA 3D with a moving camera: https://imgur.com/YM0Z5W2
I remember older Final Fantasy games having a multiplayer aspect where characters can be assigned to controllers. That would probably work well on the GBA with an ATB system, where each players on their console sees the battle from their own perspective and they need to communicate in-person with their friends, who are controlling other party members, to take down enemies or the boss.
Modern tools are way better than what they used to be. TileD as a map editor with a custom GBA map compiler will produce content that was never really seen before on the GBA.
Route to Commercial.
GBA ROMs these days are expected to be pirated (therefore free). I believe it would not be effective to put a ROM binary behind a pay-wall.
What we could do is focus on the collector's market. Produce a poster, a box, a manual and load the basic ROM onto a blank GBA cart (custom label) and a USB stick with the PC app and flash cart bonuses (ROM file, FMV addon, DLC?). This would be expensive, I realistically foresee selling this collection at or above the $200 mark - a price I think collectors would be happy to pay as what they will be getting is the full monty. It's no longer about the game, it's about the fact that a high quality game exists on a cartridge, with a box and manual, a poster, plus a USB stick to hold everything else.
As for those who aren't collectors, there's the free ROM, but also they could purchase DLC content to show support. Their purchase could generate a unique key for them to unlock their DLC, which would be delivered in one of the methods described above. Emulator users would get their save file modified. We have the means to protect DLC content by signing it for each individual player.
The online system could also be designed to unlock additional features for those with a paid account. Maybe even a special room or badge for Patreon supporters - so ongoing support.
"That all sounds lovely and great, but how would we even get to this point?"
This is the part where you all throw up your arms and call me crazy. I think crowd-funding in this case would be acceptable. This is by no means after mass-market appeal (that era of crowd-funding I believe is completely dead). The crowdfunding projects I've been part of have been most successful when they've targeted specific audiences and generated conversation for this audience.
Micro Mages is a good case to look at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mo ... or-the-nes
After building a working ROM demo, we can switch gears and focus on a crowd-funding endeavour. This involves talking to gaming communities & press and getting them interested in this project before we launch crowd-funding. Crowd-funding requires 100% focus from everyone, so it very much would be switching gears. Ideally, one of us would become a dedicated writer for the crowd-funding campaign, keeping up with monthly updates.
We should be able to think of rewards and stretch goals.
For rewards, things like "your name as an NPC" or "your name in credits" or "you get to work with our artists to make a character". We can ramp up to things like "boxed copy of game" and then further on "custom built GBA + flash cart + boxed copy of game".
For stretch goals, there's some technical things we can limit until they become realistic, such as GBA Wireless Adapter support. We can set a high stretch goal for something like a Nintendo Switch port of the game - we have a few choices here as we can use a GBA emulator or port the game proper as it would be written in C.
If the crowd-funding is a flop, then we have a nice GBA demo of an RPG that we can be proud of and walk away from. I'm not going to say it's a win/win situation, but we'd have a graceful exit plan and that's something I always want to account for.
Crowd-funding requires a lot of skill and effort in itself to pull off. This includes promotional material, writing, contacting press and community, keeping up a social presence and making videos. Don't imagine it will be easy or can be sorted out in a week, it will need focus.
What the actual fuck?
I wouldn't present this idea if I didn't think it was viable. Personally, I'm about 40% invested in this idea myself and I'm still in the phase of writing tools and testing ideas (discovery phase). So far, everything looks surprisingly good and possible which is why I've given it some thought as to how to bring this to market.
Now, about the structure of this all; a proof of concept/demo would pretty much tell us a lot about this project. I am not willing to get financially involved until it clearly makes sense, I don't want anyone else to risk anything either.
What would be best right now is for me to build out my TileD map compiler so we can actually fiddle around with mapping and at least moving a camera around in a GBA emulator, that will shed some light on what can be done.
The game would be built from scratch, so a story, characters, system design, would be needed. I would want us all to agree on these things, but I want strict design rules to keep us doing the right thing. If the player is button mashing through a 30+ minute intro cut-scene and spends a full hour before a battle happens then something has gone wrong. Too many existing GBA RPGs do this and it is painful. This is also something MV projects are massively guilty of.
We should probably be incredibly critical and harsh of our own content "be our own worst critic".
After playing a few GBA RPGs on actual hardware I do think it's worth being mindful of what real hardware feels like. Squeezing the direction pad for an action battle system actually gets physically painful. Will an action battle system lock out potential options for online play? This is partly why I think ATB would actually be best, but it's this kind of stuff that would need discussing and debate.
As for theme/setting; I've been thinking about this and I personally believe we shouldn't be surprising anyone in this regard. 2D RPG I think people expect a fantasy setting. I see that it is trendy and hip to set an RPG in a modern setting, many MV games are doing that right now, but I think this would be a harder sell. It's weird to say, but I think a fantasy setting would set a project like this apart from other RPGs right now. It's also the theme that I see most representing in the games from this community, so I argue that we have more fantasy themed sources to look at and learn from. Would it be a risk attempting a modern or sci-fi setting? I believe so, but again it's up for discussion and debate.
Check out these gorgeous GBA RPGs: