VN portal / game re-release / game engine

[ficedula]

This topic covers quite a number of things, but they're all sort of related. I'm sure if discussion drifts too much we can split the topic or something...

Anyway, as mentioned in the VN portal thread I was thinking about launching a site of my own for VNs anyway; initially I said I'd have something up in March. Turns out I'll be busy next month, so I figured, better to release something now (even if not quite complete) than wait until April/May - then I can get feedback

So, first thing: http://www.studiomab.co.uk - prototype portal. Essentially *none* of the details are fixed yet - the name and domain aren't definite, the design certainly isn't complete, and so on. But the core functionality is there; I can grant people accounts on the site, they can upload games and set up descriptions/images/pages for each game, games can be free to download or paid downloads, and so on.

First question is, therefore: Who is interested in either a) Posting games - either existing ones, or ones currently under development - on the portal, or b) Having physical copies printed (or both!)? For those people who are interested, what *specific* things do you want on the portal, or changes would you need made?

There's some information on the site about provisional costs and terms, but it's all still up in the air, albeit hopefully a bit more solid now than just hand-waved with nothing to show.

You can test it out from a customer perspective if you want. MorningStar is set up as a paid download; register an account, go through Google Checkout (it IS set to the TEST SERVER so no money will be taken!) and - fingers crossed - you should get an email notifying you that your account has access to the MorningStar downloads and you'll then be able to access the files.

Second thing: Some of you may remember we (Studio MAB) released MorningStar for the NaNoRenO of 2007. As part of the next VN we're writing, the engine has been totally rewritten, and so we brought MorningStar up to date on the new engine. Interesting points are firstly that it can now run on Linux & OSX (although it does still need Mono installed; yes, we know that's a pain, we're going to work on a helpful does-it-all-for-you graphical installer), and secondly (perhaps more interesting) it can also run as a Silverlight application - meaning, in a web browser plugin. (It's been tried on Windows and OSX; Linux, I'm not sure about. It may work, there is a Silverlight plugin for Linux, but I haven't tried it!). We've put the MorningStar 'demo' up to show off the Silverlight functionality.

Anyway, if anybody is interested, it's all on the StudioMAB website.


Third thing, or possibly second-and-a-half: Since we've got a more-or-less cross platform and also works-in-a-web-browser game engine, I've decided to release it for download in case anybody else wants to use our engine to write VNs. Again, the portal site has it available for download along with some sample scripts to learn from, and a command reference. Things that might be interesting to people is that it has a (currently *very simple*) editor to help manage the assets, which will also compile zips for you of the game - a Windows/Linux zip, and a compressed Mac OSX Application Bundle.

Again, this is definitely under development and so don't think that it can do everything RenPy can - obviously it can't, it's a new(ish) engine without all the advanced features. You may prefer the script syntax to RenPy, but then again, you may prefer RenPy's method of doing things! But if you want to write a standard VN, it'll probably do all you want - the bit that's most unique is, of course, the ability to write one game that runs either as a local application, or as a Silverlight web browser application, without any special work needing to be done.

As with the portal; if anybody's interested, please check it out, ask questions, and suggest improvements you'd like to see!

A plethora of links:

The portal site: http://www.studiomab.co.uk/
MorningStar page: http://www.studiomab.co.uk/browse/Studi ... orningStar
(Silverlight demo is at the bottom)
Game engine downloads/info: http://www.studiomab.co.uk/Content.aspx/Sylph

.NET 3.5: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en
(If you download MorningStar or the engine, you'll need this - if it's not already installed)

[Counter Arts]

Wah... tried it out and it works on IE.

Just one thing... Please put a "Now Loading..." thing so we know if it's loading or stuck.

Also... there are issues with firefox and silverlight.

[DaFool]

First question is, therefore: Who is interested in either a) Posting games - either existing ones, or ones currently under development - on the portal, or b) Having physical copies printed (or both!)? For those people who are interested, what *specific* things do you want on the portal, or changes would you need made?

I still have to finish my ongoing freeware project(s) (and in addition I'm considering whipping up something on a budget for Nanoreno), but basically all my projects after that can definitely use this portal, thank you! They'll be in the approximate range of 4-6 hour conventional visual novels / kinetic novels and will take about 6 months each to develop. Really, this is very early... much appreciated, though I was looking ahead a couple of months.

I am interested in physical copies and am curious as to the extent you made arrangements.
a.) Are we limited to CD and DVD cases? Can we specify boxes or would those require our own arrangements? How about multi-disc releases? Non-standard packaging such as Super Jewel Box (what the Japanese use)?

As mentioned elsewhere, the general attitude of people towards online stuff is a default to freeware so if ever there's an incentive to purchase anything online, usually it's for something physically tangible so it's a good idea to make that a very good experience for the customer.

b.) How about glossy inserts? I know CD/DVD replication and cover sleeves are pretty much standardized, but inserts can range from a single piece of cardboard to fold-out posters to moderately thick booklets.

Now more general questions:

c.) Provisions for copy protection? How about for your own Sylph engine?

d.) There seems to be no shipment provision to the Philippines (as well as other locations?). Is this a limitation of Google Checkout?

e.) Do you have your own standards for submissions besides no 18+ and must be VN or related? Surely if it's going to contain commercial entries it must be of a higher caliber than the Ren'ai Archives?

f.) Is there possibility to use Euros for default currency? I know you're based in the UK and all, but it'll be easier to compute standardized pricing in ones head (not to mention compare with offerings elsewhere such as Mangagamer)

Once again, let me say, many, many thanks. (Now I will need to hold up my end by making worthy offerings).

[Vatina]

(Argh, my long reply post was deleted... trying again)

Awesome, that was fast! I'll test the website when I get home from work.

First question is, therefore: Who is interested in either a) Posting games - either existing ones, or ones currently under development - on the portal, or b) Having physical copies printed (or both!)? For those people who are interested, what *specific* things do you want on the portal, or changes would you need made?

Since I am one of the people who voiced interest in the portal, I better answer the questions.

a) I'm interested in posting games on your portal, maybe even my free game at first when it's done (which is very soon! Really!), but also future commercial projects. I will be doing some - but it will take a while before I have any, so don't count them among the start-up projects.

b) Very much interested in this too. Maybe even as an option for a printed copy of my free game, in case someone would wish to buy something like that.
Apart from the boxed version of a game, I would be interested in the possibility of including small booklets and such? Am I being too needy?


And then I also mirror DaFool's questions.

[ficedula]

Counter arts: The demo should work in Firefox now. A loading indicator will be next up to look at. (EDIT: Basic loading indicator implemented).

Dafool: In theory we can do anything, but in practice, standard DVD and CD jewel cases are easiest. Multi disc releases are no problems, there are a variety of multi-disc cases available easily for both DVD and CD formats. Anything other than that ... I'll certainly do if you really want, but at that point it's something I can't source immediately so there may be more costs involved.

Inserts wise; glossy prints are easy, because I'm already running off a glossy cover for the discs, so anything up to A4 size on either paper or thin card is basically no problem at all, as it'll just get printed as part of the normal print process for everything else in the firm. If you want anything larger than A4 (which would then get folded down to fit in the game, I presume!) isn't a major problem as such, because I already deal with a commercial printing shop near my business for anything like that, BUT because I'm having to go to a third party, we're probably talking about pre-printing a minimum quantity to be able to fulfill that.

Boxes: Same story here, really. I'm willing to look into it, and source the materials and printing for you, but it would probably mean pre-printing a minimum quantity since it's not really something I can run off on-demand.

I realise it's tricky to judge demand for areas like that, so it might make sense to release a simple copy first (DVD case, printed discs, glossy inserts - perhaps fold outs) and see how well it sells, then use the sales data from that to make a decision for your *next* release.


Copy protection: First of all, the site restricts access to downloads on a per-account basis, so the download link does you no good unless you're signed into an account which has paid for access to that link. Obviously that doesn't stop people passing the download around once they have it, but it's a first step.

Secondly, if your game is license-key protected, if you can provide a pre-generated list of license keys, the site will email a key automatically when somebody purchases the game. If you're using RenPy or similar, you'll have to find somebody to write a license key authentication module for you For Sylph, obviously I can provide that for you.

I'm sure you realise this already but license keys may or may not be effective *at all*. If you don't restrict how often one key can be used, nothing stops somebody buying one key and publishing it for everybody else to use. If the game 'phones home' to authenticate the key against a central server, you may p*** off users who buy your game then copy it onto their laptop only to find it can't be played without internet access. And *nothing* will stop a determined hacker bypassing the copy protection.

Thirdly, I'm not a big fan of games which 'phone home' on *every single run* because of how likely it is to annoy customers, but if somebody wants a scheme like this ... well, we'll see.

Basically, I'd like to work with authors to add what they want - bearing in mind I don't want anything *too* obnoxious that might give a bad impression of the site.

Oh, one other thing I had in mind - more long term - was adding a 'registered users' area to the site where buying one game gives you advance access to demos and previews of new games from the same author, or even from other authors (provided everyone agrees!).



Shipping: No, Google does support shipping to most of the world, including the Philippines - I just haven't worked out how much physical shipment costs to those locations! But once I enter the postage rates, checkout will work.

Standards: Yeah, I'm a little reluctant to lay down rules in stone, but I do want a reasonable quality of games on the site. I just don't know what can be said other than "reasonable quality". Fundamentally I have a veto over what goes up; I won't refuse a game because I personally don't like it, but I might ask to playtest games from new publishers and refuse them if they crash, contain major spelling/grammatical errors, or otherwise seem unfinished. If somebody wants to charge a ridiculous price (£50 for a half hour game) again, I'll ask them to reconsider.

On the other hand, I can see people who already have games up on the site maybe wanting to publish previews or works in progress; I wouldn't expect those to be polished, but I also wouldn't expect them to be sold at a price or promoted on the front page!

Currencies: Unfortunately Google doesn't let UK merchants charge in Euros. It's really quite annoying and one of the few things that Paypal is better at. On the other hand, I really, really don't like Paypal.

Once possible compromise is to display *estimated* prices in Euros on the site, but fundamentally I'm afraid I'm limited to taking payment in pounds sterling, at least while using Google.

Vatina: Certainly, printed copies of free games is absolutely the sort of thing I'd like to see on the site - download and play for free, if you like it and want to support the authors, buy a 'plus' copy on CD that comes with a booklet / mini-poster / insert / whatever. See also my ramblings above


Final note: I'll be at an anime convention in the UK (Minamicon) in about 6 weeks time - so if anybody has something already complete / nearly ready they want me to market on my stand there, please do let me know; the more games I can advertise the better, as far as I'm concerned.

[DaFool]

Man, so excited!

I'm planning to set aside 4 months to put together something in the order of 2 main characters, 35,000 words, 8 music tracks, 20 CGs, and 200mb size, charge £10.00 and throw in an OST CD for good measure, just to test the waters.

That's pretty much the sweet spot I think a single creator can manage, any more and the workload explodes exponentially... there will be a need to recruit additional team members then you'll need to split the proceeds. Also, for those who cannot compose, obtaining music might be a problem unless there's some agreement made with a musician regarding commercial versions.

I think the trick would be to write for a bigger world such as that in Songs of Araiah, then you can make subsequent games starring new characters but set in the same universe. Hell that's what the most budget conscious of eroge makers do... 1 girl games for 840 yen, then collect them into a package set and charge 2000 yen. Lol business plan! (Then again, there might be a limit to the things you can do with just one character without straying into 18+ territory).
-------------------------------------
EDIT:
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Some new ideas just popped up:

* What if, for whatever reason, a game is made with strictly non-commercial intent. So a physical distribution in this case is just an alternative means to get the product around, while not necessarily creating profit. What is the break-even cost so that we're essentially paying for replication, your services and efforts in assembly, shipping and handling (and marketing at conventions) while the developers could care less about having their cut at all? In other words, it's like we're paying out of our own pocket for physical distribution just like we would for hosting a free game.

* That being said, is there an option to order multiple physical copies of a game and send them to various addresses as gifts? For example, let's say I have 3 teammates, I buy 5 copies, one for me, one for each of my team members, and one to be sent to PyTom as a complementary copy?

[ficedula]

Ah, only just saw your edited questions.

1) Non-commercial. Well, there's two pricing models I've proposed on the website - for downloads, and for physical copies.

For downloads, you first have to have a web hosting account (£30+VAT/year), and then I charge 20% of the game cost with a minimum charge of £1. *But*, if the game is freely accessible, I wouldn't charge anything per download provided you stayed within your monthly bandwidth limit - that's what the web hosting charge covers.

For physical copies, which is what I think you're talking about, instead of a percentage I would normally charge a fixed amount per CD - assuming the final selling price was reasonable. The exact amount depends on how many discs, whether CD or DVD, whether there's inserts/booklets (and how big they are), but let's say for your product I charge £3 per copy. It's up to you what you want to charge. If you charge £10, you get to keep £7 from each sale. If you want to 'sell' the game at no profit to yourself and just cover my fee, then I'm happy to sell it at £3 to your fans, whether via mail order, at conventions, or hopefully both.

(The figure could easily be lower than £3 for a simple CD with no booklets or other materials. On the other hand, I'd caution you against cutting costs too much - if you make things *too* barebones and budget, firstly the postage cost becomes a significant proportion of the price, secondly you're reducing the reason for people to buy it ["oh, so I just get a CD, no bonus material"], and thirdly people may simply assume a super-cheap product isn't very good!)

Gift copies? Interesting. I think my answer would be "certainly, I'm happy to do that", but whether it's worth automating rather depends on how often it's likely to come up. In your case, I'd say "email me to say what you want and I'll tell you how much that'll cost, including all the postage". I'm not sure it happens so often that the website checkout procedure needs to support buying 5 copies and sending 3 to this address and 2 to this other one...

Also, if you wanted to 'bulk buy' a load of copies to be sent to yourself (and you then wanted to distribute them to your team members or friends or at a local convention, whatever!) that could work out cheaper; first of all, sending a bunch of copies in one parcel is more efficient on postage, secondly, for larger orders I'd knock a bit off the price anyway since it's more efficient for *me*, too.

[chronoluminaire]

(The figure could easily be lower than £3 for a simple CD with no booklets or other materials. On the other hand, I'd caution you against cutting costs too much - if you make things *too* barebones and budget, firstly the postage cost becomes a significant proportion of the price, secondly you're reducing the reason for people to buy it ["oh, so I just get a CD, no bonus material"], and thirdly people may simply assume a super-cheap product isn't very good!)

This is a significant point. SunKitten upped the price on the physical copies of Elven Relations she sold at anime cons to £5 from WIRTW's £1, not because it cost any more to print, but so that people would feel like it was something significant they were buying.

(I think the number of sales of each was about comparable, and not very high.)

[DaFool]

If I understand correctly, everyone -- freeware or not -- has to pay the basic hosting, correct?

Please be advised that the total sales (*sum of your products sales if you have more than one product registered) of your product must reach at least $100 in order for us to make a payment to you. If your total product sales did not reach $100 in the current month, the balance is carried to the next month. If your total product sales did not reach $100 within a year, the payment is made to you at the end of the year.

Just curious what the plan for this site would be in comparison. I kinda like the idea of a running virtual bank balance before actual payment -- would it be possible to let net income pay off costs (such as hosting) before being passed of as profit (or non-profit in this case)?

[ficedula]

If I understand correctly, everyone -- freeware or not -- has to pay the basic hosting, correct?

Yes - although if you only sell physical products (no downloads), I'd probably waive that, since there's no significant bandwidth being used.

Just curious what the plan for this site would be in comparison. I kinda like the idea of a running virtual bank balance before actual payment -- would it be possible to let net income pay off costs (such as hosting) before being passed of as profit (or non-profit in this case)?

Yes, I'd probably run a similar scheme. Certainly maintaining at least one payment per year sounds good to me (and it'll probably make my accountant's job easier), and a minimum threshold for paying out first is also sensible - even if I manage to arrange a free money transfer, I don't want to spend time transferring tiny amounts of money around... and allowing payment for hosting from your earned fees is also sensible. Something roughly equivalent to $100 is about the right sort of amount, I think, maybe slightly less (since I'd be pricing it in pounds sterling).

[ficedula]

*Resurrection*

Not directly portal related, but for anyone who was interested in the engine, it now runs on PocketPC. You can test it on an emulator of course, but more likely you want to see it running on actual hardware...

(As with the Silverlight version, games should run as-is; when you package a game up for PocketPC the packager rescales the graphics down in resolution, but you don't have to do anything special. In theory anyway. It seems to work so far!)

[DaFool]

I know we're kinda busy with Nanoreno right now, but I guess it isn't too early to ask... according to your business plan, how many games would be optimal for you at launch time?

For example... "It might be nice to have 4 games by December".

Just for reference, Mangagamer has 6 titles on offer.

You know how creators tend to make multiple games in the same universe? Well, that's sort of the plan now...

[chronoluminaire]

*Resurrection*

Not directly portal related, but for anyone who was interested in the engine, it now runs on PocketPC. You can test it on an emulator of course, but more likely you want to see it running on actual hardware...

(As with the Silverlight version, games should run as-is; when you package a game up for PocketPC the packager rescales the graphics down in resolution, but you don't have to do anything special. In theory anyway. It seems to work so far!)

Oh, wow. That's very nifty. As it happens, just earlier today I was thinking "I want a game I can play on my PocketPC"... Don't suppose you've got the cab file hanging around?

[ficedula]

Oh, wow. That's very nifty. As it happens, just earlier today I was thinking "I want a game I can play on my PocketPC"... Don't suppose you've got the cab file hanging around?

Eh, I'm afraid it's still in sort of beta on the PocketPC - it runs but there's a couple of minor issues I'm working on. I'll try and get a download up by the weekend, though. (It's likely to not have the battles in MorningStar working - because they're a non-standard part of the engine - but on the other hand, you might consider that a bonus... )

I know we're kinda busy with Nanoreno right now, but I guess it isn't too early to ask... according to your business plan, how many games would be optimal for you at launch time?

That's a nice question with a hard-to-give answer. Really, it depends what games people want to publish on the portal. I suspect - and it's something I'm happy to go with - that to begin with a fair proportion of the games will be existing games that people just want to add a "buy a physical copy with bonus material" option for. We're planning to do just that with MorningStar, to begin with.

Obviously I'd *like* new games to launch on the portal, pay-to-download as well as pay-for-hardcopy - but I do realise there's a limit to how many new games get produced!

Shall we say that, if I launch properly this summer, I'd like to have 10 games on the website, but I rather expect many of them - perhaps not all - will be existing games that are going up there as "bonus versions".

Whilst on the subject, we've got the first copies of MorningStar sorted, as chunderbunny alluded to in another thread. Obviously it's a little tricky to try and convey print quality via digital photos - particularly given one was taken on my mobile phone - but nevertheless, here's some sample images...