Any artist want to work on a GBA game?

[pre]Yes it's that time of the week again.[/pre-emptive self deprichation/bad spelling]

Any artist interested in working on a 2d side scrolling tile based game in the same mould as the old amiga/bbc classic exile and metriod 2d.

Obviously the aim is to finish it, then find a licensed publisher.

You don't need a gba to play builds of the game, just an emulator. It's beeing coded in C++.

Man, if you look up 'weekly' in the dictionary there's a picture of you with a blank page in your IDE.

How much are you willing to pay? - Upfront!

Micheal bluth? I'd change it to bluth.

Indie, nothing up front, just an event split of profits from selling it to a publisher.

Man, we need to create a few text files to copy and paste from. This is a major time sink.

And the chances of selling a homebrew GBA game (that is NOT made with the official licensed SDK put out by Nintendo) to a licensed publisher of Nintendo GBA games? That chance would be a big ZERO! No legitimate publisher would risk losing their Nintendo license over such nonsense.

Why would they lose their license Brice? The tool I'm using is a commercial ide/gcc combo. Surely nintendo being the way they are would have been all over it if was breaking any rules?

I'll work with you on it... Something to do. dampee@... hell, I'll write music for it too. Worse comes to worse, we'll just have to re-do it for some other format if being on the GBA falls through...

Send me the Design Doc.

Ant: You were not talking about making a game for fun and for free, you were talking about selling it to a publisher.

A licensed publisher, who decided to start publishing bootleg games would indeed lose their license to publish Nintendo GBA games. Licensed Publishers will only work with Licensed Developers.

The console market is much different than the PC market where any kid can turn out a PC game and sell it. To make and sell a game for a console, you need to be a licensed developer and need to find a licensed publisher.

Of course, the chances of this game ever seeing the light of day, is also zero, based on your habit of starting a new project and dumping the old one every other week.

Antony, I suggest you take for some time a break away from any programming, and come back later with something that you can focus on.
When this time has come, look back without kindness to all the projects you've started with the naive (no pun intended) certitude to finish it and go commercial. I'm sure that will help you getting a better approach.
Because while all your projects certainly have brought you very valuable experience, this is wasted experience if you can't focus on a project long enough to produce anything marketable and *really* profitable (which as I understand it is your final goal).
To me, the way you're doing things is fine only for people that don't want to make a living (even partial) of it.

Also I hope you don't find too offended or *attacked* by people here (me included), because quite frankly they are kindly enough given your history. You can be certain that however sympathetic (or not) they might find you, a whole lot of people on these forum might think just the same but are just no bothering to tell it to you. And maybe they might somehow be true and not just nay sayers...

My 0.02$

Absolutely true. I worked inside a company that developed GBA games, and you have to buy a license, and then the tools/kits.

Yeah, the 'Nintendo seal of quality' is exactly that, a licence you need to buy to be able to sell anything you make with it. Sucks.

its a material world after all, we're all dreamers for thinking otherwise.

Um...I hate to say it but, he's actually write. I've programmed a few kick butt GBA games, and I applied for a nintendo license like 2 years ago...nothing yet. Not holding my breath.

these posts by Antony are good fun!

can we have a link to play these games perhaps?

Hey CodeD, how are you doing? Stay safe bro!

heheh...the new idea of the week! wonder what he's gonna give us next...!

At first it was interesting to see someone with so much "optimisim" who seemed to believe he can get a lot done. Then it started to appear doubtful, and quickly turned into laughable about what he was trying to do. Now he is making fun of himself (quite obviously, cant you see?) and it was odd for a few moments. Now the few moments have gone and it has become sad.

It was ever interesting?

Yeah, it was interesting to me when i was new here, saw this guy who had big plans. Made me think there are big players around here.

You know how it is. You smoke a rifa, get this big idea in your head where it's greatness is heightened by the leanage and redeye, then when the affect has worn off it's not so great an idea.

shall we place bets on what game it's gonna be next week. Last week it was a football manager program (after the porn game idea was scrapped). I think the next game is going to be warcraft style on a mobile phone.

I say VR helmet stuff

I tried to get Ant some focus on 2-3 projects. He's often makes fun at me for going on about focus. Game dev is something that needs a lot of time and proper focus if your going to finish anything.

These days I might consider working with ant, but only as a member of a team with another good programmer that could finish what was started, and some kind of limited compensation for work done. Unless he completed the project of course :).

Not sure what the answer is, just hope that when he gets to mature a bit, he is in a better situation to finish what he started. I get the distinct impression that his situation at home puts a lot of pressure on him to make a quick buck. Unfortunately thats not the way things work 99.9% of the time.

Consoles are pretty much a nono unless someone invited you to develop your existing game for Xbox live arcade. But you have to have a finished product to show proof of concept before anyone like that will take you seriously and wave licencing fees.

Nintendo won't even look at your stuff till you cough up. (that used to be the case anyway). MS seem to be your best bet right now, but only if you have something to show thats portable.

Nintendo, sadly, is afraid of independant developers.
Which is a huge shame, because their handhelds could really be the best place for independant games!

Just look at the fiddling that occurs over here, to work around Nintendo:
http://forum.gbadev.org/
(It's most noticeable with DS. Also, if you check out how hard it is to get an official development kit/license...)

Fantastic things have been achieved, though, thanks to that fiddling... But that's another thing altogether.

Antony, what out a project plan and design document before posting another mail containing your latest impulses?

In fact just finish the game with graphics placeholders and then if it's cool, an artist (in fact several) will jump at the chance to do the graphics for a masterpiece that will sell shedloads.

Nintendo were at garage games IGC last month, so they do have some interest in indies. Allthough I understand their rep kept a pretty low profile. Jeremy was pretty bumbed that he didn't get to meet them.

Wonder what they thought of Aerial Antics

And next week on bloosom...

people will be queueing for your autograph one day Antony! well, maybe. so don't give up! go get em bruvva! you can do it. i believe in you. you're nearly there. etc.

ps: j/k

Bloosom???

Crappy tv show with a bunch of talkative would be sages who said too much and knew too little.

Probably misspelt.

think it should be "Blossom"?!?
(it's with that skinny girl, right? IIRC she always wore funky hats..)

DonyDarko what are you doing in this thread??? Get back to working on your next movie!!!

Why don't you just start a website for Public Domain roms? It isn't illegal to develop your own rom file for a GBA emulation. As it's non-profit. That way people can see your ideas amongst the rest and see the potential you provide. Doesn't matter about music/graphics/or how many fps you are pumping out, if your ideas good, it's good. I wonder how many people here actually developed for the Net Yuroze (sp?) for the PSX. I used to always play the PD games on my PSX demo disc, and some were really good, even though they're not using the latest graphic artists from Asian counteries.

If your games good, it's good on any platform. Stop bitchin' in this forum and start doing some work for once.

I did. That's how I got a job in the games industry, several years ago. I don't work in the industry now, though.

P.S. Anyone want to buy a Net Yaroze? :)

You know with these licenses you have to buy to develop games, why do they have them?

If it's for quality assurance so that crap games aren't released then I can understand this. The thing is, take the GBA, if they allowed public developing for GBA wouldn't that create a whole new market for games and shift more GBA units?

You would think they would see that they could make extra cash buy allowing any old joe to make games for it.

i can't


Go take a look at half the GBA games out there! Played Spiderman 2 for the GBA?! the first level was so difficult that you couldnt finish it. I heard there were 3D bits, but i never saw them.

The Q&A tesing carried out by console manufacturers before they allow your game to be published is more about ensuring the game fits their Technical Requirements document, and has little (if anything) to do with the actual quality of the game itself.

Even the Net Yaroze demo games done for coverdisks had to go through this Q&A, which included 'rules' such as:
- The program must not feature any means of switching between PAL and NTSC video modes.
- The four-letter "SONY" logotype must not be used within this program except where this logo appears on a digitised image of the PlayStation console or on a peripheral licensed by SCEI/SCEA/SCEE.
...blah, blah, blah. There are pages of this stuff in the full document.

Do you have a copy of this document? I'm sad, and this kind of information interests me.

Ohhhh yeah, I almost forgot those, thanks for reminding big10p.

With Sony they are called TRCs, Technical Requirement Checklist, and it sucks bad. Stuff like which message must it show if the controller is removed while the game is played etc.

With Nintendo its called Pre-Lot Check.

With Microsoft I can't remember.

You probably can find them on the internet..

I don't think Microsoft has one, otherwise Halo wouldn't exist. :P (Joking)

PS: I found this: http://www.gameinstinct.com/index.html

Jono: I have a copy of the Net Yaroze TRC, which is a sub-set of the full, commercial one. I can't seem to find a TRC on the net - hmmm, maybe I'm not allowed put it online. Don't want Sony breathing down my neck. :/ I probably shouldn't have posted those 2 examples. :O

GoSsE: Did you have a Yaroze, then?

No Yaroze.
I developped for PS2, not PS1. They had those PS2 Test Kits, which were basically modded PS2, along with PS2 Debug Kits, which were huge computers in which you could do line-by-line execution while running the game.

company I worked for ended up buying modde PS2's a couple of years ago as Sony said they were all out and could take 3 more months. With only 6 weeks to go, we bought some modded PS2's to do the same thing. Bought 4 for the price of 1 official test kit lol.