Cave x Steam teaser!

[Strider77]

THAT'S what they should do... Make a Cave home console and rub the RetroVGS's nose in it...

[emphatic]

Also if we are hardware dreaming then I'll throw in a home Jamma Cave system that uses carts for the games and plugs into USB for updates. lol

OMG, yes!

[vector7]

The rewards for the backers will be Steam/PSN licenses - and Cave will have to pay them the usual percentage of the sticker price.

Well, i don't know about psn but in case of steam they won't need to pay anything. The developers of games on steam can request keys without any cost.

Games sold during sales pay less to the developer, publisher and Steam. It is obvious that Cave has certain "revenue requirements/expectations" - games sold at a discount contribute less to reaching that goal so therefore even more licenses will have to be sold (e.g. 40,000 instead of 25,000) before Cave is satisfied. In the end they want to recoup their investment ASAP and harvest some profits so they can keep going as a business.

Yeah, that's kinda obvious. But even with a very low discount profits can be quite high. If cave wants a quick profit maybe they will be dissapointed. And there is possibility that there won't be any significant profit for them after initial release. In the end like emphatic said it's just assumptions and guessing game and while it can be entertaining, it's pointless to some extend.

[Strider77]

I'd play that.

After looking at what I typed out.... I probably would also.

[Satan]

Not really a House fan, but I'm glad to see Sebastian Leger is a Cave fan.

[emphatic]

Not really a House fan, but I'm glad to see Sebastian Leger is a Cave fan.

Yeah, I've seen his cabinets on Instagram.

[Xyga]

Why yeah no surprise he's a member here.

[DestroyTheCore]

[mastermx]

That makes me moist.

[Eno]

Holy mother of god it's happening. If only they'd support SteamOS too. Hopefully there will be people making it work on Wine.

[NeoStrayCat]

Damn, already, lol. Cave doing their work, lol. Hopefully soon, lol. X3

[DestroyTheCore]

Knowing Cave, I bet the sole programmer who must be working on the port sleeps at work to get the job done.

[Giest118]

How many frames of input lag do you guys think this'll have?
My money's on "all of them."

But seriously, awesome. I didn't expect to be DODGING BULLETS SO HARD THAT MY FACE EXPLODES so soon.

[MR_Soren]

In a previous interview, somebody at CAVE said that their arcade games can be ported to 360 or Microsoft Windows in a couple days. Granted, that is for a bare-bones port. Testing, upscaling graphics, option menus, and getting content ratings will add additional cost.

Of course, many of their games already have existing upscaled graphics from the 360 and iOS ports, so that cost can be ignored. It probably takes a handful of people a few months of dedicated work to produce a polished port that is ready for release. Probably not $300k - $500k of cost, but kickstarter fees, backer rewards, steam fees, and ratings boards will claim a lot of money beyond what they have to pay their own programmers. Plus they have to make enough money to make it worthwhile. Otherwise, why divert people away from creating more mobile games? The number might be reasonable.

Likewise, they've stated some years ago that it costs about $1,000,000 to produce their arcade games. I'd expect an original console shoot-em-up to cost about the same... but that was several years ago. With inflation and the cost of producing higher resolution graphics for a current console (rather than a 320x240 arcade PCB), the budget will have to be higher. Plus they'd have to create a new code library because their SH3 and Xbox 360 code won't run on the PS4. (Same for porting to PS4 rather than PC) This would probably be a one-time cost. Maybe their first new console game would cost $3 million, but the next one might only cost $2 - $2.5 million since they could re-use a lot of code. At any rate, it's not cheap, the numbers they posted are probably about right.

[CWM]

In a previous interview, somebody at CAVE said that their arcade games can be ported to 360 or Microsoft Windows in a couple days. Granted, that is for a bare-bones port. Testing, upscaling graphics, option menus, and getting content ratings will add additional cost.

Of course, many of their games already have existing upscaled graphics from the 360 and iOS ports, so that cost can be ignored. It probably takes a handful of people a few months of dedicated work to produce a polished port that is ready for release. Probably not $300k - $500k of cost, but kickstarter fees, backer rewards, steam fees, and ratings boards will claim a lot of money beyond what they have to pay their own programmers. Plus they have to make enough money to make it worthwhile. Otherwise, why divert people away from creating more mobile games? The number might be reasonable.

Likewise, they've stated some years ago that it costs about $1,000,000 to produce their arcade games. I'd expect an original console shoot-em-up to cost about the same... but that was several years ago. With inflation and the cost of producing higher resolution graphics for a current console (rather than a 320x240 arcade PCB), the budget will have to be higher. Plus they'd have to create a new code library because their SH3 and Xbox 360 code won't run on the PS4. (Same for porting to PS4 rather than PC) This would probably be a one-time cost. Maybe their first new console game would cost $3 million, but the next one might only cost $2 - $2.5 million since they could re-use a lot of code. At any rate, it's not cheap, the numbers they posted are probably about right.

Kickstarter fees are 8-10% of the total; backer rewards require some consideration, but can be designed in such a way as to not take more than another 10%; there are no Steam fees; neither Steam nor any other PC digital storefront require ratings (and even if they did, it's less than 5k in total for the major territories nowadays). The idea that they need to ask for more money than they actually need because the port might sell poorly is insane. That aside, it really shouldn't even be 300k.

As for the new game, I'm pretty sure that the cost of producing HD backgrounds and enemy sprites vs 240p ones isn't much higher, especially since the sprites are obviously produced from 3D models to begin with. I also don't believe that this is some kind of huge engineering challenge for a company which did nothing but produce shmups for shitty hardware for over 15 years. It should be cheaper to do this with the kind of development tools available for modern consoles and PC, not more expensive.

Needless to say, I'm not buying it.

[MR_Soren]

Kickstarter fees are 8-10% of the total; backer rewards require some consideration, but can be designed in such a way as to not take more than another 10%; there are no Steam fees; neither Steam nor any other PC digital storefront require ratings (and even if they did, it's less than 5k in total for the major territories nowadays). The idea that they need to ask for more money than they actually need because the port might sell poorly is insane. That aside, it really shouldn't even be 300k.

You are supporting my argument. 25% of the money is gone before they write a line of code, and they're not going to let those programmers write code to break even. It's not a hobby, it's a business. If the sales projections of what those programmers write isn't going to produce favorable profit margins, they're going to keep those programmers busy on mobile games instead. I never said anything about the port selling poorly.

As for the new game, I'm pretty sure that the cost of producing HD backgrounds and enemy sprites vs 240p ones isn't much higher, especially since the sprites are obviously produced from 3D models to begin with.

When they are rasterizing 3D models for a 320x240 display, the models can be pretty simple and still look alright. They would have to create more detailed models if they are expected to look good on an HD television. Otherwise, they'll wind up with some pretty jank looking shit like the Deathsmiles II graphics. It will cost more.

I'm also not buying that this is some kind of huge engineering challenge for a company which did nothing but produce shmups for shitty hardware for over 15 years. It should be cheaper to do this with the kind of development tools available for modern consoles and PC, not more expensive.

The game programming is identical because they code to their libraries, not to the hardware. The game code talks to a library that deals with the specifics of the hardware platform. Creating such a library is probably easier on the PS4 than on SH3, but the SH3, Microsoft, and iPhone libraries already exist, a CAVE PS4 library does not. It's not a huge engineering challenge, programmers do this all the time, but creating something new is more expensive than using something you already own.

[CWM]

You are supporting my argument. 25% of the money is gone before they write a line of code, and they're not going to let those programmers write code to break even. It's not a hobby, it's a business. If the sales projections of what those programmers write isn't going to produce favorable profit margins, they're going to keep those programmers busy on mobile games instead. I never said anything about the port selling poorly.

I am very confused as to what point you're trying to make here. We're talking about crowdfunding. The "break even" point has already been reached. I do understand that if they get better margins from mobile games, they're not going to go the crowdfunding route, but how does that impact their required budget for the port? You brought it up as if it justified asking for more money than they actually need, which is extremely dishonest at best and fraudulent at worst. Am I misunderstanding?

When they are rasterizing 3D models for a 320x240 display, the models can be pretty simple and still look alright. They would have to create more detailed models if they are expected to look good on an HD television. Otherwise, they'll wind up with some pretty jank looking shit like the Deathsmiles II graphics. It will cost more.

They looked perfectly fine in HD console ports of their CV1K games. Unless you believe they redid the models for those?

The game programming is identical because they code to their libraries, not to the hardware. The game code talks to a library that deals with the specifics of the hardware platform. Creating such a library is probably easier on the PS4 than on SH3, but the SH3, Microsoft, and iPhone libraries already exist, a CAVE PS4 library does not. It's not a huge engineering challenge, programmers do this all the time, but creating something new is more expensive than using something you already own.

For the record, I'm a software engineer by trade, and I do understand how abstraction works. My comment about coding for shitty hardware referred to the need to spend time optimizing and tuning performance for a platform like that (and judging by their need to make hardware slowdown a feature in their SH-3 games, this was not an easy problem to solve), likely on a per-game basis. In any case, the reasonable approach to making a console game without heavy hardware requirements would be to use a general purpose game engine like UE4 - no need to produce your own specialized middleware for each hardware platform when you can just implement your game logic in an existing engine and hit the "build for PS4" button (not exactly that simple, but pretty close nowadays as far as I'm aware). That precludes a custom arcade release (though Nesica would still be an option), but eh, it's probably time to let the PCB dream go (sorry guys).

[pegboy]

Eh, I'm never be interested in "steam releases" or digital releases in general (especially for a game that already has 2 physical releases). I have literally zero interest in any of this and the company is still dead to me unless they actually make a new game and/or releases something physical. If they do actually released some physical products I'd probably be a day 1 buyer though (depending on the game).

[fakeXsound]

The crowdfunding numbers posted by Cave are really high. Plus, usually with media projects, Kickstarter (or whatever) funds are usually just part of the total budget... Not getting my hopes up, but who knows.

[Blackbird]

Mushi QA is progressing along. In order to improve the accuracy of the port, we've decided to start a very limited closed beta. If you are a skilled Mushihimesama player with access to the original arcade board (or 1.5) and are interested in testing the game, please reply to this thread or PM me.

[Xyga]

You guys rock.

[Illyrian]

I love the way that when people on this forum get given something many people have been wanting for years (CAVE on Steam) everyone flips their shit and starts complaining. I can't wait for this release personally.

This thread is schumps farm in a nutshell.

[Blinge]

Yeah. I can't fathom people commenting here or on gaming news sites to tell us how much they don't care.
Cheers guys. Thanks for the contribution.

[CaptainAhab]

Woohoo! Getting pumped!

[MR_Soren]

You are supporting my argument. 25% of the money is gone before they write a line of code, and they're not going to let those programmers write code to break even. It's not a hobby, it's a business. If the sales projections of what those programmers write isn't going to produce favorable profit margins, they're going to keep those programmers busy on mobile games instead. I never said anything about the port selling poorly.

I am very confused as to what point you're trying to make here. We're talking about crowdfunding. The "break even" point has already been reached. I do understand that if they get better margins from mobile games, they're not going to go the crowdfunding route, but how does that impact their required budget for the port? You brought it up as if it justified asking for more money than they actually need, which is extremely dishonest at best and fraudulent at worst. Am I misunderstanding?

What "break even" point? Aren't we talking about hypothetical numbers posted by CAVE in a "what-if" sort of scenario? Maybe they erred a bit high to not create unrealistic expectations, but I don't think the numbers are *that* high. That is what I am saying. I also don't think they have much business crowdfunding their ports. They already have a game port coming to Steam without such nonsense.

They looked perfectly fine in HD console ports of their CV1K games. Unless you believe they redid the models for those?

Usually the background artwork was upscaled up and filtered. Perfectly fine when catering to obsessive fans of arcade games that already broke even, but probably not sufficient for an original home release that has to sell itself.

My comment about coding for shitty hardware referred to the need to spend time optimizing and tuning performance for a platform like that (and judging by their need to make hardware slowdown a feature in their SH-3 games, this was not an easy problem to solve), likely on a per-game basis.

There was no problem to solve. Most (all?) of the slowdown in CAVE's SH3 games was programmed in because people liked that effect in their older games.

In any case, the reasonable approach to making a console game without heavy hardware requirements would be to use a general purpose game engine like UE4 - no need to produce your own specialized middleware for each hardware platform when you can just implement your game logic in an existing engine and hit the "build for PS4" button (not exactly that simple, but pretty close nowadays as far as I'm aware). That precludes a custom arcade release (though Nesica would still be an option), but eh, it's probably time to let the PCB dream go (sorry guys).

I doubt that is what they are thinking. At this point, all of CAVE's programmers must know how to code to their own libraries. I don't think buying a license to use the Unreal Engine, retraining several of their programmers, and starting from scratch is something they are interested in. It seems more likely that would assign a few people to port their library or hire a company like M2.

Back on the money thing, your numbers suggest that only 75% of a kickstarter campaign would be used for actual development costs. That means $2.25 million on a $3 million campaign. If their games used to cost $1 million to develop on an existing platform, $2.25 million doesn't seem unreasonable when you consider inflation, the increased expectations of a PS4 customer, and the costs of coding for a new platform. Again, they probably erred a bit high to avoid creating unrealistic expectations, but I don't think the numbers are too far out there. Look at Mighty No. 9, for example.

[charlie chong]

can we banz all the whiny pcb collectros from this thread please as everyone knows there opinions are very unimportant
kthx bi
ps you could all start a thread to prove how your most hardcore cave fan and wave your willies somewhere else

[CWM]

What "break even" point? Aren't we talking about hypothetical numbers posted by CAVE in a "what-if" sort of scenario? Maybe they erred a bit high to not create unrealistic expectations, but I don't think the numbers are *that* high. That is what I am saying. I also don't think they have much business crowdfunding their ports. They already have a game port coming to Steam without such nonsense.

If they crowdfund it successfully, they're already at the "break even" point, by definition (unless they also use some of their own money). Anyway, I honestly do think 300k for the PC port is too much, by a significant margin. Their target for a new console game looks high, but it's difficult to know without knowing what exactly they'd have in mind. You can easily spend twice that if you wanted to go crazy with production values.

Usually the background artwork was upscaled up and filtered. Perfectly fine when catering to obsessive fans of arcade games that already broke even, but probably not sufficient for an original home release that has to sell itself.

Background artwork, yeah, I agree, looks obviously upscaled and unpleasantly blurry. The actual enemy models, however, in Espgaluda 2 or DFK or SDOJ, don't need any improvement.

There was no problem to solve. Most (all?) of the slowdown in CAVE's SH3 games was programmed in because people liked that effect in their older games.

I'm pretty sure that's not true for the majority of the slowdown. That's why it's mostly missing from emulated SH3 games, the part of the hardware responsible for most of it (the blitter) isn't emulated accurately. And logically speaking, if Cave intentionally made Futari slow down to sub 10 fps when you spawn enough gems, then they're absolutely insane.

I doubt that is what they are thinking. At this point, all of CAVE's programmers must know how to code to their own libraries. I don't think buying a license to use the Unreal Engine, retraining several of their programmers, and starting from scratch is something they are interested in. It seems more likely that would assign a few people to port their library or hire a company like M2.

Back on the money thing, your numbers suggest that only 75% of a kickstarter campaign would be used for actual development costs. That means $2.25 million on a $3 million campaign. If their games used to cost $1 million to develop on an existing platform, $2.25 million doesn't seem unreasonable when you consider inflation, the increased expectations of a PS4 customer, and the costs of coding for a new platform. Again, they probably erred a bit high to avoid creating unrealistic expectations, but I don't think the numbers are too far out there. Look at Mighty No. 9, for example.

Well, yes, I don't actually expect them to pick the most efficient option, Japanese game developers often don't. But I do think that if they were to commit to making a new console game, then they should aim for a multiplatform release to begin with and use technology that would facilitate this. The digital market on both console and PC has lost most of its remaining barriers of entry in the past few years, and even relatively small indie outfits manage to release on multiple platforms without issue.

As for our napkin budget calculations, if you adjust the 1m for inflation (from 2005, not sure when they gave that number), it becomes a little over 1.2m, which you could reasonably get from a KS for 1.5m. Of course, you can always improve production values, but given the state of the market, I feel it'd be unnecessarily risky to aim for anything better than SDOJ with HD backgrounds. Like I said earlier though, this is pure theory, as they won't get this much if they go through with the idea.

And Mighty No. 9 is really not a good benchmark for crowdfunded projects, I feel. I can't really think of KS project with a similar scope, to be honest.

[HydrogLox]

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 6#p1136066

Required reading before claiming Cave is asking for too much
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AndrewPe ... rocess.php
http://www.polygon.com/2015/5/19/862466 ... ual-indies

The notion that "consumers don't actually understand the real cost of game development" isn't a new one, but the true price tag is actually kind of scary, and the illusions put up by large Kickstarters are having a measurable negative effect on Kickstarter as a whole.

[cul]

Well that would actually be interesting that for once, a game studio would be open about the real cost of developing a new game, or porting a game to Steam.
I really would be interested to see the figures, seeing how much it actually cost them to port Mushi to steam.
Gamers have irrealistic views on how much an "indie" / niche game actually costs. What doesn't help also is that very few people have experience or knowledge on how a business or a company works.

What is the average salary for a coder in japan? 7~8k $/month? Let say you have ten persons working full time on mushi port (totally guessing here, it's just to prove a point), you are already at 80k $ per month just to pay the salaries of people on a project that will take, let say a year, 12*80 > 960 000 $, just in salaries.
So yeah, those 1M+ figures are far from "crazy". Actually 1M to develop any kind of project in the tech field i very low budget. We're not in 1993 anymore, developping ANY kind of game costs money, a lot of money.

And how many people will buy that? I don't want to be pessimist or anything but really, wouldn't surprise me at all that Mushi wouldn't even break even, and that it will be the only steam port ever.

[brentsg]

Yeah. I can't fathom people commenting here or on gaming news sites to tell us how much they don't care.
Cheers guys. Thanks for the contribution.

Better to setup an echo chamber for like minded thinking like some other gaming sites? I don't mind Cave on Steam, but it's hard to get excited over Mushi after playing it in so many formats.