So I emailed Valve on a whim last night

[Square King]

I emailed Gabe when, in retrospect, I probably should've sent a message directly to their Source licensing/business development guy, but I got a response. Not from Gabe, but from their Source licensing/biz dev guy, Mike Dunkel. I asked if Valve were considering working with Cave on getting ports on Steam. Here's what he sent:

Hello Jake,

We are interest in distributing Japanese developers on Steam. We are currently not talking with Cave but their stuff looks interesting.

Kind regards,

Mike

Yay interest! It'd be nifty if an avenue of communication could be opened between the companies, amirite?

[nimitz]

The best trick if you want them to really consider it is having hundreds of people send similar emails.


That being said, if I'm not mistaken steam is virtually nonexistent in Japan. And the chances of Cave going through all that trouble for western markets only is a big fat zero.

[Square King]

Yeah. I was really bored at work yesterday.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

still it would make an nice alteranative to the 360 xbla as i believe the publisher / developers get a bigger percentage from each sale on PC then they would for consoles as the hardware company takes a chunk off each sale.

It would be great if they released their back catalog on the PC but personally i doubt we'll ever see a cave shmup on the pc.

Edit: what would be total heaven is if Cave made PC exclusive shmups that could do proper lag free danmaku online multiplayer. I rememeber a xbla shmup dev saying on this forum that online multiplayer bullet hell couldnt be done lag free yet. Maybe things would be better just using everyday PC internet instead of xbla or other consoles online connections.

[Ed Oscuro]

Presented by...Steam? Valve in a Cave.

Aaanyway, how's this going to work? View options for nearly orphaned old games on Steam are usually primitive (Quake on Steam is either WinQuake or GLQuake, likely well over ten years old lol). If Cave thought it worth releasing for I'm sure they'd find somebody to port it, maybe even do a good job...seems to be the upshot of the "omg is Cave going to spend the money on this port" threads, as I see it. But will they?

[HamidoOs]

I rememeber a xbla shmup dev saying on this forum that online multiplayer bullet hell couldnt be done lag free yet.

Call that guy and tell him there's something called "GGPO" out there.

[gray117]

... there's something called "GGPO" out there.

whuh? - this would still be a fudge for shmups GGPO is lag reduced not free... Plus there's further game dependant considerations unique to pve games - such as enemy focus - which would need special attention - I suspect grave problems for many existing shmup game loops... you'd probably end up [re]bloating GGPO...

Anyways, shame nothing in the works. Can't help feel cave could benefit from the reputation boost from courting a pre made more 'hardcore' [hate that word but you know what I mean] community...

[lgb]

No, but it's easily better than anything else.

GGPO officially supports some beat-em-ups, and technically supports pretty much everything in whatever build of FBA that they decide to choose... not sure what the problem is.

[gray117]

Whilst the traffic remains tiny; there's still more to compensate for in a bullet hell shmup - priority becomes more debatable - although interestingly I'm sure with a bit of tinkering with the specific games this could be simplified - its just that no one will take apart and reconstruct a game to redo x/y[z] tracing etc. Beat'em ups and metal slugs work on telegraphing far more than shmups of these types; input cheating becomes much harder to achieve without effecting play...

Don't get me wrong it's probably fine for fun and variation - and I applaud GPPO efforts, its just that its not magic; it's efficiency plus a bit of cheating - which fits beat'em ups extremely well... but we are on a forum where 40ms is considered lag, its just a tough fit.

Like cloud gaming - probably fine for halo bros, but I can't see myself wanting to play shmups that way.

[Observer]

Now that Steam supports Mac and all the dice, and with the iPhone ports around, it would be interesting to see them releasing a PC/Mac port with Steam achievements, leaderboards and all the fluff (heck, even DLC if they want to charge for it).

Remember Cave's twitter? Isn't it time to start poking around there too?

Would be cool to get a proper Mushi/Ibara bundle. Whatever they screw could be fixed quickly without having to wait an era for Microsoft to certify things. If Cave doesn't fix it, perhaps users can create a custom patch/mod to do so. I mean, how long have been people waiting for the DDP-DOJ BLEX patch?

Anyway, I'll mail them too just in case (umm, Square King, could you PM the contact e-mail you sent your message to? Is it one of the many listed here?). Steam could really use some extra schmukmup love. Not that I see this happening never ever but... who knows? People weren't expecting iPhone stuff, right? It could also save Cave all the hassle of the region free drama/excuses or handing over rights to other companies for localisations.

[Square King]

@obs thanks for the backup. His address is indeed on that page, but I'll PM you in a sec.

I poked Cave_en's twitter about steaming things up. Even though the service isn't too popular in Japan, Steam's reach is undeniably huge. Cave can obviously get ports running well on the PC, so it's not a far cry to get 'em on there. If they really want to expand their market outside of Japan, they can't beat selling older ports at ~$15 a pop.

[lgb]

Don't get me wrong it's probably fine for fun and variation - and I applaud GPPO efforts, its just that its not magic; it's efficiency plus a bit of cheating - which fits beat'em ups extremely well... but we are on a forum where 40ms is considered lag, its just a tough fit.

Remember that the sort of people who really would care about 40ms are the sort of people who are not going to be multiplayer-ing these games. Competitive games have it much much worse, technically speaking.

[z0mbie90]

@obs thanks for the backup. His address is indeed on that page, but I'll PM you in a sec.

Could you PM me the mailadress to? More who ask maybe they think it's a great idea. And it is

[Square King]

I'll just post it here. His name's in the first post.

mike_d_@_valvesoftware.com (delete the underscores -- don't replace with spaces)

[Observer]

Square King> Thanks for the PM. I sent the mail to Valve. One can dream, right?

Time to troll Cave too. They have a PC icon in their website, maybe it's time to turn it into a "PC/Mac" (because Mac could use some love too) and start filling the blanks, heh. Also, it would remove the barrier of localisations since they can just localise things themselves (glorious engrish) and avoid region locking dorama/Microsoft being assholes/infinite wait for patches and certifications/etcetera.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Cool lets strat up a new forum wide campaign, Let the spamming commence

BTW anyone got caves email address?

[RetroRepair]

https://ssl3.cave.co.jp/contact/form.php

[KBZ]

sent an email too. A man can dream....

also.... bring senko no ronde to Dreamcast!

[soloista]

I am interested in getting Studio Siesta's games onto Valve... basically, Trouble Witches AC and Trouble Witches 2. Dunno about the first iteration though.

[Observer]

A well deserved bump (yeah, right).

Nobody asked on Cave's twitter? I did, asking for PC/Mac ports on Steam and they replied that currently there are no plans ('course not, with two big releases coming soon) but they will pass the suggestion to Asada.

Join the crowd, people. One can dream, right?

I really forgot to ask I that it would be really interesting to see mouse support to control the ships. Now that would open a whole new painful and surreal experience!

[Square King]

No mouse support! NO! GAHHHK

I asked on the Cave twitter about Steam but didn't get a response. Come to think of it, I've asked a few things and never get a response. Wonder if the part of my brain that understands twitter is brokened.

[Observer]

No mouse support! NO! GAHHHK

I asked on the Cave twitter about Steam but didn't get a response. Come to think of it, I've asked a few things and never get a response. Wonder if the part of my brain that understands twitter is brokened.

Ok, ok, I was kidding. But it's because of that mock video of the Ketsui clone with mouse support. I thought it was nice. BUT, just in case, I will not mention the mouse deal again, in case Asada or someone else decides it's actually a cool idea and the next shooter comes with mouse support only

I barely grasp how Twitter works. Maybe it's the "exotic" location I'm typing from...? (bwahaha)

But I'm glad I got a reply so fast!

[Square King]

Chasing-a-dream-bump

Just emailed Cave re: Valve's response. I'm not getting my hopes up, but it'd be great to let them know someone wants to get their games to more people.

You cats who emailed Valve and/or Cave: get any responses?

[Demetori]

@obs thanks for the backup. His address is indeed on that page, but I'll PM you in a sec.

I poked Cave_en's twitter about steaming things up. Even though the service isn't too popular in Japan, Steam's reach is undeniably huge. Cave can obviously get ports running well on the PC, so it's not a far cry to get 'em on there. If they really want to expand their market outside of Japan, they can't beat selling older ports at ~$15 a pop.

Cave can benefit from a lot of things Steam has to offer.
Steam Works, decent leader online leader board support, achievements, security, mass distribution (everyone knows if Valve market something, it usually gets a fuck load of buys), easy updates and DLC support, and Valve aren't Microsoft.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

If that piece of shit Razor 2 can get on Steam, Cave should have no problems if they tried. Someone should just point them to the games steam forum thread as the only posters there are ppl asking for their money back as they thought what they were buying was an arcade shmup (even i was quite stocked about it as the eye candy was good untill i read the reviews and saw proper gameplay vids.)

[Austin]

Cave ports to Steam would be easy money for Cave. Maybe not a ton of money, but what would be there would be easy. There are probably more people on Steam than you think that are interested in shmups, if the activity on the Razor 2 steam forum is any indication.

[BPzeBanshee]

Ok, ok, I was kidding. But it's because of that mock video of the Ketsui clone with mouse support. I thought it was nice. BUT, just in case, I will not mention the mouse deal again, in case Asada or someone else decides it's actually a cool idea and the next shooter comes with mouse support only

Funnily enough I found Guwange to be surprisingly playable in Shmupmame by binding the movement and firing controls to the mouse. Mouse-only games sounds like a stupid idea, but having it as an option would be interesting.

[MR_Soren]

I rememeber a xbla shmup dev saying on this forum that online multiplayer bullet hell couldnt be done lag free yet. Maybe things would be better just using everyday PC internet instead of xbla or other consoles online connections.

A console and a personal computer both use the same internet. It wouldn't make much difference unless the network code on the 360 was inefficient.

Anyway, a Cave game running at 60fps would be rendering a new screen every 17ms. I just pinged my company's webserver in Texas. I'm in Michigan. 54ms. Even if you cut that in half since the game data would only have to go one way, we're talking about 27ms. The internet is not fast enough for Cave's games.

Have a random hiccup that gives you a 200ms delay, and you're borked.

Call that guy and tell him there's something called "GGPO" out there.

Oh, my favorite! Non developers who learn an acronym and think they know more than the developers. It's not magic. The lag is still there, it's just cleverly hidden. It would not be ideal for Cave's games where the tolerance for lag is extremely low.

All that said, I'd love to see Cave's games on Steam, especially if they did Mac versions for Steam while they were at it. That, however, is unlikely as it would take far more work for less payoff than porting a 360 game to Windows.

[Taylor]

There's absolutely nothing stopping a bullet hell shmup having online multiplayer. If you're sending bullet information or expecting the exact same results on both screens you're doing it wrong. The bigger problem is now you have spent development time putting online multiplayer in a game that doesn't benefit from multiplayer.

Anyway, I like the Columbo approach to getting games on Steam.