Duality ZF (Xbox LIVE Indie Games) coming soon...

[Alfred]

400 points. I have seen all the youtube videos, pictures. I have read all your posts on this and other boards. I am really looking forward to this game. You two guys are great. Good luck. I hope it sells well.

[emphatic]

Follow what I mean?!

Yes.

Also, 400 pts is my price vote, as that extra 40 added for the lower price is pretty annoying. If you get a 1400 pts card to buy a 1200 pts game, you're missing 40 points from any 240 pts purchase, and have to end up with lots of more points you might not really want at the moment.

[Dandy J]

400pts plz imma buy the shit outta this

edit: it is worth 400 points even to the general public. have you seen the kind of crap thats on xbl community games for 400 points? this rapes all that shit for free

[MADEIRA STEVE88]

Man the more i see this game, the more i see it as a full out XBLA title. It deserves to be there and its not like XBLA is all good some of the games there are utter bull.

[dmauro]

But, you always have the chance to reduce the price if its not selling well. That will bring people back who were reluctant. Win-win situation.

That's actually a really good point. Go for 400 and reduce it to 240 when sales have been dipping for a while.

[Kaspal]

But, you always have the chance to reduce the price if its not selling well. That will bring people back who were reluctant. Win-win situation.

That's actually a really good point. Go for 400 and reduce it to 240 when sales have been dipping for a while.

i think thats the way to go.

most of us will pay at full price when released... and you can lower the price, say, 6 months later.

[TodayIsForgotten]

Yay. At a 2 dollar difference i hardly doubt anyone will feel jipped if it were to change the following week. Perhaps 15 to 3 is when moaning can commence. (:

[Kaspal]

Yay. At a 2 dollar difference i hardly doubt anyone will feel jipped if it were to change the following week. Perhaps 15 to 3 is when moaning can commence. (:

moaning?... i'd say UPROAR! lol.

[Jason]

Thanks for all of your input. We are considering everything. We want to capture everyone's attention -- not just the shoot 'em up fans. We know you guys would easily pay $5 for this game, likely $10. But if we can get 10 times the audience, and online scoreboards that are 10x the size (for better competition) because we sold for $3 (or $1), we'd prefer this.

This is a hard decision.

FYI: Price changes can only be made once every 3 months. So if 400 or 240 is a mistake, we cannot drop it to 80 for 3 months. The game "Nasty" made this mistake, and he's feeling it, since his sales are almost nil. And will be low for 3 months until he's allowed to update the price.

[kong]

Well you have to take into account the indie channel is all but void of decent shmups. Sure it's flooded with arena shooters but you guys will pretty much be the only decent pure shmup available. I say go for 400 and drop to 240 if sales stink.

[TodayIsForgotten]

Thanks for all of your input. We are considering everything. We want to capture everyone's attention -- not just the shoot 'em up fans. We know you guys would easily pay $5 for this game, likely $10. But if we can get 10 times the audience, and online scoreboards that are 10x the size (for better competition) because we sold for $3 (or $1), we'd prefer this.

This is a hard decision.

FYI: Price changes can only be made once every 3 months. So if 400 or 240 is a mistake, we cannot drop it to 80 for 3 months. The game "Nasty" made this mistake, and he's feeling it, since his sales are almost nil. And will be low for 3 months until he's allowed to update the price.

I understand the caution and all that. You really should think more towards 400. Nasty while a nice game, isn't worth 5 dollars. 3, yes. I even said that when playing the demo. I bought biology battle at 800 and felt it was justified. Of course, im a small minority who thinks like that. If there are any fans of the genre i'm sure mostwill buy the game.

If you're more worried about competition, it will seem likely that you'll have a flock of people buying the and then simply stop playing it. The wider audience that you will not get are the achievement only players.

In the end, the difference between selling it at 400 and 240 is unknown at this time. Again, the indie games service does not have many quality games. perhaps everyone is afraid to push the envelope with a reasonable price for a game that had a lot of work put into it. People will know quality. If you do sell at 400 you'lll have 20 or 30 buys on this forum alone, maybe more. Then you'll have the word of mouth. Then you'll have the people in the indie games forum. Some from youtube, etc etc.

If you want more competition on the boards than you should sell it for 240. As others said, this will be one of the top-notch games and the defacto standard (for now) for what a shmup should be on the service.

p.s. the thread in the indie games general has over 5k views. Interest is there.

[Xonatron]

It looks like whatever we decide, 80, 240, or 400, everyone here will be satisfied with the price. That's good news at least! But everyone on this forum is far more likely to pay for a shmup than the average gamer, and we do want to tap into that potential, so worse thing that can happen is you all get a really cheap shmup and we make less money than we could have.

We are not sure if we can squish our game to 50MB in a satisfactory manner. It can be done, but there will be amounts of suffering from the gfx and music quality. So the 80 piont ($1 USD) price point may be something we cannot do. But if we could, can you imagine Duality ZF being only $1? If that generated 3 times the sales, we would match the profits of the 240 point price and have three times the players.

It is possible for us to do the reverse of the suggestions here, which is sell the game cheaper (introductory sale), to give us great publicity, great ratings, great downloads, push us higher on the top 10 charts, and then increase the price after. The 3 months is what gets me. I'd love to do something like that for only 2 weeks or 1 month maximum, but not really three whole months.

p.s. the thread in the indie games general has over 5k views. Interest is there.

What thread is that? Could you point me to it?

[Observer]

It looks like whatever we decide, 80, 240, or 400, everyone here will be satisfied with the price. That's good news at least! But everyone on this forum is far more likely to pay for a shmup than the average gamer, and we do want to tap into that potential, so worse thing that can happen is you all get a really cheap shmup and we make less money than we could have.
We are not sure if we can squish our game to 50MB in a satisfactory manner. It can be done, but there will be amounts of suffering from the gfx and music quality. So the 80 piont ($1 USD) price point may be something we cannot do. But if we could, can you imagine Duality ZF being only $1? If that generated 3 times the sales, we would match the profits of the 240 point price and have three times the players.

Maybe you could do that and sacrifice gfx and music to make it fit. Keep the speed, chaos and everything smooth.

Announce a "special release price" with BIG capitals (bigger is better) and shiny colours or something like that and once the three months are over crank it up to 400 points?

Only that way, less points might do it. Later you can announce a "Full Mucho-Macho Mega Futari Black Label Package Dai-Tou-Hou" for PC with high quality music (or a full OST release, did you ask the composer? Hope you consider this one, I'm quite liking the music and it would be nice to hear it roaring like a thunder at full power instead of some lossy format), improved graphics (put all the heavy files!) and stuff like that without restrictions.

Maybe that move can bring you a good user base that later might get the upgraded/less compressed PC version...

I'm already quite interested in the game so looking forward to see what will happen next.

[TodayIsForgotten]

I like what observer said. If anything try compressing the music some. See if that can get you near a mb break-point.

Matt, the xbox.com indie games general chat. You posted in it a few times (: as well as your brother. It has the most views of any thread by quite a bit.

[emphatic]

Are update patches not allowed for XBLA games? In that case, could you not release the compressed game at 50 mb, than have a "patch" that replaces all the compressed elements?

Edit: Or if you somehow could integrate a background/music selector in the settings of the game, like "browse for music directory", then have downloads of the music in better quality on your website that people can use, or even allow the users own music in game?

[Rob]

240 seems like the best compromise. 80 is practically giving it away.

[Xonatron]

Are update patches not allowed for XBLA games? In that case, could you not release the compressed game at 50 mb, than have a "patch" that replaces all the compressed elements?

Edit: Or if you somehow could integrate a background/music selector in the settings of the game, like "browse for music directory", then have downloads of the music in better quality on your website that people can use, or even allow the users own music in game?

We are XBLIG not XBLA, and there are updates allowed for both. When you run an XBLIG game that has been updated it will ask you if you wish to download the new one or ignore this request each and every time you launch it. So...

We could compromise the game's gfx and audio (maybe even remove a song or two) to squish it into 50MB, and sell for 80 points as an introductory sale. Then we could put all the gfx and audio back in full quality and update it (has to be below 150MB which even now it is not) and sell it for 240 or 400 points via updates. This would be rather cool, as we would be the first to offer a greater than 50MB game for 80 points via this update process.

We cannot offer content off websitse and whatnot. There are strict rules on the game staying within its place. One game on XBLIG had a website you had to visit for clues, and they found a swastika on it (or something crazy like that) which just further proved why they cannot allow content that can be changed outside of the peer review process.

[emphatic]

We cannot offer content off websitse and whatnot. There are strict rules on the game staying within its place. One game on XBLIG had a website you had to visit for clues, and they found a swastika on it (or something crazy like that) which just further proved why they cannot allow content that can be changed outside of the peer review process.

Yeah, when I re-read my own post I realized it sounded a bit too complicated as well for "average Joe" (the end users shouldn't have to bother with that). But the "enhancement pack" would be a smart way around the size limit.

[Xonatron]

No worries. Don't ever feel bad for sharing ideas... sometimes off-the-wall, out-of-the-box, or even backwards thinking is exactly where gems come from, even if the success rate is only 0.1%!

EDIT: Just thinking about this more. Sometimes when Jason and I bring up ideas to each other they fail immediately, but the discussion brings up a new idea. This is why discussion is always a healthy thing!

[postman]

So enough dancing around the real issue: when's the release date?

[dmauro]

Yeah 80 seems stupidly low, and it would be sad if the quality of the gfx or sfx had to be compromised to make that price point work. I didn't even know games could get that cheap actually, so when I see 240 point games that to me is like throw away cash (and I don't even have a job right now )

[lilmanjs]

I wish I could get a wireless adaptor for the 360.

[Doctor Fugue]

The game looks great; I am looking forward to playing it.

There is an Indie Game called Karnn Age (spelling?) that was released in two versions. One is the full game for 240 points, and the other version is just missing most of the music so that they could sell it for 80 points. I prefer this method since there isn't anything "lower quality" about it. They simply removed a lot of the music and, of course, a player can substitute their own music while playing.

Also related to price, when I see an Indie Game for 80 points, I automatically assume the game is not worth my time. I am certainly wrong sometimes, but developers seem to be pretty good at assigning values to their games. The new 400 point games tend to be something quite a bit more polished and I am more inclined to give the game a fair shake.

[DJ Incompetent]

I hope some of you guys like capturing your gameplay and posting to youtube... I am going to love seeing your performances.

Speaking of, you guys going to leave an audio slider in the options menu so I can adjust BGM and SFX independently (& mute BGM)?

At the very least, is custom soundtracks supported? Some indies don't even do that and it sucks.

[dai jou bu]

I really hate to sound like a jerk about this, but I have to be honest:

I'm most likely not going to buy this game because all it does is imitate Cave's style, which bores me to death since every person who wants to make a modern shmup these days ends up reminding me of them. However, the multiplayer is done right. But regardless of you being categorized into XBLIG, your product is going to end up being compared with Raystorm HD (whenever that comes out), Ikaruga (which isn't as expensive as Raystorm HD but twice as much as yours if you're going for 400 points), Trigger Heart Exelica (while most of the people who play it go "meh," it does something more interesting than Cave ever does), and Geometry Wars.

And that's not counting the Cave ports that are already on the 360, which is the style you're going for with your game. Or G.Rev's titles. Or Raiden.

[Rob]

all it does is imitate Cave's style,

In that it has bullets and you dodge them?

[Dandy J]

holyshit its 5 fuckin dollars

[Kron]

We are not sure if we can squish our game to 50MB in a satisfactory manner.

That 50mb limit was dropped quite a while ago, There are XB Indie games out there that are over 100 megs.

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/games ... 2585502c3/

[ncp]

Definitely either 3 or 5 dollars. I don't think 1 dollar should even be considered. I'm with the camp that believes that $1 will make it seem too cheap.

I'm most likely not going to buy this game because all it does is imitate Cave's style

Also, Dandy J's avatar, reading "Shump" and shooting toward Rob's post just made me laugh so hard for some reason.

edit:

We are not sure if we can squish our game to 50MB in a satisfactory manner.

That 50mb limit was dropped quite a while ago, There are XB Indie games out there that are over 100 megs.

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/games ... 2585502c3/

I'm not entirely sure about it myself, but from the context of the posts, it seems that there is a 50 MB limit on 80-point games, but not on more expensive ones.

[Xonatron]

Neither Jason or I have ever played a Cave shmup. Someone on the Canadina xbox.com forums mentioned our game was a "rip off" of Ikaruga and was asking if ripping off games is allowed! I can only take these comparisons to these amazing, professionally-produced games as compliments! If you want to know our inspiration, it is mostly Raiden II and Thunder Force II, but arrives from a lot of shmup experience where we have learned what is fun, what isn't, and what is still missing. Raiden II and TF2 captured the shmup experience we love the best. We have very little bullet hell experience and it would not shock me if we receive some criticism on our Bullet Hell mode from the true bullet hell fans (ie, not the ones who pit Aegis Wing in the bullet hell category). Our Bullet Hell mode is just way more bullets (slowed down) with a slowed down ship (already with a small hitbox), and has nothing to do with the gameplay mechanics of the most popular bullet hell games. But, the gameplay feels different so it is a different experience entirely. We hope it suffices.

I'm not entirely sure about it myself, but from the context of the posts, it seems that there is a 50 MB limit on 80-point games, but not on more expensive ones.

That is exactly right. 80 point games are limited to 50MB in size, and 240 and 400 point games are limited to 150MB in size. You will occasionally see some games on the system that break both of these barriers by a couple of MB because after submitting our .ccgame file (our entire game in one file) extra content is added into the game and changes are made.