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KickStarter Project Phoenix - Indie jRPG with Nobuo Uematsu

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Oh, 2013, it was the time when a project like this could hit a million on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...apans-indie-rpg-feat-aaa-talent/posts/1410623

Hello again, faithful backers.

It seems our slated programmer is proving to be behind schedule in joining us... He will potentially be off of his current project and able to join us by the end of the year...

I would like to reiterate at this time that we are dedicated to seeing this project through, despite delays.

I spoke with Hiro and we have decided we just cannot afford to wait any longer. Our guy may still join us but we need to make some progress now.

I am putting out a call to any Unreal programmers who may be able to help us out. We are, of course, offering compensation but involvement would be contingent upon showing previous work, portfolio, etc. and interviews. We have a few dev friends we are hoping can help source but we would be happy to consider any recommendations our backer community could point to. Comment here or send a message with any viable leads.

Additionally, I will be hitting up the Unreal forums and making a posting there soon: https://forums.unrealengine.com/forumdisplay.php?25-Got-Skills-Looking-for-Talent

We really need programmers with experience because we do not have time for someone to learn on the fly. We have waited too long already.

We know there are many of you who will support us in this decision and we need your continued encouragement to do our best and put out the game that we envisioned. We WILL get programmers on this project and we WILL complete this game.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure competent and experienced programmers would like to join the project like this. :roll:
 

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It's deepening: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...apans-indie-rpg-feat-aaa-talent/posts/1437738

Hi Folks,

Apologies for the downtime. Between deployments and holidays I have been swamped.

Here are things where they stand now on our programmer front:
  • I have been asked to clarify that we CURRENTLY have a programmer. He has done some work and much consulting for Project Phoenix already. The problem is that his current work is delaying his full commitment here by about 2 months.
  • Current estimates place dev at about 2.5 years out from completion. This is 2.5 years from the time we get our full-time programmer on board. That means we are expecting early 2018 for a finalized build and 6 months for testing after that.
  • We put out the notice that we are looking for programmers to supplement the work our main programmer will be doing, as well as simply getting things started as soon as possible.
  • On this note, we are reviewing the people who identified themselves to us and we will move forward to interview relevant applicants soon.
In other news:
Music!
One Uematsu theme from the game has been arranged and is pending approval. We hope to include a short video with Nobuo Uematsu in a future update and, in preparation for this, we would like to ask you for any music related questions you would like to ask. We will compile this list, possibly modify the wording, and translate a limited number of questions. Please either sound off in the comments here or message us on KS.

Refunds
We know a lot of people are disappointed with the delays and organization of Project Phoenix. We are not considering refunds at this time. To initiate refunds is to give up on the project since there would be no money left to complete it. If we make the decision to call it quits then we will work out some kind of remediation with backers at that time. Until then we are pressing on.

Creator CIA, Inc. 1 day ago
@Eraciel Losareth
Yes, the estimate is for one programmer.

Creator CIA, Inc. about 16 hours ago
>> Sean Hull

Hi Sean, what you pointed out is not quite what happened, and for one, we don't really have many developing employees in our company. However, with the information that's supplied, it is understandable that you came to that conclusion.

If you remember correctly, you can read in our description that we are making this game but many of us have different projects. Exactly the way we'd work on other titles for other companies. To be exact, I am currently making a JRPG w/ a very well know Japanese company, making a mobile music game and also making several films as a Producer. Many other staff has ongoing project w/ other major companies on top. This is the norm for any freelancing video game developers.

Project Phoenix is our passion, and with so many leading creators, it's hard to replace extremely talented individual like our original programmer. What he'd done himself, it takes three or four programmers to do.

I agree this must be very frustrating for you, and I apologise profusely, but we are making best efforts. Once somebody starts taking legal action, that'll definitely be the end of the project as we won't be able to legally defend ourselves, some portion of the money has been spent in production and others planned into our budget. So I pray that no one does that.

Most of our leading creators are working on a royalty basis, so many core things can be done with no development cost, but in regards to programming (now that we dont have him with us), modelling and other assistance positions, we cannot finish the game. However, everything has been categorised and carefully budgeted.

I see the problem many people don't see what we've done... and I was keeping a lot of content hidden since JRPG is all about storyline and not spoiling it. However, it seems like it's time to show what we've done, for the sake of keeping the backer's trust, which of course is of paramount importance.

Again, I apologise for making you feel this way, I am very optimistic that we will be able to find a solution that'd suit us all if we keep this communication channel open.

Director / Producer of Project Phoenix
Hiroaki Yura
 

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Development continues.
Update #129

Mar 25 2016

Video update on the current build with Daniel Dressler and Tomoki Miyoshi

Dear backers,

We hope you've all been well. It's been a little over a month since Daniel started working at CIA, and happy to report that he has made many new friends and working happily in our little studio.

Here's a message from Daniel explaining his current work in his own words.

For the next year my task is to build out our systems and workflow. We have core combat thanks to Pascal's efforts but as we all know there is much to a JRPG outside the combat system. For us this means systems such as conversations, quests, saving, overworld, items, and trading. Along with the translation, updater, installer, menus, map editor, and any further fancy features we find ourselves adding. All these systems must in turn require minimal programmer intervention for the content creators.

For the foreseeable future I will be Project Phoenix's only programmer. This means building systems which do not require assistance to use. Sadly these same systems are not snazzy or beautiful. I can only ask your understand as we go forward over the next year. Often I will spend weeks or even months on behind the scenes code. Code vital to the game yet there will be few visible to show.

Best I can do is re-assure you this is how video game development works. The typical AAA hype machine tends to focus on Concept Art, then jump right into the game play. Sadly this gives a false impression of the volume of work each component of a game requires. Code takes time to even for teams of dozens of programmers.

So I can only say thank you for your understanding and patience going forward over the next year.

Today, we also have a special video of Daniel and Tomoki (composer), talking about development then a run through of our current state of the build with Daniel. Please note that the horrible video and sound editing was done by myself and with the limited time I have these days, I ask for your forgiveness in it's quality.

I hope you all enjoy the video, and any questions and comments will be welcome in the post below.

Director / Producer of Project Phoenix
Hiroaki Yura
Video: https://ksr-video.imgix.net/assets/005/591/856/a63a9232825be86b440dc21b19ae561c_h264_high.mp4
Guys talk for the first 8 minutes. In-engine stuff starts at 8:10.
 
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that dungeon i designed using the Wizardry Legacy scenario creation tool has more content than this game and i stopped making it halfway thru when i realized it didn't use traditional wizardry rules.

i should have made a kickstarter for it damnit!
 
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btw, they're using software-translation :D

nice to have in handy video proof what i've been telling everyone who'll listen who has bashed me for using google translate on wizardry empire 1.

EDIT: my god that combat system looks atrocious. why not just make Ys/Falcom style if they're going to do this?
 
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nor should you; just know that every single localized game you play utilizes software translation as much as the studio can get away with. human translation services cost too much to use for the entire script. the average charge is 1-3 dollars per sentence depending on many variables (contract/length of paragraph/alphabet/etc).

so going by your own words you should not play any rpgs at all, period, unless you play them all in japanese. if you do enjoy localized japanese games then know that you are 100% a hypocrite. you are enjoying the work of Google Translate.

if you've ever enjoyed a super nintendo jrpg then you are 100% a hypocrite: nintendo utilzied software translation extensively.

if you've ever enjoyed any recent japanese rpg on your psp, vita or nintendo ds then you are 100% a hypocrite as every but the main dialog is machine translated.

if you've ever enjoyed ANY japanese rpg that got localized into english that did not come from a big studio then you are 100% a hypocrite as they used software translation as much as possible to cut costs.

and i don't have any guesslation projects in the works anymore; the npc dialog script for wizardry empire 1 will be translated by a human.

the only accurante translations are those done by fan groups who use a human translator to translate ALL of the game script (weapons/mundane items); they don't know the "real companies" don't actually go through this much effort.
 
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I don't mean to bust your chops, but you're gonna need a source on those statements. I know XSEED almost went under because they almost went under for fully translating Trails in the Sky because it was longer than the average VN in terms of word count. And most of the games from Atlus or NISA don't sound as stilted as machine translations put out (maybe they just have a great editor on hand...?).

why not just make Ys/Falcom style if they're going to do this?
That would be amazing.
 
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there are exceptions of course. xseed and back in the day working designs are two of the few companies who do not use machine translation (i assume); and probably a big part of the reason why they're not very profitable either.

i threw in the line about super nintendo JRPG's using software translation as bait though lol just to see if oasis would call me out on it so i could say:

"then if human translation can produce such obviously faulty translations then it should also be looked upon with derision".

i just get angry that anyone would try completely dismiss a person's attempts to translate a game with perfectly viable and PROVEN methods just because they're uninformed on the usage of software-translation.

when he says guesslation it triggers me and i need a safe space because ALL localizations of ALL japanese games are "guess-lations".

however it is completely true that the smaller the studio (with the rare exceptions of studios like xseed/working designs who have made their name specifically on their lack of usage of machine-translation, which in WD's case is what brought them under i'm sure)-- that these small jap studios will, and DO use software-translation for everything EXCEPT the npc dialog (and i'm being generous here). for example in elminage: Original's first release the NPC dialog was rightfully criticzed for how bad it was and it was because they "localized" the game almost entirely using software-translation.

before being patched the actual, OFFICIAL release of elminage: original on PSP utilized such machine-translated gems as "Friendly Call" for the inn option of adding party members, among many other hirarious software-translation mishaps. a lot of items were also given improper names such as swords bearing the names of axes, and stuff like that.

i assume the localization patch came about because the game sold enough for them to afford a proper human to go over the script; but the original release of elminage: original proves every single point i've made about how small jap studios utilize software translation more and more with eveyr passing day and will continue to do so as the technology improves.

there simply is no reason to waste dev money paying a human to translate "short sword" when google can do it for you in today's game world.
 
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the original release of psp elmiange 1 had another super funny software-translation gem regarding identification, i think it went something like "the appraise has been appraisal of value!" ahhaa

EDIT: oh there's one that's still in the game but i honest, earnestly think Ghostlight decided not to pay to have this gem translated just because it's so funny: when your thief reaches class mastery he achieves the skill of "Expart Theif".

priceless :D

thankfully richard says i need to hurry up and send him a properly formatted document containing the NPC dialog of wiz empire 1 which is what i've been doing the past few days. it's not enough to simply dump such things into text using the hex-editor; you then have to format the hex-dump BY HAND-- i have to seperate the sentences, seperate the pargraphs, make sure the line breaks are where they're supposed to be-- all so that when the document reaches the human translator he can do his work properly.

i've been doing exactly this the past few days which is incredibly tedious work so when oasis and deuxhero jumped on my ass over software-translation i got triggered. i need to calm down a little, i know.
 
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i would never claim anything dishonest about any game i help translate. the wizardry empire 1 english patch page on romhacking.net will state exactly what it contains: software translation for items and monsters, and human translation for npc dialog and spells (i did the spells myself). in fact i find the idea of someone translating a game using software (btw, thanks for the tip about Atlas, seriously) and trying to somehow claim they translated it all via human... um, well i just would never do something like that. i find it almost shocking people would not be transparent about their project.

it's not like anyone here is gonna make any money off translating Wizardry Empire 1. why would we (me, richard and helly) not be completely transparent about it? a few weeks ago i stated that i was going to also software-translate the npc dialog but that has changed completely and like i mentioned already; i'm in the very tedious process of organizing the npc dialog document for the human translator.

and i repeat: the romhacking.net page will clearly state the items and monster names were software translated. so it will no longer be a "guess-lation"; it will be a typical fan translation.
 
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you know, when i first approached the elminage 2 guy on gbatemp about wanting to help translate the game the first thing he told me is that if i was planning on using google translate that he would not allow me to help. eventually we reached a compromise on that i am allowed to translate the items in elminage 2 that were localized into english for elminage 1, which is basically 90% of them, and whatever item is wholly new to elminage 2 and i can't use it's equivalent e1 name then to leave un-translated for the human translator.

i can appreciate how strongly the "scene" feels about software-translation but you gotta cut people some slack too: sometimes even the original script is not any good at all. I don't plan on re-writing any Wiz Emp 1 characters anymore, as i don't have the energy to write fan-fiction, but i can guarantee you that any new characterization i would do on those NPCs would be miles better than the one-dimensional characterizations they have in the original game. Obviously i recognize we're talking about a very low-dialog, low-NPC laden dungeon crawler and having good writing was not the japanese team's priority... but it does anger me that some people automatically take the position that the original japanese script is automatically better.

for example, once again i reference final fantasy: her re-localized name of tina is atrocious and no matter how accurate it is to the japanese script the name of Terra fits her much better, sounds much better and makes for a very nice synergy with the name of Celes.

ORIGINAL. JAPANESE. SCRIPTS. ARE. NOT. AUTOMATICALLY. BETTER.

I lump these people into the same camp as the people who only play games on "accurate emulators" that don't render the game resolutions higher and don't feature additional graphical stuff; i.e. it is only a straight emulation of the game without absolutely anything added.

i 100% do not understand those people. why would anyone want to play a nintendo ds game on regular desmume when you can play it on X432 with 4x the internal resolution and the filtering of your choice, including none at all?

why would anyone want to play a ps1 game at its native resolution? why? these are things i honestly do not get. If you want to play it at it's native resolution... fucking play it on a playstation. the entire point of using something like ePSXe is to play it in 1080p with glorious vaseline-filters.
 
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VN's are mostly text, though. How anyone would even think to translate a VN using software is beyond me.

Even a game like Elminage 2 which features little dialog it still features a metric fuckton of dialog in terms of workload and in comparison to other dungeon crawlers it has reams of it.

A big, big reason i am even ATTEMPTING to translate wizardry empire 1 is because of it's small scope and small amount of dialog. And even this "small amount" is a huge workload. To give you a very basic estimate of its scope:

The entire dialog of all the game NPC's in wizardry empire 1 is contained in 1 file called NPC.WZA and it is 50kb's in its compressed .WZA form. this is the file i am currently preparing for human readability for it to be translated. The other files are the ITEM.DAT, which features 73 items, the MONDATA.DAT which features around 56 monsters, the SPELL.DAT which features the normal amount of spells in a Wiz-clone.

The remaining text such as the weapon shop text, the text when you enter the Temple of Kant, and stuff like the text that scrolls by when you are fighting is contained in the main .EXE which is approx. 1.1mb in size.

it is because of this small scope that i feel very comfortable about completing the project, and the reason why i even thought of once using only software translation. The spells are already translated (because they are Wizardry spells); the items are half new, and the remaining half items that are taken from previous Wizardry games (such as the Cuisinart Blade, etc); and the monsters are all Wizardry enemies and/or easily translatable; kobolds, goblins, etc. You get my drift.

and even this "small scope" has taken me a ton of work to get off the ground, but of course i am starting from scratch. for starters i did not know absolutely ANYTHING about hex-editing when i started i only knew i wanted to do it because i wanted to play the game in english and because all the game files were already titled and laid out for anyone to identify.

it has been a great learning experience, and also it has let me know how difficult translating a game with a bigger amount of text can be. for comparison's sake the elminage 2 item.csv file, extracted from the ITMCSV.BIN inside the PSP game's folders; it contains 576 entries! basically 500 entries more than the item file from wizardry empire 1! the NPC dialog is contained in a file called SCP.BIN and it is 8mb's in size.

obviously there are size differences due to the compression methods (.wza/.bin) but the amount of dialog in Elminage 2, although small by comparison to any other RPG since it is after all a Wiz-clone dungeon crawler, is REAMS largers than the npc dialog in wiz-emp-1.

anyway my point is that while i could IMAGINE attempting a software translation of wiz-emp-1 due to it's very small scope i could never, EVER imagine even bothering to tackle elminage 2 without knowing the script would be human translated otherwise what's the point? i have already played through the game in japanese without reading any of the text!

what i'm getting at is why would anyone care to translate such an immensely text-heavy genre as VN's without either having a translator on board who is also hex-editing or having the money to PAY for the translation. the entire point of a VN is the dialog! unlike the dungeon crawler!

is atlas THAT good of software that one could translate a VN with it? i imagine what the perosn is doing is using this Atlas software and then basically re-writing what it spits out into the equivalent of a fan-fic.

EDIT: i have given wiz-emp-1 a lot of TLC btw in the monster naming and especially the spell naming. All of the spells were mistranslations of the original wizardry spells into japanese and then translated back into engrish/romaji; I perosnally went through every single spell and correlated it to its original Wiz 1-8 correspondant spell and named it accordingly and utilized the descriptions from the original Wizardry game manuals when possible, but of course not completely due to space limitations.

for example the description of HALITO is "Little Fire". I will trust you understand what that means. i did the same with the entire item and monster lists correlating every classic monster with its classic Wizardry 1-8 naming and with the items as well. in some cases i ran into problems where the japanese had given classic Wizardry names japanese names such as naming the cuisinard sword the kashinato. i struggled a long time on which name to utilize but in the end decided to use the classic Wizardry cuisinart sword.

this is why it angered me so much that would call it a guess-lation, but of course you have no way of knowing any of this. the only thing you knew was that i used google translate as a foundation, which is still true, because obviously i do not know japanese.

however if google translate spits out AUGER LORE, it doesn't take a genius to click on google images and see the picture of a green ogren and realize that the actual naming is OGRE LORD. this is actually more TLC than games like Elminage 1 received from its official localization when first released!
 
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the battle text descriptions i am also juggling around the spacing so i can fit in the classic wizardry translations. every so often i fire up wizardry 5 on a NEC PC-98 emulator and take screenshots of every battle description and the context in which it appeared; then i use those as the battle descriptions for wizardry empire 1. the entire point of the translation is to be as true to the Wizardry name as is humanly possible.

there are several of the game's battle descriptions that simply don't fit when translated (and i mean human translated) such as "thrown down", for example. whatever its japanese equivalent i not going to use "...was thrown down!" one because it sounds retarded and two because it is one of the default generic battle text entries and is utilized when even enemies without arms or the ability to throw anyone down hit you in melee!

in that case and many others i utilize one of the classic Wizardry descriptions taken from screenshots during battles while playing one of the first five games.

even stuff like when an enemy utilizes a breath attack what i did was simply utilize the exact text from wiz 5 when an enemy utilizes a breath attack as the translation. a great one for this is the laughing kettle since he is easily accessible in the b1f of wiz 5 and he has access to all of the breath attacks in the game so i've fought him many times to write down or capture as many descriptions as possible.
 
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nobody gives a fuck about this vaporware pos game dude.

if it wasn't for me the thread would be dead anyway you should fucking thank me.
 

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Update #132

Sep 6 2016

Release... the Kraken!

Dear Project Phoenix backers,

As always, thank you for being patient with us.

I'd like to first share with you some of our progress and updates about what we're doing, then ideas and dilemmas we have of our First Act.

News and Updates
Meeting table
A friend of mine has helped us make a great meeting table for us. From now on, this table will serve us well to hopefully make great decisions and meetings on how to make Project Phoenix better and speed its way to completion. We chose a rounded table in traditional Japanese thinking of having a well rounded relationship with everyone.

Asami moves in to the CIA studio
One of our main illustrator, Asami Hagiwara has moved into our office from September for better communication and teamwork. She will be sitting in front of our Project Manager, Rie Tanaka, so she will be less inclined to sleep and dream of cats. We're planning to start designing more in-game characters. We will be contacting backers who have paid for character designs soon to start work on them and bring them to life in-game.

f9a3ab32f3087492bf80a6c3a21a6f0b_original.JPG

View of the studio
Schedule
Our studio's schedule for this month.

  • Finish off unannounced mobile game for a publisher due end of this month
  • QA / bug test a game for another publisher
  • Prepare for a concert in Tokyo for "I am Setsuna" on the 4th of October
  • Help several projects with Audio pre-production phase
In terms of Project Phoenix, we would like to achieve the following:

  • Create and establish a pipeline for designing backer characters
  • Decide on the scenario for Acts One and Two
  • Start work on audio designs / musical cue list
Creative input wanted!
We would now like to share with you a portion of the story from Project Phoenix. We'd like to have feedback since although we feel what we decided on is the right thing, it may necessary not be something everyone would agree with. It's important to have a consensus of some sort to keep our "sense" about.

If you do not want spoilers, please do not read below.
Some information from the excerpt below shed light on background that may be hard to find in the game itself or even not be mentioned at all.

☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆

The First Act concentrates on "The Kingdoms of the Far Realms", an area dominated and controlled by three human kingdoms, Izaria, Gilrock and Chrondoria. The story starts with the unceremonious fall of Ruffles and the subsequent conflict between our main protagonists on how her fate should be decided.

88b41152bade1ecbe148d839786ca2c7_original.jpg

The Kingdoms of the Far Realm
The protagonists make their way to Cordo, currently we are toying around with the idea that Cordo is assaulted by the Kraken during their visit. The Kraken is drawn by Ruffles and her coming into contact with a certain artefact.

The Kraken in Project Phoenix, is a little different in comparison to other Krakens from popular literature. The origin of the Kraken used to be that of an island city, wealthy to the point that it's citizen has started practice luxury in excess, with disrespect to all kinds of life, and infidelity its norm. When the people reached the lowest point in their depravity, the Angels rained death from the skies and burned the city to the ground. With the combined anguished screams of thousands of souls, the Old Ones awoke. Filled with vengeance towards the Angels that almost wiped out their existence, the Old Ones used their powers to turn the island city of the dead into a living monstrosity. Thus becoming the Kraken, it prowls the dangerous seas in bidding of the Old Ones.

8d5918b77a752ad6ecb7a2791f78392e_original.jpg

Early concept of the Kraken


7bc58b9b5bb53288538da0ec6d6be9df_original.jpg

Concept details of the Kraken and its inspirations
The Kraken was originally going to be introduced in Act Three at Fisherman's Bay. However, we felt the need to drive the story and give the players a sense of urgency to find their quest and complete their journey.

fdd57ec1983e988c580bd86630783001_original.jpg

The maw of the Kraken
The objective of the first act is for the player to gain a good grasp of the world in Project Phoenix, an introduction to the state of Azuregard. However the purpose and drive to the story would weaken due to the fact that wandering through the far realms just to get to Airaurdrenn (Elven City) isn't exciting enough. So Yoko and my idea was to smash up the first city you arrive (after, of course, being able to play tourist) and bring drive and urgency to the journey by sending the Kraken and its minions into Cordo. Smashing up a city, of course, would cost a lot of funds to achieve, but the dev team in general think it's worth it.

What do you think of introducing the Kraken early on? We understand we are only giving a partial glimpse at the story, but we would like your feedback based on the knowledge of this update. Do you like your RPGs to start with a bang or start slowly?

Please let us know! Your feedback will be greatly appreciated!

Thank you for reading our update, and see you all in two weeks time.

Hiroaki Yura
Director / Producer of Project Phoenix
 

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Three years and 1M dollars later, and they are asking kickstarter backers to design the game for them... this is just sad. :/
 

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Project Phoenix is a SQUAD-BASED, REAL-TIME STRATEGY GAME combined with strong Japanese RPG design influences, brought to you by top Eastern and Western creators who have worked on many blockbuster game titles.

Estimated release: Mid-2015.
Only 14 months late and counting! Perhaps their plan is to rival the last three Final Fantasies for length of time delayed?
:keepmymoney:
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...apans-indie-rpg-feat-aaa-talent/posts/1751786

Cinematics

Dear backers,

My apologies for the late update, with the combination of going overseas for work and getting sick afterwards on top of preparing for this update has delayed it's release.

I know people have been asking for game design/play update, but today, we'd like to present part of the cinematic from the game.

We've had the honour of having Mr Hidekazu Ohara help us recreate a legend of Azuregard. Mr Ohara is one of the most respected veteran from the anime industry who is known for his work on Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and AKIRA.

aa53d03ceb736fd40dc979116c3c94aa_original.tif


Here's a message from Mr Ohara:

「ゲームの世界の発端となった架空伝説を創ろうと洞窟壁画からアプローチ。 戦い、争いを「音楽」と云う素晴らしツールで凍てつく心を溶かし 悪の象徴である荒ぶるドラゴンの闇を鎮めるが如く”五行山”からインスピレーションを受け、常に表裏一体の世界に生きる神話奇譚を表現しました。」

We started from cave paintings to illustrate a legend from the past. Through the use of "music", warms the cold heartedness of war and hatred. Inspired by the Marble Mountains, the ultimate evil represented by the dragon is sealed within the mountain, a reminder to us all that we live in a world, inseparable between light and darkness.

This cinematic will explain the formation of Titan's Peak and give clues to the whereabouts of a dragon and what "may" have happened to the heroes of the day.

The sound is not done yet, but we will be adding the music later.



Please be reminded that this "feel" of the cinematic will only be used to recount the legends of the past. Please feel free to leave a comment below!

Hiroaki Yura
Director / Producer of Project Phoenix

Heh, at least that cinematic looks interesting.

But are they making a game or not?
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...apans-indie-rpg-feat-aaa-talent/posts/1767512

2f10773df755b098d167c9d0bb1fb145_original.jpg


Illustration by Asami Hagiwara

Dear backers,

I hope this update finds you well. We have now approached the end of the year. Thank you for being patient with us with the changes we've had with our team here at Project Phoenix.

2016 has been a year of groundwork in preparation after the major changes in development style we had previously. With Daniel Dressler joining our team and continuing on with Pascal's work, and with the support we've been receiving not just from our development staff but also other companies, we've made huge progress in which we've made where we want to head much clearer. Also Rie Tanaka joining our management team has made communication with each creator much smoother.

We read your feedback and replies to our work, we've received many valuable ideas and advice and are very appreciative of the backers. Thank you!

Those that celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas! Those that don't we hope you have a safe and happy holiday season!

Hiroaki Yura
Director / Producer of Project Phoenix

80f2fa79ce3a6cf0f2050883a0a4286e_original.jpg


Feel free to use this for your Facebook cover page!
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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The vapor continues!

Update #141

Apr 23 2017

Classes explained: The Pathfinder

Dear backers,
I hope you've all been well.

Today, we're going to go through the Pathfinder class, and let Daniel talk a bit about our progress / production and a notification about an announcement we're going to make in May.

The Pathfinder
af22d753a4f4afe4f7e91b3c21419588_original.jpg

The Pathfinder in-game art reference
The Pathfinder is a ranged combat specialist, highly suited as a scout and applying heavy damage from range. With the ability to stay hidden in plain sight (stealth) and with a large vision range, the Pathfinder is capable of surveying the lay of land and possible threats for the main party. Even caught out in the open, the Pathfinder is more than capable of getting out of sticky situation by snaring enemies, laying traps and outrunning the enemy.

ArmourThe Pathfinder uses leather armour for manoeuvrability and stealth.

Weapon
The Pathfinder can be trained to use ranged weapons and one handed close combat weapons. The ranged weapons allows the Pathfinder to deal damage without the fear of being hit by a melee weapon and enables a quick getaway after attracting attention, perhaps for the main group to get past a tricky checkpoint. In the off chance that the Pathfinder is caught in close combat, he/she isn't totally defenceless as they are more than capable of using one handed close combat weapons.

SkillThere are two major skill-tree for the Pathfinder and it splits between ranged damage and stealth / crowd control tree.

Leader skills
The leader skill allows each squad to be lead by a character and in turn, it is characterised by a passive buff affecting the whole unit. In the case for the Pathfinder, we are currently considering a runspeed increase for the whole squad or increase stealth attributes.

b1f30e28f4168714525b1da0eee06494_original.jpg

Sylrianah is a skilled Pathfinder
☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆

Production Situation
Daniel here, I have been working now just over a year at Creative Intelligence Arts. I want to be the one who presents our situation. There is lots for us to complain about but I am not going to play the blame game here. Instead let's talk about money.

As everyone knows the headline figure received between Paypal and Kickstarter was 1.14Million USD. As we have mentioned in the past this figure is misleading because it ignores how 0.26M of that disappeared even before we received it. That 0.26M is split between Kickstarter's fee, Paypal's fee, and something we had not expect: unfulfilled pledges.

So now that leaves 0.88M right? Well not yet, you see we did not plan to give out cheap backer rewards. We planned to give physical rewards backers the best quality figures, boxes, and all fantastic things Japan makes. Which meant our planned expenses for backer rewards are significant. We set aside a further 0.35M to deliver these rewards. This money cannot, has not, and will not be touched for development.

Now it is important to note that being generous like this with backer rewards was common practice during our era of Kickstarter. It was common thinking that generous rewards were what motivated backers. While many other projects have said the same thing as if they failed to calculate the costs that is not what happened to us. We fully calculated the costs of commissioning high quality figurines and high quality prints. We set this money aside because we knew it was a major cost. In practical terms what this means for backers at high dollar values is a majority of their backing funds are locked up for delivery of the rewards.

So our development budget is a still pretty impressive 0.55M USD. That is about enough to hire 5 full time AAA developers for almost 12 months. Ok I will drop the sarcasm, we all know 0.55M USD is not a significant budget for developing a game like Project Phoenix. Instead we had a plan, and it was realistic plan, but it relied on a few things.

All the AAA developers we worked with were going to be contracted, many contracted at reduced rates with royalty share. The 3d assets were going to be done by the same company which later did work for Blizzard's Overwatch. They are great modelers, and we are thankful they worked on Project Phoenix. Plus they did so at a work rate which can only be described as insulting. The programming was going to be done by a genius, once he finished up work on this other major indie game. I mention those two aspects because those are where we think production was the most troubled.

Now you might wonder what the budget would have looked like with the original smaller Project Phoenix envisioned for the 0.1M USD minimum goal. The truth is such a budget would have been easier to pull off, almost all developers were committed to working on royalty basis. The workloads for the 2.5d & reduced scope project would have required only partial dedication of developer's after hours time.

Yet when the funding exploded we did the same thing every other project of the era did, we exploded the scope. Gone was 2.5d and instead the plan was multiple high grade 3d worlds each with unique environmental assets. Now there was an overworld and cutscenes. The game got longer, the story more detailed, gameplay more complex, and the world larger. What also got larger was the commitment required from developers. Thus the portion of labor the budget needed to cover expanded. Gone was the idea of developing after work, now Project Phoenix needed people to work full time in their office. More art and for every piece of art the project needed to pay more in cash.

This was not a failure, we had an expanded budget from the kickstarter and Hiro's professional work. Accounting only for contracting outlays we have invested the 0.55M USD development budget plus 0.48M USD we earned from his professional work. To re-iterate, the 0.26M and 0.35M USD we mentioned earlier were not used for development. This 1.03M USD counts only out of company outlays, it does not include our own salaries or any rent. **Of every $1 of development money from your backing, $2+ was spent on development.** We have not taken publisher money, or sold interest in project phoenix to investors. Hiroaki Yura himself is Project Phoenix's biggest backer to the tune of almost 500K USD. We are not complaining. Every game developer wants to do their best. Every developer dreams of a bigger budget and larger game. We expanded Project Phoenix because we were hyped along with our backers.

We are still hyped. We are still committed to Project Phoenix, but as you can guess the original production plan did not work. We know that production plan did not work because when we released the vertical cut players were not impressed with the art. Now of course not all of the 1.03M USD was invested on 3d models, we commissioned concept art for a full world. Yet if the 3d assets were not acceptable to our backers this left us in a hard spot. Building higher detail assets requires not only spending more money and time per asset but also throwing out the existing assets. Of course the loss of our original programmer means we must now finance all programming out of a budget which was never designed to accommodate this. Hence, even less professional revenue going towards financing art.

Which put us into our current position. We expect to make our backers happy will require higher quality assets and more programmers. To this end we stopped investing the returns from our music business into art assets and instead drove them into a different smaller production, with further assistance from private investors. Should this tiny product succeed those private investors have promised to invest significant capital into Project Phoenix. In this way we have been able to expand our in-house development staff and work towards a bright future for Project Phoenix. Instead of financing salaries and running costs out of Project Phoenix we have been building a team out of the budget of this tiny project.Work has continued on Project Phoenix, but only things for which budget existed. If you have been wondering why the past few months have had lots of story updates, that is the reason why. We are very excited for this tiny project which will be announced in May. It is fun to play and we are proud of that.

Should it hit the success we are hoping for it will set our team in a position to deliver Project Phoenix anything we had hoped for. This is not a plea to support that project, please consider it but understand it is not Project Phoenix.

In closing, the problems facing Project Phoenix have been the same problems facing other large kickstarters of the era. We have seen other projects release at quality below fan's expectations and we are putting our all into avoiding such a fate.

Daniel Dressler - Lead Programmer
 

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