Topic: Castlevania level 1 made in unreal

[KaZudra]

http://www.siliconera.com/2016/10/26/developer-castlevania-remake-talks-stairs-whips-remaking-classic/

[dejawolf]

Then that's not only a stupid reward tier, it's an incredibly scummy thing to do. Let's put into a full perspective.

Let's assume a guy decides he does want the King's Ransom reward tier. He's clearly got a lot of faith in your game and wants to see it to its completion. So much so that he pledges almost three-thousand US dollars to your game. If you want an idea of what you could buy with that...

-46 brand new day-one-release console video games.
-70 brand new day-one-release portable video games.
-Seven brand new PlayStation 4 Pros.
-Fourteen brand new New Nintendo 3DS XLs.

So instead of buying one of those options, they instead to give the money to you for the reasons above. And you're not even going to give them a properly rigged, textured, and mapped character model. Someone is giving you nearly three grand and you're not going to take two days out of your life to give them something that does not cost nearly three-thousand dollars anywhere else.

You put the reward tier there. You give them something proper for the price you're asking for.

--------------------------

see this is the main reason why i didn't spend a lot of time typing up a kickstarter. you took the thing i said, and misunderstood it in the absolute worst possible way.
i can do art, i can do music, and i can do programming. i don't do words, because i do all those other things.
people are just going to very easily take my words out of context and interpret them in the absolute worst way possible.

read it again.

"and for the kings ransom, i won't be spending 20 seconds on that, i can tell you that much.
a properly rigged, textured and normal mapped unique character model you're talking at least 2 full days of work. "

in other words "making a properly rigged textured and normal mapped unique character is not going to take 20 seconds, it will take 2 full days of work."

[dejawolf]

As a final note, you're tossing aside a lot cuz all you want to do is develop games. But as it stands, you can't just do that. Professionalism is key. It's a huge factor in getting people to even want to play your game, let alone actually having them play it. You're focusing solely on the parts you want to do, and ignoring so many essential parts simply because you don't want to do them.

professionalism to me is putting out things that work, not trying to sell broken things in a pretty package.
i was uncertain whether the kickstarter was a good idea to begin with or whether it would even work. 
vs i could spend 2 days and fix up that annoying bug where the whip freezes, get the doors from spinning backwards, and get another enemy into the game.
i'm focusing on the things i am good at, and i know i can get to work, and i know needs to be worked on.

An important point that you need to understand is that this Kickstarter still is you making money off an IP that isn't yours to make money off of. The reason being is that if your Kickstarter is successful and Konami does not sell you the license, you now have fifty extra grand in your pocket. That's a lot of money.

i wouldn't have them for long. if Konami was unwilling to sell me the license, they'd probably sue me for that money.
but really, it doesn't make sense to me, that if i called Konami HQ, told them i want to give them 50 000 in cash for a castlevania license of a remake of one of their classics,
and oh btw, i am funding the development myself, and when i'm done, i'll be willing to give you royalties, they'd turn me down?
that's pretty insane. for most studios that'd be a dream come true.
usually it's the other way around, "oh hey, i want to make a game with your IP, but i don't have any money, oh and can you please pay for us to develop it?"

As a final aside, these aren't meant as a personal attack against you. Take these critiques to heart. Not just from me but from others who have at least tried to give constructive criticism and not just thrown insults at you. Apply them to not only your project but future projects and your work ethic. It'll give you a significantly better image to the public, and people would be more inclined to play your games and share them with their friends; and when you get to that point you're selling your games on Steam Greenlight or something, they'll be more inclined to pay for them. As I said, professionalism goes a long way.

yeah, if i do another kickstarter, i'll ask for help.

[dejawolf]

There needed to be alot more incentives. Also name in the credits was totally doable. I saw a couple kickstarted documentaries that had long sections in the credits that had kickstarter names. You can have 3 names side by side in HD resolution. I doubt Konami would give you the right to make the game tho if you were gonna add 200 characters of noname average people as playable characters. That' definately wouldn't add value to the game in their minds.

well, these would be customvanias for the people who paid the kings ransom, where they could select either simon or themselves.

[dejawolf]

No offence but this whole thing now feels like a cash grab.
Your game looks awesome and I could not in any way do better, but at the end of the day:
- it's Castlevania 1 with new graphics and
- there are also parts that seem really unfinished in the existing levels (such as the knights in L2 having basically zero animation)

I realise it's not a finished product, but just something to note.

already fixed up the knight animations a week ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgWYXpi1jeE

and you can download it for free from here:
https://dejawolf.itch.io/castlevania-1-remake

and seriously, i spend over 300 hours of my time, give it away for free, and it's a cash grab.

Even if you're asking for money for a brand new ip or a license for an existing one, then you're better off putting together a presentation that looks finished rather than quantity which looks good but seems unfinished.

You say the KS page is rushed, but you seem to be fine with it? I would seriously spend the time doing research on how to get the licence, otherwise as Claimh stated it seems like the only interest in keeping this open is for a cash grab.

If Konami sees that you've already started developing this they're more than likely to take the KS page out of context and try to shut it down along with your project.

yes, i rushed the kickstarter page, so i could put time into working on the game instead. because as you said, it looks unfinished.

from the lawyer i talked to, getting a license is not that complicated. you call the guys who own the license, you work out a deal everyone is happy with, they tell you about the hoops, you jump through them, and then everyone is happy.

[Claimh Solais]

see this is the main reason why i didn't spend a lot of time typing up a kickstarter. you took the thing i said, and misunderstood it in the absolute worst possible way.
i can do art, i can do music, and i can do programming. i don't do words, because i do all those other things.
people are just going to very easily take my words out of context and interpret them in the absolute worst way possible.

read it again.

"and for the kings ransom, i won't be spending 20 seconds on that, i can tell you that much.
a properly rigged, textured and normal mapped unique character model you're talking at least 2 full days of work. "

in other words "making a properly rigged textured and normal mapped unique character is not going to take 20 seconds, it will take 2 full days of work."

Misunderstanding on my part and I apologize. To be fair, though, I read that part of your post like four times and still came out with the same understanding, so you could've cleared it up a bit more.

professionalism to me is putting out things that work, not trying to sell broken things in a pretty package.
i was uncertain whether the kickstarter was a good idea to begin with or whether it would even work. 
vs i could spend 2 days and fix up that annoying bug where the whip freezes, get the doors from spinning backwards, and get another enemy into the game.
i'm focusing on the things i am good at, and i know i can get to work, and i know needs to be worked on.

The problem is, that's not all professionalism is. Part of professionalism is how you present yourself. Like I said before, rampant capitalization (or lack thereof) errors all over the KS page, no breakdown of you plan to spend the money, no plan on how you are going to obtain the license, and a very poor understanding of how Kickstarter works causing you to overprice things incredibly.

The whole "well, I could spend 2 days fixing the Kickstarter, or I could spend that 2 days fixing up the game" is a bad excuse because you're making the KS for the game. On top of that, you are not restricted to a deadline, and the game coming out two days later isn't going to hurt anybody.

Wouldn't even take two days if you had someone to help you. (Which you did say you'll have happen next time, which is good. Talking with a few people about budgeting, maybe getting someone on board with you who knows how to handle finances properly, etc.)

i wouldn't have them for long. if Konami was unwilling to sell me the license, they'd probably sue me for that money.
but really, it doesn't make sense to me, that if i called Konami HQ, told them i want to give them 50 000 in cash for a castlevania license of a remake of one of their classics,
and oh btw, i am funding the development myself, and when i'm done, i'll be willing to give you royalties, they'd turn me down?
that's pretty insane. for most studios that'd be a dream come true.
usually it's the other way around, "oh hey, i want to make a game with your IP, but i don't have any money, oh and can you please pay for us to develop it?"

"Not having the funds for long because Konami would sue me" is a terrible excuse. Why even risk it then? It makes zero sense why you'd do this or even keep the KS up if you know that already. (And yes, you can cancel funding on a KS project.)

And I don't know what doesn't make sense to you. Konami is a business. And every business handles their intellectual properties the same way. They aren't going to just give you the license because you'll pay for it, because it puts an official licensing from Konami on your product. And you have zero track record to go off of. If the game does well? All nice and dandy. But they have no reason to trust you with making a successful game because of the aforementioned zero track record. So if the game fails, it damages the brand.

You can argue that Konami doesn't care about the brand because they've turned Castlevania into slot machines and pachinko, but that's a fallacy. Those slot machines and pachinko machines are wildly successful in Japan, and generates them an amount of revenue that the actual CV games could only dream of. Pachinko is beyond popular in Japan, so while it destroyed their artistic integrity ditching the video games and turning them into slot machines, it makes perfect sense from a business stand-point.

The "royalties" you plan on giving them... what royalties? You'd be releasing the game for free, so what royalties are you going to give them? Money from your own pocket? If your game isn't generating any revenue, you can't give them any royalties. That's just not how it works. And if licensing the game to you means no revenue for them outside of what you're paying for the license, it's not worth it to Konami. To put it into a hypothetical scenario:

Let's say you pay them the $50k, and they give you the license. Let's say you complete the game after two years and release it to the public. Let's say you release it free, because that was the plan to begin with (right?). And now let's say the game does pretty well. That means it does decently, but Konami isn't going to make any money off of it. Even Konami's free-to-play games generate revenue, and this simply wouldn't be a good investment.

Now let's say all that happened, but the game fails instead. Yes, you've paid them $50k, but there's now a fan-made game with an official Konami licensing on it that has failed. It not only would make them no money, but it also damages the Castlevania brand, and has the potential to lose them money later.

Even if you were to sell it, there's no guarantee you'll get them enough money to meet a proper quota. There's no guarantee you'll actually finish it. There's no guarantee it'll be good or bad. You can say it will, you can make promises, but again, there's no track record to go off of for you. You don't have other released games out there to judge your development skills, to see whether what you've made before has been successful or failures. All anyone would get is a promise, and without any "right now" showing, it means nothing. All you've had to show are unfinished early test videos, which don't promise anything and sometimes even give a bad first impression.

So no, it's not a dream come true. If anything, it's par for the course, because I wouldn't be surprised if you're not the first person that has tried something like this. Even I've put together stuff and ideas like this before (things like Kickstarter didn't exist at the time, though). The fact of the matter is, you would have been better off finishing the game, and releasing it on the web for people to play, and maybe getting into contact with Konami later on and pitching it. Hell, even contacting a different developer and using it as a resume or proof-of-concept.

So you got some semblance of how to obtain the license, or at least you say you do. But you're still not showing that you do. Because I could say right now "Oh, I'm good friends with Koji Igarashi. We talk all the time," when in reality he and I are just friends on Facebook and he liked my post about Bloodstained once (he accepts pretty much any friend request so it's nothing special). It's not even like you have to record a call or have a write-up from the lawyer you talked to or whatever. Just a simple explanation of how it works, even, would give you more credibility. We live in an age where everyone claims everything on the internet, and then nearly everyone doesn't provide any proof, so all this disbelief in claims shouldn't be a surprise.

I do getcha, though. And you're going about this the best way you know how. But take it from someone who's done something like this before: you're being too over-ambitious when you don't have much to show for it. Work on some simple stuff, get your name out there, or at the very least show off that you can make and complete games. Because zangetsu's comment can sound mean ("No offence but this whole thing now feels like a cash grab.") but it makes perfect sense where he's coming from with one of my many previous points ("The reason being is that if your Kickstarter is successful and Konami does not sell you the license, you now have fifty extra grand in your pocket.")

[Chernabogue]

Nice update, the game looks good so far. The animation on some enemies (like the Mermen) is great. The lightning from the Whip sometimes casts strange shadows, but that's not a big problem. Keep up the good work!

[zangetsu468]

The knight animations were an example, one. However it's good that they're fixed.
The majority of visual issues I see are in foreground objects, again I'm not saying they're bad or game-breaking but they seem unfinished. To be fair this is bound to happen going from 2d to 3D because some objects can't simply be extruded and objects need a sense of realism in the 3rd dimension.

Granted I understand why you feel my cash grab comment was aimed as a personal attack but it wasn't. I don't believe your free demo/ partial game is a cash grab at all. As Claimh has stated and re-iterated I believe the KS "feels like" a cash grab. If hand-on-heart it's not, then this is my interpretation and it doesn't affect you, because although I like the idea of what you're doing, I'm not willing to pay for it. Even if the game was 100% complete I doubt I'd have time to play through it.

I did read your interview that Kazudra linked and I find it interesting that your prerogative was to learn to use Unreal. I say interesting because if the whole thing is truly and strictly a learning excercise then why do you believe you should be paid for it? (This is not me being condescending, just asking a direct question)

[dejawolf]

The knight animations were an example, one. However it's good that they're fixed.
The majority of visual issues I see are in foreground objects, again I'm not saying they're bad or game-breaking but they seem unfinished. To be fair this is bound to happen going from 2d to 3D because some objects can't simply be extruded and objects need a sense of realism in the 3rd dimension.

well, i've taken a lot of shortcuts, simply because working in 3d is very time-consuming compared to 2d work.
as an example, making a 2d brick sprite, you might spend at most 20 minutes in photoshop.
for 3d, you need to first make the brick, then unwrap it, then create a normal map, a specular map, an ambient occlusion map, and diffuse map,
you have to consider polygon and pixel density.. and now you're probably pushing 2 hours already.

Granted I understand why you feel my cash grab comment was aimed as a personal attack but it wasn't. I don't believe your free demo/ partial game is a cash grab at all. As Claimh has stated and re-iterated I believe the KS "feels like" a cash grab. If hand-on-heart it's not, then this is my interpretation and it doesn't affect you, because although I like the idea of what you're doing, I'm not willing to pay for it. Even if the game was 100% complete I doubt I'd have time to play through it.

i saw people posting stuff like this:

and figured, well, let's try and make a kickstarter and see if people will support it then.

I did read your interview that Kazudra linked and I find it interesting that your prerogative was to learn to use Unreal. I say interesting because if the whole thing is truly and strictly a learning excercise then why do you believe you should be paid for it? (This is not me being condescending, just asking a direct question)

why do i believe i should be paid for doing something living in a capitalist society, that is built upon paying people for their work?
let me ask, do you have a job?

[zangetsu468]

well, i've taken a lot of shortcuts, simply because working in 3d is very time-consuming compared to 2d work.
as an example, making a 2d brick sprite, you might spend at most 20 minutes in photoshop.
for 3d, you need to first make the brick, then unwrap it, then create a normal map, a specular map, an ambient occlusion map, and diffuse map,
you have to consider polygon and pixel density.. and now you're probably pushing 2 hours already.

I'll take your word for it, I've never designed games but I have 3d modeled in Rhino, 3DS Max and Revit, 3d can take time.

i saw people posting stuff like this:

and figured, well, let's try and make a kickstarter and see if people will support it then.

Fair enough.

why do i believe i should be paid for doing something living in a capitalist society, that is built upon paying people for their work?
let me ask, do you have a job?

Yes I do, a day job, pay taxes and am a part of this society which you refer to etc and I don't appreciate the undertone of that comment.

The reason I was aksing is firstly if someone is learning something like a student, there's no guarantee anybody is being paid to learn (it in fact costs most of us). Thus I was curious as to why you believed people should pay you for your work on this project ? Claimh had mentioned the zero track record which is a valid point, but maybe it's not about that, maybe it's the positive feedback from people who want to see this come to fruition that has given you the belief you could make a living from this. As I said, curious and you answered this above.

Having said this, given you get the licence and Konami give their blessing for you to go ahead and publish the game with their seal of approval then good times. However, if the opposite happens are you willing to refund all of those who funded you in the first place? What happens to all the funds people have pumped into the project then? Assuming you will want to be paid and all. If you reimburse the people then how will you be paid if nothing eventuates?

[dejawolf]

Yes I do, a day job, pay taxes and am a part of this society which you refer to etc and I don't appreciate the undertone of that comment.

well, the undertone you gave me was that my work has no value.

The reason I was aksing is firstly if someone is learning something like a student, there's no guarantee anybody is being paid to learn (it in fact costs most of us). Thus I was curious as to why you believed people should pay you for your work on this project ? Claimh had mentioned the zero track record which is a valid point, but maybe it's not about that, maybe it's the positive feedback from people who want to see this come to fruition that has given you the belief you could make a living from this. As I said, curious and you answered this above.

it works differently in Norway. you are actually paid for educating yourself, and working as a trainee at a company, you also get paid.
because students need to live, and you want them to be educated.

Having said this, given you get the licence and Konami give their blessing for you to go ahead and publish the game with their seal of approval then good times. However, if the opposite happens are you willing to refund all of those who funded you in the first place? What happens to all the funds people have pumped into the project then? Assuming you will want to be paid and all. If you reimburse the people then how will you be paid if nothing eventuates?

given that scenario, i'd have to reimburse people, and start working on my own project instead. i can't have money that's not legally my own lying around, no matter how hard i worked for it.

[dejawolf]

Misunderstanding on my part and I apologize. To be fair, though, I read that part of your post like four times and still came out with the same understanding, so you could've cleared it up a bit more.

The problem is, that's not all professionalism is. Part of professionalism is how you present yourself. Like I said before, rampant capitalization (or lack thereof) errors all over the KS page, no breakdown of you plan to spend the money, no plan on how you are going to obtain the license, and a very poor understanding of how Kickstarter works causing you to overprice things incredibly.

yes, i definitely could have explained that in more detail.

"Not having the funds for long because Konami would sue me" is a terrible excuse. Why even risk it then? It makes zero sense why you'd do this or even keep the KS up if you know that already. (And yes, you can cancel funding on a KS project.)

dunno, i'm hearing all these people saying konami is satan, and eats fanprojects for lunch, yet i've been hammering away for a year at this, even had a small article in kotaku, and still nothing from konami.
the KS is obviously going to fail, but i'm kinda wanting to keep that kickstarter up just to see if people are wrong about konami.

And I don't know what doesn't make sense to you. Konami is a business. And every business handles their intellectual properties the same way. They aren't going to just give you the license because you'll pay for it, because it puts an official licensing from Konami on your product. And you have zero track record to go off of. If the game does well? All nice and dandy. But they have no reason to trust you with making a successful game because of the aforementioned zero track record. So if the game fails, it damages the brand.

well, i have 11 years of experience as a 3d modeler for a company called esim games, which has released 4 versions of a tank simulator called steel beasts.
dunno if that'll count for anything.

You can argue that Konami doesn't care about the brand because they've turned Castlevania into slot machines and pachinko, but that's a fallacy. Those slot machines and pachinko machines are wildly successful in Japan, and generates them an amount of revenue that the actual CV games could only dream of. Pachinko is beyond popular in Japan, so while it destroyed their artistic integrity ditching the video games and turning them into slot machines, it makes perfect sense from a business stand-point.

sure, konami is a business, and they have employees with families that needs to be fed, clothed and housed. they'll understandably do what they can to keep their employees jobs secure. i took a quick look at their stocks a few days ago, and it has gone up since they started with pachinko.

interesting fact about pachinko though: gambling in japan is illegal. which means pachinko is actually illegal in japan since it is a gambling machine,
but the pachinko parlors have found a clever way of circumventing this law.
at the pachinko parlors, the people "buy" pachinko balls, and put them into pachinko machines.
after they're done, there are stores that "buy" pachinko balls, which the pachinko players go to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWV_zpRrCko

The "royalties" you plan on giving them... what royalties? You'd be releasing the game for free, so what royalties are you going to give them? Money from your own pocket? If your game isn't generating any revenue, you can't give them any royalties. That's just not how it works. And if licensing the game to you means no revenue for them outside of what you're paying for the license, it's not worth it to Konami. To put it into a hypothetical scenario:

Let's say you pay them the $50k, and they give you the license. Let's say you complete the game after two years and release it to the public. Let's say you release it free, because that was the plan to begin with (right?). And now let's say the game does pretty well. That means it does decently, but Konami isn't going to make any money off of it. Even Konami's free-to-play games generate revenue, and this simply wouldn't be a good investment.

i've released the game for free, and going to keep the first 3 levels free. 
if i get  the license, i'll sell the full game with all levels for maybe 5-10$
if i don't(which seems very likely, given how the kickstarter is failing) i'll finish up level 2 and 3, and then work on my own IP.

Now let's say all that happened, but the game fails instead. Yes, you've paid them $50k, but there's now a fan-made game with an official Konami licensing on it that has failed. It not only would make them no money, but it also damages the Castlevania brand, and has the potential to lose them money later.

people were making comments on my video such as "konami, take note, this is what you should have been doing all along"
i believe that is a fairly strong indicator that what i'm doing is in no way damaging the brand, but rather strengthening it and giving people back a little faith in it.

Even if you were to sell it, there's no guarantee you'll get them enough money to meet a proper quota.

a "proper quota?" what, if i fail to make them enough money? that's usually only is a problem if the game has a budget.
e.g we spent 50k on this game, so we'll need to earn at least 70k for this project to be worth it.
in this case konami spent 0, so the "proper quota" would also be 0.

There's no guarantee you'll actually finish it.

well, that'd be my problem, given how Konami would have to pay me nothing for development.

There's no guarantee it'll be good or bad. You can say it will, you can make promises, but again, there's no track record to go off of for you.

there's a guarantee it will play very similar to the original. so it's really up to the original game whether my remake is good or bad.

You don't have other released games out there to judge your development skills, to see whether what you've made before has been successful or failures. All anyone would get is a promise, and without any "right now" showing, it means nothing. All you've had to show are unfinished early test videos, which don't promise anything and sometimes even give a bad first impression.

no, i also have released the first two levels on itch.io for free.

So no, it's not a dream come true. If anything, it's par for the course, because I wouldn't be surprised if you're not the first person that has tried something like this. Even I've put together stuff and ideas like this before. The fact of the matter is, you would have been better off finishing the game, and releasing it on the web for people to play, and maybe getting into contact with Konami later on and pitching it. Hell, even contacting a different developer and using it as a resume or proof-of-concept.

sure there's other games that have been made into 3d sidescroller platformers, like mega man x, which got slammed pretty hard by critics.
and mega man powered up: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e0/Mega_man_powered_up.jpg
myself i got the idea of doing it in unreal engine from watching a guy who did mario and zelda in unreal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW4L9CuZ3Ak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgbGgtq-NMc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9I-aTPwda0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65JEfWpy7N0

So you got some semblance of how to obtain the license, or at least you say you do. But you're still not showing that you do. Because I could say right now "Oh, I'm good friends with Koji Igarashi. We talk all the time," when in reality he and I are just friends on Facebook and he liked my post about Bloodstained once (he accepts pretty much any friend request so it's nothing special). It's not even like you have to record a call or have a write-up from the lawyer you talked to or whatever. Just a simple explanation of how it works, even, would give you more credibility. We live in an age where everyone claims everything on the internet, and then nearly everyone doesn't provide any proof, so all this disbelief in claims shouldn't be a surprise.

i could dig up their phone number here and give them a call:
https://konami.com/jobs/en/

I do getcha, though. And you're going about this the best way you know how. But take it from someone who's done something like this before: you're being too over-ambitious when you don't have much to show for it. Work on some simple stuff, get your name out there, or at the very least show off that you can make and complete games. Because zangetsu's comment can sound mean ("No offence but this whole thing now feels like a cash grab.") but it makes perfect sense where he's coming from with one of my many previous points ("The reason being is that if your Kickstarter is successful and Konami does not sell you the license, you now have fifty extra grand in your pocket.")

[Las]

Damn Dejawolf this 1st and 2nd level is amazing so far! You have really nailed it on this! Keep up the great work! Love what you did with the stairs and flooring in level 2! 

[Lelygax]

@dejawolf
I really like this project and want this to happen, but what people there seems to be trying to communicate is: It isn't right to ask money without a guarantee.

Kickstarter doesnt work this way, it would be hard to refund everyone and I think that in the worst case scenario you could even lose money. But wait, there is a solution. Why you don't contact Konami first and try to know if they could guarantee a greenlight, while also knowing for sure how much money they would ask? This way no one would have doubts about what would happen if you reach the KS goal, not even you.

The last thing that people want is to get their hopes high only to be smashed later, without some kind of guarantee people won't pledge.

[BLOOD MONKEY]

I have one word for this whole situation......

DUMB