Shenmue Dojo

New Interview from Eurogamer:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017- ... fan-outcry

SEGA forever? More like SEGA for a little while LOL

MiTT3NZ wrote: I like how a lot of the newer lot who have to speak corporate in interviews are clearly fans and give a fuck about the product. Ten years ago there was a very distinct difference between developer and publisher.

That's true, Sega's communication with the fans has definitely improved in recent years. Even many of Sega's old school Japanese developers are becoming more comfortable with social media and being in the public spotlight. That new Sega ident that Nagoshi unveiled earlier in the year is only the beginning, it looks like is preparing to increase their popular culture presence in a major way.

That was a very harsh interview, I think unnecessarily so. You can still get across the same meaning without being so confrontational.

But I will say RetroArch haven't done themselves any favors by crying foul so publicly. I'm not sure who would want to work with them now.

SEGA need to do a lot more work in their development of the Unity emulator before they start bringing the Dreamcast games online if people are already struggling with these old ones.

I don't know why they're using the unity engine as it is. They're using a game engine aimed at independent game designers to create an emulator for their games which it wasn't designed to do in the first place.

south carmain wrote: I don't know why they're using the unity engine as it is. They're using a game engine aimed at independent game designers to create an emulator for their games which it wasn't designed to do in the first place.

Nah, you can use engines like Unity to do what ever you like. In this case it serves as middleware to interface with Android, iOS, future PS4 & XB1. Doesn't really matter what you're running underneath that middleware layer.

fittersau wrote:

south carmain wrote: I don't know why they're using the unity engine as it is. They're using a game engine aimed at independent game designers to create an emulator for their games which it wasn't designed to do in the first place.

Nah, you can use engines like Unity to do what ever you like. In this case it serves as middleware to interface with Android, iOS, future PS4 & XB1. Doesn't really matter what you're running underneath that middleware layer.

I am aware of what it is doing. My point was that the engine isn't designed to do that even if it can hence why Sega Forever is having performance issues with games that require a toaster to run.

fittersau wrote:

south carmain wrote: I don't know why they're using the unity engine as it is. They're using a game engine aimed at independent game designers to create an emulator for their games which it wasn't designed to do in the first place.

Nah, you can use engines like Unity to do what ever you like. In this case it serves as middleware to interface with Android, iOS, future PS4 & XB1. Doesn't really matter what you're running underneath that middleware layer.

That's true, but tbh I don't get their choice myself. I have used Unity a lot in the past years and it's a good choice to make games portable, but it also includes high-level stuff like Mono for programming, which are unnecessary for emulators: if they use them, it could be detrimental, because emulators require low-level programming for fast performances; if they don't and instead program their own libraries in C, Mono and the other stuff would still be included in the emulator and could potentially burden their emulator's performances anyway.
Maybe I'm wrong and it's actually a good choice, but it sounds more like a decision the marketing guy would make, not the programmer :\

John Doom wrote:

fittersau wrote:

south carmain wrote: I don't know why they're using the unity engine as it is. They're using a game engine aimed at independent game designers to create an emulator for their games which it wasn't designed to do in the first place.

Nah, you can use engines like Unity to do what ever you like. In this case it serves as middleware to interface with Android, iOS, future PS4 & XB1. Doesn't really matter what you're running underneath that middleware layer.

That's true, but tbh I don't get their choice myself. I have used Unity a lot in the past years and it's a good choice to make games portable, but it also includes high-level stuff like Mono for programming, which are unnecessary for emulators: if they use them, it could be detrimental, because emulators require low-level programming for fast performances; if they don't and instead program their own libraries in C, Mono and the other stuff would still be included in the emulator and could potentially burden their emulator's performances anyway.
Maybe I'm wrong and it's actually a good choice, but it sounds more like a decision the marketing guy would make, not the programmer :\

I wouldn't call myself an expert with unity but I have been tinkering with it since around 2010 and as a result I've read quite a lot about it in terms of its strengths and weaknesses from articles and experienced users. From what I know about the engine I would completely agree that they put cost and convenience over final result in this case as even if they can re-purpose it to suit their needs it would probably be very difficult to get the same result as if they built something from the ground up.

Hyo Razuki wrote: Free things always hurt. I do think it's a good idea to bring the old Sega games to current platforms but I think it would have been a wiser decision to make every game $1 or 99 cents and then add a monthly subscription option with 10 games per month at like $5. Something like that. Getting the Sega brand associated with a free mobile gaming service will probably hurt the brand in the long run, giving it an even "cheaper" reputation than Sonic games and other bullshit have already given it.

The expectations of the mobile market are completely different to the mentality you're describing here. To the extent that it's quite unusual for mobile games to charge a set price, even if that price is as little as $1. In reality, most mobile games are either ad supported or rely on some form of repeatable microtransaction. Putting an upfront cost like you describe would deter mobile gamers from trying out Sega Forever; ad supported is definitely the way to go, since these classic Sega games were never designed with microtransactions in mind. The ability to pay $2 per game to remove the ads is just an optional bonus, it's unlikely that most mobile gamers will be bothered the presence of ads even if they weren't in the original versions of these Sega games.