Paprium: The Official Thread Mk 2

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Originally Posted by Mad Moham

I don't get it either. If Fonzie wants to make a game that's so technically advanced then why not just make the game for a modern system, or at least a slightly more modern system than the one chosen. Its against the spirit of things to make a game that can't even run on the base console, you might as well install a Cray supercomputer inside the cartridge, it gets to the point of not even being an MD/Gen game.

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Exactly. You don't even need to push the limits of the console to make a good game, let alone depend on a bunch of extra hardware. Consider the Mega Drive / Genesis library, tastes are of course subjective, but it's not like the best or most popular games are even close to being the ones with the highest megabit count. From what I've seen, Paprium seems to focus on the "wow" factor (huge sprites, bells and whistles, etc) first and foremost, and that's not what makes a game good or stand the test of time.

Even simpler, if after 3 years of development, you still have troubles with the custom chip, it is clear that it is not a good idea.

Anyway, in the end, Paprium is not a complete waste of time. At the very least, it'll be a textbook example of disastrous game development decisions, and that's worth something, as everyone can learn from it. It'll hopefully encourage future developers to keep it simple, and backers to be more demanding and more cautious with their money. It also spawned PapiRium, which is a fun project regardless of whether it gets finished.

To st1ka : I really appreciated to watch and listen part 1 and 2 ! thanks for the cool entertainement !

Recently, everyone keep talking about how Paprium is broken from a hardware perspective and how it's impossible and such a failure to make it run on a real megadrive.
But, I keep in mind this video posted on the WM facebook page the morning before the paris party : https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=Bx7uJzXc7z4
This is evident the footage is from a PC version, but the game system / whole software there seems completely broken and in a miserable state.
It would be interesting, ST1KA, to investigate about the software state in part 3

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Originally Posted by dolphinkiller24

To st1ka : I really appreciated to watch and listen part 1 and 2 ! thanks for the cool entertainement !

Recently, everyone keep talking about how Paprium is broken from a hardware perspective and how it's impossible and such a failure to make it run on a real megadrive.
But, I keep in mind this video posted on the WM facebook page the morning before the paris party : https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=Bx7uJzXc7z4
This is evident the footage is from a PC version, but the game system / whole software there seems completely broken and in a miserable state.
It would be interesting, ST1KA, to investigate about the software state in part 3

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That video is a real mystery. Why was it posted? Why was it even edited together and encoded?
If nothing else, Fonzie was capable of making trailer videos that at least looked like there was a game in development.

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Originally Posted by dolphinkiller24

To st1ka : I really appreciated to watch and listen part 1 and 2 ! thanks for the cool entertainement !

Recently, everyone keep talking about how Paprium is broken from a hardware perspective and how it's impossible and such a failure to make it run on a real megadrive.
But, I keep in mind this video posted on the WM facebook page the morning before the paris party : https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=Bx7uJzXc7z4
This is evident the footage is from a PC version, but the game system / whole software there seems completely broken and in a miserable state.
It would be interesting, ST1KA, to investigate about the software state in part 3

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There's not much I can investigate there sadly. Fonzie is the only person who knows the answer to that and he never answered any of my attempts at contacting him

And Luis have seen the game running on a customised gens emulator, but he can't probably talk about it and won't.

This video is THE piece of this whole cake which made me lose any hope about paprium

Oddly enough, regardless of how advanced the tech on the cart might be, it still had to be a good beat-em-up. On a console with lots of good beat-em-ups, but more importantly, housing both of what many consider the best beat-em-ups. SOR2, and Final Fight. I mean, if I need a Sega CD to play 2 player, get what game I'm going to be playing instead when I hook up that Sega CD?

It's interesting, because I never really had any confidence the game would be a great beat-em-up, anymore than Pier Solar was a great RPG. I don't really feel like we'll ultimately be missing out on much.

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Originally Posted by stika

There's not much I can investigate there sadly. Fonzie is the only person who knows the answer to that and he never answered any of my attempts at contacting him

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Based on what you've seen, is it possible that someone else could have been able to post that video?

To post something so broken on the day of the launch party, only to have it removed shortly thereafter, I wonder if that wasn't a disgruntled employee's attempt at sabotage like "hey look this is what the game's really like."

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Originally Posted by axel

Based on what you've seen, is it possible that someone else could have been able to post that video?

To post something so broken on the day of the launch party, only to have it removed shortly thereafter, I wonder if that wasn't a disgruntled employee's attempt at sabotage like "hey look this is what the game's really like."

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I doubt it. It had to be Fonzie. Remember he is a control freak and avoids sharing anything with anyone. He probably had a change of heart, for whatever reason. Maybe people reacted negatively to that video.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

It's really interesting to hear from the people involved how it went. What a train-wreck...
After watching that video though, the blame is not solely on Fonzie (though it's definitely clear he's the one who doomed WM).
A lot of the people interviewed seemed to be pretty ok with most of the crazy ideas, which should have never left the drawing board.

There was no need to try and "top" Pier Solar in any way other than making a better game.

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Of course he is not the only culprit here. There were plenty of people (including us backers) who enabled him. And, TBH, I've worked with people like him before. After a while you get tired of preventing people from taking bad decisions. I could not fault Tulio's decision to leave at all.

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Originally Posted by SEGA-Jorge

Oddly enough, regardless of how advanced the tech on the cart might be, it still had to be a good beat-em-up.

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That cuts to the heart of it. I know multiple people have expressed similar sentiments over these past 600 pages, but we need reminders every now and again.

This is the worst case of second system effect that the homebrew games scene has seen. (If you haven't heard of it, I highly recommend The Mythical Man-Month, where the term comes from.) The need to one-up Pier Solar, add extra capabilities to the stock Genesis, etc... But is the game worthwhile in the first place?

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Originally Posted by netpredakonn

And, TBH, I've worked with people like him before. After a while you get tired of preventing people from taking bad decisions. I could not fault Tulio's decision to leave at all.

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I don't fault him either.

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Originally Posted by nitelich

That cuts to the heart of it. I know multiple people have expressed similar sentiments over these past 600 pages, but we need reminders every now and again.

This is the worst case of second system effect that the homebrew games scene has seen. (If you haven't heard of it, I highly recommend The Mythical Man-Month, where the term comes from.) The need to one-up Paprium, add extra capabilities to the stock Genesis, etc... But is the game worthwhile in the first place?

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I was also thinking of that quote but forgot the book it came from, it's a good read for anyone into programming or business. I wish we could have seen the engine running on a stock Genesis, no DSP, see if it can even display the characters without glitching. If it can then at least you could work from there, maybe it ends up being one player with 3-4 enemies at a time like Final Fight on the SNES, which isn't bad for an indie game.

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Originally Posted by nitelich

That cuts to the heart of it. I know multiple people have expressed similar sentiments over these past 600 pages, but we need reminders every now and again.

This is the worst case of second system effect that the homebrew games scene has seen. (If you haven't heard of it, I highly recommend The Mythical Man-Month, where the term comes from.) The need to one-up Paprium, add extra capabilities to the stock Genesis, etc... But is the game worthwhile in the first place?

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You mean one-up Pier Solar? But yeah, that sums it up pretty well.