Paprium: The Official Thread Mk 2

[chilled]

does this thread have more lines of code than any MD game ever released or promised?

[axel]

What does Sonic 2 or Sonic Spinball, 2 games made by Sega and an American arm of Sega during the console's lifespan, have anything to do with Paprium? I don't see even the most remote reason to draw parallels between their development cycles, methods, or tech. There is really no excuse for Fonzie's lack of professionalism. This entire ordeal is just a mess.

Also, this "developers are professional liars" garbage. Speak for yourself. There are plenty of devs, myself included, that are straight shooters. Making up for a lapse in project management, or scrambling to meet deadlines/milestones set by publishers, leads, and producers has very little if anything to do with the devs and artists. The nature of software dev requires consistent, efficient project management, strategic asset/team member use, and realistic time management. Devs don't lie about this stuff. They solve problems that roll down from unrealistic deadlines that are set by market circumstances or poor project management.

If anything, this entire mess is a lapse in project management, time management, financial planning, and technical acumen. Fonzie is pretty good a lot of this stuff, and arguably great at marketing. But he can't do everything well, and is in fact, downright terrible some of it.

I'd rep you again if I could. I'm not in game development but I have to deliver big projects sometimes, a mockup or proof of concept is standard practice but you have to let the client know there is still a lot of work left to be done, not pretend you are just putting on the finishing touches! If you miss one deadline you need to be doing everything you can not to miss another, if that's impossible it's time to start cutting features or at least looking for more efficient ways to implement them.

If you are honest from day one you never need to invent excuses.

[CrazyMonkey]

What does Sonic 2 or Sonic Spinball, 2 games made by Sega and an American arm of Sega during the console's lifespan, have anything to do with Paprium? I don't see even the most remote reason to draw parallels between their development cycles, methods, or tech. There is really no excuse for Fonzie's lack of professionalism. This entire ordeal is just a mess.

Also, this "developers are professional liars" garbage. Speak for yourself. There are plenty of devs, myself included, that are straight shooters. Making up for a lapse in project management, or scrambling to meet deadlines/milestones set by publishers, leads, and producers has very little if anything to do with the devs and artists. The nature of software dev requires consistent, efficient project management, strategic asset/team member use, and realistic time management. Devs don't lie about this stuff. They solve problems that roll down from unrealistic deadlines that are set by market circumstances or poor project management.

If anything, this entire mess is a lapse in project management, time management, financial planning, and technical acumen. Fonzie is pretty good a lot of this stuff, and arguably great at marketing. But he can't do everything well, and is in fact, downright terrible some of it.

I believe this is needlessly negative, but I'll give the benefit of doubt. Don't get me wrong, I do, in fact, agree with what you mean "after all", and I'd like the same in return, because I don't speak so "black & white" (inb4 you question it too lol). And I'm not excusing Fonzie.
While I fully agree with the second paragraph, I'll leave this question: Is a mockup "real"? A mockup is a mockup, no matter how standard it is, no matter the intention, no matter the reason behind it. What you call a mockup that claims itself to rather be a "screenshot"? Well, this is just my opinion and point of view anyway, and not to look down on devs who did it but still put their best into their projects.
Please don't think I've attempted to do bad talk here. This is just the conclusion I get after seeing and working within the good, bad, and ugly from certain Hacking Scene.

[SEGA-Jorge]

I believe this is needlessly negative, but I'll give the benefit of doubt. Don't get me wrong, I do, in fact, agree with what you mean "after all", and I'd like the same in return, because I don't speak so "black & white" (inb4 you question it too lol). And I'm not excusing Fonzie.
While I fully agree with the second paragraph, I'll leave this question: Is a mockup "real"? A mockup is a mockup, no matter how standard it is, no matter the intention, no matter the reason behind it. What you call a mockup that claims itself to rather be a "screenshot"? Well, this is just my opinion and point of view anyway, and not to look down on devs who did it but still put their best into their projects.
Please don't think I've attempted to do bad talk here. This is just the conclusion I get after seeing and working within the good, bad, and ugly from certain Hacking Scene.

Mockups are reasonable and necessary. If a project can't get off the floor, due to technical obstacles, team member bandwidth, or a lack of field specialists, then the best options are compositions, mock ups, prototypes, and additional documentation. Every developer, every artist, every designer works better when scope, goals, and tasks are clearly defined. Prototypes and mock ups go a long way to doing just that. Whenever progress can't be made on one front, it's imperative that progress is made elsewhere. Be that at the design level, art pipeline, interaction design, technical and architecture, etc. Even if you have no art, the art pipeline can be set up, tested, and improved upon. If you can't make progress on full dev, then prototyping base level mechanics, establishing technical engineering solutions based on the the available documentation, etc. is all good progress. Showing mockups also moves the project along on the aesthetic level, which is where lots of investors tend to focus. So assets moving, being laid out, and art pipelines being tested is a great step.

Look at this way, if Fonzie was having all these technical issues, team composition issues, etc. But he had shown progress on art, music, tech pipeline, animation, along with the marketing materials, we wouldn't be in this situation. Further more, just showing progress would help ground the project in reality, making community members with dev and art skills more open to helping out, etc.

Not a single person has criticized other groups for being transparent and honest about their dev process. It's actually been really helpful and positive for the devs and supporters alike.

[Black_Tiger]

I'm a developer, and while I haven't sent a single cent to WM so I could be a biased, I "feel" that Fonzie didn't really "want" to scam people. Myself I have been through lots of art blocks, and lots of ups and downs within my own team too. Making mockups is in fact not an unusual practice either, Sonic 2 team released some because they were asked for updates and the engine wasn't ready, and I believe the same happened in Sonic Spinball during an expo (and I'm not talking about the early toxic caves footage, but the video that said "welcome to sonic spinball" at lava powerhouse). Not because Sonic 2 devs were bad at their job, but because they were making a flagship game for SEGA, and I guess there was a lot of pressure not to disappoint anyone; cutting Hidden Palace for sure must have hurt.
When you're making a game, yes a minimum of honesty is expected, but saying "can't show anything because the engine isn't ready yet" is just unprofessional and should be avoided at any costs. Especially when you have such a big ego and so far are seen as a "great programmer". From one aspect, I can understand the desire not to disappoint, and no "sane" scammer would try to push their lie for so long either. And when you're the only lone person in charge of your enterprise and have to account not only for your game, but also the whole marketing side of it, it's obvious there's not much time for anything. Yes, it's Fonzie's fault for being so dickish towards others, trying to cope with unrealistic goals, and hiding from his members whenever he couldn't get things done (can't imagine what else could have happened other than that). Yes there's perfectionism, and in a developer's life there are flagship projects we'd drop and screw our lives for, but... no project is ever perfect either, and trying so hard on pushing it does result on low productivity. I have fallen into pushing projects so hard it eats my whole life, it's a lesson to learn, and even through the hard way, I hope Fonzie decides to learn from it, with or without release.

Something else: Some devs including myself... yes we are professional liars, and very manipulative when we need or feel it. But... it's part of the game development duties in a certain way: Today it's just not enough to do a game with appealing music/art or impossible effects in aging hardware, but we do have to apply at least a bit of psychology to attract and catch the public in our works. There's just too much media around to compete with, and can't rely on thinking on hardcore sega fans alone. Why else you think so many people would rather stick to "trash art"? Which is knowingly riddled with subliminal messages and other bullshit? This is the status of artistic world: Rule, be ruled, or die! If I was able and wanted to sell my own game on MD... nobody knows me, therefore I think I must resort to some manipulation tactics to draw some people interested and have some push for my kickstarter campaign. Not without its sacrifices of course, I don't have much time, I don't have much money, I had to freeze college in order to make a free Sonic the Hedgehog fangame, which should help gain public's trust in our team for when we announce our coming homebrew for sale. Just stole this practice from TobyFox and LakeFeperd, who done the same, and had successful campaigns. But don't get me wrong, we love what we do, and we aren't going to do a half-hearted game just to convince others to give us a buck.

He was b.s.ing people with this scam from the very beginning. His tech demo showing how the engine can display so many CPS sprites at once is technically impossible.

The Coleco Chameleon scammers chose Indigogo instead of kickstarter because they'd get to keep the pledged money if it failed its goal and no prototype was required. Fonzie push the Magical Gems scam as a way to launder money and it difficult for people to get a feel of what they were actually paying for. The promised steady stream of exclusive behind the scenes content and notion of influencing the game design went so far as to describe it as becoming a member of the dev team.

Nothing was followed through on for investors from the get go. Parallel to that, he scammed the actual dev team members. He never had a chance to lose his way or good intentions because he never began to make good on any of his commitments.

The moment he got everyone's money he went silent.

Occasionally bragging about blowing investor funds on random things isn't the kind of behind the scenes access that was promised. Years went by and he suddenly dropped a professional style commercial and inferred that release was imminent, as he generously allowed people to "preorder" a non-existent game.

The moment he got everyone's money he went silent.

I haven't led a game production, but have worked on several games for classic consoles. I know how projects can get delayed for years, even when nearly complete. In every case of legit projects, actual screenshots and video or demos are distributed along the way.

Paprium dev team members have shared some if the assets they sent Fonzie, but he has never distributed a single real screenshot or video of the game running on real hardware or real Mega Drive emulator... other than possibly that broken demo at the release party... which someone here outdid in a matter of days of development.

Those Sonic games are also actual games. Paprium was just a scam and it's now long over... unless he tries to sucker a few more people for "preorders" sometime in the future.

[Mad Moham]

This whole mess makes me want to know two things:

- Luis appears to have lied about playing the game on hardware. Why lie about it? (I know I brought this up in an earlier post, but since then his story has started to appear much less likely to be true)

- Since Paprium was announced I could probably have learned the necessary skills and then made the game myself. So, what the hell does Fonzie do with his time?

If Luis was telling the truth about playing the game on real hardware then I apologise, but his story doesn't appear true at all. Also, I would love to sit in on one of Fonzie's work sessions just to see what he does and how it all takes so long.

[thesegadude]

This whole mess makes me want to know two things:

- Luis appears to have lied about playing the game on hardware. Why lie about it? (I know I brought this up in an earlier post, but since then his story has started to appear much less likely to be true)

- Since Paprium was announced I could probably have learned the necessary skills and then made the game myself. So, what the hell does Fonzie do with his time?

If Luis was telling the truth about playing the game on real hardware then I apologise, but his story doesn't appear true at all. Also, I would love to sit in on one of Fonzie's work sessions just to see what he does and how it all takes so long.

I understand why you might think this about Luis. I won't fault you for it.

I still believe that Luis told us the truth; that he played Paprium on his own original Genesis.

[MushaAleste]

I have been following the whole drama for quite some time as most of us. It is my impression this isn't a deliberate scam from the get go. The guy fucked up along the way. He seems to be quite narcissistic too. Which is why there is a slight chance he still might try to redeem his name by actually releasing this. If its actually one of the better beat em up games, thats probably quite unlikely.

[axel]

Occasionally bragging about blowing investor funds on random things isn't the kind of behind the scenes access that was promised. Years went by and he suddenly dropped a professional style commercial and inferred that release was imminent, as he generously allowed people to "preorder" a non-existent game.

The moment he got everyone's money he went silent.

It's things like this that point to a scam, why would anyone put together a professional commercial for a game that doesn't work? Also the Final Fight sprites only animate the lower half, he could have made the static parts background tiles. Or maybe the sprite demo did work for that limited example but it fails when you need actual game logic, scrolling backgrounds and a ton more tiles than just walking animations. Whatever the case there's likely a reason why no developer ever tried to claim the Genesis could "eat CPS sprites for breakfast" as Fonzie claimed.

I'm not saying it was a scam from the beginning because I don't know, but it sure looks like one the longer this drags on.

[Barone]

If Fonzie's company was selling cars and car parts he would probably be in jail by now.

[SEGA-Jorge]

Where is Luis? Has he said anything since saying he played the game, then the weird eBay auction? Yeah, that was a thing that happened.

[tokay]

After having been involved in some parts of PAPRIUM, it made me believe game was nearing its release so I communicated about it... Later I felt very stupid because the game was still not out.
Could be that it is where Luis is standing right now and/or he is working on a new AAA 3D project (as it is his day job).

[avlon]

Food for thought, while Paprium and Fonzie have been farting around:

Tanglewood passed its one year anniversary. Development started way after Paprium did. Dev was also just learning to work with the Genesis.
Tanzer is nearly on its 6 month anniversary of release. Development started way after Paprium did. AFAIK, it's also the devs first professional Genesis project.
FX Unit Yuki is at its 6 month anniversary. Game started development way after Paprium did, released for the PCE CD and then ported to the Genesis. Also first time dev team on a shoestring budget.
Xeno Crisis is around the corner and even with its own delays, it will beat Paprium to market with a development time far less than Papriums. Again, first time Genny devs with less budget.

The in dev stuff that's been announced lately like Arkagis, Phantom Gear, and Curse of Illmoore Bay all look technically impressive and will all beat Paprium to market.

Hell, the Mega Man X port being worked on from scratch looks like it will be done first.

New teams or individuals, likely all working with far less resources and funds were able to get their projects completed not only in far less time, but with communication to the public.

Yes, these games aren't a technically advanced as Paprium was supposed to be, but they still got the job done and fit in with the existing library just fine.

[molasar]

Xeno Crisis is around the corner and even with its own delays, it will beat Paprium to market with a development time far less than Papriums. Again, first time Genny devs with less budget.

Let's not forget that Xeno Crisis is in development for 7 different platforms almost simultaneously. Otherwise a Genesis/MD version could be already finished.

[axel]

Let's not forget that Xeno Crisis is in development for 7 different platforms almost simultaneously. Otherwise a Genesis/MD version could be already finished.

Early on I had thought that was likely a reason for Paprium's delay, surely it was being developed simultaneously for modern hardware too. I thought maybe it had been written in a high level language and that was why it needed that 300 MHz chip on the cart. But no, it's only for MD and nothing else.

Just as well considering at the time development began the Wii U wasn't even on the market and the PS Vita was the newest console available.