Inhabitants, Maqiupai and the future of GOAT DC Homebrew

goatdan · Post by **goatdan** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 11:53 pm

For the record, if you want to take the text of this message and post it anywhere... PLEASE DO. I want to inform everyone as much as possible about the problems regarding the release of these games and what we have done. By all means, if you have any questions, please post them here. If you post this on any other message boards, please point it to this thread for people to reply to, as I can only watch one at a time...

*ahem* So here goes:

As many people know, there were two games that won the first DreamOn contest -- Inhabitants and Maqiupai. Both games are excellent homebrew titles that are definitely ready for a professional pressing. The games were supposed to be pressed in time for the Midwest Gaming Classic on May 22nd and released at the show. Due to a problem with the master's that assured us only a 50/50 chance that the final product would function, we opted to not force them through and instead resubmit masters.

About a week after the show, we had created a new set of masters using the exact same method as Feet of Fury, the first commercial release that we did. These disks were sent to the pressing company, and they went through the pre-press set-up and had a limited number of errors. Seeing that they were the same general errors as what Feet of Fury had, we figured everything would be fine and signed for the games. They were shipped to us, arriving on June 22nd.

Upon booting, the disks refuse to load the game. Both of them will default to the built-in audio track(s) and will play those just fine. The data is accessable by looking at it on a computer. But the Dreamcast will not play it. Even though there would be a relatively easy fix to "force" them to function on the Dreamcast, it would not hold up to the same professional standard as Feet of Fury.

We are not working with the company that pressed the games to figure out a fix. We are going to have to pay for another pressing, as we signed off on the initial one fully understanding the games may not work. Some answers to questions that have been asked:

Could it just be a bad burn on some of the disks? The disks that are made into the games are not burnt, they are pressed. The pressing process ensures that every disk is made in an identical way -- if there is a problem with one, there is a problem with them all.

If the masters work, why can't you just make an exact copy of them? - This sounds like the most simple solution, but the fact is that pressing CDs are really only done in three "flavors" -- music, PC and Mac formats, or a combination of the above. The machine that makes the CD molding has built in error checking for these formats. The Dreamcast is a different format that has obvious differences between the other formats that will arise no matter what -- for instance, the disks contain a lengthy blank track to push the data to the outside of the disk, which theoretically helps keep the Dreamcast alive longer. This consistently shows up as a, "Are you sure?" type option. There are a lot more technical things that pop up too.

We are the only company currently producing Dreamcast games, and the place we are pressing them through is the only company that is currently pressing Dreamcast games onto CDs, and one of only a handful in the world that have done it. Considering the difference in time frame and scale, this is a huge problem that needs to find a workaround for all future releases.

Is there any way to speed up the process? Yes and no. We could push the games through right now with hacks that would probably make them work, however it would not solve the larger problem of understanding what went wrong and stopping it from happening again in the future. We have at least three releases in the pipeline right now, and we do not want to run into this problem again. Also, if we pushed them through and they still didn't function correctly, it could do irreversable financial damage to us. We have to get this right, and we have to do it now. Our goal is to have the disks back through production by the end of this month, and it is looking like that will occur.

What if the games aren't ready to go for a while longer? What about pre-orders? We will keep everyone updated as much as possible. There hasn't been too much news to report as of late, so we have been rather quite. Pre-orders will be shipped as soon as we can. If you have a pre-order and would like your money back, we wil refund your money at any time with no questions asked. Simply email loosen@goatstore.com and we will set it up for you.

If you have any further questions or comments, please feel free to ask here. Thanks for your continuing support, and we will get this right soon!

Post by **Christuserloeser** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 8:03 am

Posted over at DCEvolution: http://www.dcevolution.netfirms.com/php ... .php?t=108

Chris

skar · Post by **skar** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 8:13 am

although i'm feeling a bit sad about seeing all those problems coming up, i'm still confident that you'll get them solved soon. It's really nice to see you're willing to put so much work into getting things fixed and i'll surely get the games once they are releases.

Freeze · Post by **Freeze** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 11:06 am

I don't get the line about the only company which presses Dreamcast games. Can't any other professional CD production factory press DC games (with the correct settings) as well?

Ex-Cyber · Post by **Ex-Cyber** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 11:43 am

It's not so much a matter of "the correct settings" as it is a matter of "the correct procedure". AFAICT, many CD production houses are not set up to produce multisession discs at all, and those that are would have their environment set up for producing something like "CD-Extra" discs, which are similar to Dreamcast discs but still not quite in the same format. A further difficulty is that it is quite expensive to do a "test burn", as that would essentially incur almost all of the non-recurring costs for a full production run. Imagine if every coaster you burned as a newbie to DC homebrew cost you several thousand dollars instead of 25 cents...

goatdan · Post by **goatdan** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 2:31 pm

Thanks Ex-Cyber, you're almost dead on.

A Dreamcast disk is completely unlike a PC, Mac or Music CD. The molding software automatically looks for problems in the disks and reports them if they find them. A lot of what they find is pretty technical stuff that is how it is supposed to be for the DC, but the system stops it as a critical error.

It only makes sense to a non-producer / presser to just put it in and run it manually, but the software that checks the disk makes sure it is compadible with all of the above systems. Turning it off is a legal risk for the company that is doing the presses -- if it doesn't work, they can't warn the other company first. Because of this, turning off the software is something that simply isn't done in the industry -- and may not even be possible with most molding tools.

Once the legalities and the procedure are figured out, we will be able to easily continue to create games with no problems. Unfortunately, the problems run a lot deeper than we had any clue of from the production of Feet of Fury.

X525 · Post by **X525** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 6:13 pm

i just have ooooooonnnnnnnnnneeeeeee question. i pre-ordered Maqiupai alone. is there any possible way i can add Inhabitants onto my order? hehehe.. sorry.. but now i want both

. i will wait patiently for a response and the release of these two games

Imerion · Post by **Imerion** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 8:36 am

What exactly do you mean by those "hacks"?
I really hope you will pull this through! The DC community really needs this and many people are looking forward to those games. Since I dont know much about pressing cds all I can say is : Good luck!

Just a small noob question : What prevents a company from burning the cds? I mean, simply burn from images or whatever. Shure, it would take more time and some copies might not work, but it seems cheaper...

Ex-Cyber · Post by **Ex-Cyber** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 1:16 pm

It seems cheaper until you consider the equipment, space, manpower, and supplies (e.g. ink for printing the labels) needed to produce runs of thousands of CDs in a timely manner...

goatdan · Post by **goatdan** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 1:56 pm

X525, email me with your order number and we can set it up for you.

Imerion - By hacks, I mean there are ways that I create disks that will give them a better chance of running, but unfortunately there is no way for me to have proof of this without actually re-pressing the disks. And quite unfortunately, the fact that Feet of Fury worked and was created in the _exact same_ method as these other two, it seems like at least part of it is just dumb luck.

We could burn the CDs, although we would need to spend the time to do it each time one was ordered, get better printers to run the labels and invest a bunch of money up front to do it. After that, the problem would be that the game data deterioates much faster. According to studies, newer CDs will probably not get "bit-rot" in the near future, but burnt CDs develop it much quicker.

And finally, burned CDs do not look half as professional as silk-screened, pressed CDs. When we decided to create these CDs, we decided that the only way we would is if they looked as good as a "real" release. Considering that the homebrew community has had debates over if Feet of Fury was a homebrew release or not, it seems that we have done our job rather well. We want to keep that standard of quality at the same level.

Alexvrb · Post by **Alexvrb** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 5:52 pm

Well, I've seen some pretty good silver printable CDRs, the ones that you print directly onto. But pressed CDs would be much preferred... if you can do it successfully. Good luck, Dan.

aisupikku · Post by **aisupikku** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 6:43 pm

Ah! I was worried there for a second; The "future of GOAT DC Homebrew" had me thinking the worst... I am very sorry to hear that the second batch was still not good to go, but only for the effort and monetary expenses incurred -- I am very patient and attentive to the progress of this operation, and appreciate how it is helping us closer towards a full-fledged "commercial independent DC game market."

I'm of course hoping that the third time will be the charm, for a number of reasons! Good luck with it, as always.

not just souLLy now · Post by **not just souLLy now** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 7:35 pm

good luck, looking forward to these.

WRAGGSTER · Post by **WRAGGSTER** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 8:53 pm

GoatDan if you want or would like newsposting access to both DC Homebrew and also DCEmu UK give me a PM and ill sort it, its a great way of getting news direct to the fans of the scene.

Imerion · Post by **Imerion** » Sun Jul 18, 2004 5:44 am

I see. Perhaps you should increase the price a bit to compensate for another pressing. I mean, most people would think 19.90$ is cheap for a new DC game. But it might be to late, since pre-orders are already made...

Ex-Cyber · Post by **Ex-Cyber** » Sun Jul 18, 2004 10:19 pm

You could always buy an extra copy or two to give to your friends/relatives who have a DC gathering dust, if you think they'd be interested in the game. That would probably do more for the DC scene than jacking up prices.

Post by **Christuserloeser** » Mon Jul 19, 2004 7:02 am

Hm, beside all that's already been mentioned I still do not understand why there's no possibility of copy a Disc Image to your hard drive (use virtual disc drive with Nero) then put (burn) it on a common PC-CDROM as a NRG Image file, send them to the Pressing Factory and track the pressing from the Disc-At-Once Nero Image file instead of using "on-the-fly" copies.
As you can't do any direct on-the-fly copies from CD to CD I sometimes copy my discs like this for friends and my brother - it always worked: Beats of Rage / MODs, SBInducer Compilations etc This way I only had to put one Image file to my HDD and then could burn some discs with the same content without the original DiscJuggler or Nero Image file I created ...

Could the pressing factory(s) work with these Nero Disc-At-Once files ?

Please excuse me if this doesn't help the cause or has already been discussed (in another thread ? ) or you've tried something like this before or the pressing factory can't work with Nero DAO files

Chris

goatdan · Post by **goatdan** » Mon Jul 19, 2004 9:07 am

The price will not change. I appreciate the suggestion, but we decided that from here on out, all Dreamcast releases from us would be $14.90 or cheaper unless the developer had something big against that price point. Our hope is to release some games, like the GOAT Compilition Disk, at price points of $9.90 or less, but a lot of that will depend on how this goes.

Chris, the pressing factory could work with Nero Disc-At-Once files, but it still leaves the greater problem of the fact that the molding software will (probably) "fix" the things that make the games work on a Dreamcast. They make a molding from the master, and you cannot create a molding using any commercial CD burning program -- it is all done with a master being converted.

Thanks for the suggestion though...

Rand Linden · Post by **Rand Linden** » Mon Jul 19, 2004 9:11 am

What particular type of mastering software is being used?

I've not heard of a reasonably large-sized plant that can't burn MultiSession discs.

Have you considered using a mastering facility to create your stamper and then pressing from that stamper instead of doing it at the same place?

Do you know the precise error that was reported?

Rand.

goatdan · Post by **goatdan** » Mon Jul 19, 2004 10:54 am

Rand,

By mastering software, do you mean how was the master created? Once was done using Alcohol 120%, which was the reason for the multi-session error on the first (aborted) run. The second time they were burned using CDRecord by Dan Potter, who created them the exact same way that he did Feet of Fury.

The problem comes in when the masters are transferred to the stamper. The issue is that the method that is used to create the master finds errors in the masters -- because they contain data that isn't arranged "normally" for a PC, Mac or music CD -- and the software / hardware automatically tries to "fix" this problem.

The masters are created by us. They all worked. The problem is finding a way to "circumvent" the precautionary tooling built into the pressing machine, and then having their lawyers draft a special contract that we can sign to ask them to turn it off.

I have a list of the errors somewhere, but I don't know where offhand.