HOMEBREW SUPPORTER

[zxdplay | 149]

Hello, everyone. Today I want to discuss something with you. I have been thinking about making a brand new 2D cartridge game console. I don't know how many people are interested in it.
I have always wanted to develop games on game consoles with cartridges, because I like physical cartridges. I previously planned to make games on the SFC (SNES) and SEGA MD (Genesis), 
but soon I found that it was too difficult to make games on these two platforms.The CPU in the SFC is too weak to program in C language, and I can't even buy an original MD machine. The biggest pain is music production. The BGMs I can get are all wav, mp3, or midi. 
Due to the capacity limitation of the cartridge, it is not practical to save PCM audio sources in the cartridge.
Moreover, neither SFC nor MD supports midi playback, and converting midi to a playable format has poor results. I am not proficient in music, and although I can appreciate it, I cannot compose or produce music myself. I believe many Homebrew game producers have encountered the same problem when producing music.

So I came up with an idea to create a brand new game console, a game platform designed specifically for Homebrew game creators and players.
The name of the new game platform is HOMEBREW SUPPORTER, referred to as HS below.

HS should have the following features:
1. Use cartridge as the storage medium for game resources, with a cartridge slot similar to the 60pin slot of the FC.
2. The game graphics are mainly 2D, with rotation, scaling, and semi-transparency (Alpha blending) effects. It supports high-definition output with a maximum resolution of 1920x1080 at 60fps.
3. The game development is easy to learn and has low development costs, allowing game creators to fully unleash their imagination.
4. Music can be played in wave, mp3, midi, and common music formats. This ensures the quality of the music while shortening the development cycle and reducing the difficulty of game creation.
5. It is open to all Homebrew developers, and anyone can develop games on this platform without any royalty fees.

The  price of HS is between $50 and $80. I would like to seek your advice here. If you are willing to purchase, please let me know in the reply to this thread. I will calculate the total number. When the total number of willing purchasers exceeds 170, I will officially launch this project.

It's actually a wish list. It's not about actually paying, but just asking if you are willing to add HS to your wish list. If the total number of people in the wish list exceeds 170, I will start the project.
 

It should be mentioned that HS is not an emulator, not an Android box, but a brand-new game console. If HS can be successfully produced, I will continue to develop games for HS. The first batch of consoles will come with a free game.

Finally, regarding the NFT incident, it was a mistake that I made. I apologize to everyone here and hope to receive your forgiveness. Thank you.

The first batch of consoles is a test model, and the shell is borrowed from the FH-C26 (an 8-bit clone of the NES), and the HDMI and USB interfaces are installed on the back panel.

The picture below is not a real machine, just the finished look

 

Edited January 10, 2024 by zxdplay

[Scrobins | 1,881]

I am intrigued and would be interested in purchasing if you reached the necessary threshold. Do you have any games in development for the console already as well?

[Link | 2,951]

I would be interested if there are enough good launch games.

 

Straight away, I doubt any project could find 170 buyers on this site in the time span of one campaign. Do you have other places where you will promote this? 

What will HS offer that Ouya didn't?

How will you attract other developers? 

Will HS use C programming, or what?

[zxdplay | 149]

46 minutes ago, Scrobins said:

I am intrigued and would be interested in purchasing if you reached the necessary threshold. Do you have any games in development for the console already as well?

I am currently planning the first game release, and I am the only one working on it. Therefore, HS is actually a

"HOMEBREW game console", 

[zxdplay | 149]

16 minutes ago, Link said:

I would be interested if there are enough good launch games.

 

Straight away, I doubt any project could find 170 buyers on this site in the time span of one campaign. Do you have other places where you will promote this? 

What will HS offer that Ouya didn't?

How will you attract other developers? 

Will HS use C programming, or what?

HS will use C language or java for development, but which one to use requires further evaluation of the hardware performance before making a choice.
I haven't done any publicity because I'm too busy. I'll consider it after the HS console is finished.

[erac | 80]

I feel it won't have much reach, just like Ouya. Evercade already exists as well.

[zxdplay | 149]

46 minutes ago, Link said:

What will HS offer that Ouya didn't?

Compared with OUYA, there is a big difference. The appearance of HS looks more like a classic game console because it uses cartridges as the medium. The only difference is that the HD output has stronger 2D performance.

[OptOut | 9,271]

Creating your own hardware is going to be a big challenge, I'd reckon. Is this going to be like a Raspberry Pi or Android box sort of thing?

Getting everything you need together, from the motherboard and outercase, to the pin connector and controllers, as well as designing and manufacturing bespoke cartridges?

No way on Earth a system like that comes in between 50 and 80 bucks, that's a pipe dream.

[fcgamer | 5,128]

I'd be interested in purchasing this too, sounds interesting. Maybe developing as well when I get my programming up to scratch 

[zxdplay | 149]

17 minutes ago, OptOut said:

Creating your own hardware is going to be a big challenge, I'd reckon. Is this going to be like a Raspberry Pi or Android box sort of thing?

Getting everything you need together, from the motherboard and outercase, to the pin connector and controllers, as well as designing and manufacturing bespoke cartridges?

No way on Earth a system like that comes in between 50 and 80 bucks, that's a pipe dream.

Thank you for your feedback. I understand your doubts about HS and your concerns about the challenges of hardware development. 
Indeed,  HS is not a Raspberry Pi or an Android box,  creating your own hardware is a difficult task that requires consideration of many factors, such as motherboards, enclosures, pin connectors, controllers, and the development and manufacturing of custom cartridges.

However, my goal is to minimize costs through optimized design and supply chain management, so that the price of HS can be kept within a reasonable range.

[neodolphino | 272]

I have my doubts, but I'd be interested - especially at the price promised.

[a3quit4s | 4,531]

I’ve spent $80 on worse so sure why not, what do expect to sell games for? What is the planned launch date? I definitely wouldn’t give you money upfront with no product however. 

A couple things - good god the name is terrible, land on something more marketable. If this thing has any chance of taking off the first couple games you create should be something to behold since you are going up against something like NES Maker which has a great library. I don’t think you’d have any less buyers if you made great games and just sold digital only copies on steam or something, why even bother creating hardware? You aren’t even just creating your own hardware you have to create how the hardware interacts and interprets the game as well no?

[SNESNESCUBE64 | 629]

The thing about new hardware is that you are already limiting your base immediately. I love to see it but am pretty skeptical.

Do you have prototype hardware already? Showing a shell for another device does not enstil confidence in a product. We saw that with the coleco chameleon several years ago. I wouldn't even bother asking for money until that is achieved.

What kind of hardware are you targeting? Some ARM-Based machine using off the shelf parts or are you doing your own architecture from scratch? Developers care a lot of specs because they need to know what they are working with.

How are you going to be handling compiling? Are you making your own or are using something like GCC or LLVM? Are you developing your own C libraries to handle graphics and other custom hardware? Are you making a whole environment meant for development on your platform? What is debugging going to be like? Will there be a debugging environment or an emulator to try things out?

What is the lifecycle of this project expected to be like? What is support for this new hardware going to be like? I know it's a hard question to answer, but how long do you plan on supporting the product?

 

Let me be honest. As much as I'd like to see it. I think that for small time development, the ship has sailed for new hardware. You are going to struggle to get developers to come to your platform. From a programmer's financial perspective, it's hard to justify development of a game that has a userbase of 170 that MIGHT buy it. People looking to develop for new hardware are going to target PC as it has a much bigger target audiences and more ways to get it to them. A lot of NES homebrewers enjoy the strict limitations and idea of programming for such old hardware. I'm just not sure newer hardware will catch on with that community.

I'd try doing a kickstarter if you are looking for backing. I think VGS is way too small to hit your target backing.

Edited January 6, 2024 by SNESNESCUBE64

[zxdplay | 149]

19 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

I’ve spent $80 on worse so sure why not, what do expect to sell games for? What is the planned launch date? I definitely wouldn’t give you money upfront with no product however. 

A couple things - good god the name is terrible, land on something more marketable. If this thing has any chance of taking off the first couple games you create should be something to behold since you are going up against something like NES Maker which has a great library. I don’t think you’d have any less buyers if you made great games and just sold digital only copies on steam or something, why even bother creating hardware? You aren’t even just creating your own hardware you have to create how the hardware interacts and interprets the game as well no?

You don't need to pay a cent to reserve, because there is no reservation at all. You only need to indicate whether you are willing to purchase it. When the product is officially launched, it's up to you to decide whether to buy it. So there is no risk of crowdfunding for players.
 I just want to investigate how many people are interested in this machine.

The price of the game depends on the cost of game development and the cost of the cartridge PCB. The cost of game development is difficult to say, as it depends on the scale of the game production. The cost of the cartridge PCB can be divided into several types, with the lowest being around $10.

Because I love cartridges very much, I just want to make a high-performance cartridge game console that can develop games using advanced languages such as C language. In this way, I will feel very happy during the game production process, and my design ideas will not be affected by technical obstacles.
As for the name of the game console, HS is only a tentative name and is still under consideration

[Gloves | 12,582]

Are there other places you're advertising this? I ask because we don't have 170 active members so you'll certainly need to do so to hit that number.

[zxdplay | 149]

1 hour ago, SNESNESCUBE64 said:

What kind of hardware are you targeting? Some ARM-Based machine using off the shelf parts or are you doing your own architecture from scratch? Developers care a lot of specs because they need to know what they are working with.

The hardware model has been selected, which is actually a chip with Allwinner ARM SOC H616 1.5G frequency and 4 cores.

Because it is a homebrew product, it can only be produced in small batches, and it is impossible to purchase raw materials in bulk. Considering that the chip will be discontinued one day in the future, I decided to use cross-platform development frameworks and tools as much as possible, such as using a Java virtual machine to run on Linux systems, or running on some other real-time embedded system. Then, IDEs will consider using Eclipse or Netbeans, and there will be debugging pins on the motherboard, which can be used to determine the status of the current update frame using a logic analyzer.

1 hour ago, SNESNESCUBE64 said:

What is the lifecycle of this project expected to be like? What is support for this new hardware going to be like? I know it's a hard question to answer, but how long do you plan on supporting the product?

 

If this project can survive, I will support it to the end.

1 hour ago, SNESNESCUBE64 said:

Let me be honest. As much as I'd like to see it. I think that for small time development, the ship has sailed for new hardware. You are going to struggle to get developers to come to your platform. From a programmer's financial perspective, it's hard to justify development of a game that has a userbase of 170 that MIGHT buy it. People looking to develop for new hardware are going to target PC as it has a much bigger target audiences and more ways to get it to them. A lot of NES homebrewers enjoy the strict limitations and idea of programming for such old hardware. I'm just not sure newer hardware will catch on with that community.

You are right in saying that the market is indeed small, but I think it is better to be cautious and start with VGS step by step. Now it is still a concept and the test models have not yet come out. I don't want to ask others for money without any certainty. This is irrational. Wait until the testing period is over and the product is ready before making plans.

[a3quit4s | 4,531]

4 minutes ago, zxdplay said:

start with VGS step by step

I feel like you are doing that thing again where you believe that VGS is much bigger than it really is. We aren’t a step and people being interested here are not representative of really anything besides people who collect old crap and bitch about modern technology. I would heed what Gloves said about having other avenues to advertise on!

Edited January 6, 2024 by a3quit4s

[SNESNESCUBE64 | 629]

1 minute ago, zxdplay said:

There will be debugging pins on the motherboard, which can be used to determine the status of the current update frame using a logic analyzer.

That's good to hear, big fan of test points. I was more speaking of software debugging though. Will this be able to debug via serial or USB?

[zxdplay | 149]

2 minutes ago, SNESNESCUBE64 said:

That's good to hear, big fan of test points. I was more speaking of software debugging though. Will this be able to debug via serial or USB?

I'm not sure how the Java debugging environment is set up. The client's virtual machine should have a debugging server that can communicate with the host via Ethernet. You can use Eclipse or Netbeans to set breakpoints on the debugging server for tracing and debugging.

[zxdplay | 149]

1 hour ago, Gloves said:

Are there other places you're advertising this? I ask because we don't have 170 active members so you'll certainly need to do so to hit that number.

 

11 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

I feel like you are doing that thing again where you believe that VGS is much bigger than it really is. We aren’t a step and people being interested here are not representative of really anything besides people who collect old crap and bitch about modern technology. I would heed what Gloves said about having other avenues to advertise on!

I didn't say VGS is a ladder. I just want to find people with the same needs in VGS to work together to make this project come true. 
I think many game makers and players in VGS will be interested in HS if they want to have a better performance and easier development cartridge platform.
If I can't find 170 people, I will consider other places to try my luck.

[Gloves | 12,582]

25 minutes ago, zxdplay said:

 

I didn't say VGS is a ladder. I just want to find people with the same needs in VGS to work together to make this project come true. 
I think many game makers and players in VGS will be interested in HS if they want to have a better performance and easier development cartridge platform.
If I can't find 170 people, I will consider other places to try my luck.

I don't aim to be the stick in the mud, but I can tell you a few things with at least relative certainty:

1. You won't find 170 people at VGS who are interested in this (this is for sure)
2. You'll be lucky to find 20 people here who would ever put money down on this should it come to fruition
3. You're going to have an incredibly difficult time finding any developers who will want to:
   1. Dev for what sounds like a proprietary software infrastructure
   2. Pay to have carts made for an extremely limited console
   3. Make quality titles for it

I just don't see the appeal outside of "oh neat, that sounds like a fun project that guy did". Devs don't want it to be harder to dev for a console, and the cartridge thing is again a "that's kinda neat they did that" sort of thing, not really an "I need this!" sorta thing. 

It's neat that you wanna do this. If you make a thing, it'll be cool to hear about it. But if you make it with the intent to sell it to people and (presumably) make money, odds are incredibly high that it sits on shelves and makes you next to no, if any, money.

I'm more curious about what happened to Star Keeper. You released it on Steam with some updates, which is cool (and a much more forward-thinking approach than this console idea IMO). Do you still plan to do a Star Keeper 2, or a second run of the original (with updates applied?)? You released the game to a digital platform with high reach yet I've not heard anything since, to my knowledge it's not sold like hotcakes - it has zero reviews, and only 5 discussions (the bulk of which are people saying they can't get the game to start). You stated on Steam that while there are currently no achievements, you will be adding them in the future:

So are those coming, or is that abandoned? A steam game is incredibly simple to support compared to a whole console and managing the community you'd need to build around it in order to support it.

Again, I don't want be super negative here - I support creativity and I like seeing neat things, do what you like by all means. But it has to be said that what I have seen thus far is someone who likes to try things out, make something very flash in the pan, then move on to the next thing after a long period of silence. You seem to be the type of creative person who has an idea, gets it far enough that it could be considered a minimum viable product, releases it, and then goes back to the drawing board on some new project. There's nothing inherently wrong with that in and of itself, but if you want to see true success in anything you build, you really need to either overcome your own shortcomings, or find people to help fill the gaps in your skillset - you lack marketing capabilities, and seemingly any desire for long term support on your products. 

And for those reasons...

[zxdplay | 149]

27 minutes ago, Gloves said:

I'm more curious about what happened to Star Keeper.

The Star Keeper PC version has failed, and its sales are far less than expected

 

35 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Do you still plan to do a Star Keeper 2

Star Keeper2 may be launched on the new platform I mentioned today

[OptOut | 9,271]

7 minutes ago, zxdplay said:

The Star Keeper PC version has failed, and its sales are far less than expected

 

Star Keeper2 may be launched on the new platform I mentioned today

Do you have a fully working prototype of the system, or is it entirely theoretical at this point?

There seems to be many aspects of this system that are still undecided.

How long do you think it would take to produce a full working prototype of this system?

[Gloves | 12,582]

Just now, zxdplay said:

The Star Keeper PC version has failed, and its sales are far less than expected

Star Keeper2 may be launched on the new platform I mentioned today

Then let me be more blunt: I see no reason for anyone to support this new thing. You hardly tried at all with Starkeeper outside of (to my knowledge) posting about it on VGS. You've come here now multiple times exclusively to hock your wares, and while you apologize for the NFT thing, that doesn't change that it happened. You keep coming back to what you seem to think is a well of people looking to support you because the thing you did once is considered homebrew. 

I feel the need to be extra critical here because as I say, you seem to be treating VGS as a test market, and as far as I can tell the sole market for "marketing" your stuff. You've not been a member of the community otherwise I might feel more inclined to be softer with my words here; you don't post here outside of trying to sell something you've barely even started planning, and have done so twice now.

The NFT thing still puts a sour taste in my mouth - it wreaks of "I want to make a lot of money without having to put in effort personally". It was not well thought out even in the world of NFTs - you claimed to be an expert in that area, yet basic principles of the systems in place eluded you, as well as all of the potential legal ramifications of doing what you intended to do. It speaks heavily to an inability to work outside of your core skillset which, as far as I can tell, is to make an NES game (and refuse to make more). You don't strike me as someone who is a big proponent or supporter of homebrews, rather you strike me as someone who made a game and sold a few copies in the hope that it would make you money (speaking with regard to your original NES release). You followed that up with the NFT collection which failed out of the gate (despite handing one out to a user here - does he have sole rights to make Star Keeper universe games; are you honoring the contract you & he "signed"?). You ported your one game to PC on Steam and provided zero support in terms of either marketing or maintenance; you didn't even add controller support. How am I supposed to enjoy the game "like it's the 80's" when I'm limited to WASD controls?

You keep putting numeric requirements on your doing anything. "I need to sell X copies of Star Keeper on Steam to consider making Star Keeper 2", "I need 170 people who will buy this console to make it happen", "X people need to buy my NFT and then I can afford to do something I dunno maybe nothing who knows". Go make a thing and then let us know about it.

[a3quit4s | 4,531]