Pretty much this.
Plus it's great to see all the things you've done for the PC community build up to something like this. :)
Durante (Dark Souls, Trails of Cold Steel) open a port studio
- Thread starter Chairmanchuck (另一个我)
- Start date
Pretty much this.
Plus it's great to see all the things you've done for the PC community build up to something like this. :)
Congratulations Durante! You're always an inspiration. Part of what gave me the drive to go back to school for CS was you. Don't forget us ;)
It was just a very short QA consultation. I actually asked the mods to remove it from the title, since putting it on the same level of ToCS (2) where I made the entire port might give the wrong impression. (Dark Souls isn't problematic I feel since most people here know at least some of that story)
Congratulations to you, hope everything works out. Out of curiosity, how do you determine how much to charge a publisher for a port?
If you say your future co-workers are as good at their job as you are then I'm confident we get good stuff out of this no matter whos at the helm.
That said, I hope your first order as a new boss is to get the job for the PC version of Cold Steel 3 as soon as possible.
Holy poop
This rules. I can't wait to see how your upcoming ports turn out! I'm guessing you found a way to balance all this with academic work?
This rules. I can't wait to see how your upcoming ports turn out! I'm guessing you found a way to balance all this with academic work?
This had better happen. I certainly hope NISA's noticed the port quality for Trails of Cold Steel I & II after the Ys VIII mess and constant comparisons on social media.
I also remember Gedosato, a magnificent tool that opened the door to an easy way to downsample a game, something that before gedosato was literally a pain to get right.
Also i like to think that Nvidia and AMD implemented the downsampling at a driver level only because gedosato existed and taught them that it was an highly requested features from basically every single pc gamer out there
Best of luck durante, I wish you and your team the best!
That is a difficult question. I was really curious to see how it is generally done in the industry when I first encountered the problem, but I couldn't find anything solid back then.
So far, it has worked like this:
- First, we get all the required data from the publisher
- Then we try to get an overview of the codebase and determine what is necessary and desirable for the PC port
- We put those necessary and desirable requirements and features into work packages (which group related tasks)
- For each of those packages, we try to put them into broad categories of how much work we expect them to take (the smallest is 1 or 2 person-business-days, the largest is 1 or 2 person-months -- if it's more than that the package is too large)
- We take an average time in working hours for each package category, sum it up over all packages, multiply that by a hourly rate, and add some buffer to that to hopefully cover unforeseen issues, QA, and post-release support
This has the advantage of hopefully eliminating bad surprises for us (and whoever is offering the contract!), and arriving at a fair rate. But it also means some significant work before knowing whether you'll actually do the project, especially if it's a custom engine. Since just getting to the part where you can do even rough effort estimates with at least some confidence can require a full week or more of time investment. It also requires a good level of experience, and even so it relies on human estimates of software project timelines so it's far from infallible ;)
Best luck to you Durante. Can't wait to play more awesome games on a platinum standard port level.
As much as i wish for it im 99% sure that NISA will do it inhouse if they will ever port it.
As much as i wish for it im 99% sure that NISA will do it inhouse if they will ever port it.
Oh fair enough. Just wanted to show appreciation for your work but I guess that's not fair to the studio that actually handled the port. They did a stellar job.
You should flesh out the online portfolio as I'm curious as to what all you've had a hand in.
Plus, your work on Little King's Story is probably my favorite. : )
Plus, your work on Little King's Story is probably my favorite. : )
Wow, geil, alles Gute, Durante! Just drop me a note when your clients need loca from EN to DE ;D
