Level-5 acquires Keiji Inafune's company Comcept

>>380404852
I am actually surprised anyone wants to hire him. This is the corporate equivalent of a pityfuck.

>>380404852

>Inafune had dreams of being a CEO, his company being the new Capcom, starting an indie revolution in Japan, MN9 being a cash cow series, and creating copycat Mega Man series
>reduced to working on mobile shit for the rest of his life as a mere employee of a minor company

>>380405132

Comcept has an office and a team of artists. So they're not completely worthless.

>"One difference between Mighty No. 9 and other games, Rockman, for example, is they're both my children. But if you're making it in a company, it's kind of a foster child. You want to raise it in a certain way, but you're going to have interference from other people, from the true parent, which is the company. It's complicated. Mighty No. 9 is my child. I can raise it any way I want. I don't have any restrictions. So it feels different." — Keiji Inafune

>>380404852
>Ever backing a kickstarter
they deserved their fate

>>380404852
Maybe with a real budget he can shit out something good.

What the hell do Level 5 even do anymore besides Toys 2 Lyfe shit and Layton?

>>380405261
So you think they will find a way to just keep the talent and give Inafune the boot later on?

Those guys who make shota football?

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>>380404852
>There is now a minute chance that we will get a Dark Cloud 3 made by the Mighty Number 9 devs

>>380405696
And then he let Inti Creates use all MN9 characters free of charge.

>>380407819
The franchise is dead anyway. At least dead so long as Inafune is the one in charge.

>>380404852
>Company that makes good games acquires company that makes bad games
I hope this doesn't turn out like Squeenix.

>Beck could appear in yokai watch
I mean, Mighty number 9 is dead isn't it?

>>380406868
They actual devs were Inti-Creates, Comcept are idea guys.

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>>380404852

I thought it was funnier when Comcept gave Inti Creates to Beck and the Mighty No 9 franchise for literally nothing.

>>380405152
That's what he gets for hedging his career on the belief that the japanese games market is dying. He will disappear bankrupt and reviled just like the western devs he idolized.

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>>380408693

That's a pic I made.

Someone in another thread edited it and made a better version.

>>380406115
Games with a much lower budget than MN9 came out 10x better than this POS.

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>>380409004
You really think he is gonna sacrifice everything for his company? He will probably grab what is left of the cash and live comfy for the next 20 years in the countryside of Japan.

>>380406115
>What the hell do Level 5 even do anymore
Ni no Kuni is one of the best games ever made.

>>380404852
>level 5 acquires a team of scammers

WHO WILL THEY FOOL NEXT???!

>>380409245

It was because of Unreal engine. Inti had no idea how to use it, so they spent their time struggling with it. Then there was 10+ ports, and they decided absurdly to work on each port separately at once. Lastly there was modes like Online that delayed the game but ate up time and resources, and no one used it.

Those were the three key problems.

>>380409301

Inafune has a big ego, lacks talent and is generally kinda stupid. He is not intentionally a scammer, and won't cash out like that. He has or had big dreams. He will try to keep proving himself that he's a talent.

if the next mighty no. 9 is full of shotas
i'll be fine

>>380409464
The fun part is that Iga thought they had experience on Unreal now, and thus hired them. He didn't notice until a couple of months ago that they learned nothing, and thus had to hire two other companies to do the heavy lifting. As for Inti Creates, they are no longer being credited in the videos, which most likely means they got their asses fired.

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>>380409975

Supposedly for MN9, according to rumors, they had no proper programmers. none. They just built the game in pre-made Unreal level builder and called it a day. It's why the game is so insanely inefficient.

For Bloodstained, the trailers are crediting only Artplay and 505 Games. Looks like Iga is trying to promote Artplay to the forefront. They're also promoting director Suharto Iida as a personality as well. I don't think it means Inti isn't working on the game. But watching the interview with Dico it seemed to show that Dico is doing some heavy lifting, including multiple programmers and planners. But even they seemed to imply that Unreal is a bitch to work with, so who knows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m20wmdMC6ck

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Y'know the biggest red flag that MN9 was going to turn out bad was the Call design poll.

These four were the most popular by far, and they're all good really; but something in particular sets apart the eventual winner, design F. She's the one that looks most similar to Roll.
Call me biased, but I'd argue the other designs are better; particularly E, whose design really seems to try to make Call stand out as her own character (e.g. her outfit resembles that of a WWII radio operator, which is pretty fitting for a character named Call).

But the majority of the backers didn't want a new character that sets herself apart. They wanted Roll Again; and similarly, they didn't want a spiritual successor to Megaman -- they wanted Megaman Again. It's not a stretch to say the whole project was based around the same sentiment from Inafune.

But you can't just do that and have it turn out good. In fact, doing so consistently fails. Among MMOs, after WoW got big many others tried to imitate its design, and every last one of them fell short, unable to be more than a lesser derivative; a pale imitation. The same thing happened with FPS games: after COD4 got big, for a few years others tried to imitate it (including its own sequels), and again, all fell short.

Mighty No 9 has the same problem. A spiritual successor can be great in its own right, but if you lack the skills to do that, you'll just end up making a weak imitator.

>>380410936
>It's not a stretch to say the whole project was based around the same sentiment from Inafune.

Beck's design is completely derivative of mega man, and the story is the same. Inafune trying to setup a multi-media empire makes sense when you think of it as him being finally fully put in charge of mega man and he gets to do what he wanted with it. It seems he felt that there were a lot of opportunities and cross over media that he felt Mega Man could expoit that Capcom is ignoring.

>>380410936

Morally, is it wrong to program a lolibot to crave your cock?

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>>380409464
>It was because of Unreal engine.
Yes but not because of the reasons you say.
Unreal simply sucks dick for anything that isn't a first person shooter. Or I guess first person anything.

>>380404852
Cool, maybe now we will get that penguin pirate game.

>>380411351
>image
I don't think it was the lack of armor that killed the slutes but rather, the decision to wear high heels to combat

ok so who the fuck owns Soul Sacrifice
Is that IP just going to be dead forever

>>380411351
>>380411661
The only problem I have with that image is that it makes the knight seem evil. The darkness from the entrance is so ominous.

>>380411793
She does seem to be taking in a bit of enjoyment in the festivities

>>380410936
I also doesn't help that the design they picked doesn't even look like the one in your picture. They tumblr-ized it. She's thin and cute in that picture. In official art she's round and fat. They had the same problem with Beck. Look at this picture >>380408565. Mega Man looks cool. Beck looks like a fat teenager.

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>>380409464
Why would they even choose to use Unreal engine? The concept shot that basically sold the kickstarter was really nicely rendered stylized 2D, which Unreal just isn't made for.

>>380409615
In a way I can feel some empathy for someone like that. Chasing dreams but lacking what it takes to fulfill them, failing miserably, abandoning the dream and chasing a new one. It sounds like a profoundly sad experience.

>>380411793
eh it's just the rembrandt "paint from darkness" technique to give good contrast to a lighter-colored subject

although that shadow coming off the left corner of the wall, hitting the knight in the face, is pretty menacing

>>380411351
Edgy.

>>380409090
But I find the first better

>They might be the people in charge of the next Dark Cloud game if Level 5 never stops Shitkai.

FUCK

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>>380412083
>Why would they even choose to use Unreal engine? The concept shot that basically sold the kickstarter was really nicely rendered stylized 2D, which Unreal just isn't made for.
It's not so much "why did they choose Unreal" but "why did they choose 3D," and the answer is that 3D is generally easier to animate in most cases.

However this isn't one of them, because the camera is static, there's a large variety of enemies that don't share any animation joints (called a skeleton), there's just 1 main character, and a load of other minor areas. Sidescrolling 2D is about the easiest workload of 2D one can do.

That leaves lighting, which 3D is usually less laborious in doing, and I can tell from the concept art that this might have been an issue for them especially if they wanted a lot of dynamic shit going on like those top lights and the ambiance from exploding enemies. All in all I would safely say that they decided to go 3D due to lighting, picked an engine off the shelf, and the engine was simply out of their league or not optimized for the genre they were doing. I'm not an expert Megamanfag or MM9fag so there might be details I'm missing here

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>>380411297
>robots experiencing lust
Could the seven deadly sins be one of the key components of sentient AI?

>>380411351
>Unreal simply sucks dick for anything that isn't a first person shooter. Or I guess first person anything.
You can tell it's Unreal if you're playing a classic arena FPS, a singleplayer FPS with great atmosphere, or a third-person shooter where you sprint like a freight train.

>>380412054
Yeah, the final stuff looking nothing like the concepts REALLY hurt the game visually, e.g. >>380412083

>>380412083
>Why would they even choose to use Unreal engine?
They probably didn't know what they were doing, and couldn't reproduce their cool looking mockup as a game. So they picked a pre-made engine for ease of porting to multiple devices. And they probably didn't have any talented developers that could shoehorn it into doing what they wanted. Which means they most likely ended up styling their game around what they could do with the engine instead of the other way around.

>>380410936
>they could have used the incredible design of E, which just oozes personality; just looking at her you can imagine what she would be like
>they went with the generic animu roll clone because they let the public decide

truly that was their worst sin. art should not be democratic.

>>380411297
Interesting question. Is your robot sentient?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TfZEwvTma0

>>380404852
Is this good

>>380411351
>armored chick's face says "get a load of these fucking retards"

>>380413276
I have no idea why anyone would pay money to acquire a company like Comcept, which has never shipped a successful game and is surrounded in stigma. Since Level-5 does make some good games, this is probably bad.

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>>380410936
Pink Call was the best one and she wasn't even a choice

>>380413548
Did they acquire all of their debts?

>>380405132
>>380405261

Wasn't one of their Vita games good? Soul Sacrifice?

>Inafune we dont have much experience with unreal so this might take a while.
>Port the game to every possible platform
>But...
>EVERY SINGLE ONE

>>380412760
>there's a large variety of enemies that don't share any animation joints (called a skeleton)
Yeah, having done some work with that myself, shared skeletons really let you get more mileage out of your work. There's a point where you're going too far of course (Bioware comes to mind; every Mass Effect and every Dragon Age uses the same animation for the protag downing a glass of liquor, for example), but at times it's even beneficial, since consistent animations become familiar to the player and help with telegraphing and such.

>Sidescrolling 2D is about the easiest workload of 2D one can do.
It is? I'd have thought isometric (e.g. Starcraft) would be easier. Unless that was actually 3D models cleverly rendered in the first game? Obviously SC2 was 3D.

>That leaves lighting, which 3D is usually less laborious in doing, and I can tell from the concept art that this might have been an issue for them especially if they wanted a lot of dynamic shit going on like those top lights and the ambiance from exploding enemies.
Come to think of it, how does lighting even work in 2D? I can't think of any 2D games that even noticeably have dynamic lighting.

>and the engine was simply out of their league or not optimized for the genre they were doing
Other posts ITT support the former, and my own experience supports the latter. You just don't do 2D games in Unreal.

>>380413036
>So they picked a pre-made engine for ease of porting to multiple devices.
Now THAT'S a good point. Weren't the additional platforms stretch goals? Highlights something I've been worrying about: if a Kickstarter project gets WAY more money than they asked for, I'm willing to bet careless decisions for what to do with all the extra budget can lead to costly mistakes.

>>380413105
I've talked to a few industry veterans about MN9, and their jaws drop when I mention character designs being decided by the backers. That's completely unheard-of.

>>380413686
Wasn't that the updated design for Call D, or am I retarded?

>>380414410
>It is? I'd have thought isometric (e.g. Starcraft) would be easier. Unless that was actually 3D models cleverly rendered in the first game? Obviously SC2 was 3D.
With Starcraft in particular they actually made 3D models and took snapshots of them at 45 degree intervals and put them on a 2D spritesheet, which was the same technique used for games like Harvest Moon 64 as well. This is because isometric is the absolute worst case for doing in 2D because you're multiplying your workload by 4 (unless you're lazy and mirror them, so it'd be 2x, but that doesn't work for non-symmetrical sprites for obvious reasons). In contrast for a game like a 2D sidescroller, with the camera locked in to just one plane, the artists only have to do one angle viewport of the characters and environment.

Naturally there are some more primitive examples throughout gaming history, like how early RPGs used static screens and very little animation (like Dragon Quest) but those genres evolved so much that it's hard to generalize them.

>Come to think of it, how does lighting even work in 2D? I can't think of any 2D games that even noticeably have dynamic lighting.
I've never done it hands on but there are per-pixel methods of doing lighting on 2D. You have to designate zones on the sprite sort of like how a 3D model texture can be bump-mapped, but this layer is only used for shadows and highlights. I suppose they could have done that if they had a knowledgeable technical artist, but who knows what kind of chucklefucks they hired

>You just don't do 2D games in Unreal.
Yeah definitely, I think that the decision to do Unreal came after the decision to go 3D. So this is betrayal (from the concept, and perhaps KS backer's expectations) from an even earlier point on the timeline.

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>>380414892
She was one of the designs made by Call D's artist. The poll only allowed one design per artist, so he went for the Roll rip-off.

>>380414410
>I'm willing to bet careless decisions for what to do with all the extra budget can lead to costly mistakes.
Of course. Most Kickstarter projects can barely ship their initial idea, let alone all the stretch goals. That's why they're on Kickstarter to begin with. Most of the time stretch goals are prepaid feature creep.

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>>380415323
I'm assuming you mean Call F's artist. Weird, someone told me Pink Call was an updated D.

>only one design per artist
>Call G appears to be 3 slightly different designs
Also, am I the only one who kind of likes Call A as well? No tears shed over Call B or Call I though, good lord. Why does Call C have a robo-unicorn with her?

>>380415132
>I think that the decision to do Unreal came after the decision to go 3D
I'm solidly convinced the development process went like this: "Ok we've got this concept art now, how do we make it a game? I heard we need something called an engine? Lets YouTube about how to make a game first to see what we're supposed to do."

And then they tried to make a game with what they could. They'd have used RPG Maker if they had to. I don't think they wanted to do 3D. I think they ended up doing it because they couldn't follow through on their concept designs.

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>>380415454
>are prepaid feature creep.
that's the best kind of feature creep

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>>380412728
>>380406868
I would still be happy just to get more dark cloud anything

>>380416614
As someone who got a sequel for one of their favorite games, and it ended up being Legaia 2, let me tell you that you should reconsider wanting "anything".

>>380416050
Yeah I meant Call F. Inafune designed Call D.

G is single design. She only has different outfits and hairstyles. The text describes it as modes.

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>>380415132
>With Starcraft in particular they actually made 3D models and took snapshots of them at 45 degree intervals and put them on a 2D spritesheet, which was the same technique used for games like Harvest Moon 64 as well.
Are there plugins for Max, Maya, Blender, etc. that make this process faster nowadays? I can only imagine individually rendering each frame of animation, from each angle, manually; seems like exactly the type of tedious bullshit a nicely scripted tool could solve.
>read the devblog for Iji
>he did the same thing, generating spritesheets from Blender-animated 3D models
>it was an early version of Blender that lacked key features like planted feet
>had to fight with the wimpy limitations of GameMaker by using tilesets for level design and other optimization tricks like that
Between that and the other stuff he did, he'd basically have had an easier time doing it any other way than how he did it.

>You have to designate zones on the sprite sort of like how a 3D model texture can be bump-mapped, but this layer is only used for shadows and highlights. I suppose they could have done that if they had a knowledgeable technical artist, but who knows what kind of chucklefucks they hired
Sounds like I've got my work cut out for me for what to learn/experiment with next; 3D animations into 2D sprite sheets, and shadow/highlight maps for 2D animations. Technical art is fascinating.
Thanks for the info, anon.

Great thread. It'd be neat to do this kind of deconstruction on what happened with others, like Yooka-Laylee.