[RPG] Zia and the Goddesses of Magic

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rama3
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Post by rama3 » April 27th, 2017, 7:15 am

It's definitely down to marketing and copy protection on PSX.

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Post by Xavi92 » April 28th, 2017, 5:09 pm

In my opinion, modchipping has never been easier. One can get modchips for less than 10US$ and solder them in less than a few hours. It only requires you to be careful, but it's an easy task nevertheless. Shamefully though, although if PSX is actually being played a lot (see how many gameplay videos are available on YouTube, for example), people are only running their classic, commercial PSX games through emulators in MS Windows or Android and don't care at all about real hw.

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Post by likeabaus » April 29th, 2017, 5:40 am

Agreed, not to mention there a bootdiscs widely available as well as gamehunters etc for doing the swap trick (or unirom) safely for those who are squemish of soldering/dont have steady hands.

I think most ppl are opting for emulation as well. We're the odd one's out who still prefer the real deal *shrugs*. It is, what is is. I advise Orionsoft andanyone else making commercial games for retro consoles, to due so part time, with another primary source of income. This is a veryniche market, not saying it cant be done with some level of financial succesd, but you need to tread lightly and not put all your eggs in one basket, as the saying goes.

Orionsoft, that being said,vi love what you did with Zia, its amazing <3. Eventually, i will order that psx copy, but for now, im stuck with the pc version. Not knocking you in anyway, you really captured this era of classic game, bravo!

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Post by Orion_ » May 1st, 2017, 8:54 pm

I don't agree, bootdisc cannot be found that easily, sometimes on ebay but they are expensive (more expensive than a ps1 alone)
A modchip is not easy to install for anyone ! First you need to have the adequate equipment, even for someone who has a soldering iron, the pins are so tiny on the ps1 board that you can fuck up something pretty quick.
Flashing an Action Replay with Unirom require an already modchipped console ..
Most of the players & collectors (and not hackers) don't want to modify their console and want something as close as the original games, they want something that can boot and play straight.
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Post by Shadow » May 2nd, 2017, 2:44 am

I agree. Customers do not like modifications or messing around with stuff like that. They just want to buy the game, put it in the console and play. Whilst Sony's security for the PlayStation is really old and completely reversed, the problem is the CD-ROM security. Burners can't write the wobble on CD-R's, so pressing discs is the only method to get around this issue.

Another alternative however that might be cheaper is to make a "UniROM" based cartridge which simply forces an execution of the disc whether a modchip is present or not. "Cybdyn Systems" will soon have thousands of the parallel port connectors (they will become the only distributor in the world for them), so an idea could be that a very small and thin card can be plugged into the back of the PlayStation which forces your game to boot. It would have to be included with the game of course, and it won't work on PSone's. Overall, it's an included softmod to get your game to boot. You'd just have to work out if it's cheaper to manufacture and include them or if it's cheaper to press discs.
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Post by Orion_ » May 2nd, 2017, 5:12 am

I don't think that a CD factory would agree to reproduce this wobble protection, it might not be easy for them to do it on a glassmaster.
also, due to region protection, it would be required to press 3 different disc .... which would cost way to much.
(or maybe make a special wobble with all 3 strings SCEE, SCEA, SCEI in a loop like some modchips do)
The UniROM dongle would be nice, if anyone could buy it for "cheap", then it would unlock the PS1 homebrew possibility !
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Post by Shadow » May 2nd, 2017, 6:34 am

The glass master would contain the wobble.

Yeah, you need to design your EXE for multi-region like I did with PSIO. It's a lot of work, and even though Sony advised against it, you can get away with it without any issues.

Just license it as Japanese (SCEI). All PlayStation's can boot Japanese (except for some models of the PSone). However, this is the license string I'm talking about. As for the HC05 logic which actually flags the wobble data as 'good' (after the CD-ROM controller has passed it through to it), I'm not too sure in that department since no one has ever done such a thing before. Best bet is to read the HC05 assembler routines that were dumped and check if they can all be bypassed with "SCEI" like the license data strings, or ask NO$CASH directly since I believe he has already spoken about this before somewhere in the forums.

I'll have a look into making them at some point, but it's a lot of work just for a small handful of people to buy. If you were really serious about making games though, you'd go down the route of producing masters with a pressing company. Just make sure your game is up to quality standards though and it's been tested well and truly.
Development Console: SCPH-5502 with 8MB RAM, MM3 Modchip, PAL 60 Colour Modification (for NTSC), PSIO Switch Board, DB-9 breakout headers for both RGB and Serial output and an Xplorer with CAETLA 0.34.

PlayStation Development PC: Windows 98 SE, Pentium 3 at 400MHz, 128MB SDRAM, DTL-H2000, DTL-H2010, DTL-H201A, DTL-S2020 (with 4GB SCSI-2 HDD), 21" Sony G420, CD-R burner, 3.25" and 5.25" Floppy Diskette Drives, ZIP 100 Diskette Drive and an IBM Model M keyboard.

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Post by Xavi92 » May 2nd, 2017, 8:30 am

My advice is not to take this too seriously. PS1 has always been a tough console for homebrew, hence the small community even in its golden age.

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Post by likeabaus » May 3rd, 2017, 8:57 pm

Matt wrote:I agree. Customers do not like modifications or messing around with stuff like that. They just want to buy the game, put it in the console and play. Whilst Sony's security for the PlayStation is really old and completely reversed, the problem is the CD-ROM security. Burners can't write the wobble on CD-R's, so pressing discs is the only method to get around this issue.

Another alternative however that might be cheaper is to make a "UniROM" based cartridge which simply forces an execution of the disc whether a modchip is present or not. "Cybdyn Systems" will soon have thousands of the parallel port connectors (they will become the only distributor in the world for them), so an idea could be that a very small and thin card can be plugged into the back of the PlayStation which forces your game to boot. It would have to be included with the game of course, and it won't work on PSone's. Overall, it's an included softmod to get your game to boot. You'd just have to work out if it's cheaper to manufacture and include them or if it's cheaper to press discs.
I really like the idea of a simple Unirom cartridge. That would be fairly cost effective and very user friendly (just plop the disc in and turn it on, basically, without any internal modifications). This would likely be more cost effective than hiring a firm to press the discs properly for you, as that could be quite costly (specialty order) not to mention, its a niche market anyways so you don't want to put a ton of money into it, only to find out, you can't even break even. The only problem with this approach is SCPH-900x and PSone models which lack the parallel port. For user friendly purposes, the only option would be to bundle some sort of boot disc (for swapping) with the game, but as Orion has already stated, those are getting harder and more expensive to get your hands on these days.... hmmmm....

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Post by Orion_ » May 3rd, 2017, 9:11 pm

Matt wrote: I'll have a look into making them at some point, but it's a lot of work just for a small handful of people to buy. If you were really serious about making games though, you'd go down the route of producing masters with a pressing company. Just make sure your game is up to quality standards though and it's been tested well and truly.
Well, check my website, all my CD games, except for the PS1, are factory pressed CD, produced at 300 units.
I already pressed about 4 or 5 games for the Dreamcast and the Jaguar CD.
the problem is, I can't press a CD for PS1 for now, because I know I will only sell less than 20 units, useless.
whereas on Jaguar CD or Dreamcast I sell at least 150 to 300 units.
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Post by likeabaus » May 3rd, 2017, 9:48 pm

Oh ok, i didnt realize that :p

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Post by Shadow » May 4th, 2017, 2:54 am

If you pressed PS1 games though, they would run on the PS2 and PS3 also, so even if gamers didn't have a PS1 console, they could still play it on their PS2 and or PS3 which might open your market to a wider rage of people.
Development Console: SCPH-5502 with 8MB RAM, MM3 Modchip, PAL 60 Colour Modification (for NTSC), PSIO Switch Board, DB-9 breakout headers for both RGB and Serial output and an Xplorer with CAETLA 0.34.

PlayStation Development PC: Windows 98 SE, Pentium 3 at 400MHz, 128MB SDRAM, DTL-H2000, DTL-H2010, DTL-H201A, DTL-S2020 (with 4GB SCSI-2 HDD), 21" Sony G420, CD-R burner, 3.25" and 5.25" Floppy Diskette Drives, ZIP 100 Diskette Drive and an IBM Model M keyboard.

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Post by rama3 » May 4th, 2017, 6:39 am

Unless someone finds a really user friendly workaround for the copy protection, I don't see the PSX ever becoming marketable. If I ask my "collector" friends, they do know about modchips and all that, but they don't bother to look for them or other bypassing methods. They just know a PSX "only plays PAL originals" and that's that (I'm in PAL land ;)).

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Post by gwald » May 4th, 2017, 8:24 pm

Why would you press dreamcast/jaguar games, they don't have any security to warrant it? Unless it's an order quantity thing?
But even if you wanted to press a PS1 cd, can you actually replicate the wobble?

Re PS1 collecting, i've been keeping up with collectors too and PS1 is becoming fashionable to collect for.
As you know, Homebrew's on any system is still very niche, but "IF" you/anyone else could press a PS1 bootable game, I would think it would be more popular as Shadow said, PS2, PS3 & emulation.

But the biggest issue IMO is the legality of using propriety SDK.. so :roll:

Good to see Xavi92 using PSXSDK :clap

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Post by Shadow » May 5th, 2017, 4:08 am

rama3 wrote:Unless someone finds a really user friendly workaround for the copy protection, I don't see the PSX ever becoming marketable.
Exactly. People would want to basically burn their own wobble using consumer CD-ROM drives.

http://www.psxdev.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=1266
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Post by reachC » March 7th, 2018, 12:50 am

I got this game today. Looks really great :clap
Keep up the good work!

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Post by Orion_ » June 22nd, 2018, 1:44 am

Nice picture :)
I have a special Summer Sales for my games including my Zia RPG for PS1 at 19€ shipping included :)
http://onorisoft.free.fr/
http://onorisoft.free.fr/retroshop/ps1.htm
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Post by likeabaus » August 11th, 2018, 1:17 pm

I will actually be ordering this fron you for real! I actually have the funds! Just need to put them in my account :)

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Post by likeabaus » August 29th, 2018, 10:20 pm

likeabaus wrote: August 11th, 2018, 1:17 pm I will actually be ordering this fron you for real! I actually have the funds! Just need to put them in my account :)
Just confirming that I finally placed my order for the PSX version as promised eon's ago! Can't wait to get it! My paypal email is segasaturnshrine at gmail .com so you know its me. Spaced everything out, because I don't want random bots picking up my email address for spam!

Also sorry for double posting, just wanted to make sure Orion saw this!

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Post by samspin » September 6th, 2018, 2:54 pm

Just ordered this myself! Just to let you know: I shall be ripping it into CD image format to place it on my PSIO cartridge for convenience, but I certainly will not be uploading it anywhere! It's a shame you've gone to so much time and effort to develop a brand new PS1 game but can't make up even close to the cost of the development. It's really good to see a new game produced for PS1 after all this time. It would be awesome to see some more come out eventually, but I fully understand it's a significant investment to make.

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