28 replies to this topic

[GroovyBee]

gliptitude, on Fri Feb 3, 2012 7:10 PM, said:

Is there a standard or more than one standard of cartridge that is most accessible? What sort of expenses could be involved in the volume production of cartridges? What are the variables in terms of cost? How much of this would have to be custom to a new game? Can this end of things (cartridge production) be simplified by deciding on a particular cartridge/process/service before beginning to program the game? What would that service be and what might it cost?

I'm not a Vectrex developer so I don't know who to point you at to get answers to your questions. However, one of the biggest challenges in cart homebrew releases is getting the donor shells. Either common games have to be recycled or (if you are very lucky) somebody has had a mold made. I'm pretty sure its the latter in the Vectrex scene. I can't imagine there would be all that many commons given its market share back in the day.

The best thing to do would be to find somebody who is willing to work on your game after they have been pitched the idea. Without that key person in the team the game isn't ever going to be more than a concept idea/document. I wouldn't recommend spending money on carts, labels, boxes, manuals or overlays until the project is viable.

Unfortunately nearly every programmer for retro systems has their own very long list of projects they'd like to work on. After all, it is a hobby and the stuff you work on in hobby time should be fun. Trying to lever your project into a programmer's free time schedule is going to be an uphill struggle unless your project has some compelling reasons to do so. Many times those reasons aren't monetary based so offering a bounty may not work either. If your game style is unique or offers some technical challenges then you are much more likely to get a programmer to bite.

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A couple of friends with different qualifications than myself are interested in working on something like this with me and I'm trying to get better ideas of the potential costs involved, anticipate the scale of the thing, narrow my concepts etc., anticipate whether or not I would require a specialized programmer besides my friend(s), whether or not having multiple programmers in a project like this is a bad idea. ...

Good luck on your adventure .

[gliptitude]

Thanks for your input GroovyBee. I don't propose spending considerable amounts of money on anything anytime soon. Just saying that IF a project materialized, i would be serious about bringing it to production, and willing to work and sacrifice to make that happen. I'm totally inspired by this system and what I see other people doing with it, DECADES after it was introduced, and see an opportunity with some aspects that haven't been thoroughly explored yet. Like many programmers I think, my payoff would be a playable game PRODUCT that was presentable and viable as a credential for gaining other exciting projects and (jobs), and also just a cool thing to accomplish. ... I think I will be starting a new thread on here shortly, for kindred Vectrex fantasies, like what I mistook this thread for initially, a place to bounce ideas.

[GroovyBee]

There doesn't seem to be very many Vectrex technical discussions on AA so you might want to join a more hardcore Vectrex site (if you haven't already) and post there too.

[gliptitude]

The small number of vectrex forums i found did not look as active as the vectrex threads on atariage. I have found lots of technical material for download though. ... I've noticed several major contributors to the vectrex homebrew scene participating on threads on atariage in the past. ...