IGA not sure if Wii U port will really happen

The Vita port shouldn't be an issue.

Refunds will never be an option.

The Vita version doesn't have a clear upgrade path like the Wii U to NX does and there has been no suggestion that version of the game is in danger yet but I see no reason to have 100% confidence it will see the light of day. Kickstarters have cancelled Vita versions of their games before, we all know the Vita will be a tricky port for Armature (lower power + no native support of UE4) and the Vita will be similarly "dead" in 2018. I'm not saying the Vita version will die - I'm just not taking it off the table nor would I be surprised if that were to happen.



Why not? Offering refunds is a pretty common practice for Kickstarters that cancel versions of their game during development. A recent example would be the Shantae: 1/2 Genie Hero KS which cancelled the PS3 and XBOX360 versions of the game. They are offering a refund (or codes for other platforms) if people want them. Hyper Light Drifter also canceled the Wii U and Vita versions of the game and is offering refunds (or codes for other platforms) if people want them.

Honestly, Wii U will mostly cease to exist by 2018 with the NX, the market will be so low for Wii U sales by then

Bringing in pledges on the promise of the game for a platform and then cancelling that version and not offering the opportunity to back out would be both dishonest and disrespectful.  To be honest, I can't imagine a significant number of backers  taking them up on such an offer(and doesn't the speculation about the cancellation mostly hinge on there not being many Wii U backers anyway?), but forcing those that want to to switch to a platform they don't even own would probably be the first objectively negative turn this game's development would have taken if they go that route.

We've been fighting speculative and inaccurately sourced negativity in the various gaming communities pretty much since day one.  This would be the first legitimate source of complaint that I would flat out not be able to defend against.  In my opinion, there's more profit for this game in long term respect than in short sightedly holding on the the funds of people who you can't give what you promised them.  Especially when the number of people affected(presumably) is so low in comparison to the number of people who will use it as an excuse to fuel the Internet Outrage Machine.

Aside from your elitist crapping on consoles that other people enjoy, I mostly agree with the core of your sentiment.  The issue to me isn't whether the Wii U version continues as planned or gets dropped(my stance is do whatever is best for the game), but rather how the people who pledged for said version are handled.  There's the respectful way(offer change of version or refund if requested), and there's the way that gets IGA's name unnecessarily tarnished as the gaming press parrots each other in an attempt to get more clicks by lambasting him over a completely avoidable situation.

I firmly believe that the number of people who pledged for the Wii U version and would rather cancel their pledge than switch to another offered version is exceedingly small, so I don't think that it would significantly affect development.  On the other hand, you only need one match to start a fire, and the hit this game's reputation could take for not handling those people correctly could be pretty long lasting.

I hope that Wii U port will be made, with Armature porting it simultaneously to Wii U and Vita, as promised during the campaign. At the time they knew Wii U was going to be at the end of its cycle when Bloodstained comes out, so cancelling it now feels like cheating. As I said in other post, there are many homes with Wii U and it is not going into trash for many years. The backers for Wii U version should get the option to change the version or to get a refund. I think refund is fair and possible option, and it should not be very hard to do it if there is a small number of Wii U backers. I want a Wii U version because I dont have any other consoles nor a PC. I dont know what NX is, I dont even know if I want it. Maybe it is something similar to mobile phones, with touch controls, augmented reality (like Pokemon go) and such things that I am not interested in. For me, the best home for Igavanias is Nintendo, and I hope to play it on Wii U, or NX if it turns out to be a good successor to Wii U. If there will be no Wii U version, I will be disappointed, but I still support IGA and whatever he does to make Bloodstained as good as his games can be. He is finally making a spiritual successor to Castlevania, with both Michiru Yamane and Ayami Kojima in the team. So that means I cannot be mad at IGA, I can understand the business decision he makes, but I will still be disappointed if the Wii U version gets cancelled.

I think I should share some of my knowledge here and we may understand the current situation about "porting" and "Game Engine" better.

I'm a professional software developer(web / mobile /fullstack) with almost 10 years of experience.

I've worked with a game porting company for 4 years(porting mobile java game) and have developed some mini-games for Android using Unity engine.

Disclaimer: I wrote this as best as my knowledge allows. There may be something I'm wrong. There's a guy in this forum by username dareka who seems much more knowledgeable than me when it comes to game development. If you're reading this, feel free to fix where I'm mistaken. =)


What is a Game Engine and how it works?

*** Note this is a super-simple explanation. There're actually much more detail to this topic.

Imagine a software like Adobe Photoshop. You use Photoshop to edit the hell out of an image. Then when you have the final image, you can "save as" .jpg, .png, .gif, etc.

In a similar manner, you use a Game Engine (Unreal 4, Unity, ...) to create a game. Usually without any knowledge on how to develop games for the target platforms (PS4, XBONE, ...). Then when you have the final build of the game, you can "save as" the game to Wii U, PS4, Xbox One, Vita, etc.


Why use a Game Engine? Why don't you just develop a game for Wii U, PS4, .... You also don't have to pay for Unreal Engine if you do it yourself.

Because it's SUPER difficult AND doesn't make sense these days to build a game without an engine. I won't go into detail but it's basically re-inventing the wheel. Forexample, instead of focusing on "making a fun game", you'd be spending time coding just to make Miriam walk properly on a floor and not fall through it. (I'm talking about the basic collision detection feature of a Game Engine)

If a team with Unreal Engine can finish Bloodstained for PC within about 3-4 years. Tell them to do it without a Game Engine (use only DirectX or OpenGL, forexample) and they'd tell you to go to hell lol. Because it may take them 10+ years to get the job done. And that I'm talking about just PC version alone, not PS4, XBONE, ...


Back on topic. The current status of Wii U and NX port of Bloodstained. (that you probably don't know)

If you have time, please take a quick look at this article. (or atleast just the topic of the article)

"Unreal Engine 4 is (sort of) coming to Wii U and PS Vita"
www.engadget.com/2015/06/11/unreal-engine-4-psvita-wiiu-bloodstained-port/

As I've said above about the "Save as..." feature of a Game Engine. When we say  Armature Studio is responsible of Wii U and Vita port of Bloodstained. Their main job(90% of the work load) in this project is NOT porting Bloodstained to Wii U and Vita. But to develop the "Save as Wii U" and "Save as Vita" sort of plugin for Unreal Engine 4. Bacause Unreal 4 does NOT officially support "save as Wii U/Via".

If they manage to do it, then they'll use that plugin to "Save Bloodstained as Wii U/Vita game".  (of course there's also some more coding to do after that, like the Wii U gamepad support and stuff)

What I want to say here is this plugin should be in development since May 2015 when we hit Wii U/Vita stretch goal. They can develop this plugin regardless of development progress of the main game.

It's Oct 2016 now, that plugin should make considerable progress already. Now you wonder why Iga said something vague about future of  Wii U port, right? Well, maybe...
- Armature Studio realize now that Wii U plugin for Unreal Engine 4 is very difficult to create (and maintain after the game launched).
- Official Unreal Engine team tell Iga that they plan to support "save as NX" feature.

If this is true and the Wii U backers are ok with NX upgrade, that would mean no more work on Armature Studio side. They can just focus their effort on Vita and anything else and (almost)everyone will be happy.


But what if official Unreal Engine team will not support NX?

This is very interesting. Do you think that we can just say "let's do NX instead of Wii U" like it's an easy thing to do ^_^?  To the best of my knowledge, no. It will be a HELL of a work if they want to support NX if official UE4 team says no. Armature will need to take another big project, as big as the Wii U plugin. I personally do not think this is gonna happen. We can consider this a separate, big project that will require big budget and time.

And what about the Wii U plugin that (should) have been in development since 2015? I think Armature Studio need to make it happen as they already got paid to do it for more than a year now.

So my personal speculation is we will get atleast the Wii U port. (Armature can't just say they can't do it, right?) While the NX port will depends on whether the official UE4 team will do it or not. If they do,  Iga also get a free NX port without spending a cent. If they don't, then that's it. =)

My two(three) cents on this...

1. I have a feeling that neither the Wii U nor the Vita version will ever come out. If either of them does come out, I don't think the fans on those platforms will be very happy with the results. 

2. Though I haven't mentioned it before, I've always felt this was the one mistake IGA and Co. did make during the Kickstarter Campaign: promising the game for vastly under-powered hardware.

3. That said, I think IGA will bend over backwards to make it up to fans waiting for those ports. I think he will offer the refund option.

So, what do I base my gut feelings on?

1 & 2. The way game development works nowadays is you have something called the lead platform, often (but not always) the PC, which is the one  all development is done on first. The game engine and assets are created with the lead platform in mind. The game is then ported to other platforms using the "save as" feature Kitti_W mentions.

This process, however, does not always go very smoothly. At the end of the day, you're dealing with different hardware, a different OS, a different development environment. So, what you do is you go iron out the wrinkles on the secondary platform ports, and once there are no more wrinkles, you optimize so that it runs smoother.

Well, guess what? When you have vastly under-powered hardware, those wrinkles turn into outright cracks.

Sometimes, patching those cracks up is more work than rebuilding the game from scratch - which is, by the way, how ports used to be handled, because games not being as big back then as they are now, it wasn't really a problem.

Two things are at play here: code and assets. Even if the code is running smoothly (and, uhm, that's a big if), the assets won't. So the assets are downgraded - end of story, right? Well, they don't always look very nice when downgraded, especially if there's some fancy shading involved. In the case of the Vita, making them look acceptable might end up being a lot of work, and they still won't look as good as games designed from the ground up for the platform, which is what Vita users are probably expecting. The Wii U sounds a bit more feasible but... it probably won't run very smoothly without a good deal of work.

Also, procedural asset generation - I'm not very knowledgeable on this issue, but can the Vita even handle it, as implemented in UE4? If the game is too big to generate all assets by hand, it's probably too big a task to make those assets work on Vita.

The result, I fear, will be this: the funds provided by backers of the Wii U and Vita versions will not be enough to justify the amount of money it's going to take to bring those versions up-to-par.


3. Faced with this situation, it would make sense for IGA to offer refunds, regardless of the logistical difficulties. He wants to do right by his fans, and if he can't deliver on one of his promises offering a refund is the best option.

Then again, this is all speculation on my part... if Armature can get everything to work, and Wii U/Vita versions that users are satisfied with ever see the light of day, well, they are indeed an amazing studio.