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Work in Progress / Real Estate Magnate

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Matt Rock
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Posted: 9th Dec 2007 20:31
LOL I don't want to get shot or stabbed though, it would take all of the fun out of it! It's times like this I wish I were friends with Baron Sasha Cohen (or whatever his name is) or Tom Green, or someone else that nutty

Darth Kiwi
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Posted: 9th Dec 2007 20:51
Quote: "Baron Sasha Cohen"


Do you mean Sander Cohen, the insane artist from BioShock? He was one of my favourite characters. He thinks like me!

I'm not actually a Kiwi, I just randomly thought it up one day.
Matt Rock
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Posted: 9th Dec 2007 20:57
Nope, I mean the guy in Borat/ Ali G, hehe. It might be Sasha Baron Cohen, not sure hehe.

Insert Name Here
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Posted: 9th Dec 2007 22:54
Good afternoon, sir, I am the Developing Director of a games company, and I wondered if I could use your house for a picture of a flat owned by an extremely lazy, dirty and irritating man. How's that sound?


Sudoku arts, the rabi and Nancy DrewG
Matt Rock
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Posted: 10th Dec 2007 01:06
lol! Yeah, this is going to be fun, fun, fun tomorrow lol.

Insert Name Here
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Posted: 10th Dec 2007 12:30 Edited at: 10th Dec 2007 12:31
Are you goingfor tha_rabi's vectorised look or a more sort of cartoonish look?
Here's a really rough example:



Sudoku arts, the rabi and Nancy DrewG

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Deathead
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Posted: 10th Dec 2007 15:20
Quote: "Do you mean Sander Cohen, the insane artist from BioShock? He was one of my favourite characters. He thinks like me!"

Well even though he may mean him I actually thought he mean't the person who plays Borat.

[href=http://www.freewebs.com/deatheadstudios/]

[/href]
Agent Dink
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Posted: 10th Dec 2007 16:30
I prefer Rami's image ING, sorry.

Duplex
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Posted: 10th Dec 2007 20:03
This is looking really promising. Well done People.


Professional, afforable, what more could you want?
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Insert Name Here
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Posted: 10th Dec 2007 20:49
Quote: "I prefer Rami's image ING, sorry."

H, dearie, H.

And yes, me too, my image is the original with one filter applied.


Sudoku arts, the rabi and Nancy DrewG
Agent Dink
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Posted: 10th Dec 2007 20:59
My bad, H is right next to G and this was right after I woke up

Matt Rock
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Posted: 11th Dec 2007 00:40
Yeah, for buildings we're sort of limiting the list of options. Unless Dink has other ideas, as far as I know the buildings have to be:

(A) Vector art based on photographs
(B) Photographs themselves (not sure about that though)
(C) 3D buildings, fully textured, with stills sent in to us
(D) proper 2D images drawn by hand

I think the same can be said of character art as well, although no one should hold me to that, lol. It sort of seems wasteful to make a 3D image of a person and not use it in a proper animation, and I'm not sure I like the concept of photos of people. But we could have vectorized photos of people, and maybe that could be a neat promo as well... send MISoft a clear, serious picture of yourself and you might be in Real Estate Magnate as an NPC, hehe. Definitely something worth discussing

tha_rami
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Posted: 11th Dec 2007 01:38
Matt, you're going promo crazy. We do want to actually SELL stuff here, instead of giving it all away, eh .


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Agent Dink
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Posted: 11th Dec 2007 01:46
The popularity yesterday went to his head! ^_^

Matt Rock
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Posted: 11th Dec 2007 08:31
Well, I see it like this. From May to December, prior to the EE promo, EE sold five copies. After the promo, we've already sold another copy, and two other people are already talking about buying it, and with free copies out there, it's more likely that someone will see a friend playing it and say "cool, what's that?" Shy of the TAC, we hadn't done any promotional stuff, so giving away free copies can't hurt much. We'll probably give away five free copies of REM (maybe as many as ten) in promos at the start, and the better the game sells, the more promotional stuff we'll do. The more computers the game is being played on, the better, I think . Although based on what people have said about REM (so far, anyway) I don't think we'll have quite as much difficulty selling the game as we had with EE... that, and EE was a niche game, hehe. Relax, I'm not going promo-crazy just yet, and if I start doing that I'm sure everyone will gang up on me and order me to stop lol.

Darth Kiwi
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Posted: 11th Dec 2007 18:37
Of the four options, 3D seems really really wasteful unless you're going to animate it. I'm sure you could spend the time it takes making a high-quality 3D object of a house just drawing one. I think photos might sort of spoil the quirky, and professional sheen this game has so far. So either drawn-from-scratch stuff, or vector-arted-photographs. My vote's on vecotr-arted-photos: I just think they look great (I mean, rami's is just brilliant) plus you already have a basis to work from, so it should be less work.

I'm not actually a Kiwi, I just randomly thought it up one day.
tha_rami
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Posted: 11th Dec 2007 18:43
Thanks Darth Kiwi, I'm flattered.


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demons breath
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Posted: 11th Dec 2007 22:41
This game looks amazing!

I'd buy it... if I had money... and a way of buying things off the internet...

But I definitely think you should go with the style of tha_rami's picture; it looks great, and I think photographs wouldn't fit with the style so well, and would just look kind of tacky...

Matt Rock
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Posted: 11th Dec 2007 23:33
Duely noted . We were more than likely going to go with Rami's art anyway, it's always better to keep a game's development in-house (no pun intended) and not need to bring in new people when it isn't necessary. Saves us a lot of time and orientation work, hehe. And best of all, Rami's vector stuff is gorgeous . Now I just need to compile an album of photos for Rami to work from, which is so far proving a lot more difficult than I figured it would be. Turns out people aren't so keen on having their house in a video game .

We still need one more artist though, a 2D character artist to draw/ create the various customers and rival business people, and a few other special characters as well. If anyone is interested, please contact me or Agent Dink as soon as you can... we want to release this game in February if possible .

Gil Galvanti
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Posted: 12th Dec 2007 00:14
Quote: "Turns out people aren't so keen on having their house in a video game ."

Lol, got any good stories? How many agreed? 50%? More? Less?


AaronG
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Posted: 12th Dec 2007 03:07
Yeah that'd be cool to know!

tha_rami
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Posted: 12th Dec 2007 04:00 Edited at: 12th Dec 2007 04:00
lol, Matt, I can do vector characters based on pictures as well. I could even take my own pictures and work from there. Outlining them with a thick black line and you've got characters, cartoon style.


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Matt Rock
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Posted: 12th Dec 2007 05:57
Quote: "Lol, got any good stories? How many agreed? 50%? More? Less?"

Well, to scientifically calculate it, of the ten homes we stopped at precisely 80% refused to answer the door, of which 30% were clearly home, and 20% flat-out refused, lol. One guy was pretty insulted by it...

Guy: So, how much am I getting for this?
Matt: We can't afford to pay you, but you'd get your name in the credits!
Guy: Wooow, really? [door shuts]

Pretty miserable lol, I live in the wrong area to go door-to-door asking people to let me photograph their homes and sign their names on waivers . They all think I'm casing the joint lol. Might try a few neighborhoods across town next week, and I'm considering writing emails to real estate agencies asking if I could use their photos in return from some free advertising... can't hurt, hehe.

Quote: "lol, Matt, I can do vector characters based on pictures as well. I could even take my own pictures and work from there. Outlining them with a thick black line and you've got characters, cartoon style."

I like that idea, it's just an issue of finding people for it really. We could get the entire MISoft Studios team to submit photos and we'd only have 18 people. I think we should offer the TGC community to submit photos of themselves (within specific guidelines of course), and those who take the offer seriously and provide pictures that we can actually use would get a free copy of the game and a credit as an "Actor" or something, hehe. Something to think about . Would anyone like that idea?

tha_rami
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Posted: 12th Dec 2007 06:15
Instead of that, you could also think about using relatives of the team, friends, business partners, work collegues ect. ect.

I can go through the city here and make some photo's of all types of houses. We've got villas till flats. Just tell me what you need, and the first day that I've got time and there's no rain, I'll set out on this quest.


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demons breath
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Posted: 12th Dec 2007 20:01
Haha more free copies of the game Matt? You won't be able to sell this game... You'll already have sent practically everone with a computer a copy for free for sending you their name or turning on their screen or something like that...

Zeus
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Posted: 12th Dec 2007 23:16
Trying to take my tycoon ideas, eh? Looks awesome.... I demand a demo.

Matt Rock
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Posted: 13th Dec 2007 00:16
Quote: "Haha more free copies of the game Matt? You won't be able to sell this game... You'll already have sent practically everone with a computer a copy for free for sending you their name or turning on their screen or something like that..."

lol nah, we'll give away a bunch of promotional copies and if we end up needing more people to photograph, those people will get free copies as well, but I'd like to hope that getting this game "out there" through promos and the like will inspire more sales. We did that EE promo and it resulted in sales, so hopefully these promos will as well

Quote: "Trying to take my tycoon ideas, eh? Looks awesome.... I demand a demo."

We're extremely serious about this game not being classified as a "tycoon game," hehe. It's much more a proper business simulation game with fun features. Real Estate Magnate allows you to get close to your customers, whereas tycoon games have faceless, nameless customers, usually falling into various age and wealth brackets but lacking individuality beyond that. In most tycoon games, you hire personnel with flat salary rates who either perform their job duties with ultimate capability, or roam around a small localized perimeter and perform their job duties as they're needed. In Real Estate Magnate, your employees can do a bad job. They might go on strike if you don't treat them fairly, and they might get lazy if you treat them too well. One of my biggest problems with tycoon games is that they often run in live time, and if you pause the game to take your time and build your business on your own schedule, you quickly find out that you can't place things or view certain screens. In REM, you do things on your own schedule, in a turn-based environment where one month is equal to a single turn. And the vast majority of tycoon games are whipped together quickly by an unloving team looking to make a quick buck (not always the case, but usually the case). As with all MISoft games, REM was made from the heart and the head, not the head and the wallet

We're hoping to have a demo finished relatively soon. We'd like to get the tutorial mode finished first, and have the demo include the tutorial mode and demo mode. I'm also trying to figure out what the demo mode should consist of... I'm figuring we'll have a limit of a few years and certain buildings will be locked, or alternatively, we could allow the demo to be played indefinitely but with only one building to manage, probably an apartment building.

Zeus
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Posted: 13th Dec 2007 02:05
Thanks Matt. I was kidding about the taking my idea thing. So, well, it looks great.

pros: The game sounds and looks great.

cons: It looks like coffee tycoon. SOME 3-d parts would be nice.

Matt Rock
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Posted: 13th Dec 2007 02:20
That's the first time I'd ever heard of coffee tycoon lol. We thought about making it 3D, but it's sort of pointless with this sort of game because things aren't happening in real time. REM is turn-based, so 3D is a bit wasteful. We'd rather have the game run with fewer system resources and look stunning, rather than have it run on a ton of resources and "try" to look pretty

Zeus
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Posted: 13th Dec 2007 02:57
Well you'll be scared of it,

http://www.coffee-tycoon.com/

It is awful, I made the mistake of playing it.

Matt Rock
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Posted: 13th Dec 2007 03:15
lol yeah, it looks pretty terrible . We played a ton of Tycoon games and researched a bunch of others prior to designing REM. We have a joke internally that if Mall Tycoon can sell 300,000 copies, so can REM... it's just way better than Mall Tycoon, lol.

Zeus
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Posted: 13th Dec 2007 03:28
The best 2d tycoon game is pet luv and spa resort tycoon. Don't ask how.

tha_rami
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Posted: 13th Dec 2007 04:30
The best tycoon game is Chris Sawyers' Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Old, freeware now. With the OpenTTD mod it's a perfectly playable, multiplayer supporting game that is both entertaining and deep.


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Zeus
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Posted: 13th Dec 2007 13:34
No, the old original Rollercoaster Tycoon!

tha_rami
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Posted: 13th Dec 2007 18:03
No, Rollercoaster Tycoon never ever reached the fun of TTD.


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Matt Rock
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Posted: 13th Dec 2007 18:21
Well, REM isn't a tycoon game and will be better than both of them . Well, to me and the team who made it anyway, lol.

Osiris
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Posted: 14th Dec 2007 09:06
I can only assume your website it down because your updating to 2.0?

RIP Max-Tuesday, November 2 2007
You will be dearly missed.
Matt Rock
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Posted: 14th Dec 2007 22:26
Nope, must have been a problem with our host, we're planning on warning everyone that the site will be down prior to launching MINet 2.0. Unless Agent Dink broke something lol, but I doubt it . It's back up and working fine now though, might just be a host problem. Which is okay because now I'll get a discount, lol.

Agent Dink
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Posted: 14th Dec 2007 23:34
Nope, didn't break anything. Haven't hardly had time to do anything with MINet the last 4 days, but the weekend appears at this time to be free from anything big (crosses fingers). We will definitely warn everyone before the switch, but I don't think the site will be down for too long, so no need to worry.

Matt Rock
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Posted: 14th Dec 2007 23:48
A quick note: For those of you who don't regular the MINet forums, we're currently looking for alpha and beta testers for REM. Here's a link to the thread where you can sign up. Testing won't begin for a while, but we like to get our testing teams sorted out well in advance. Please be sure you read the full thread prior to posting so you understand exactly what you'll be doing and what you'll be getting in return for testing.

It isn't an open beta, we only do that with freeware games. When we get closer to the testing phases we'll review the people who've "applied." For alphas, we'll pick the people we think will do the most thorough job. For betas, those positions will be dished out on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you don't want to sign up for the forums for some reason you can email me. The forums are safe though, a bunch of TGC vets hang out there rather frequently nowadays

Osiris
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Posted: 15th Dec 2007 02:13
I'm there!

RIP Max-Tuesday, November 2 2007
You will be dearly missed.
Matt Rock
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Posted: 14th Jan 2008 21:32
A quick update, work has slowed a bit on REM because MINet 2.0, our new website, is taking longer than anticipated. But we're hoping to post new screens in the not-too-distant future, probably around the same time we officially announce Project Sewer Rat, our FPS game. Testing positions are still open for REM if anyone is interested, you can email me or visit our forums and sign up there. Jerico2day and MISoft's other owner, Colin, are taking over all of the remaining coding for REM now as I put all of my attention on Sewer Rat, so the speed of future updates are in their hands, hehe. No pressure!

tha_rami
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Posted: 14th Jan 2008 22:23
No pressure? Lol! You know how hard Agent Dink is working on MINet 2.0 . It's becoming a really functional and fun to see website.


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Agent Dink
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Posted: 15th Jan 2008 01:57
Thanks Rami I really hoped it would be done by now but argh, real life gets in the way all too often... it's coming soon though.

zzz
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Posted: 15th Jan 2008 17:46
Wow, it looks really professional indeed!
From what I understand you´re a group of people who are developing this, right? How many are you?

WII number: 8220 5043 6939 7393
Darth Kiwi
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Posted: 15th Jan 2008 18:24
A FPS, eh? I'm intrigued...

I'm not actually a Kiwi, I just randomly thought it up one day.
tha_rami
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Posted: 15th Jan 2008 21:34 Edited at: 15th Jan 2008 21:34
MISoft is, I think, the largest TGC development team that currently exists. We're working on quite a lot of things and projects, but sorry, can't tell ya .

If MINet 2 launches, I can recommend you to visit the Cheney Hunter, Pod 9 and Eternal Equinox pages, and the business subsite for job openings. It's really becoming a great site, for a great 'company'.

Heh, yeah... an FPS...


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Inspire
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Posted: 15th Jan 2008 22:40
Why don't you guys go through the trouble of trademarking the name?



I think my team will be doing that in the future...

Matt Rock
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Posted: 16th Jan 2008 02:22 Edited at: 16th Jan 2008 03:01
Quote: "From what I understand you´re a group of people who are developing this, right? How many are you?"

20 people on five projects, four of which you'll see in the very near future. This does include two marketing people, three "contract" people who are only working on one specific game (Capital Punishment, due for release July 4th of this year), and two "producers" who don't really do much besides giving us money, lol. It isn't counting Hobgoblin Lord, who helps from time to time but isn't technically a team member yet, and Jess T, who if he had more free time we'd ask him to join in a second. As it stands we always invite him to test new games. But yeah, I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure Rami was right when he said we're the biggest dev team in these here parts . By the end of this year we'll have released more games than most (definitely not more than all). It isn't as impressive as it sounds though, hehe, not yet anyway.

Quote: "A FPS, eh? I'm intrigued..."

Yeah, that game is codenamed Project Sewer Rat for now... expect to know more about that in the near future . We'll probably announce the official title in the next MISoft SOTS (our newsletter). If you haven't signed up for it yet, visit our forums and register for it there . Here's the URL for you all.

Quote: "Why don't you guys go through the trouble of trademarking the name?"

We looked into it. Because of our website and our hefty online presence, we have the grounds to sue someone if they try to steal our name. When we register as an LLC later this year (in NY State and in the US), we'll get a trademark. They're expensive as hell, that's the only reason we haven't done it just yet. Feel free to email me Inspire, I can explain a bunch of this stuff to you, I've been studying business stuff lately as we prepare to make our company legit.

Inspire
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Posted: 16th Jan 2008 03:42
Twenty people! That is a ton!

Emailed you, Matt.

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