Project Magma on iPad

[Zaknafein]

Still no response from take 2? Getting them to agree with a deal that would see all profit going to them, would probably get us the best result.

[Myrd]

Still no response from take 2? Getting them to agree with a deal that would see all profit going to them, would probably get us the best result.

Are you volunteering to do all the work of porting Myth to iOS to put money into Take2's pockets? Because I'm not.

[Zaknafein]

Still no response from take 2? Getting them to agree with a deal that would see all profit going to them, would probably get us the best result.

Are you volunteering to do all the work of porting Myth to iOS to put money into Take2's pockets? Because I'm not.

Fair enough, I figured if we had Take2's permission the job would be a lot easier. The only reason they would even pay attention to myth is to make money.

[cimota]

Still no response from take 2? Getting them to agree with a deal that would see all profit going to them, would probably get us the best result.

Are you volunteering to do all the work of porting Myth to iOS to put money into Take2's pockets? Because I'm not.

Good lord, that's the worst possible result.

So, if there was to be a clean room version, how much dev time would it take?

[Graydon]

Considering the projectmagma team of developers is currently at its core, 3 people, and considering Myth TFL took a team of 3 coders approximately 2 years to write, it'd probably be 2 years of solid coding. Day in, day out. For free.

Yea right. Lol.

[dac]

Considering the projectmagma team of developers is currently at its core, 3 people, and considering Myth TFL took a team of 3 coders approximately 2 years to write, it'd probably be 2 years of solid coding. Day in, day out. For free.

Yea right. Lol.

YES! because writing myth on the ipad would somehow equate to writing myth from scratch!

[cimota]

Considering the projectmagma team of developers is currently at its core, 3 people, and considering Myth TFL took a team of 3 coders approximately 2 years to write, it'd probably be 2 years of solid coding. Day in, day out. For free.

Yea right. Lol.

For free? Where did you get that idea? Who said anything about free? I was thinking about clean rooming a game "for money" that would enable the creation of "some more money" not only for the dev team but also for a legion of plugin creators through IAP.

And besides, even I can see there's multiple Interpretations of a MVP.

That's why I want to know how much it would cost

[Melekor]

What exactly is meant by "clean room" in this context? Reverse engineering something that is compatible with Myth, or able to load existing myth content, or just making a new game that is "Myth-like"?

The latter is possible, I don't think the first two are without an unrealistic amount of resources - Myth is just too complex for that.

[cimota]

Hi Melekor,

I don't think there is any reasonable way to produce something that can re-use all of the tags and plugins. I think it would be insane to even try that. But something new that had the feel of the units, the same sort of user experience for the game itself, albeit with a multi-touch user interface.

I think it would add an unfeasible amount of additional work.

[Myrd]

Also the classical definition of "clean-room" would exclude any of the Magma devs from working on such a project. We've already been exposed to the Myth code, so no "clean-room" implementation would be possible (by us).

[vinylrake]

YES! because writing myth on the ipad would somehow equate to writing myth from scratch!

it would if you were trying to create a myth-clone that was clean-room engineered - which is where the conversation had shifted to. in that scenario yes, if you didn't want to get sued by Take2 or have your app banned from the app store for IP infringement, then yesm you would be writing Myth from scratch.

[dac]

YES! because writing myth on the ipad would somehow equate to writing myth from scratch!

it would if you were trying to create a myth-clone that was clean-room engineered - which is where the conversation had shifted to. in that scenario yes, if you didn't want to get sued by Take2 or have your app banned from the app store for IP infringement, then yesm you would be writing Myth from scratch.

yes om, until you figure that 90% of the requirements are already met and you already have a target result for gameplay. the only real innovation would be how youd make it a touchscreen format (no small task) but the physics are in place, the units, the balance of the maps, the behaviors, all of which would be reverse engineered.

2 years? doubt it. but who cares, it wont ever happen anyways

[vinylrake]

ignoring your misattribution, it's obvious from your comments that you've never programmed anything substantial in size or scope. being fresh out of programming school isn't a bad thing, but programming large projects with the complexity of a game-engine from scratch is rather different that what you learned and did in school.

given the option of taking an estimate of the work involved from either the people who have actually seen the existing code and have a working knowledge of how complex the game is, or someone fresh out of programming school who hasn't see the code and doesn't have a clue how complex the game engine is? I'll go with the people who have some knowledge to back up their words.

[Myrd]

I think you two estimating different things. dac is estimating just porting the existing Myth II code to the iPad, which I agree wouldn't need to take 2 years, while vr (and all other recent replies) were about writing a Myth-like engine from scratch - which would definitely take considerably longer - where 2 years of people working full-time is not an unreasonable estimate.

[dac]

i think somebody loves to reply to my posts and tell me im wrong.

i have the same love so it makes for funny board warning pms and the like.

nothing of scale huh vr? (see i deleted the other 2 letters and fixed it this time) lol. just lol. perhaps im just jaded from working with incomplete requirements in a dated language. perhaps i know what im talking about from real world experiences. im glad you're here to talk about my real world experiences!

as for trusting the people who work on the code, i've seen some rather ridiculous claims on this board that sort of thwart that. regardless, its a moot debate because its not going to happen. nobody's going to program the ipad for free, nobody's got a clean interface for a touchscreen implementation (good luck on that one) and myth has no market.

props to magma for building your resume by improving a dead game, you should take the wealth of experience and get paid for your troubles by doing something worthwhile. of course, going from being the boss to a rank and file programmer is a hell of an adjustment (again experience talking), but as somebody who has done interviews and managed teams, i would still advise against going into an interview saying you did OOP in C.