MSR *WILL* be finished, come hell or high water... hell more likely.

[nat]

Hold the press! This means beta testing should finish up five years ahead of schedule, in 2015!

[nodtveidt]

Will these be typical of other released homebrews, printed on CDs and with manual and case? Are there pictures of what we could expect the finished product to be? Very ready to pre-order this, but just want to see what I'd be getting media and packaging wise.

These are properly pressed CDs with 8-page manual and case. The cover art hasn't been finalized yet; still deciding on the front cover, whether to go with the silk background + title, the portrait cover, or Desmond's painting. The back cover art was already decided. If I get the chance today, I could put together a mockup of sorts that shows roughly what the finished product will look like.

[termis]

Cool.  My address has also changed since preordering -- I'm updating you my address via pm.

[vestcoat]

Don't get me wrong, it's awesome that another big step has been made toward completion, but why use the word "finished" when there's still testing to do, bugs to fix, one script to add, art to finalize, and discs to press?  A natural disaster, family emergency, frozen paypal account, computer crash, mix up at the replicator, or any number of things (knock on wood x5) could still delay things quite a bit and cause another pre-order debacle.

[nodtveidt]

For the same reason that Windows versions are "finished" six months before release... the product is complete, though it still needs a round of testing to ensure the gold standard. That's where we are right now. The game itself is finished, but we need to ensure that it is totally perfect before it's released. While final beta happens, the rest of the details get filled in, such as the cover art. "Finished", in the software industry, means "nothing left to add".

Fortunately, I've already accounted for all of the issues you've mentioned, and then some. Natural disasters don't really happen here (we live in a bunker-style concrete house in case of hurricane or floods, and have many days of power backup in case we lose power), the paypal funds are transferred out to a real bank account almost instantly to avoid another paypal f*ckup, computer crashes are accounted for by making regular daily backups to twelve different locations across our local network and all of our internet servers, replication issues are virtually always caused by disc damage, which will be avoided by providing a dozen gold-standard archival discs... this time, I've got backup plans for the backup plans so there's little that could actually go wrong. The final beta test will not take long, as virtually all the issues were tackled in the first three major beta runs... all that was left to fix was two obscure-and-hard-to-track-down bugs, one of which has been isolated and fixed, the other will be addressed all day tomorrow. The final beta will be in the hands of the beta testers within 36 hours, and we plan to go to press in mid-September. Pressing will take 10 to 15 business days due to the backlog of orders the pressing house has. Since it's getting close to Xmas, I would assume the latter, which means that the shipment should arrive at our distribution points in early October, at which time they will be immediately shipped out to all the customers.

The only thing that could possibly go wrong is my mother-in-law... she came rushing in the house yesterday morning while I was debugging and dumped a PC on my lap, saying "fix this! I need it tomorrow morning!" without any context besides the fact that the woman who owns it (a real ditz) couldn't find her documents. Turns out that her account was damaged, and the school had let go of their entire tech staff (so the head of the DOE could pocket more federal funds) so they had no access to any of the original software. Since I'm the only experienced tech they know, guess who got the task of fixing the system... and I didn't even get paid for it. Oh well... life goes on.

[nectarsis]

"Finished", in the software industry, means "nothing left to add".

Except the aforementioned French translation   Like I said last night "finished to you (software industry), and the vast majority of peeps on here are pretty different.    I def see what Vestcoat brings up and agree.

[vestcoat]

Thanks for the reassurance Rover (and good story, too).  I'm psyched, but sometimes my cynicism wrestles with my optimism.   

[nodtveidt]

Except the aforementioned French translation   Like I said last night "finished to you (software industry), and the vast majority of peeps on here are pretty different.    I def see what Vestcoat brings up and agree.

Not so much "add" as it is "replace"... right now, where French should be, it's in English. Just requires a string swap. It's about 1K of text in total, and will take about 5 minutes to do thanks to a nifty little string manipulation utility I crafted earlier this year for this very purpose.

[Arkhan]

lol, the games not finished if there is stuff to add/replace, and testing to be had.

In the single-release-no-patches-ever-happening side of the industry, finished means "Ready for pressing" or "Ready for release". 

Windows isn't a proper comparison.  Any software that has upgrade patterns/release cycles is allowed and expected to need service packs and other tweaks down the road... so they can say its "finished", release it, and at the same time already be working on Service Pack 1....

So unless you have a way to download patches for Super CD games that can be applied to a pressed CD, I would not consider the game is finished...especially if you have a bug that needs addressed.

I say this only because I don't want to see you put your foot in your mouth again.

I didn't open Insanity for preorders until the game was literally 100% done, burnt to a master CD, and ready to go to the pressing house.  When I claimed it was finished, it literally was finished and no longer being worked on.  It came down to "The game is done, I can't afford to front the money, 30 of you need to pony up some cash",

Also, don't bank on 10-15 business days for the pressing house.  Shoot for ~20, just to be safe, lol.

Handle the discs like brain surgery.  Go straight from fresh package--->CD tray that you precleaned, and then take it out and drop it right back into the case.  In a dust free room.  One little speck or nick will make them go NOPE, and toss the disc out.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Besides a dust free room, we need some moon suits, anti-static shock cream, & sweat repellant! 

[_joshuaTurbo]

This really does sound awesome!!

How many pre-orders do you have left?  How many in total are you looking to press?  I guess I'm only asking because I was looking to purchase the game roughly a month from now, and want to make sure there will still be some available at that point.

[Emerald Rocker]

That's great news about MSR being finished!

I just finished my own Turbo homebrew game (Thunder Force Octology).  The only things left to do are design and code it.

[TheClash603]

Wow, you guys jumped all over this!  I know the game has taken a while, but it seems we should be more supportive in this thread to someone developing for the TG16?

Anyway, hopefully my gratitude can motivate the team's next project to be a spiritual successor to Yo Bro!...  no one wants Neutopia 3 anyway.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Wow, you guys jumped all over this!  I know the game has taken a while, but it seems we should be more supportive in this thread to someone developing for the TG16?

Anyway, hopefully my gratitude can motivate the team's next project to be a spiritual successor to Yo Bro!...  no one wants Neutopia 3 anyway.

Heh, I'd rather fix Yo Bro, rather then make a sequal personally.  There's a few different projects that could maybe be our next release, though I think it more likely to be Jungle Bros.  I wish I could say the music end of things(for JB) is zipping by, but, I'm still working on cleaning & repairing my synth, while also working on tearing up my yard to put in African Daisy's, flagstone pavers, etc. all by myself, each week, hoping the managers don't come down on me for not finishing the project soon enough, or not good enough, or who knows.  It's kinda strict here, which can be good(keep out the riff raff), but sometimes it comes down on me if I don't mow my lawn as soon as they'd like

[shubibiman]

I don't want to be rude or anything but even if I'd like to get one of the 100 preorder copies, I'd rather order once it is pressed and all. I'm confident that it will be released by the end of the year but too many annoucements got people disappointed in the end. So I totally agree with Arkhan on this.

But I'm really looking forward to playing the game