Are you dead set on a clear tray? I understand white is expensive, but black would be nice and it would at least match U.S. games.
MindRec has always used White Trays and tried to match the style of the Japanese releases (for artwork). The backing art for the clear try is tasteful (in my opinion), it is a dense star field (this will show through to the front), and Coming Soon text, along with a few screen shots of Xymati. The Xymati web address is also included (I need to get that site updated).
I'm confused about the Xymati/Mindrec/Eponasoft relationship. It's great that you're considering work on Xymati again, but last I heard Fragmare and Eponasoft had already revived the project. I'm not even clear who Eponasoft is (a Rover side project?). Can anyone explain?
Here is the abbreviated history of Xymati.
2005: The concept of the game was started. FraG and I bounced a lot of ideas back and forth, the basic game scenario was my idea, FraG came up with the multiple weapons and GFX to match.
2006: initial tests of Xy on the PCE were proving to be challenging, and times was short on my end.
2009: My life fell apart (literally): I was downsized, there were medical issues (started in 2008), and MAJOR family problems. Only one of these issues has been resolved to date.
2009/2010: I released a few iPhone apps, and started thinking about Xymati again
2011: started doing so proof of concept work with XNA that proved promising
2012: started porting MSL3 to XNA, and working on the game itself.
Somewhere in the 2011-2012 timeframe I told FraG that the PCE version was not working out, and was going to focus on the PC/Xbox version. He reluctantly agreed and started (without my knowledge) working with Rover on the PCE version. I am not against this, but I have also not had any conversations with anyone about it, so I do not know what the status of it is, what their goals are, or how closely it is going to resemble the PC version.
At no time have I ever said that the PCE version was not going to happen. As I have maintained all along, my goal is to make "PCE Like Games" for modern hardware. The reason for this is simple: I doubt that there are that many PCE/Duo owners out there who do not own some sort of modern console, and the life expectancy of that hardware is much longer than the ever increasing number of Duos out there. I want people to be able to play this game, and enjoy it. For the limited PCE market, that number is 300-400. For the PC/Xbox, that number is in the millions.
There was also the CDR issue for a long time too, I was not going to publish another PCE CDR title, it sounds like that may no longer be an issue. Yeah for that, at least.
