PCE Super SD System 3 - Terraonion New Product (Dec 2017)

[takeshi385]

Oh man this is shaping up beautifully. I still need to buy a spare genesis 2 cable(or solder one together), but I am super excited.

 

[Recap]

Well, actually, the problem was that using the higher res, requires using larger tilemap modes, that need more ram, and also need more tiles to cover the screen, that required more than the available video ram. That was in early stages where the "empty" areas also were wasting tiles, then we made the scroll thing in the filenames, and it was quite good, and although the tiles are currently optimized, that didn't change, as the graphics are already done for that resolution. I just had a look at the tile data allocation and we are around 40KB for the tiles & font, plus 2KB for the screenshot, another 2KB for the "no screenshot" image, and then 2KB for sprites (the selection and scroll bars and plenty of space ), so to use the higher res modes, all that data will need to be increased, probably neededing more than the available vram amount.

Currently there is no way to disable the UI graphics or change the font, it's part of the SSDS3 experience

That's my point, indeed. However much all the users will no wonder love the device for its uniqueness, some will appreciate to have an option to make the experience itself as "official" or "pure" as possible, and having a clean, motifs-free GUI is the only factor which can help here. The truth is the current GUI's graphics and font have more to do with, I don't know, Amiga 500 demos than with Japanese games or the PCE (and yep -- even with an official controller drawn there in), which can be kind of alienating for the people used to the system since the old days (as it already is with most flash carts menus, emulators and whatnot).

I'm not trying to shit on your designer, mind you (I myself wouldn't be happy with any motif-based GUI, no matter how it comes off); just trying to explain another perspective and why more options are usually for the good. If your plans involve reaching Japan, "minimalism" in this stuff is well-regarded there, on the other hand. And well, there's what you say about the graphics not being suited for a high-res mode too -- a motifs-free GUI would allow for that, and higher res helps a lot when browsing and is a lot more comfortable for the eyes.

Anyway, I'm glad the option to have that in the future is there. I'm sure your device will be so successful that this is only the first vote for it.

Thanks for reading.

 

[torgo100]

The current UI looks just fine to me

 

[Razoola]

I agree that the current UI look fine. At the same time however I kind of understand what recap is hinting at (although I don't like the minimalism approach). I understand why UI's (for SD based devices like this) look like how they do. UI's are designed for a purpose and this kind of layout is an easy way to achieve that, and its clean and easy to do. I do feel though that it does not have to be this way, I feel multicart UIs can break away from this kind of layout into something different, something more is line with game choosing rather than file selecting on a futuristic design layout (even when its excellently drawn).

Now what that sould be is an open question, but what ever it is, if it does not at least equal or beat usability of the current designs then it should not be used. If I use the neogeoland demo as an example (keeping in mind the ui was not complete and used placeholder gfx in places). Yes its still a scrollable game list and windows opening within windows so to speak. However the feel of it is really quite different. In my view, bringing the games system feel into the UI really helps.

This is an idea I would like to share but bear in mind given where this device is now in production this could only maybe happen via a future firmware update... I really love the colors of the 'PCE Super SD system 3' packaging. My view would be to incorporate those colors into the UI but at the same time 'round the edges' of the GFX in the UI to give it a less metallic feel and more soft feel.

 

[greatfunky]

The UI is fine to me too , i was a copier's collector back in the 90's and start of 2000's , before flashcart era and we had sometimes fun menus on some of them ...

I enjoy each new video from neosd , we won't regret our purchase for sure ...

 

[s. k. technique]

I think I am with Recap on the UI; coming from having an Amiga growing up the UI reminded me a tiny bit of Paradox scene group. I too would welcome the possibility of future custom front ends, or a PCE colour scheme, which isn't easy mentioning the VRAM constraints as the PCE, CoreGrafx & Core Grafx II have different unit and logo colours (and controllers). Either way, this continues to look like a top quality product and I am looking to receiving mine.

 

[neosd]

I think I am with Recap on the UI; coming from having an Amiga growing up the UI reminded me a tiny bit of Paradox scene group. I too would welcome the possibility of future custom front ends, or a PCE colour scheme, which isn't easy mentioning the VRAM constraints as the PCE, CoreGrafx & Core Grafx II have different unit and logo colours (and controllers). Either way, this continues to look like a top quality product and I am looking to receiving mine.

It looks like a paradox logo cause alien did most of the paradox art this is where we meet
So yes, our devices have all this scene look or feeling. I myself love that touch as I think ours are kinda like scene devices

Anyways, my opinion is that you guys have to try it and see how it feels, how it performs.

We are always on time to change things on the ui for sure as every part of the software is updateable by firmware as neosd ...

My own taste is I don't like a GUI that is just a terminal screen, I don't like everdrives GUI at our devices, I think those are just poor

 

[s. k. technique]

Lol, Brilliant! That makes a lot of sense They were one of the biggest groups on the Amiga, always looked forward to their releases, thumping tracks and bouncing art!

 

[greatfunky]

And when copiers went out, the scene moved also on the consoles .... snes cracktro

 

[Heinz]

Never once have I thought oh the sd2snes gui is a bit off for my taste or hey the neosd gui seems a bit unlike the dipswitch screen. Who the hell thinks like that? OOh err the menuuue doesn't look like how I like, the colours hurt my eyes ooh errr. geez fuckin louise!

 

[Recap]

Never once have I thought oh the sd2snes gui is a bit off for my taste or hey the neosd gui seems a bit unlike the dipswitch screen. Who the hell thinks like that?

People who care about the details and aesthetics, I'd say? Same kind as the artists and designers who made the NG games you love so much? Hum...

 

[torgo100]

People who care about the details and aesthetics, I'd say? Same kind as the artists and designers who made the NG games you love so much? Hum...

As long as the device functions properly is good enough for me. I don't care about aesthetics for simple menus

 

[neosd]

People who care about the details and aesthetics, I'd say? Same kind as the artists and designers who made the NG games you love so much? Hum...

I may be missing something cause this sentence and the UI picture you showed wont fit on the same post in my mind ...

 

[RAZO]

As long as the device functions properly is good enough for me. I don't care about aesthetics for simple menus

This. It's a menu, you select a game and off you go. As long as it functions properly, it's fine.

 

[Jontox]

Indeed, this is quite awful as far as I’m concerned.
Current UI is great and the designer should be proud of his work!

 

[Rot]

You think the Spanish member... recap is a Darksoft spy? Is that what everyone is implying here?

xROTx

PS. Let me know... I'll deal with it...

EDIT. It's a fuckin' menu... you select... and play...

How many fuckin' times do you intend to look at the menu and think "Oh wait... I need NOT to play a game... look at the layout for hours... and start a list of shit to criticise instead..."...

 

[neosd]

You think the Spanish member... recap is a Darksoft spy? Is that what everyone is implying here?

xROTx

PS. Let me know... I'll deal with it...

EDIT. It's a fuckin' menu... you select... and play...

How many fuckin' times do you intend to look at the menu and think "Oh wait... I need NOT to play a game... look at the layout for hours... and start a list of shit to criticise instead..."...

Rot,

His claim has a lot of sense (atleast if you haven´t tried the actual UI)
A menu has to show all the needed information in a clean way and it must be fast to move among the items aswel. Alteast those are the parameters i care about in a menu

I said : "try the actual menu and judge yourself" because i think our current menu acomplishes all the goals it has to, while adding a nice look to the device. Its far from everdrives menu for sure, where you don´t have any graphics neither screenshots.
I bet everdrive´s developer would love to have graphics and screenshots there if you ask him, but this needs more skills and work than write a flash/ram chip with an arm

I may understand that some people may see art in a termianal screen, the same way some see art in a gallery when i can only see garbage.

So, get the device, try the actual UI and come back complaining about the usability, we will consider improving it based in your coments and the coments from other users aswel.

I just want to believe this is not another tactic to start some drama about our product, i say that cause your original post was asuming we had bad or poor game compatibility ... It looked fishy to my eyes the whole scenario

 

[Rot]

Rot,

His claim has a lot of sense (atleast if you haven´t tried the actual UI)
A menu has to show all the needed information in a clean way and it must be fast to move among the items aswel. Alteast those are the parameters i care about in a menu

I said : "try the actual menu and judge yourself" because i think our current menu acomplishes all the goals it has to, while adding a nice look to the device. Its far from everdrives menu for sure, where you don´t have any graphics neither screenshots.
I bet everdrive´s developer would love to have graphics and screenshots there if you ask him, but this needs more skills and work than write a flash/ram chip with an arm

I may understand that some people may see art in a termianal screen, the same way some see art in a gallery when i can only see garbage.

So, get the device, try the actual UI and come back complaining about the usability, we will consider improving it based in your coments and the coments from other users aswel.

I just want to believe this is not another tactic to start some drama about our product, i say that cause your original post was asuming we had bad or poor game compatibility ... It looked fishy to my eyes the whole scenario

I know...

NO ONE has got the device except for one member...

So why not fuckin' wait?... people should start getting this a LOT sooner than a NG.dev pre-order OR that Darksoft fubar device.....

This speculation makes me irritated.... ALL I am waiting for is the first user reviews... NOT speculation from lurker members or n00bs....

The fun REALLY starts when people start getting the device... this is the big breath before the plunge... so "IF" certain parts of our membership wish to be around for it...

...I'd suggest not hitting my radar...

xROTx

 

[torgo100]

I know...

NO ONE has got the device except for one member...

So why not fuckin' wait?... people should start getting this a LOT sooner than a NG.dev pre-order OR that Darksoft fubar device.....

This speculation makes me irritated.... ALL I am waiting for is the first user reviews... NOT speculation from lurker members or n00bs....

The fun REALLY starts when people start getting the device... this is the big breath before the plunge... so "IF" certain parts of our membership wish to be around for it...

...I'd suggest not hitting my radar...

xROTx

Because people like to complain and judge :-/

 

[neosd]

Because people like to complain and judge :-/

Yes, and this is good, we are the first ones interested on that. On see the complains to improve.
We have improved some areas with SSDS3 based on Neosd feedback and we are working to improve others aswel (company like, no SSDS3 )

We can´t wait to see people´s reaction while getting the device, i would say this is one of the best parts of the experience while creating a product like this (maybe the best one is the first time you load a game on the deive).

At the end of the day, we work/release things we like and we are proud of. We would not put anything on the market if we would think its broken or bad. This is a bad long term decision.

Just think about that : SSDS3 is selling well cause NEOSD works pretty fine. If SSDS3 works bad, our reputation (tech like) will go down and sales will go down aswel. Thats why i said that we care more about having users happy than about forums and so.

Our time is limited and we are happy to be here.
If we would not have this place here, as today we would not be aswering anything in public and maybe not by private aswel, cause all our resources are put into developing, not into entertaining people at forums.
I hope you guys unterstand that, we are small and we are trying to grow up, as much as we sell, as bigger things we will be able to build.
We have big plans, we just need time and money to pay senior skilled people. We are in the right way so amazing things are comming if we don´t die while trying it.

 

[torgo100]

My feelings about complaining about things like this revolves around getting hands on it first.

 

[Recap]

I just want to believe this is not another tactic to start some drama about our product, i say that cause your original post was asuming we had bad or poor game compatibility ... It looked fishy to my eyes the whole scenario

Have no worries there; my "assumption" was based on what you said a few pages ago when asked -- that there could appear issues given that the library is so huge. (And also, I'll admit, on my experience with the SS ODE by Deunan.) That's far from assuming the compatibility is "bad" o "poor", anyway.

If I wasn't confident enough in your labor, I wouldn't have ordered the device this soon; it's that simple.

I do think --and I do without any previous "tactic" nor hidden intention-- that there's some real need of drama here, though. One which ends in you people leaving this place or not using it as the official discussion center for your products. And again, no offense involved; just an opinion as an outsider. If a legit, full-of-arguments suggestion which could well be used as an idea for improvement(*) is seen as suspicious or destructive criticism, there's either, a problem of bad climate and overprotective attitudes or one of adulthood. Having permanently a moderator complaining because a related subject doesn't please him enough only to find you later letting him know that the discussion's OK and good, is nuts. And it's not doing you any good in the long term, despite the comfort area it provides now.


(*)And I'm sure it indeed will be in the future; whenever the people (and most of your customers won't be the oldtimers here, remember that) realize that the menu can have 70~100% more on-screen text for game names in a higher res mode at the cost of the UI's visual motifs, paying homage to the A500 demo scene (no less) and all, it's an easy guess what they'll choose. The screens and videos shown are there to let you to form an opinion on evident stuff like this without having to wait for the device -- that was my guess.


Once again, thanks for reading.

 

[Rot]

Have no worries there; my "assumption" was based on what you said a few pages ago when asked -- that there could appear issues given that the library is so huge. (And also, I'll admit, on my experience with the SS ODE by Deunan.) That's far from assuming the compatibility is "bad" o "poor", anyway.

If I wasn't confident enough in your labor, I wouldn't have ordered the device this soon; it's that simple.

I do think --and I do without any previous "tactic" nor hidden intention-- that there's some real need of drama here, though. One which ends in you people leaving this place or not using it as the official discussion center for your products. And again, no offense involved; just an opinion as an outsider. If a legit, full-of-arguments suggestion which could well be used as an idea for improvement(*) is seen as suspicious or destructive criticism, there's either, a problem of bad climate and overprotective attitudes or one of adulthood. Having permanently a moderator complaining because a related subject doesn't please him enough only to find you later letting him know that the discussion's OK and good, is nuts. And it's not doing you any good in the long term, despite the comfort area it provides now.


(*)And I'm sure it indeed will be in the future; whenever the people (and most of your customers won't be the oldtimers here, remember that) realize that the menu can have 70~100% more on-screen text for game names in a higher res mode at the cost of the UI's visual motifs, paying homage to the A500 demo scene (no less) and all, it's an easy guess what they'll choose. The screens and videos shown are there to let you to form an opinion on evident stuff like this without having to wait for the device -- that was my guess.


Once again, thanks for reading.

Are you suggesting... that NG.com isn't the right place for Neosd?

We aint holding him against his will... he can ask to leave anytime he wants... I just move all the threads to where they belong and life goes on...

However, it seems YOU want to make an issue concerning the running of Ng.com... let me make this fucking clear to you...

The management of this site isn't your concern... the issue wasn't with the discussion...

It was with dumbass members like yourself with 139 posts in 14 years here... or n00bz asking questions or making comments without reading the threads or understanding the forum...

Leave or stay.... I don't care... BUT never fuckin' forget this forum has been here close to 2 decades and will be here for a while yet...

The only REAL question is whether you're gonna survive the next 2 minutes...

 

[neosd]

Have no worries there; my "assumption" was based on what you said a few pages ago when asked -- that there could appear issues given that the library is so huge. (And also, I'll admit, on my experience with the SS ODE by Deunan.) That's far from assuming the compatibility is "bad" o "poor", anyway.

If I wasn't confident enough in your labor, I wouldn't have ordered the device this soon; it's that simple.

I do think --and I do without any previous "tactic" nor hidden intention-- that there's some real need of drama here, though. One which ends in you people leaving this place or not using it as the official discussion center for your products. And again, no offense involved; just an opinion as an outsider. If a legit, full-of-arguments suggestion which could well be used as an idea for improvement(*) is seen as suspicious or destructive criticism, there's either, a problem of bad climate and overprotective attitudes or one of adulthood. Having permanently a moderator complaining because a related subject doesn't please him enough only to find you later letting him know that the discussion's OK and good, is nuts. And it's not doing you any good in the long term, despite the comfort area it provides now.


(*)And I'm sure it indeed will be in the future; whenever the people (and most of your customers won't be the oldtimers here, remember that) realize that the menu can have 70~100% more on-screen text for game names in a higher res mode at the cost of the UI's visual motifs, paying homage to the A500 demo scene (no less) and all, it's an easy guess what they'll choose. The screens and videos shown are there to let you to form an opinion on evident stuff like this without having to wait for the device -- that was my guess.


Once again, thanks for reading.

Hello,

I will try to eplain what i think about the different subjects.

- Compatibility : GadgetUK got the device before we did the anouncement. I think he tried about 200 games before the anouncement and found no issues.
Then he tried the rare (and some obscure japanese games) (that we didn´t take atention at) and found issues with 4 games, if i don´t remember bad those were :
sherlock holmes
it came from the desert
3 in 1 version of gate of thunder (when regular one was working fine, 3 in 1 was having audio loops)
and another japanese game i don´t remember.

The japanese game was not a bug but a censor audio beep (game did the same on mame and on the other emulator)

If i am not wrong (gadgetuk tried 400 games or so) the entire library ?

Well, we fixed the issues on those 3 games cause those were emulation issues (about 3 weeks ago ?) and as today there are not known issues.

What i mean : the library is large and we put efforts in the games that did something special/ different than regular games: arcade card games, 3x3 eyes, steam hearts ....
So, do i think issues will show ? yes, i am sure that someone will find that when you reach X stage in Y game, audio will get a loop or whatever strange thing this game may be doing others don´t do, and there will be an issue there.
We will fix it in minutes/hours/1 day, 2 days ? depending if this issued is submited a friday or a saturday and we are out for the weekend/personal life stuff... and we will iusse a firmware update.

Resuming : someone is going to find an issue, software is never perfect (not only ours, software in general). But you are not going to find an issue easy for sure cause its has been tested a lot.



- UI : i still think that doing a UI like the one you showed is a mistake, this would make the product less atractive to regular users and will give a feeling about the product being cheap or amateur. I understand pretty well, that not having horizontal scroll is better than having it. But you always have to weigh the different aspects to make as many people happier as possible, see what happened with neosd original UI (before released) for example, we had to change it before release cause people didn´t liked it. In this case (neosd), it was pretty clear that people didn´t liked it. On Super SD System 3 after one month you have been the one asking for a change.
We need more than one user asking for that do change it, not only for the work involved but cause this may upset others. One can never have everyone happy, we just try to have as many people as possible happy ...
So what we are going to do ? for now just wait, this is do something aswel ... wait for others feedback.

- About the forum :

I know it may look from a foreigner that our forum section may be oevermoderated, no one gets his coment deleted but the moderators/owners sometimes send users to the war room.
If you look at the rest of the forum, its just the same.
If you look at what happened with neosd back in the day, it has been drama generated mostly by competors with personal/economics interests. What i still haven´t seen here is someone coming telling us we did a mistake (rgb on SSDS3 for example ? ) and we asking to remove posts or ban people without discussing the issue and working on deliver a solution.
This is an objetive view of the situation here. NG.com is not ours, we acept theyr rules, if we don´t want to stay, we move out.
I myself find curious that Rots ask me if he is so much agressive and so, and i don´t even have an opinion about that, cause i don´t want to have it. Its not going to be me asking him on the forums to ban someone or remove coments.
I just think that customers need to know the good and the bad of what they are going to purchase and hidding issues the manufacturer knows about is scamming people.

So as today we are an small company with a number of customers arround 1.000s, you can see we don´t have many complains cause if there would be complains, believe me NG.com moderating coments would not hide those. There is twitter, facebook, and all this shit where people love to complain ratter than sending a support email asking for help.

Whats going to happen in the future ? i hope someday we will have 10x or 100x (or i wish x1.000 customers), then we will need to move or even not being in forums at all. I have been proved to know a shit about sales and with the few things i learnt i/we am/are doing my/our best.

Everyday i got a piple of things to do, i loook at the list and instead of getting myself sad or ill (cause i know i can´t do all), i try to do the ones i think are most important. Forums right now have low priority, we got more serious things to work at with the resources we have. I can work saturdays, sundays, 12, 14 hours a day but i can´t double myself unfortunally.

I am just doing my best with only a premise : be honest, deliver quality products, don´t cheat customers.

Alex,

 

[Syn]

Open discussion? How many times do we have to read someone insist their point of view is better than NeoSD's?

He has been open to suggestions but once NeoSD has addressed why things are the way they are, bringing it up again is pointless at this time.