Blog for Ed Farias at GarageGames.com

iRetroGames.com Goes Live

Ed Farias — 2006-05-08T22:46:00+00:00

Some of you might have remembered me from my last thread about finding games designed for the home arcade market.

Well the site is finished, just a few consmetic changes to the navigation bar. I'm looking for some games to start and fill out the main page a bit.

What I am asking is if you have a game that would fit this platform well, please let me know. As long as the keys can be reconfigured, I'd like to offer it on the site.

I plan on having icons for each game stating whether they are "Out of the box" arcade cabinet ready, or if they require some configuration. If they require configuration, instructions will be posted.

Let me know if you have a game that might fit this profile. Even if you are selling it from another site like Arcadetown. I'd be more than happy to become an affiliate of such sites to offer the game.

This is mainly to save me some time of downloading hundreds of games to find one that will work for this market .

Thanks again, the webstore is http://www.iretrogames.com but developers info site is still http://www.aiabgames.com

I'm hoping for a grand opening in the next few weeks.

Thanks for reading.

AIABGames.com Goes Live

Ed Farias — 2006-03-29T20:06:14+00:00

Arcade-In-A-Box Game's website is now live for developers to start registering.

www.aiabgames.com

(If you want to see a demo of the dev portal, just log in as ArcadEd/reztro)
(If you want to see the store visit www.aiabgames.com/cre it's just not active yet, but there are few demo products to show)

Here is a copy and paste of our current FAQ, hopefully it will answer some questions. If not, I'll be checking back here very often to help address any questions.

What is AIAB Games?

AIAB Games is a division of Arcade-In-A-Box, LLC. We are dedicated to finding talented independent game developers that have a desire to create arcade style games, and give them an outlet to sell their games. Our sole business is not to make profits off selling software. Our main business is manufacturing high quality arcade controllers and consoles. However, we do see opportunity to utilize these great games to help sell our units, while promoting your games in return. It?s a win both sides.

What do I need to do to make my games available at AIAB Games?

First, you will want to download the AIAB Technical Specifications Sheet. This document will give you a good idea of how to program games for this platform. If it is something you are interested in, then register for an account here. There are no setup fees, so registration is free. Once you have registered you can then login to the developer area. From there you can add games to the database, edit games, view stats, etc.

What does AIAB Game get out of this?

AIAB Games takes a 12% percent commission from each sale (10% +2% for credit card processing if a credit card is used.). The rest of the money you sell the game for is yours. The only exception to that is if you want to be paid via paypal, there is a small funds transfer fee. We make payments the 1st of every month.

What is the process of adding a game?

Once you have a final version of your game, login to your AIAB Games account to get to the Developer Portal. From their you will click the add game button and fill out the information. Once that is complete, you will get an email with the information to an ftp site to upload your game too. At this point, AIAB will test the game on an arcade system to make sure 1. It?s compatible and 2. There are no game killing bugs. Once 1 and 2 are cleared, the game is packaged in 3 ways. 1. Arcade Cabinet (MAME Compliant), 2. Arcade-In-A-Box, and 3. PC Compliant. Then it?s added to the store for download.

How good does my game have to be?

Over the years of playing video games, we have learned one thing; everyone has a different taste in what is fun. With that said, we will not judge your game. As long as it meets the technical requirements and is not buggy, it will be added to the store. Now whether it sells may determine how good it is. But, it won?t cost you anything to have it in our store. However, we do reserve the rights to remove any game from the store that is not selling if we become short of space

After registering you will have access to the Developer Portal. Hopefully we can build a nice downloads section to help other developers with their projects.

I hope to open the store May 1st, but if we have enough games before then I'll open it earlier. It would be great to have at least 5 games available when the store opens.

Thanks again for all the hard work you put into your games.

New Website Launched

Ed Farias — 2006-03-15T20:03:22+00:00

Arcade-In-A-Box, LLC.

We have launched our new website. We are still working on getting the new forums and online store online, but that should happen within the next few days. More pictures will also be added to the gallery over the next week or so.

We will, most likely, be launching a seperate site to handle the software side of the business. This is where your games will be made available, if you choose to port your games over to the arcade control setup.

The latest version of the tech sheet can be found here
www.arcadeinabox.com/stuff/aiabtechsheet.doc

I have a growing list of developers in a seperate contact list that I email with updates. If you would like to be included on this list just send me an email at ed.farias@arcadeinabox.com

Things are moving along quickly and we are really looking forward to a long partnership with all of you great independent developers.

Thanks,

Ed Farias, Owner
www.arcadeinabox.com

Webstore Development has begun

Ed Farias — 2006-02-17T22:18:19+00:00

For those of you that say my last blog you know that I am reaching out to a few communities about making some slight changes to their already great games to make them more arcade cabinet friendly.

Backend development has begun on my site to implement a store that will be a bit unique. (And this is not the current website you are seeing, that site is old looking and a new one is being designed by a professional as we speak).

Remember, this will be setup specifically for games designed to run on arcade style setups. I'll link a tech sheet to the bottom of this blog that you can download. It will give you a lot of information about what the system can and can't do.

The plan right now is as follows.

Developers will be able to create an account. From their admin page they can upload games, set pricing, and manage their tech support inquiries. The admin page will also include stat tracking so they know exactly how many times their games were viewed and purchased.

When you upload your game there will be some options like Game Type, Controllers used, 1p or 2p etc. Plus a little section for you to write a nice summary about your game.

Your games will not be available right after uploading them. They will be briefly tested on a working arcade cabinet, and setup with a custom install that is compatible with the system.

The site owner (me) will then send payments via paypal at the end of each Month to each individual developer. I can mail checks as well.

I chose to do it this way for a few reasons. 1. You know exactly how well your game is doing, sales wise. and 2. You know I didn't just buy copy from you and installing on every arcade box I sell. 3. Having the money sent directly from paypal was a good idea, except if more that one game was purchased from seperate developers it gets pretty messy.

I want to support the indie community as much as I can. I am not looking to make money off your hard work. With that said, a small fee (probably a dollar or two) per sale will go to me for server maintenance and bandwidth. If that fee turns out to be more than needed, then we will do stuff to get more people to the site via advertising, contests, etc.

I have a few thoughts and questions though, as I am sure all of you do.

Are you comfortable with a plan like this? If not, why not?

How do you currently restrict piracy with your games? I have a few options I am thinking of, but just
wanted to get your thoughts first as some of you might have a great way of doing it already.

Is there any other feature you would like to see?

Thanks again, and here is the above mentioned tech sheet.
www.arcadeinabox.com/games/aiabtechsheet.doc

One side note, I am not looking for exclusive rights to games. Just creating another vehicle to help them sell.

Arcade Console Looking for Games.

Ed Farias — 2006-02-16T06:10:53+00:00

Well this is my first post in this blog and I just wanted to say how excited I am to have the opportunity to work with many of the great developers here.

My plan is to get a good list of games that would work well with an Arcade style control set, and would bring that arcade feel back most of us had in our youth.

We are not really in the business of buying or producing games, at least not yet. What I want to try and do is get more of these great game out there, and the only way I know how is using my Arcade Boxes :). Below are a few simple guidelines that are important to the success of a game in this type of setup.

First, the layout of the controller: (www.arcadeinabox.com/paul1.jpg this is an example of common arcade control panel layout)
1 and 2 player 8 way joysticks (non analog).
6 buttons per player
1 and 2 player start buttons
1 and 2 player coin in buttons
ESC button to exit game and return to the game list.
3" Arcade Style Trackball with 3 mouse buttons (LMB, MMB, and RMB)
Arcade Spinner.
All of these parts come from Happ Controls, the leader in arcade quality controls and buttons.

The buttons interface to the computer with a keyboard interface board. These boards mimic keyboard presses, but at a much with a higher throughput and no chance of ghosting. The standard button layout is as follows

Player 1 Joystick uses UP, DOWN, LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys for directions.
Buttons 1-6 uses Left Control, Left Alt, Space, Left Shift, Z, X (In that order 1-6)
1p Start uses 1 (normal keyboard 1, not numpad)
1p coin in uses 5 (normal keybard 5, not numpad)
Player 2 Joystick uses - R (up), F (down), G (right), D (left) for direction
Buttons 1-6 uses A, S, Q, W, I, and K (in that order 1-6)
2p Start uses 2 (normal keyboard, not numpad)
2p Coin in uses 6 (normal keyboard, not numpad)
ESC is used to exit the game.

One big draw of the Arcade-in-a-Box is the ability to plug the box into any TV via Composite or S-Video, although VGA is also an option, but we want to work with the lowest common denominator here. 640x480 is the best with those TV connections, although 800x600 will work pretty good as well. The game should be locked into one resolution.

All options screens should be removed as the game should just start right up. Having the user insert coins would be a great addition, but not needed at all. Just helps add to that arcade feel.

You know all the buttons (keypresses) you have to work with, so you could do anything you like. If you want the player to have the ability to save, you could have a quick save on one button and quick load on another Just remember, that the whole purpose of an arcade style game, is there is no keyboard hooked up except for initial configuration.

I am also looking for ideas on designing a way, in windows, to make these game available via download from the game menu itself. Sort of like Xbox Live Arcade, any ideas or help with that would be much appreciated.

I don't want to put out the impression that I am a large company, that simply isn't true. I do the construction of all the boxes myself (with the help of computerized routers). I've been doing custom arcade cabinets and boxes for about 5 years now.

I take great pride in my arcade boxes.

Thanks for reading all of that :).

Ed