I realize this may be a bit early, but this is something I've wanted to do for a while and I couldn't really wait until tomorrow.

This topic is basically a recap of everything Quixotic Productions has done from the beginning of Arcadia Mania (Winter 2008) to present. If you've been reading topics on this forum then you likely already know the whole story, but I thought it'd be nice to have a summary of everything in one topic for easy reference. And I'll throw in some extra tidbits of information that may surprise you.

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Q: What is Arcadia Mania, and what was it about?

A: Arcadia Mania was designed around the concept of bringing arcade games to home. The origins of this idea came from visiting an arcade at my local mall. It was a pretty fun experience, and it was a feeling I wanted to share with the RPGMaker community. It would feature an arcade with many different mini games, some bound to push the limits of the hardware, and an open world to explore as well. You could win tokens and membership cards to play new games.

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Q. What were some of the more impressive features of the game?

A. One of the more advertised features of the game was the concept of expansion packs. Years after the game was initially released, new minigames could be developed for the game. Another idea went so far as to have community-created games for it, which would put it leagues ahead of any intuitive RPGM title, allowing the community to make and upload their own games.

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Q. So, what happened? Why did the game get cancelled?

A. After the second mini-game was completed for Arcadia Mania, it was apparent the game was getting too ambitious for it's own good. Coding and debugging a complete mini-game took a lot of work. Donkey Kong took nearly a month to finish, and that project took a lot of creativity and technical know-how to make it work and work good. Putting out that level of quality creative force over a lot of minigames....it was too big a project for one guy to handle. The boots were too big to fill, and years of development wasn't looking too friendly. Eventually, the game got the axe.

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Q. Which games got completed during the production of Arcadia Mania? Were there any close-to-completion titles?

A. Two games were completed over the course of Arcadia Mania. One was Find the Needle in the Haystack (hereafter referenced as FtNitH), and the other was Donkey Kong. Since the game got the cut right after production wrapped on DK, these are the only two and no more work went into any other games.

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Q. What kind of game ideas were made for AM that never surfaced?

A. Fatal Furlong, a horse racing simulator, a cooking game, a date sim RPG, Blast Away, a bullet dodging game, and a couple others.

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Q. So what happened to the two completed titles?

A. Both FtNitH and Donkey Kong were split into their own games.

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Q. How did development proceed with revising these two games?

A. Obviously both titles had to be revised somewhat to become their own game; removing references and items that would fit in Arcadia Mania, but not in a standalone title. FtNitH's development went rather smoothly since little altering needed to be done, and was completed within two days. Donkey Kong however, saw many ideas and revisions to the source code, so it took longer to get DK finished.

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Q. Please explain more about the revisions Donkey Kong had to go through.

A. Well Donkey Kong was very intergrated into Arcadia Mania, so a direct port would be possible but rather confusing. Easily the biggest problem came in tokens, which was the currency for AM. You'd earn tokens for collecting items and beating the game, which you took out of the game to spend them on. You can see how this presents a problem, don't you?

At first a capsule system was developed to give the player something to collect and replay the game for. Like Shemnue, you could insert your tokens and get a figurine, and collect them all. But this wasn't a great idea for two big reasons, 1)It conflicted with the simple and fun gameplay, and 2)It was hard as hell to code smething like that to make it work. So it was decided to drop the capsule system in favor of points. Points don't have a value other than bragging rights, and is more in-line with what you'd expect out of an arcade game. The title did see a long, painful development, but it all paid off thankfully.

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Q. So can I assume both these games are now available?

A. YES! FtNitH is available at the Mag (released May 3rd), and Donkey Kong is available at both the Mag and Pavilion (released May 13th).

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Q. Have these games seen any improvements since they were originally concieved?

A. Yes. Since the announcement of the two games becoming seperate, many ideas were brainstormed to improve the games slighty. One inclusion that both games saw are custom-made title screens. Other minor enhancements were made to each game to improve the overall quality of each title, such as new endings and sound effects and special effects.

And oh my god, both games saw an enormous amount of playtime sweeping for bugs and glitches in the code. It's impossible to tell how many hours went into debugging. Donkey Kong was picked clean and new little things were added daily until it became a polished product.

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Q. Here's a curveball question: According to your studio news, Donkey Kong is the first game made by Quixotic Productions to be released at both the Mag and Pav. Why this game?

A. Figuring out where to send my game is always one of the last things that I stress over in game development. Keep the game on one site as an exclusive title, or spread out and try to get the most audience? Every other release has been one or the other (except a shot with Usuru DX, but let's not go there).

I decided to release Donkey Kong at both sites because I wanted to test the waters, personally. Being it's the first non-garbage game I've released there, I want to see how a new game at the Pav does for downloads. If it does well I'd love to send more games in their direction, and maybe set up a development studio there if things go really well. I'm staying hopeful!

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Q. What has this series of games taught you?

A. More than anything I've realized the need for achievable goals. Before I would set the bar too high, trying to take on the other development studios and their multi-year/card games. But I learned that I'm not patient enough to work on these kind of titles, that I get burnt out and stop working on projects because they become chores instead of being fun.

So Quixotic Productions is taking a new direction. Shorter, fun games. And games that are fun to develop as well.

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If you have any questions you'd like to ask, fire away!

Good, 'cause you don't need to compete with us. DK is a fun little sidetracking game. And after all, not everybody wants to be playing those big, lengthy games some of us are creating.

True. Competing is something I generally like to do though.

Thought up something else I forgot to mention.

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Q. Why is the Donkey Kong file I downloaded have a 'V5" at the end of it?

A. The V stands for Version, and helped me keep track of changes I made. V1 was some changes after the split, V2 had the last reamins of the capsule system, V3 removed it and was used for playtesting, V4 cleaned up bugs from V3, and V5 was the released final product and also fixed some bugs.