shadowkn55

That's the rumor floating around to where ngdev got those cases. It's not something I've confirmed for myself or read some where. Reading too much into the davidg saga gave me a headache. Somewhere mixed in there is a guy spending his 30k AF3 refund on an equally expensive Tin Tin Statue owned by someone famous. Ya know, Jon Voight LeBaron style.

The guy was legit. Can't say the same for "David Garret."

Not only that, but he was a chill dude in real life. He came to several of the socal get togethers and showed us some of the remnents of his days at SNK. One of them was the neo geo dev manual which eventually got released to the public.

A racing game would be pretty nice. Maybe it could actually take advantage of the streering wheel that Nightmare Tony posted before he passed away (RIP, buddy). Someone actually took his schematic and built it into a cab. He tested it with Thrash Rally (I think?) and the results were pretty good. edit: found it. He actually tested quite a few games. http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?244014-Neo-Geo-racing-circuit-s-games-review!!!

That game is terrible no matter how you slice it. I got it at the neo store last year for 80 some dollars. I only own it along with every other mvs title because I need it for eventual testing on my perpetually delayed fpga neo geo.

If he can pull that off, I'll take two.

May I recommend Legend of Success Joe? Your loyalty will be put to the test.

At the same time, it's hard to convince them otherwise. The new generation of programmers are probably taught Java as their first language and are told memory management is hard, pointers are hard, and objects are God's gift to programming. If they weren't shielded from the most basic concepts of computing and learned C instead, we wouldn't have this.

Based on some of the comments left on their FB page from "potential" devs, they want something powerful enough to use .NET, Java, or (insert bloated language here) otherwise it's a non-starter for them. Part of the retro charm is having a resource limited platform and programming in an environment (mostly assembly) that allows the developer to squeeze as much performance as possible out of them and still convey their vision to the gamer.

My concern is if this has any implications on anything else that needs to be crowdfunded and contains an fpga. This project has shed some light on the fpga topic to the general public but perhaps not in way that leaves a good lasting impression.

I'm pretty sure we're seeing eye on eye on this whole fiasco. I just wanted clarify, not specifically to you, for the people only seeing the dollar amounts ($2000 vs, $100k) that there is a delineation of where the "blood money" is being "spent." Somewhere between those two numbers lies passionate work of someone who loves the intricacies of video game hardware. Kinda reminds me of a salami attack (real term, btw). You take a couple thin slices hear and there over a long period of time, nobody notices. Take the entire salami at once, someone definitely notices. When you do part time R&D over the course of many years, it's far different from lumping that all together into consecutive man hours doing the same work.

It's far from being a moot point. Whether or not you want to belive it, those are the figures. There aren't very many gracious types like kevtris floating around that are willing to spend their free time and give back to the community as much as he does. There are people out there that a capable enough to do what he does but most of them aren't fascinated with the subject enough to do it pro bono. To hire a full time engineer to do the same work isn't cheap. However, I will agree with you that crowdfunding should require blood sacrifice. They are supposed to provide a platform to get a WORKING idea off the ground. Not fund pipedreams that will eventually produce something tangible. If John believed in the project enough as much as Mike did, he would have spent the time to making something that at least resembles something functional. What John seems to misunderstand is that he thinks a prototype is a pre-production model, not a hodge-podge of eval boards hooked to work in the desired fashion.

But I am so I have a slightly better idea of what goes into developing hardware projects. He's virtually valuing his time at free. He's doing this more out of curiosity than a finnancial reward. 2-3 months of dev time is nothing to scoff at even if it's just 2-3 hours a day in addition to his normal day job. I'm not saying it was right for the IGG to basically ask to fund a prototype. That should have been a bare minimum to even get the campaign started. For reference, a computer science or electrical engineering major straight out of college makes at least $50k a year. A veteran, especially one that is directly applicable to the field, easily commands $100k+. I wouldn't be surprised if the $100k cost quoted to make a prototype was equal to John's salary for the project.

To be fair, $2000 is what he personally spent not inlcuding his time to manufacture the prototype. He's been working on these cores in his spare time over the course of a decade. If you were to add up all the hours he put into it and paid the going rate for someone of his caliber, you'd probably end up with a bill well over $100k.

Development and evaluation fpga boards seldom look like the final product end up being. They are strictly used in the early phases to test code and functionality. I would find it completely backwards if they made a prototype board that was form fitting into the jaguar case before they hammered out the hdl code.