dev diary: all the BET console version stuff i couldn't talk about until now

...long title, but there's really not that much to share. mainly i wanted to show off the save icon i made for playstation (pictured above). it's a reference to disgaea 2's iconic save icon with rozalin :)

BAD END THEATER is the second game i've been able to get onto consoles (syrup and the ultimate sweet being the first!) so i wanted to share what it's like getting little indie visual novels onto systems that make it feel like a REAL game....... whatever that means. (it was a real game before now, i think.)

you basically NEED a publisher

because i work with ren'py (and rpgmaker), i'm not able to port my games to console on my own. I WISH... I WAS SMART ENOUGH.... because it would be quicker to self-publish them. i have some pals who have self-published games on nintendo switch at least, and while they said the process itself was miserable, i'm really jealous of them for being able to just handle it all on their own!!! i wish that was me!!!!! i guess it could be me if i used unity or gamemaker, but i wanna use ren'py.......... sigh!!!

pytom (the lead dev of ren'py) has said that he doesn't want to work on console port stuff because it would only be relevant to a relatively small number of developers, and it'd contain proprietary code anyway which doesn't fit with ren'py being open source... as far as i remember, anyway. i read this once and went "yeah sounds fair" and didn't think about it again, so maybe i'm wrong and there were different reasons. but basically, i would have to figure out how to port it myself, or hire someone to do it for me...

...which is why i went with publishers that have ported ren'py games before. for syrup it was ratalaika, which i had a good experience with! they're a smaller company and they don't really have post-launch support because they're focused on releasing new titles rather than updating older ones... so for BET i wanted to go with a bigger company, where i was hoping for more flexibility on the back end and a higher marketing budget.

that's what brought me serenity forge, the DDLC guys haha. i reached out to them in 2022, but due to various circumstances, they weren't able to work on the game. i was at a low point that year, so i decided if i couldn't go with them then i'd just forget about it... a few other publishers reached out to cash in on BET's popularity but they hadn't proven they can port a ren'py game so i just ignored them lol. i didn't want the game to get trapped in an exclusivity contract with a publisher that couldn't follow through on their promises, since i'd heard of that happening to another dev before...

anyway, 2 years later, SF reached out to me again! they hadn't forgotten about BET, and the stars had aligned to try to make it happen once more... wahhh! in the years up to that point i read a lot of comments like "i wish this game was on switch", and all i could do was sigh... but once the plans came through i could finally be like "HEH, JUST YOU WAIT"... and now that it got announced right after switch 2 came out, people just ask me if it's gonna be on switch 2 instead. gah!!!!!! i can never win (i still consider this a win)

the actual porting process

it's... a lot of waiting. i would say MOSTLY waiting. it turns out SF's porting process is handled by another studio, so they're just like coordinating everything and uploading things to the platforms' backend service-whatever-thingies... BET already had full gamepad support for its original steam release, so i think i only had to add different button art for like, the ps5's option button or something. small, boring stuff like that.

i had to make achievement/trophy icons and other system-side art assets for xbox and playstation, but those were just based on the steam achievement art... i think the xbox ones are 1920x1080 for some reason? so i went through and added the curtains to the side of all of them (since they're normally square). this kind of work is so tedious... but i don't mind it! steam asks for more art assets than any of the platforms do (im pretty sure nintendo only wants the game icon and screenshots lmao) so it wasn't any more annoying than prepping a steam release.

one nice thing we did was some localization QA! we did an editing pass on some of the "major" languages, and a brand new japanese translation! i actually already added that one to the mobile version, but i've yet to update it on steam... i will finally be syncing them up next month...... i could've done it before but ahhh that takes too much brain power and i was doing more fun things anyway like building my website lol...

i also... gh...! i wanted to make the console version special in some way. i wanted it to be a little more than just the same exact game on a new system, but it had so many translations that it was impossible to add more story content, and i felt like the game was already complete and didn't need more story anyway. i didn't want to write/draw something just for the sake of it... so i thought... i thought it'd be nice to try to add voice acting. i wanted to try, but the plans fell through. i realized that it wasn't a good fit for the game after all, and that i was only really pursuing it because i'd never included VO for my games before and this felt like my one chance to really go for it. ALAS... it wasn't meant to be. BET remains unvoiced... so you can read it out loud with your friends instead.

anyway... after many delays, the final build was submitted and approved. i think for nintendo the patches take a few weeks (ask deltarune fans lol), so that's the main blocker... and then you pick your release day or release window or whatever the heck... and you can't release games in november/december because [weird marketing excuses]... so much bureaucracy!!!!!!!! everyone should just get the game on itchio instead!!!!!!!!! no, but... i'm happy we got here. please have a successful release, BET console...

hey, is console really worth it?

idk, i might cut this section for the future public version of this post but... i think it's a valid question. is this all worth it?!?!??

maybe it's my mistake writing this while i'm in a bit of a bummer mood, but i figured i'd be honest about my feelings. i've been wondering if nostalgia is the main reason that consoles are held on a bit of a pedestal in my mind... it's that "real game" thing i alluded to at the top. these are the platforms where the REAL games are. but it's not even true anymore... everything gets steam releases too nowadays... and what makes an off-steam pc game lesser? it's not! and mobile games oh god, those are just slot machines full of ads, no real games to be found there, right... (sarcasm)

i think of it like this... before syrup's console version, i wasn't making much money on my games at all. selling it on there gave me a big influx of cash, which i used to pay off my student loans (yay!). that was worth it. when i released BET on steam, it happened to go viral and did even better than syrup. that was worth it. doing a console version of BET is like... well for one, people have asked for it. it's at least worth it to do things that fans ask for... and i'm sure it'll make good money. the money is beside the point now, because i already have enough... i'm not here to endlessly pursue profits, i'm here to make imaginary gay people kiss.

so like, okay... with consoles, it feels like you're reaching a wider audience... and that's something in my mind that i've fallen back on with BET, that it's good if the game reaches more people. always good to have more gay console games. but if you want a wider audience... aren't mobile games kinda the way? everyone has a phone, not everyone has a gaming computer or console... 2 of my games have over a million downloads on google play. these are people that just enjoy them without really talking about them... they just go about their lives and keep it in their hearts, i imagine. isn't that enough...?

i don't know... i guess in the end, i will continue to try to do console releases at least for the games that makes sense to put on console. like, there's no universe where i don't try to put treat on switch (2) for example. so maybe i'm overthinking this for no reason... i think mostly i just don't want to do things automatically, thinking like "well this is what other devs do" without considering my actual goals in the process.

but yknow... if i could port ren'py games myself... we'd have starry flowers on switch in a matter of months HEHEHEH...... that would be worth it..........

anyway, sorry for the ramble in the end!!! now that i'm nearing the finish line with this BET stuff, my brain is chewing on it all, trying to decide if it's good to keep spending my time on stuff like this... i don't know if it is! but i guess i'll look very silly in retrospect if BET console makes a bajillion dollars, then it'd feel completely unreasonable to say it wasn't worth it.

thanks for reading <3