Monday, August 1, 2011

Clearing Up August 19 Misconceptions

If you've participated in the effort to reinstate Mega Man Legends 3, you've no doubt heard of some sort of ominous event taking place on August 19. Misinformation surrounding the date has caused a flurry of rumors and misconceptions, eliciting both excitement and fear throughout many circles. Before things get really out of hand, I figured it'd be ideal to dispel the confusion right here and now.

Contrary to popular belief, 8/19 is not the day Capcom plans on terminating the Legends 3 source code. Keiji Inafune is not returning to Capcom, and no one's getting fired. Nope, nope, nope. In actuality, August 19's significant is rooted in the Japanese Devroom. On that day, at approximately 12:00PM, the Japan's Devroom and developer blog will officially shut down. What you see here will be no more in a matter of weeks.

Question is, will the North American Devroom be affected on 8/19 as well, or suffer a similar fate at a later date? Hard to call. As noted by Gregaman a few weeks back, the "North American Developer Room and its forums will remain open indefinitely." However, there is a noteworthy contradiction in a later statement: "The Dev Room will remain open in a limited capacity, so you can PM those people now and in the future. Gregaman has yet to clarify these statements.

If the North American Devroom was closing, I believe we would have been given a specific endgame date. That news could be forthcoming, mind you, but right now I seriously doubt it. In comparison to the Japanese Devroom, Unity's version has amassed quite the following, consisting of some 11,000 users. The forums are bustling with activity, so I see no legitimate reason to shut anything down.

In any case, I suggest anyone interested should make an effort to backup Devroom content For archival purposes. This includes posts, images, and other misc. assets. It'll take some time, but you should probably pace yourself to get the job done by 8/19 the latest just in case. Better to be safe then sorry.

27 comments:

  1. Then again, we didn't foresee any valid reason to dump the game like a dead hooker. But lookit what happened anyways?

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  2. why would anyone say that the source code would be deleted? game developers and publishers rarely ever delete source code. they already spent money on it and keep it for a variety of reasons. it wont remain on the hard drives on their computers, but they will put it on permanent storage medium and keep it in an archive room or something like that.

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  3. Thanks for clearing that up, I had heard the August 19th rumors, but had never actually done any research to determine what it was all about. All I had to say on the matter is, "If they really do wipe everything to do with the project on that day, that will also be the last day I care about what they do". Or something along those lines.

    Even so, I do see the 19th is the last possible day Capcom would change their minds on this, since that would cut off Capcom's communications with the Japanese fans at that point.

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  4. "I see know ('no'?) legitimate reason to shut anything down."

    Same for the game itself...

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  5. *sigh* Stupid Capcom.

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  6. The JP Devroom closing would rule out any "if X number of people join the Devroom, the project will restart" rumours, I think...

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  7. Sad to see support dying down but if this is the "end-all" deadline, then this could spell doom for the effort. I hope it won't come to that.

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  8. Anonymous said...
    "*sigh* Stupid Capcom."

    That's the true reason the game got cancelled. Either that or "crazy Capcom".

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  9. @RADIX:

    Unfortunately, even that rumor is just that, a rumor. I hate to say it, but what Seth said (Was it Seth?) about the Devroom member numbers having everything to do with it may have been in regards to the past. He never said it still could change things. That said, I'll keep up my part until the bitter end. Never before have I felt so passionate about a game, so I'm not going to just walk away from this one.

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  10. I just wanna put this out there, we have confirmation that Crecente is still at work on the Legends article. The delay is due to lack of a requested comment from Capcom. Check his twitter for the response.

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  11. "If the North American Devroom was closing, I believe we would have been given a specific endgame date."

    Just like if they were canceling Legends 3 they wouldn't keep updating with things like the Brightbat mascot contest? Face the music it's over guys.

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  12. No more Megaman/Rockman ?

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  13. Wow, anon. How did you arrive at that conclusion?

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  14. this just in: looks like capcom is making another bad decision. coming in 2012: yet ANOTHER version of street fighter 4:

    http://kotaku.com/5826480/2012-will-get-a-new-super-street-fighter-iv-version

    legends never die, but capcom never learns.

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  15. Doesn't this mean that Capcom has no plans on collaborating with the fans anymore as well? I thought the Devroom wasn't just for Legends 3, but also for maybe future titles as well.

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  16. Capcom has no plans of making quality games anymore, period. ^^

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  17. Funny you should mention archiving the Devroom, Protodude. I was just doing that yesterday with the first 11 pages of the general blog posts. Saving images and making PDFs out of every single blog post, and saving any videos I come across as well.

    And my god, man. It really made me a believer of the whole fan-and-professional-game-development experiment. I can't believe the awesome stuff that fans came up with in the Boss event.

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  18. I actually spent a few days saving every post posted on the English devblog a little while ago. This includes full resolution pictures, YouTube videos, and special pages (heroine design pages, Reaverbot Revival pages, 3D model viewers, etc.).

    I was planning on creating an archive site for it all if/when the original disappears off the face of the internet. I suppose I'll go for the Japanese blog next. Though I've never really worked on a website before so I'm a little nervous about it.

    However, there are already a couple images on the English blog that have disappeared. They were hosted on a site called "aww-kittah-aww.com" which went offline months ago. They were posted on the following two pages:

    http://www.capcom-unity.com/devroom/blog/2010/10/18/more_details_from_new_york_comic_con!

    http://www.capcom-unity.com/devroom/blog/2010/10/29/new_heroine_design_winner_with_results!

    If anybody has those pictures, it would be greatly appreciated if you can post them. My email is rabid_rodent2001[at]yahoo.com (though I only check it maybe once a week since it's basically my junk account now).

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  19. NOOOOOOOO!http://kotaku.com/5826723/capcom-quashes-hopes-of-mega-man-legends-3s-return

    :'(

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  20. I knew things were gonna get worse before they got better...

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  21. Ten bucks says you all are still going to blindly continue your campaigns despite the fact you now KNOW they will accomplish nothing.

    Just a whole lot of sound and fury really.

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  22. >multi-step approval process
    >again

    OOOOOH, THIS IS JUICY. SOMEBODY LEAK THIS NUGGET. I'M DYING TO FIND OUT.

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  23. @anons: Here's an editorial posted by Heat Man from TMMN:
    "While certainly a letdown, I would not personally expect a change in procedure anytime soon. And truthfully, this is about the same as any comment would sound concerning any Capcom game that they have not formally announced. They will say they have no plans up until whenever and if ever they decide to announce its revival.

    All in all, this should just give you cause to fight even harder. Everyone needs to realize that this movement wouldn’t succeed overnight. We’re very well going to have to rally this game for months, maybe years to come, and I know it can be terribly difficult to keep up momentum and motivation for such a long time. The moment motivation breaks is when Legends 3 is truly lost. And even if Capcom were to turn around on their decision tomorrow, it would still take time to reorganize the staff and resources to pick things up again (at this point the staff have certainly been assigned other projects). Patience is a most needed virtue.

    I’m not going to paint some fantasy scene of success. But Capcom is a business as any other, and at some point they have to answer to their customers (many people think that businesses are about making money, but they are really about making customers). So if you want Legends 3 that much, you will just have to keep supporting it. The means are out there, be active and spread the word. That’s all we have."

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  24. http://liveweb.archive.org/http://blog.daletto.net/dash3/

    Gotta save it all with Wayback Machine while possible!

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  25. Yikes! The English versions of the Rocket Development Progress, the 3D model viewers, and the Reaverbot pages are stored in the Japanese site. Will they be lost? How can one save the 3D viewers?

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  26. ^
    Simply rip the textures from the sites code. The models can easily be reconstructed afterwards.

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