The Storied Sword & Dream Disc '24
by Ross Kilgariff - 2025-01-18 - 12:28pm
We've been very busy at Orc Face HQ!
Aside from the usual HarleQuest! hustle, this month we helped organise and run the Dream Disc '24 game jam and published our first game, The Storied Sword!
Working with Bite the Chili Productions and Raft Labs Interactive was a pleasure and we'd happily join forces again for another game release down the line.
Manufacturing our first physical Dreamcast game was a real learning experience which you can read about in our previous post.
The process of making a valid DDP image to send to a replication plant ended up taking a lot of time and effort involving buying a license for proprietary software from 20 years ago, writing custom software to convert a Dreamcast .CDI to .DDP using standards that you can only order via post, and procuring two distinct disc drives - one that supports writing DDP test images in the old software and one that supports dumping the raw data from the disc for final validation.
After tackling each challenge as it came up, we're now well-positioned to make pressed physical Dreamcast games with a guarantee that they'll work on the console when they arrive - a pretty big risk with any other method.
Additional to our learnings from disc manufacturing, having to deal with CMYK colour profiles and colour-calibrating our displays has actually allowed us to get very good colour reproduction in physical print media.
One of the more challenging aspects was trying to find a nearby CD-ROM manufacturing plant that is still operational in 2024/25. Many have shut down over the last few years, and many are just small businesses with off-the-shelf CD-R duplicators rather than actual plants that use glass masters and injection moulding.
Of all the plants in the EU we contacted, only one was still operational, reasonably priced and had good customer service. That was Optimal Media via SixtySix Productions. Once we submitted our final files and gave the go-ahead we received the discs after only 3 weeks.
You might ask "Why would you share your supplier? Aren't you running a business? People could just go directly to them and cut you out of the picture!"
The reason we're happy to share is that we're not just a middle man. We port/naturalise games to the Dreamcast while handling quality assurance, print media design, physical production, selling and marketing.
Our rates are much lower than alternative publishers specifically because we don't want to be another middle man. We believe developers are bringing the majority of the value with their games and that they should be paid fairly for their work. This is the key to keeping the platform alive long-term.
Speaking of long-term plans to support the Dreamcast scene...
Last year we decided to help bring more games and interest to the platform via Dream Disc '24, a game jam and friendly competition where developers submit their latest Dreamcast creations. The top 10 software submissions are then added to a compilation CD which we manufacture and send out to anyone who wants one for the cost of shipping. The top 3 submissions are awarded a cash prize from a donation pool.
Our first time running this has been a blast! We received 24 submissions from developers and over $1000 donated to the prize pool. We will proceed with the judging period around the middle of February, then we can get to work producing the physical discs and sending them out to everyone!
Thanks for reading. Until next time :)