Ah MazonMayu,
I apologize for the late reply
You asked a great question. Of ALL of the consoles out there, be it PC, PS2 Xbox 360, why did I choose the Dreamcst?
I chose the Dreamcast because of many reasons, it's almost a science....
I chose the Dreamcast originally because I believe that Sega really let the Dreamcast 'die a lonely death' as some would put it. Near the end of Sega's console endeavors, the abandoned the Dreamcast console and just let it die slowly and silently as developers pulled from the console leaving many games completely unreleased. This makes me sad to know that a great company, the second to that of Nintendo completely abandonds a great machine. Not only that but the machine was light-years ahead of its time and the company did not bother to even prove that in advertisement and many of its games. So the Dreamcast was cut short of its prime, so I feel that a certain justice needs to be served on hardware as great as the Dreamcast. Even though its 10 years old, its hardware is still acceptable even in today's standards which brings me to my second point. The consoles of today (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii (sometimes) and the PC (though not a console)) have pushed themselves so far with the graphical prowess of their machines, they overload the user with so much, the environments are unbearably huge with massive terrains cluttered with just about everything under the sun (literally), this psychologically overloads the user/gamer far too much and they become desensitized or they all together do not like the way the game looks or plays, so this mentally makes user/gamer become easily bored by gaming now a days. Have you folks not noticed that there has been an extremely sharp decline in people playing games this console generation? it's because it all LOOKS THE SAME and therefore psychologically plays the same. A good example, take a look at Unreal Tournament 3 and Oblivion. Both games are first person, though you may think they're completely different from one another, they actually are extremely similar in fashion. Their designs are both over the top and their environments are extremely cluttered with weapons that are highly detailed. Our brains see our environment and make sense of it by simplifying what we see, so we do not see everything at every given time, we do not see the rain drops falling in the distance while focusing on something else, we choose to see this if we want. In games we cannot choose this. For example while playing a certain first person shooter you have a gun, you are shooting in an environment, the lens is flaring, the environment you are in is loud (for this example, it is a city) it is raining off in the distance, there are cars wailing, lens flares from lights and stopped vehicles, the camera bobs around, the gun is shiny. All of these factors are shown to you at the same time and so the mind cannot differentiate and CHOOSE what it wants to see, it's all taken in at the same time and this is serious information overload. In earlier games such as the Dreamcast and before hand, the games were complex but still essentially simple in design, it was not too much, when games hit the dreamcast, to me it hit an apex, where the graphics were just right, the data coming it was good and the user was immersed enough in his or her environment and not overloaded. Lets take Phantasy Star Online as a great example. The game is extremely simple in design, it does not have much story, you are out on your own with other people online, the environments are rich and colorful but look at them carefully, they have hardly ANYTHING in them, their geometry is really simple and maybe they'll have a tree here or there put in place but there, even when the environment rains, its not too overbearing because the rain is not fully interactive with its environment. There is a great way of saying it...it's NOT rain but the essence of rain and so our minds get the point. Everything we do in animation and game design (or at least should do) is NOT make it as realistic as possible but give it an essence because, what is essence, it is what we has humans perceive it as and we simplify what we perceive. Lastly, the reason why I chose the Dreamcast was because for programming, research and design, it is, for the most part, unexplored territory. I mean, we could program for the Xbox 360 where there are tons of books, SDKs, tutorials and tons websites that have all of the guides to follow with everything handed to you directly, it hardly presents a challenge. With the Dreamcast, most of it is trial and error and digging in a lot of dark, unexplored places, looking through their minimal SDK, tearing apart and reverse engineering games, getting code and writing code yourself by looking at pinouts for boards like VHDL hardware programming, the satisfaction of this is far greater and if we can make a comprehensive way for others to do what we can do (if not more), then not only have we made a game, but we have made a gateway for others to make games as well and with this roadmap that we will create with our research and design, the Dreamcast will have an entirely new life, a life as a development machine for gamers all over the world! Dreamcast 2.0. With this initiative, people may buy Dreamcasts for far cheaper than XBOX 360s for development on (for students and hobbyists alike) and so the Dreamcast may find an entirely new, larger audience if this is all successful. So these are the reasons why I chose the Dreamcast over any other system. I could tell you that I spent hours playing on this console when I was younger; from lobby surfing on phantasy star to mocking Seaman and running as fast as I could on Sonic Adventure and these adventures are far from over.
As for updates on the Tahi game, I'm still doing research on online functionality and how to implement if it were to work. My art director sent me some new images of some great character designs which include the villain (Aroceans) and a newer hero with some better, more streamlined armor. I have also been talking to my web developer and the website is nearly complete, we are about 80% complete on the website, he gave me an ETA of about 1 to 2 weeks at max.
- Frank & the Ragtag Reticons
P.S I apologize if there are any grammatical errors or sentence structure errors, I was writing this on the go!
mazonemayu wrote:then again, if someone could think something like that up & make it work, having a custom made app for playing online would be the biggest contribution in independent (or homebrew) yet.
however this has got me wondering
@reticon: why of all consoles do you want to try something this big on the dreamcast? I mean if you're aiming for commercial success I assume you'd simply go for pc or ps2; so why the dc?
. Anyway, I am very sure it IS possible because, well, look at all the online Dreamcast games that were made. I would kindly ask some game developers, and maybe even SEGA for some information on online features 
. 
) but I hope you and your team know how much work it will take.
