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Kirin Games Manufacture

Kirin Games Manufacture is a games company of about thirty to fifty staff members, situated in Delsauria.

History

Kirin Games Manufacture was once a team of garage programmers and artists who remained in contact via the InterNep and PANTHEON in YE 30 to make Grenade Toss and Gun Happy Man. Eventually, once they found that they shared common interests and goals. They eventually decided to meet together in Delsauria and buy some office space. For a laugh, they decided to hang onto their InterNep and PANTHEON handles, leaving the credits rolls to be very confusing.

With their new office, they made and released The Agent of Interest, which was applauded with good sales and commercial interest, meaning that they had to expand their team. They enforced the pseudonym rule with their new employees. With their egos on a high, Kirin decided to have a go at the First Person Shooter market, releasing NSS DeathWish and YSS ShiKaze, two games which are able to be played smoothly and cooperatively over a gaming service despite some of the differences.

Games Releases

  • Grenade Toss (Casual)
  • Gun Happy Man (Platformer)
  • The Agent of Interest (Adventure)

NSS DeathWish & YSS ShiKaze

NSS DeathWish and YSS ShiKaze are two first-person shooter games that share the same engine, assets and code, but share different single player campaigns. Online play is the same, with competitive balancing for Nepleslian and Yamataian power armours. When the game's single player campaign is finished, a co-operative mode which requires one user to be playing NSS Deathwish and another to be playing YSS ShiKaze will appear, and it will tie up the storyline. This feature was regarded as interesting and polarizing for its requirement that two people playing games which have fundamentally different experiences are tied together.

As a multiplayer game, Deathmatch mode is generally regarded as fun and refreshing by reviewers, who lauded the competitive balance and fast network code.

Expansions: LSDF Cernobog & SNS Jun'la, ISC Badassery

The LSDF Cernobog (Černobog) & SNS Jun'la expansion to the series adds Lorath military equipment and a new single-player campaign that takes the war against the NMX in a different direction, now getting to a desperate knife-edge. The weapons and armours for all sides have been rebalanced to accommodate for each other's differences and to facilitate the new play styles that would come with the new content.

It took the Kirin team a year to work on the new expansion, given that they had an engine to work with. While the time taken made some gamers lose faith in the company for the delays. Their fears were allayed with the release of the game.

The ISC Badassery Pack is a cosmetics and gameplay pack that was released a couple of months after the Delsauria Incident occurred. Gamers could choose how much they wanted to pay for the cosmetics, and the proceeds would be donated to the charity of the gamer's choice. At least half a million KS was raised by gamers. Curiously, a large amount was donated to a place called the Orange Street Orphanage.

The pack itself contains a “No-Armour” mode for each of the selectable Yamataian, Nepleslian, and Lorath armours, revealing their pilots' looks while retaining their weapons and combat capabilities, and adding a new “Independent” faction that consisted of no-armour only 'armour' choices based upon personalities in the ISC Phoenix - Volume 2, particularly that of Luca Pavone.

Playable Armours

Each power armour represented in this game does not necessarily reflect their real-world counterparts for the sake of game balance.

Yamataian Nepleslian Lorath Independent
Mindy (Flight) Hostile (Assault) Human-Sized Bringer of Thunder (Area Denial) 'Captain Phoenix' Outfit (Joke Character)1)
Daisy (Melee Combat) Aggressor (Fire Support) SDI-M3 Hunter (Durable) Impulse Powered Armour (Quicker Resupplies)
Kylie (Anti-Air) VOID (Portable Shields) Tenshi No Yoru (Survivability)
Sylph (Stealth) NIGHT (Sniper)

The Game of Skill

A very ambitious, if not pet project for the Kirin Games Manufacture crew. They have set out to create an augmented reality game where the object is to defend your house - that is, the house you live, breathe, eat and sleep in, or possibly your entire neighbourhood or city block from a holographic invasion of one's mind's deepest fears by fighting them with one's imagination, creativity, rage and defiance.

So far, tests are being conducted to make the tangible holographic technology feasible for widespread use and distribution with reports going well, with the aid of PANTHEON to handle the network traffic. However, one of the core problems lied in coming up with procedural generation algorithms for all of the items, otherwise the size of the game would be immense. They enlisted the help of Freespacer codebashers from Nepleslia to help tackle the problem.

They had a breakthrough in YE34 with this pet project with the rumours that there was a platform that could be powerful enough to support the traffic and code generated, as well as being able to handle all of the user input to create the game's assets for a session, as well as generate new ones on the fly. Kirin Games Manufacture is currently trying to get in contact with Tamahagane Corporation to work out a publishing deal.

After getting the publishing deal sorted and Tamahagane to work with them by supplying proper development kits and a couple more months of feverish polishing and integration, it was then released to the public, and it was a joyous occasion for the team. They had a massive sale on all of their products at the time of release, and made a generous sum, in addition to critical praise from the public.

Galaxy Adventure 3

Rumours have been surfacing that Kaidan Telecommunications' third instalment in the popular Galaxy Adventure series is being outsourced and developed by Kirin Games Manufacture. Eventually, screenshots were released to confirm the rumours and send most of the gaming community into a spiral of speculation. The game has promised to use a completely new engine and mechanic system, but still allowing you to import your previous save.

The game came to light in YE34 to good critical success, save for the last five minutes of the game, where it is alleged that Kaidan Telecommunications forced the game on a tight schedule. Kirin Games Manufacture was resentful for Kaidan Telecommunications' conduct, and took it upon themselves to rectify the the ending a couple of months after release.

Distribution

Kirin Games Manufacture releases its games directly to its websites on the InterNep and PANTHEON systems, for a reasonable 40 KS a Game. Once purchased, the games are modifiable, and only need to be 'activated' online only once, and can be played on closed LAN networks. Kirin Games Manufacture does not have a strong view against software piracy, and does not make use of any clunky digital restrictions, since they've found that they more often than not mar the experience.

Kirin Games are available on these network services, and players on different networks can connect to each other across different networks, as demonstrated in NSS DeathWish & YSS ShiKaze. They seem open to adding more services if players make enough requests:

Employee Structure

These are permanent employees at the company. The number increases when they need additional help, such as voice actors, research assistants and advisers.

Admin Name Tech Name Design Name Art Name
CEO Mr. Ed Lead Programmer Whomp Creative Director Jonesy Lead 3D Artist B.B.
Manager Pecker Lead Programmer Lars Mechanic Designer Shotgun Lead 2D Artist J.J.
Manager Klubb AI Programmer Death Plus Interface Design Mickey 3D Artist Karrenda
Marketing AAA Engine Programmer Goren UI/HUD Design Joe the Cactus 3D Artist Misho
Accounts Ms. Nesbitt Programmer Anomaly Detective Level Design Ninja Rope Modeller Amelia
Publishing Cue-cum-bur Programmer Marky Level Design Fireman Rigger Wallace
Advertising Donny Level Programmer Boone Tester Four-Ecks Skinner Mouse
Advertising Butcher Prototyper Moloch Tester Carl Texture Artist Busman
Localisation Whippy Prototyper Marduk Tester Victor 2D Artist Arke
Casting Narp Animator Cloud

Real Names

For the relative anonymity that is provided by using Pseudonyms, Kirin Games Manufacture does not go out of their way to prevent users from searching for the employee's real names. The following names are known, but unconfirmed:

  • Anomaly Detective - Miranda Kelly
  • B.B. - Barry Blackowitz Bosch
  • Cue-Cum-Bur - Quentin Roberts
  • Death Plus - Makotsu Akane
  • Donny - Daniel Orson
  • Jonesy - Harry Jones
  • Ninja Rope - Tamashi Kaori
  • Whomp - Lars Breneke
1)
does not show up on Radar

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corp/kirin_games_manufacture.txt · Last modified: 2023/12/20 18:20 by 127.0.0.1