For the past two months or so, a number of coders and designers from the MacScene community have been working on a project. The working title of the project is 'Vigi', and the goal of this thread is to introduce the project to the public over the next couple of months. Here are a few things we wanted to tell the community right off the bat:

1. Many of the discussions in this forums were started specifically by members of the Vigi team while we were researching the possibility of doing the project.
2. We hate the name Vigi, and assure you the final project will have a much better name.
3. On January 1st, 2011 the project will go live. Although members of MacScene and our affiliates may have access to the project, website, and applications before then.
4. Vigi is a project which we hope will help the classic gaming community.
5. Vigi is not something that has been done before.

I will try to keep this thread up-to-date with more information as it becomes available.

Tantalising! Look forward to hearing more!

Oh cool, you picked the castle logo - that was one of my favourites.

I thought you weren't going to announce it for another month or two. What changed?

A quick note for everyone else: I've been keeping my eye on this project, and it will be something special when it's done.

Being involved myself, its turning out to be something pretty special...you might think 'oh another video game project' but, trust me... there are some aspects to it that will make you smile... happily.

mossy_11 wrote:


The biggest change has been the growing momentum of the project. I've been overwhelmed by the response I've gotten from emulator authors, web admins, media center developers, designers, coders, news sites, etc. For instance, at the beginning of the project, I hadn't actually related the project much to MacScene, but after a bit of brain storming with people involved we realized that this project (and it's related tools) has the potential to revolutionize even a site like MacScene.

We also noticed that our timeline requires quite a bit of community involvement, and I hope to rely on the MacScene community for this. The project began as a very abstract idea; a new way of doing something. Fundamentally it's quite simple, and just combines two very obvious technologies already in existence. But once we started investigating the implications of the project, we realized that it was a game changer (hint).

And finally, we are actually ahead of schedule. My usual hesitation to announcing a project is the possibility of failure and delay. Failure is not an option (we have all already made significant sacrifices of both time and money). And the threat of delay, while possible, seems to be distant. While lacking in organization and overall features, I currently have a beta version running on my local system which is already a functioning prototype.

So while this thread serves as a teaser for the community, it will also be a place for recruitment and brainstorming. I plan on announcing the name of the project on November 1st, along with a teaser page. The nature and purpose of the site will be revealed over the course of November, and a beta should be opened up December 1st for an initial group of users, testers, content submitters, admins, creators, demi-gods, and mobys.

I am very interested in the project. As mainly a classic gamer myself, this intrigues me greatly. If there is anything you need to help move the project along, I may be able to help. Though I have no idea what exactly your idea is, I may not be able to help if it requires coding. I will patiently wait.

Niemann wrote:


Suddenly I'm even more sad that I don't have much time at the moment to check the forums more often. Count me intrigued at the very least, and I'm looking forward to whatever your creative bunch of busy people is preparing.



I think Microsoft really softened the terminology with their banana software. IIRC a beta is pretty close to release, while an alpha should be feature complete. So your prototype is actually pre-alpha.
Yeah, I know I'm nitpicking as usual (and I'm definitely not trying to offend you personally, Ryan), but calling a prototype with lacking features a beta somewhat amuses me



I wonder which category I might fit into. Probably pedantic, seldom-showing guest.

M.I.K.e wrote:

Perhaps he could have called it a beta of a prototype

In all seriousness, the term does seem to be losing meaning, with some projects being released as "open beta" when by traditional terms they are actually at alpha or pre-alpha, and others that are technically at 1.0 (final) -- presumably so that people will forgive them for any design flaws that slip through the actual beta phase. (Or maybe not. Without access behind-the-scenes I can only guess what's going on with the shadier-looking "open betas.")


User. Definitely sounds like user.

Ryan refers to the erm backend portion being Beta ... said too much?
It'll be fun for the next tease I think...if Ryan doesnt go nuts over my obsession to visual detail over the next few weeks.

We'll probably need to discuss how to open it up for testing later on...
Personally I don't want anyone at MacScene to feel excluded from 'it' and the enthusiasm here for video games and the energy people have will certainly be needed for this new 'thing' to be the best it can.

*bite tongue, bite tongue...keep schtum *

M.I.K.e wrote:

Understandable. In the traditional computer science definition, we are a couple months away from 'beta' status. For web projects I usually follow the stages proof-of-concept, beta development, feature complete, release candidate, and launch. Although even this is followed very loosely. For web-development I hesitate greatly to use the term 'feature complete', because I've never met a client who ever accepts a project as 'feature complete'.

With that said, I could make the argument that the actual project is in a 'beta' stage as Mucx mentioned. The item 'lacking organization and overall features' is one of the handful of satellite projects we are developing to implement and use the project. As a web-developer myself, it would probably be pretty obvious at this time, that the satellite project is a web interface of some sort for the project.

Whether or not I am part of this project you may never know, but my two cents.

I'd say its not Microsoft, but rather Google that made the term beta meaningless. Feature complete is impossible for a website as it needs to change dynamically to stay relevant. Google Mail is a primary example of this.

mossy_11 wrote:


Damn, I was fishing for demi-god... Serves me right that I get demoted to user

Mucx wrote:


Ah, now it makes more sense.

Niemann wrote:


Yeah, it seems I spoke to soon before thinking about it. But it still sound interesting, nevertheless.

menace690 wrote:


Microsoft was shipping unfinished software long before Google had any apps. That's what I was going for with "banana software": It ripens at the customer's.
But I have to admit that their release candidate of Windows 7 was surprisingly usable.

There is also an old joke where a baby is found in front of Microsoft HQ. The next day there is a press release from Microsoft, saying:
"It is impossible that the baby belongs to Microsoft, because:
1. We've never finished a product within 9 months.
2. We've never released a product that had hand and foot right from the beginning."
(I guess the "hand and foot" thing doesn't translate too well from German, where it means that something is complete or well thought out.)

But I digress...
I guess I'll have to wait to see what this announcement actually means. I wish all the involved people that it turns out as they imagine it.

I'm really excited about this project, which is strange because I haven't the slightest clue what it is. Something that's "revolutionary" and relates to this community is bound to be something really special.

domdec314 wrote:


One thing I realized last night as I was talking with some former MacScene / Emuscene staff members is that this project has been discussed countless times over many years. We've discussed different features and different approaches, but what we never realized was the fundamental problem. Sometime this recent summer, we realized not only the problem but the solution as well. In fact, some in the community have successfully developed similar projects. But none of them have been on this scale and this simple.

The biggest challenge now is just developing the many satellite projects which go along with 'Vigi'.

I'm also kind of tempted to make a poll 'Do you think menace690 is working on Vigi?'.

i don't know why, but i'm thinking of some kind of game room that supports multiple emulators and helps organizing roms, so that it looks like that those game are on some kind of shelf, with artwork, infos and everything.

I think Mungo may be onto something. This quote is from the thread 'organizing ROMs' that appeared a short while ago here after information was being sought about some form of ROM organisation.
Niemann wrote:


I think the non-reemergence of the wiki may also give some clues but I wouldn't like to speculate too much. Sure is a teasing me though

One of the things I've enjoyed most about working Vigi so far has been all the possibilities of its usage. I've referred previously to the many satellite projects which will be released in the weeks and months after January 1st, and frankly our biggest challenge at this point is prioritizing the possibilities. Definitely an excellent place to be.

As we enter a new week, I wanted to share a small piece of one of the first satellite projects to be released. What we've done here is take a rather mundane feature of MacScene, and 'Vigi-fied' it.

Yay! A tiny piece of the design work for 'X' and a fun tease

(Note the background in the finished version of 'X' will relate to the background being shown , this was just a nice Wii virtual console poster someone created)

Another screenshot below. My hope is that next weekend we can provide a very important screenshot (which I sent over the weekend to the guys working on Vigi) which should give a basic understanding of what people can do with Vigi.

The below screenshot is again a shot from our primary satellite project, which will be announced almost entirely on November 1st. Over the month of November I'm hoping we can collect ideas and opinions from this community (and others) while the developers and designers continue to work on Vigi and the various satellite projects. December 1st we will open up a limited beta, and throughout December continue to improve Vigi and invite more and more people to use the project. Then January 1st we should be all set to go for a public release.

We've also spoken about delaying some of our features for the weeks and months that follow January 1st, and spend the next two months or so focusing on the core features necessary for Vigi's success.

Vigi will be in the Mac App Store, hopefully day one.