Why make big games? Why make cheap games?
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Why make big games? Why make cheap games?
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| Hey everyone, I noticed a vast majority of people that are around here are making cheap games! Cheap in terms of their real value and their price. Most games I see are up to $20 (US) with art and code one could make in a few weeks. My question is - Why do you people do this instead of make BIG games? My understanding is that you can make much more money if you invested say 1 year into making a kickass game or any kind of software for that matter (in Blitz) and sold it for only $50 where you would be able to compete with "AA" titles! Personally, I estimate most of us could make a "AAA" game, a top commercial success which you could live on and maybe sell in stores if you devoted 2-4 years of work, alone or with a team maybe 1-2 years. The only larger projects i have seen so far that are at least actively on the forums are halos WW2 thing, and i also consider the tokamak engine to be a semi-big deal. Is it that most of you need less money but need it FAST or is it that you are just not confident in your abilities to sell and undertake in general such a big project? You need artists? You have other things you do? I'd just like to know, cos it makes much more sense (to me) to go for less bigger titles, if you can stand the tension caused by the amount of risk you are taking. I also believe that if you test your games extensively, design them extremely carefully, and keep the most important thing in mind - how the Player percieves the game and how his brain reacts to the "fun" you are trying to create - then there is nearly no risk and it all comes down to work and more work. Personally, I am still unsure wether to go for 1 huge project that i have in mind for a very long time and that i know would work out, only because: well, i need less money fast... :\ How about you? |
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| 1) Most big projects don't get finished. 2) The bigger the project, the more money you have to invest in it. 3) Many people don't want to write games to compete with the dross that fills the shelves at Game. Some do, but others want to create alternatives. 4) Have you actually done any game design before? Have you looked around here much yet? Sorry, but most people here are NOT capable of producing AAA games. That's not to be negative or critical.. most people everywhere are not capable. I really don't think you understand just how much media is required to make a big game, just how many people are involved and just how good the quality needs to be. Ignoring code complexity and Blitz's ability to cope with large projects, and simply working on art alone, there are very few games around here that could compete with AAA retail titles. It's just that hard to be that good ( graphically. ) |
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| And seriously.. no risk in spending 4 years of your life writing a game?? That's going to eat a huge chunk out of anyone's savings and quite possibly involve borrowing to spend four years without earnings and I think there's a heck of a risk that you could finish the game ( unlikely in itself, but even so ) and find no one wants to take a chance on it. |
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| I write games for fun, I write games I want to play. If I make money out of it it's a bonus. I don't think anyone here could write an AAA game as blitz isn't capable of it. Regarding risk, 99% of projects started don't ever get finished, so if you pay an artist, modeller, musician £1000s to get the media done there's no guarantee you're actually finish the project and therefore you would have lost that money. I have completed and sold all of two projects that have paid for blitz and other tools several times over. I've got about 10 projects on the boil that quite frankly I've got bored of and are sitting waiting for me to be inspired to hack out a bit more of them. With regards to advice for you... I'd suggest having a go at a few small projects and see how you do, also, the more projects you do the better your programming becomes. For example: My Lander project is/was a biggy, and also my first in blitz, I've re-written it from scratch at least 3 times now and currently it needs a re-write. Another problem many of us have is 'feature creep' as your coding you come up with another idea... and another idea... and another... and guess what... you never ever finish the game. And most of us are not hard nosed enough to come up with a design document and stick to it. Anyway, that's just me. |
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| I don't think anyone here could write an AAA game as blitz isn't capable of it. I think Blitz is capable. Whether the programmers and the artists are reliable and dedicated enough to see it through to the end... now that's another matter. |
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| Blitz is certainly capable. But AAA games aren't developed by 20+ person teams of professional developers for nothing. It's real work and most hobbyists don't have what it takes to see it through. Not saying anything bad about anyone, but that's the reality of it. |
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| I think the only devide is in terms of content..In terms of code, and quality of design the only thing between you and the best is well, your raw talent. If you've got the same mindset as kojima, you can design a game as good as him, if you can code as well as carmack, you can do a nifty engine... But content is the killer.. I believe procedural generation will progress to solve this though...my first fps sota built cities/roads/pavements randomly every time you played, even used csg to make random doors etc, fairly simply but it proved to me it's possible and effective for this one case. Once we can harness things like that in a controlled way, content creation will be more about simple prefabs that forge the foundation of greater designs...(At least for those of us not fortunate enough to have 20 artists.) this is in the hands of us coders however...and you know how lazy we are...give it a million years. |
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| Sounds like you've got it all worked out... I'm not sure why you asked the question. Go make your AAA game and stop poncing around wasting time on the forum. :) |
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| lol true! |
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| Well, I'm not sure how this will end up, but at the end of this year I'm going to complete my third year of work in the same game (arrrgh 3 years, I still can't believe it :) As I said I don't know how good it will sell when finished, I'm not specting too much neither, but at least I have seen interest from publishers who get your product in stores also, as for example: http://www.summitsoftcorp.com/index.asp Don't know, I think time will tell ... Cheers! Paolo. |
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| Most games I see are up to $20 (US) with art and code one could make in a few weeks If you can make a full commercially viable game in a few weeks then why don't you take a month and put us all to shame? |
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| heh, its not even about making art, and code in a few weeks lol. ts getting it all to work the way you want it and tweaking the gameplay that takes half the time. There are a lot of good 3D artists for instance, but not that many good game artists. Particularly for a engine that renders as few polys as blitz does. Half the art and design stuff, are things you the player will never actually see, but these things take a lot of time. Optimizations take a lot of time. Often for me creating an art asset is relatively quick, optimizing it can take as long again. In Aerial Antics we wanted dynamic shadows, and that required a lot of experimental coding plus dozens of hidden proxy collisions that would conform to the terrain enough to recieve shadows and be used for collisions. This part took about half as long as creating all the visuals. And thats just one thing out of dozens. Blitz is capable of making a AA quality game of perhaps 1-2 years ago in the graphics side of things. Unfortunately most pople don't have te money to risk spending the time required to make those kinds of games. There's a reason that most publishers are going out of business, and a lot of Developers are one hit wonders. |
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| Eurythmia, wow! You are talking about Tecno, correct? I wish you all the luck and I wish your demo link would work. I tried it before and now again, it is down. Binary_Moon: If you can make a full commercially viable game in a few weeks then why don't you take a month and put us all to shame? :-/ I dont know why you feel like i am trying to put you to shame... thats kinda sad isnt it... Evak, yea but if you want to make a turn-based strategy game which is highly complex and has a lot of sub-features and flavours within itself, you do not need all the high-end DirectX stuff. I am personally bored as heck by FPSs, but some multiplayer is nice. Aside from FPS, only maybe simulations would require awesome-ish graphics, while in other games art, the physics (which you were talking about) and such things that blitz isn't top notch at, can be ignored to a great extent if there is something to cover it. I liked Areal Antics demo quite a bit, btw. Nice stuff. |
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| I dont know why you feel like i am trying to put you to shame... thats kinda sad isnt it... No, but it IS a tad insulting to say that the stuff you see on the shelves at the store could be knocked out in a few weeks. Absolutely untrue. |
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| Yeah, sorry Lynn but it takes months of dedicated incompentence to ruin games like the pros do (It's hard work being that bad.) My advice, aim higher than them..aim so much higher, even if you make it, no one down here will even notice you. You're never going to compete on their terms, so you have to do what they can't..and that's make an innovative game. It's not possible for most pros..they lack enough vison to see past the doller signs of another safe doom1 clone with pretty graphics...that's REALLY not something to aspire to, imo. |
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| Yep, I think Evak has good points there... By the way, I liked very much the Aerial Antics demo, and I was looking carefully at the shadows to see how you did it.. :) Thanks Lenn, and I may apologize for the stuff in the website, actually I'm not interesting on having a nice website working because I'm focused on finish the game before the end of the year... then I'm sure everything will work. Try this one for the demo if you want: http://www.freewebs.com/tecno-itb/tecno.zip (right click -> save target as...) Paolo. |
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| Warren: i just said that some of the stuff that SOME people are SELLING right now online for 20 bucks can be done in a few weeks! Im talking about pacman, bubble trouble and whatever, space invaders, etc etc. Not that i have anything against those games, i usually play them when i relax as well, but im just saying there is so many of those. Of course games on the shelves at the store cant be done in a few weeks :D you'd have to be either crazy or an idiot to say that... Blitz has heaps of potential... The Dude, youre my man! :-))) Eurythmia, that link doesnt work either :( |
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| Lenn Even those $20 games selling online can NOT be done in a few weeks. If it's a direct copy of someone elses game, maybe. But what you're looking at is the final version of that game - what you don't see are all the iterations, failed features and tweaking that went on before that "simple" game was released for sale. It's unfair to say that can be done in a few weeks because a (for example) original puzzle game takes more than a few weeks. It just does. Trust me. But the bottom line is, lots of people talk the talk and complain about games today. However, I don't see anybody standing up and doing anything about it. I'd like to see some walking to go along with all of this talk... |
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| I'm writing what I thought was a simple Advance Wars clone. I'm about 50% done with it and holy cow! I had no idea it would take this freakin' long just to make a "simple" game. The biggest area I think people overlook is how much time making assets will take. I actually had to limit the visual quality of my game and simplfy the theme just to compisate for this and I'm a professional 3d artist! I think realistically, I'll be done with this in another 3 or 4 months. That would put me at about 6 or 7 months total. In the end I could see this game going for $20, but not much more. I don't have $5,000,000 to make a AAA game title. That's really all it takes. |
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| I agree with both sides here. Unless you've grown up through the initial inception and evolution of computer/video games, I think we've all thought the way you are Lenn. In addition, I agree with you. Many of the games created by blitz users COULD be cloned in a few weeks. WarrenM put it perfectly however, you're missing the bigger pictures. Creating those games has been such an iterative process, and so many times the amount of work and effort which makes those games play so well is what you'll never see. When it comes to games, it truly is the quality of what you reject that makes them either classics or somehow awkward working prototypes which have/had 'potential'. I'm the first to admit I haven't done much around this blitz community, and I double many people (if any) even know me. I do hope that to change in the far future, as I've decided to hang back a bit until I see what blitzmax has to offer (yeah yeah) and in the mean time work on designs, concepts and small personal prototypes in a range of different languages. Nobody will ever see what work, and yet I hope it will be what makes my final products stand out. The thing I've done that I'm most proud of in blitz is a pencil rendering demo, only to have someone beat me to releasing one by a few days (which incidentally was quite similar in code and structure, however his presentation with the sketchbook was better). It doesn't matter though, because I learnt so much in doing it. I can't speak for the person who did that demo, but I certainly didn't arrive at that solution instantly. Sure we all could clone that demo in a night or two, but initially coming up with the concept and cultivating it into something which works is another story. My version began with using a pencil texture mapped to all the geometry in an attempt to rotate it depending on the perspective of each tri relative to the camera. Pretty stupid now looking back, but it was where I began as I wanted pencil lines in different directions and wanted their width to scale based on distance from the camera. Obviously I never got it fully working, but in trying it I realised...lines going in all the directions were so distracting that they actually took away from the depth and believability of the world, rather than add to it. To cut this short, I eventually ended up with a single overlay attached to the camera, etc etc. Yet in doing so I learnt a lot about design and rendering concepts. It's that process which developers go through which makes knocking off games in a week unfeasible. However...if you do happen to have the vision to see the perfect solution the first time...can I work with you? I believe that blitz currently is capable of great things, but managing the project is quite difficult as it grows. I also believe this will soon change. |
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| We've all thought like that man... I have to tell you though if you're willing to work you can make things quickly. For example I did the Aerial Antics prototype which was a full game of 30 levels on 3 locales and used it to pitch Garage Games and Adrian. That took me about 1 month of non-stop (12 hour a day often) work though. Of course the final game ... that took another 6 months + another 4 months after launch of refinement. Games are about the most time consuming thing you can do. Sure you can prototype an idea really quick which is what I do all the time. I'll get a gameplay idea and just straight code it. I call it codesketching. Your 50 page design document will probably go out the window. Quite a few people on Garage Games that have completed published work like Adrian, Joe (Think Tanks) and I were giving advice about those things. Basically, give yourself a 1-2 page outline. Prototype the game concept and see what ends up being fun. Write down the end vision but not in too much detail and then make day to day checklists or worklogs like GFK mentions in his newletter interview. These more managable things will help you get your project done quicker and better than an enormous design doc. In fact it was agreed in this other debate that a very detailed design document is only good for: A. Killing the project, stopping it from ever being released or.. B. Making a game that's not fun... Good luck with your aspirations to making a 'AAA' game. Very similar to what mine were 2 years ago. Check out this project if you want to see where a lot of hard work but lack of experience can get you: http://www.leadfootproductions.com/Install-True-Vol.exe I worked for nearly a year on that. The best it ever did was get me noticed so I could get my foot in the door with Garage Games and Adrian. I learned a lot but those super detailed 'AAA' game aspirations get flattened a bit in favor of projects that you can complete, manage, and actually sell online. Good luck! |
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| a good technical and design doc is usually for the Publisher to nose around in. But the actual game is rarely written is stone. In my eperience the design doc usually outlines stuff that the publisher has agreed on and lists the things that absolutely must be completed in sequential milestones, to leave something out means not getting paid till you reach the next one. It's also insurance for the developer, as the basic game design is allready laid out, they aren't going to be forced into missing deadlines for things that weren't in the design doc. When your working in a tightly scheduled release and budget, you need all the help you can get to button down exactly whats expected of you. So the purpose of a design doc doesn't allways have much to do with the game outside of laying down the rules, and what absolutely must be done for the developer to complete a project, and in what time frame. Any additions and changed have to be negotiated, and its here that the developer gets the opportunity to add time and put back dates without losing money. Not quite as important for Indie games, as your typically your own boss, and get to make all the decisions within members of your team. But for a commercial project it really helps a lot. Both the publisher and developer know what they are getting, and what they need to achieve from the start. And it reduces risk for both parties. |
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| I'll get a gameplay idea and just straight code it. I call it codesketching. Oh wow, mind if I use that term? I've always used the term prototyping but it's never really fit what I do, and collections of words like conceptual prototype are just too annoying. |
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| It all depends. in all cases at least. Kojima for example, writes (Iirc) a 400+ page tomb before work even begins on a mgs game, they even go so far as to storyboard every moment of the game. .So it's really dependent on the type of game. BUT the actual gameplay, the game it's self they treat organically..it grows every day..even so far that kojima gave everyone a notepad to jot down one idea a day for the game, while they were heavily making it.. When you lose that kind of hands on design, it can have negative effects...when you become so focused on turning the whole affair into a machine like mechnicism, you lose the creative spark that is the difference between simply good and AAA. And end up with tomb raider 2,3,4,5..for example. Or doom2,3.. All the classics seem to come from teams that work in relaxed creative atmospheres, with no millitary style cat and mouse bs with desperado (EIDOS EIDOS EIDOS) publishers.(not speaking from experiance,just what i've seen) |
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| yeah, but most people don't have the luxury of a relaxed creative atmosphere. They all have jobs, spouses, mortgages, car payments, taxes etc. So unless your allready a hugely sucessfull developer, you need to reduce risk, and thats where things usually become less maleable. As a fairly inexperienced development studio with a couple of So/So games under your belt, your stil lgoing to find it very hard to get published without the document, a prototype that suggests your not just blowing wind, and preferably some instantly recogniseable licence/franchise. Everyone needs money to get by, unless they are lucky enough to get that provided for them, and publishers base a lot of their decisions with developers solely on risk. Game ideas are considered cheap, small developers bid or get handed projects to do where they have limited flexibility in the design. Or a developer comes up with a great Idea, Marketing get scared about the risks, and take over the game design with statistics. It's all about money and a little about games in the commercial workd, if your lucky to be a game god, you get to do whatever you like, at least untill you fail once or twice. But most don't get that luxury, fail once and your probably not going to get another chance. It's also not good for an individual developer, as Publishers only care about shipped titles, when evaluating development teams and rarely care about all the other things that you never completed. |
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| That's kinda what I mean..an idea, a concept alone does not make a great game. It doesn't matter how great it is, how wonderfully original...It's the little touches that evaluate work into the relms of the immortal. (over dramatic? I've gotta work on that.) Those moments of zen that come to you in your sleep, as you play, as you code, that can't be put down on paper..it's like a gut feeling, out of nowhere. I mean..you kinda liked fmc right?(;p) You think I designed those controls or the hud system or the weapons or anything? Nearly every idea I put into it was 'on the spot' Light bulb above head moments. I mean like when you got a missile lock on and it played the sound of a swoard being drawn from it's sabre...the kinda things that just makes no sense on paper. Money is a concern I know..i'm the last person on earth who needs reminding of that, but at the end of the day there's two type of game makers, those in it for the money, and those in it for the glory.(Of making something great, the art..the Andy Warhol's of this world, not that i'd consider myself a warhol fan..;) ) The fact this is hard to do is evident in the lack of reknowned development teams..but then even those who play it safe will eventually have to learn to take a risk..because chances are people will grow tired of buying generic shooter 72. Anyway, too much rambling for one night. |
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| Will people stop bagging Tomb Raider 2? It was -clearly- the standout of the series. Also, I reckon if a AAA game called 'Generic Shooter 72' came out I would buy it. Naturally I'd be expecting it to be set in a scifi 2072. |
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| 'Generic Shooter 72' Hmm, maybe I'll make that game... |
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| Back in 94 three of us released Prince of Destruction -- a "big" game that was initially released as shareware and was later commercially published. (When I say "big" -- it takes a playtester who knows exactly how to solve every quest about 10-12h to play through it at top speed; it generally takes 24-48h of solid play for a player starting cold to finish it assuming they don't get stuck. That's more content than most commercial titles -- and you're not walking back and forward through mazes to flip switches.) We'd initially estimated it would take us six months to complete; it ended up taking three years. I'd say that if we'd been working on it full time it would have taken 18 months. 1) We had an extraordinarily talented programmer: Andrew Barry. (Think of him as the Mark Sibly of Mac development tools; among other things he wrote RealBasic 1.x and 2.x and the Spotlight Debugger.) 2) We had two talented artists. 3) The standard of quality of computer games back in 94 was FAR lower than it is today. Today's games have FAR more content and far better architected engines. Our game had 1400 map layouts, three internal scripting languages (items were scriptable, so were map objects -- e.g. monster spawns were invisible scripted map items, doors were visible scripted map items -- and so was npc behavior), a system for handling conversation data, and allowed NETWORK cooperative play (up to four players). We had real content development tools (in fact we made our content development tools available to our players). It won a number of awards, was reviewed in every high profile Macintosh magazine, was distributed on a LOT of cover disks (back when cover disks were fairly novel)... I think we made a total of $30,000 from it (split three ways). Typical triple-A titles today cost $5M. Ten years ago it was $1M. Ten years earlier it was probably $100k or less. Ten years before that it was something a good hacker could knock together in a couple of weeks given enough coffee (literally -- read the history of Sierra Online or Origin). Most triple-A titles LOSE MONEY. Being a game programmer is the geek equivalent of forming a rock band: most people do it for love; a small proportion of rock bands ever get a paid gig; a tiny proportion make real money at it; the average professional musician doesn't earn enough to live on from music and has a "day job". This includes rock musicians and members of symphony orchestras. And guess what, the same is true for game programmers. |
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| Also, I reckon if a AAA game called 'Generic Shooter 72' came out I would buy it. Naturally I'd be expecting it to be set in a scifi 2072. The horror... ;) There's another good game name..the horror... |
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| Prince of Destruction sticks heavily in my , not because I used to play it (tried on a few occasions but I don't think I was focused enough back then) but because there were constantly maps or add-ons or some kinds of mods on cover disks. I remember always accidentally running them and having POD start up. Really nice and unexpected to hear some information about its development. |
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| My advice, aim higher than them..aim so much higher, even if you make it, no one down here will even notice you. Ha. |
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| Enidox ... you can say codesketching just remember I coined the phrase baby (I want a quarter everytime you use it ;) ) ... I actually bought the domains sketchcoding.com and codesketching.com because I couldn't figure out which one I liked better at the time. I finally decided codesketching was the better term. Eventually, I want to have a site up with tons of codesketches ... people using code just like they'd use a pen and paper ... no design just let the imagination flow. In the future I believe ALL people will all use programming code as we use written language today, it'll just be one more form of communication added to the list. My advice, aim higher than them..aim so much higher, even if you make it, no one down here will even notice you. My advice ... do this after you've aimed for attainable things and acheived them. Once you've got some medals on your game designer uniform then aim higher than the rest. Don't expect to come out of the proverbial womb and spank all the best developers at what they do ... you can try (It can get your foot in the door as I mentioned above) and then you'll learn and understand why everyone says take it light to begin with. |
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| Thats a lot of responses! (I read all of it and i have a few things to say) Firstly, yes i must admit i was wrong to quickly say "few weeks" without really thinking about it. It is possible only in theory if the person worked around 12 hours a day on it, which is rarely feasable. So yeah, i was wrong there. Jeremy, i mix both of what you said. The design doc is purely designed to test gameplay, such as "if this feature is in, then noone will build this kind of space ships cos it does not pay off" , it is basically calculations to balance it all and also make it fun. Fun is something i define as having a number of ways to approach and solve a problem, think the way you like to think and still be able to be effective, etc etc. I also have a 1-2 page outline, and since i never did such a complex project come to think of it, i would probably change a few things here and there even after the start, but as little as possible. I hope i dont sound too naive or ambitious :) but i try to learn quickly and if i'm wrong a adjust as soon as i get a hint of how wrong i could be! Thanks for wishing me good luck, i hope i'll have some. Who knows, maybe lots of things don't work out which cause me to change course, such as not having another coder at my side or realising blitz isn't good for something so i have to add it myself (hope that doesnt happen). Also, as i have said, (if you were referring to me) i'll make at least 1 or 2 or maybe 3 smaller games to get a realistic picture. Now all i have is simulations in my head of what would need to be done to get a game of certain complexity and quality, but life has taught me to add about 50% more to the "time required" calculations as something always crops out. The Dude, youre THE dude, dude! :) I like doing the same thing and of course you dont write on paper things like "when missle locks: make sound of drawn sabre" lol. I would do that as i went along and wrote notes as i thuoght of them. Creative moments come when you least expect them, but the logic of the gameplay is something that can be prepared beforehand. Thats probably what i was refering to as the 'design doc' |
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| You'll need to learn about the way blitz handles things too. Like the surface issue, that i biggy i would say :o) |
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| I've heard this said before and I believe it myself ... Kojima secretly wants to make movies. He's a movie director trapped in a game designers body. The MGS games are fun, but they are at least 50-60% cut scenes (and they aren't even -good- cut scenes. Just heads talking on the intercom system). This was particularly evident in MGS2 where Raiden spent half the game arguing with his girlfriend while the design of the levels themselves really took a creative hit. I'd wager that 400 page design doc is 300 pages of dialogue with the last 100 dedicated to the gameplay itself. This is not a knock against the man ... I mean, go with your passion ... but I don't think he's in it for the game itself these days. He's in it for the story telling. This is evident in MGS. While it has a wonderfully rich back story, it's also one of the most convoluted and confusing stories you'll ever read. It gives most players a headache trying to keep all the names and places and alliances straight. I think this is because Kojima gets bored easily and feels the need to keep throwing twist after twist at the player to keep the story alive. Just my opinions... |
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| I'll agree about mgs2..wasn't nearly as good as MGS story wise, raiden was probably the single biggest mistake a developer of his stature has made in a long time...(Especially keeping it a secret..It's like he know no one wanted it, but did it anyway.) But the cut scenes themself are the best ever seen. Not the intercom moments(That's more to immerse you in your world I think) but the actual 'cinematic' moments..like for example when the game starts...snake running across the bridge, engaging his camo and jumping down onto the passing boat termintor style..amazing..or the end of the tanker when ocelot takes out the ceo and gives his little speech.. Another great moment when emily dies and they tool up for revenge and walk into the camera..The kinda things you'd expect from QT, not a game. But he has said he wanted to do movies before games, many times. But once he found games, he was hooked on the fact not only could he tell a story, but he could make it interactive.. Which I still think is his main concern, as he turned down a offer from the wachoski brothers to do a matrix game.(Makes me sad to think how good enter the matrix would have been with his team on it...;/) |
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| [EDIT - all been said already ] |
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| YHou could do AA quality games with a proper team. There's been a few. Aerial antics is the only example I can think of. Generic shooter? How about generic Adventure game? Or generic puzzle game? There's been more bad shooters out of the mod/indie community then out of the pro's. Every time We do a concept at work, we check the mod community to see if someone's already doing it, make sure we;re not shooting anyone down. Current game: 8 hours of gameplay, 11 levels, 4 months. to the Dude: Anthony, type !'s are slowly being worked out of the industry. the don't have the drive, and the money really isn't great. Right now, all of these people are in charge of the publishers. It's changing, slowly, but it is. My current producer, for instance, actually likes the game we're working on right now. He's done more QA testing than our entire QA team combined, and has played the game through more times than I have, and I'm doing modeling/texturing/LD/FX ect. Yeah, it's an FPS, made in less than four months. Every dev I work with is in it for love, not money, and they're all extremely talented and dedicated. Enter the matrix: got pushed out by a desperate publisher before it was finished QA. Bad project management. My team and I have met every publisher milestone, actually been ahead on most of them, because our team leader/manager knows what he's doing. We have time limits, we finish and move on, we have rules about feature creep. All very important to actually finishing a game. As an artist, I may get annoyed by "You have an hour to finish that weapon texture", but it get's done. I recommend it to anyone who wants to actually finish something. Those that have done something in a normal timeline already know what I'm rambling about. |
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| There's another good game name..the horror... Only if the game was set in a happy bouncy playful theme park or something. =] |
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| Actually, in all seriousness, "The Horror" is a terrible name for a game. It doesn't tell you anything about the game and is so generic, it isn't memorable. For example, "Doom" is a great name. "Quake" is terrible. |
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| Well it's a bit hard to come up with a title that reflects the contents of a game that doesn't exist. :) Cucumber(dude..get a man's name ;) ), you say that like it's a bad thing? ;p |
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| Some wildly OPTIMISTIC numbers to think about. you are makeing a FPS, starting with the design doc. In a whirlwind of creativeity you get the whole thing done perfectly the first time in an hour. You then set about developing the engine...amazeingly enough it takes you an hour to get the baseic stuff all done...another hour to code together the perfect scripting engine...and you spend an hour for each of the games ten weapons...as well as an hour for each brilliant AI of each of the 20 enemies in the game. You then start on art...30 models in total...it takes you exactly an hour to model and rig each, plus another hour to animate them. you then start on 30 skins for the models...and it takes you an hour to do each, but they are perfect! You then start on level textures...there will be 30 levels each with 20 unique textures...it takes you an hour to perfect each You then start on the 30 levels you will have in the game...each takes an hour to model, and and hour to script, place models and such you then start on the music...5 songs..an hour each then the sound effects...60 of them in total and you somehow perfect them at a rate of two an hour Now you have it all together for playtesting...and what the heck, you did everything perfectly so it only takes an hour to fully test each level... so how long did all of this take? 848 hours...thats a bit more then a month for 5 people working 40 hours a week....and given the wildly optimistic numbers quoted above (most of your time will be spent tweeking and bug hunting, which I barely glossed over above)...expect the real thing to take at least ten times as long, if not more...then triple that figure for dedicated indies working part time and you will be in the ballpark of what it takes for a seasoned team to make a relitively unambitious AAA title. |
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| yeah, the port of splintercell to PS2 took almost 1 year and had a 70 strong art team. And thats for a port of a gam that allready existed with a complete set of high res assets. |
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| and like wise, though, splinter cell2 only took the very same team who did the port, a year to make iirc.(Seeing how they got the job after they impressed ubi with the port..sc2 came out about a year later.) though the true sequel, sc3 has been in dev since the end of sc1...3 years now.;) |
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| yeah was watching the xbox video previews of SC3. It has far better AI aparently, which is currently making the game much tougher to play. |
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| "70 strong art team" geez...and I have been in a company with 3, 2 and even one...XD can't imagine what an army like that can do...woah. |
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| btw, back to topic, I'd vote for very small, very profitable games , several in a year. Reduce money investment, time, and if you earn little, it still makes a good balance. if I had an stable job, I'd probably get involved in long projects, too, but only for pleasure. |
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| I didn't think so many people used Blitz for codesketching (watch the term lift off now!). But it kinda makes sense. Though i bet there are many indie developers who are making awesome games in C++ and stuff, just that I don't really go into searching for it there. I'd never be able to go through the pain of learning any other language than Blitz right now, and i can imagine how long it would take to make anything even if i did know another language. |
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| couple of relevant recent articles: Industry ignoring casual gamers.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3620518.stm Women take a shine to video games.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3615278.stm Games Industry faces shake up.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3592036.stm Game firms urged to take risks.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3798237.stm some interesting articles, some things suggest that the independant devs may be in with a chance here, if they are professional enough, and motivated to finish quality games. |
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| First, excuse my english please! Hello, I've been reading some opinions here (not all of them, cause no time!) and i want to say something: I've been programming since 1987 and i have been programming in Microsoft Basic, GWBasic, Turbo Basic, Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, Turbo C++, Assembler, Visual Basic and Visual C (wich i don't like at all!). I first started programming in a MSX microcomputer and in a Spectrum+2. When i started programming PC, i started with Turbo C++ from Borland and i found it very cool for the stuff i was mading. But, when Windows95 was released, even if some programmers (like me) don't like it, we had no choice and had to cross to this buggy-platform because of DirectX... Before DirectX and W95, you had to code for EVERY 3D standard and audio standard independently. DirectX was good news, but that was all! Because programming in Windows environment is like a nightmare if you want to do something that is not a window oriented aplication! Even using DirectX, In Visual C, you have to code up to 200 (or more) lines of code to ONLY declare your aplication, create a main window and engage Direct3D or DirectDraw. Ok, most of this work is done by the "wizards" included in VC (it's an automatic code generator) but, hey! an environment who must be programmed this way, IS A NIGHTMARE! That's why the programmers who were coding in free-time and for fun have been disapearing... Now, programing a game it's not fun... NOT FUN AT ALL in Visual C, you know? when you pass the most of the time trying to understand WHY windows do this kind of strange bugs, or trying to understand WHAT THE HELL were thinking about the coders who did Direct3D to make a thing SO HARD to code, in this way, you don't have much time to do what you REALLY wanted to did when you sat in front of your computer. Why i'm saying all of this? I just want to explain the REAL situation of coders in this times and how the big companys manage to code the big games of the market. Being so hard to code a game in windows environment, the companys have made sub-levels in the market of game programation. There are a few companys that made 3D engines or even 2D engines (to make strategic games), this companys, like ID software, make the real big deal LICENSING their engines to other companys who want to make games for PC. (but in Playstation it's the same thing, they call it Software Developpers Kit, but this kind of packages are very very far of what we know as SDK in PC world...) This way, the most companys buy a license of the engine(with royalties to pay per copy of game, sometimes) and make a game with it. And what is exactly an engine? it's not only a program who draws something on the screen or plays 3D animations... is a complete 3D package made for designing video-games, usually with a programation lenguage inspired in C... That's it, you can consider Blitz3D like a commercial game engine... ok, a real game engine is ready to make a game right out the box and blitz not. But it's because a game engine is VERY specialised and will not let you make anything else than the kind of things it was designed for. Blitz is specialised too, but only to make EVERY kind of game (or even 3D aplication) you wanted to do. So, is Blitz3D limited? Yes it is, like every game-engine you will find in the planet. But it's the most flexible game oriented lenguage i've seen so far. And, can Blitz3D make BIG games like Doom3? It's a nice question... with a nice answer: Yes and no! Blitz, as it comes by default, no. But making DLL with Visual C wich will increase internal functions... this way, yes it is possible. Keep in mind that Blitz is using OpenGL internally, a programming layer between software and hardware, in order to run 3D instructions. In 3D, it goes so fast as DOOM3, because DOOM3 is using Direct3D + OpenGL for drawing to the screen. Were comes the difference then? There is only 2 things Blitz don't do, and i suppose this is because of the OpenGL version is programmed for: BUMP MAPPING and PIXEL SHADERS The first is to make a texture react to the light like if it were in real 3D. The second is the ability to use the cpu inside your 3D card (the GPU) to make simple but powerfull programming in order to automatize water reflections, collisions, rendering effects, projected shadows... Blitz don't let us access some buffers like the Stencil Buffer, wich is specialy designed to calculate shadow projections. But, with Blitz you can do a BIG game or not?! With Blitz you can easily do the Half-Life 1 engine (and of course "counter strike"). You can do Quake 2 as well. If you are a good programmer, you can make Quake 3 too, but will be slower because you can't use PixelShaders. And, if you code some DLLs in Visual C, you can implement everything you want! where is the problem? I wrote this because i know there are plenty of "serious" programmers wich think in Blitz as a "toy", but i want to say that, if it is based on OpenGL and it is flexible, it's great! Another thing: You don't have to be 30 people to make a great (really great) game. "Prince of Persia" was made by only one man, Jordan Mechner, and it was the first game in history to use motion capture to make the movements of the character!! (Jordan recorded his litle brother running and jumping in the garden, and then redrawed the movements in the PC!). Prince of Persia was one of the better games of these old days, and one of the better graphically. You may think "times have changed", and i say: NOW YOU HAVE BLITZ3D, JORDAN ONLY HAD A TEXT EDITOR. Programming a good game is not a matter of money or graphics/music. It's a matter of creativity and fun. A good games is not the most impressive, it's the most fun. You are programmers, you don't are 3D designers or music composers, ok. But you have internet and plenty of 3D designers and musicians hoping that, one day, they will made something for a videogame! Find them, they are so interested as you are. |
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| Doom3 have been programmed by 3 coders and John Carmack as the Technical Director. The graphics and sounds were made by 15 designers. The other members of ID software are there in order to manage the business, not to create games. And think that ID Software can pay as many personal as they want, wich means that there are as many people as they need to be in order to work in very very good conditions! |
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| Well, consider that John Carmack is the equivalent of 5 normal programmers. Plus, id Software doesn't exactly run a loose ship. The guys work insane hours, all the time. They are in perpetual crunch. From what I hear anyway... |
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| I havent worked on a game that had more than 5 programmers, and they usually have very specific tasks. The last one, 1 Xbox engine programmer, and 1 PS2 engine programmer, working together to try and push each system as far as possible without going out of synch. One game designer/programmer who also can do art, he develops the art pipeline and tests the tools and works on gameplay. another programmer that is a general busy body and works with the 2 engine programmers on things liek particle systems, AI, physics and fixing issues artists have with the engine. and a 5th programmer that handles video codecs, save games, compression and UI programming etc. you then have the art director who helps the game designer design levels, and works with the engine programmer at deciding what the engine needs implemented. and then you get the artists that often help with level design and do all the lighting, modeling mapping etc. Usually in a small team like the above you might have one master texture artist who works with everyone else getting a consistent look in all the levels in the base textures that the level artists get to build on. there's often an animator, who in the last game I worked on coudl also code and do physics and worked on all the character related side of the engine. Ended up being a team of 14 including the office manager. Pretty small team for console games though. |
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| Counterstrike was made by two people. |
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| I suggest some research into the "man month myth". No, you don't need big teams to make big games...but big games take a whole LOT of time to make. And don't forget all important testing and tweeking...Counterstrike may have had the raw work performed by only two people...but the polish was applied with the help of a great many more. |
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| Interesting post there Joah. I remember about 3-4 years ago when I was thinking if I should go more into coding or more into 3d/2d art, I was thinking what it would take to learn Visual C and DirectX. After a few glances i realised that the energy that it would take to learn all that would be HUGE and i would probably not be able to last the distance. Also as you said, if you need something for your Blitz game you can employ a VC coder to make you a DLL and you're off! But here is something that stuck in my head from this thread by Tangent: We have time limits, we finish and move on, we have rules about feature creep. All very important to actually finishing a game. As an artist, I may get annoyed by "You have an hour to finish that weapon texture", but it get's done. I recommend it to anyone who wants to actually finish something. |
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| Counterstrike was made by two people. No. It has 2 programmers who initiated the concept in code. The levels, models, textures, skins, etc. didn't materialize out of thin air. And, realistically, the CounterStrike we see today is NOT the CounterStrike that they initially released. Not even close. With Valve's backing it has become something much larger than the mod it started life as. |
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| I played CS a few months after the very first Beta came out. Back then it was 4 new models, a few modified weapons and maybe 1 or 2 levels with a lot of unrelated half-life or other levels in there. It hardly had any scripts or something so people played "by agreement" . it was somehow fun tho and it expanded. |
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| A big problem in the PC world is the technology grows too fast for programers. It means that a you will need a huge group of game developpers in order to finish your game before his technology has become obsolete. THIS is the major trouble. But if you can use a 3D engine, the time for doing a game can become a 1/4 of what you will need without it. That's why i'm considering Blitz3D a great product. (without having to pay 25,000$ for the QuakeIII engine + Royalties) ok, let's be realistic. To do a BIG game, you have to be a BIG coder, a BIG leader and you must manage all the stuff in it like GFX and sound. You don't have to be as good as a 3D designer is, but you MUST know enough about modeling to find out how to implement everything with the maximum quality and the minimum rendering time. Making games has never been an easy job, even in the old days. Actually we have tools like Blitz3D and Photoshop wich can make our life much simpler than before, but the result the gamer expect is much more than in the old days of coding... But, even with this high level of exigence from the market, i think it's much easier making amazing games right now than 6 years ago, because, even if the industry has made things like Doom3, UT2004 or stuff like that, we don't have to forget that, in the end of all this technical explosion of coding virtuosity, there is a player who wants to have fun! nothing else. I repeat: we don't have to do the most 3D advanced engine in the world to make the better game of the year. Half-Life is a good example of it. It was developped using the QuakeII engine as a basis. But the success of this game don't came from the technical specifications on it (wich you can do with Blitz, i repeat), it cames from the background story of the game, wich make us really believe we are inside of it. And ID software has understand it, as we can see in Doom3... The technical benefits are just the advertise of a game in the PC world, after 1 hour of game, you are no more impressed by the bumpmapping in the walls and so on, you are only cought by the "feeling" of the game. This is just an opinion, and i do know people who only looks for impressive technical demos, but i think it's not the major part of the gamers community. |
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| But the success of this game don't came from the technical specifications on it (wich you can do with Blitz, i repeat), it cames from the background story of the game, wich make us really believe we are inside of it. And ID software has understand it, as we can see in Doom3... This is true -today-, but when Half-Life first came out, the tech used in it was pretty state of the art. |
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| @Lenn: here is a market for "small games". Today, you can buy only superior games: half life 2 (if it comes), far cry etc etc etc - only 3D-games. Or only big, complex cames. I don't like complex games - i don't like 3D - why should i create this games? And spend year(s) for this??? And why should a big game make more money than 3 mini-games? Here are many ideas or many games from old days, that i never saw on PC... and if you create a new game with no competition, you can sell it for higher price :-) |
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| I dont understand why this thread went into the direction of discussing FPS 3D shooters and games that generally count on the hardware. I must be having a completely different mindset in regards to what i like playing/coding. I am interested in making games like Masters of Orion, Civilization, or other turn-based games. But i would add twists such as minigames inside the big game to for example help certain aspects of your "empire" or whatever you are leading. I am talking more about a gameworld where the player would be happy to see more quantity than quality, even though this formula may be considered wrong. Imagine having 1000s of different planets you can approach with 100s of different buildings you can see there in 3d from a nearly unlimited number of races of civilizations. And when i say more quantity than quality i just mean having DirectX 7 quality graphics with polycount and surfacecount blitz can sustain. For the game i am talking about, let alone a Civilization clone, that would be more than enough. Especially if it is multiplayer capable. Just look at HomeWorld, thats what i mean. I hope one day i prove its possible, but right now i dont even have the beginning of this in visible range. :) |
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| din't read all the topics... quote - $20 (US)in a few weeks 4 weeks for one $20 game = 12 games a year ($240 variable) you sell maybe [3]x12 games = 36 = $8640,- or you take the risk and make one big game and hope people like it and sell more games then above. My big problem is Time and i'm not a really good 3d designer/animator :S //the next market is 1:n multiplayer "game" |
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| Someday i want to make a big game. i say this because it seems like it would be a great accomplishment in comparison to the arcade-style games i have been making. My main problem is the artwork, so far i have been using paint(basic design outlines) and photoshop(finishing touches) for my art, but i am starting to do 3D now and paint isnt going to cut it. I think the potential for blitz is high but nobody takes advantage of its full potential because we are all to buisy complaining about it "oh we need dx9", from a commercial standpoint i do not think that everybody has dx9. You might as well be complaining that blitz doesn't have 64bit capability! But i think that the main reason that no one is making "big" games is because everyone in the blitz comunity came here because it is easy and they don't need a big group of people. That is what blitz was made to do, simplify things for small time programmers. But i think it would be great if some big games for blitz were made, it would really streangthen the community and bring in a lot of new people. |
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| hm... you know lemmings or something - simply games, but you have endless fun with it... But with some big games, i have no fun to play this... On my amiga i had some very simply games, but i played it longer than lemming, pinball dreams, zool etc... this was some very funny games... |
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| GC-Martijn, thats if you sell all of your 12 games, 3 times a month each month. That is a great success even if you had like 6, 7 or 8 games to sell. Well, maybe it can be achieved that they are all sufficient quality for this but it is not that easy. |
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| One year is too long for a single programmer/artist/etc. to devote to a project. It is near impossible to get a team of people working on a project of that proportion for a year for free. I have lead a few ambitious projects as you describe before working with a team I scoured up here and there, artists, modellers, etc. and they all tanked. For one person, if you can't do something worthwhile in 3 months tops what exactly are you gonna do?? Unless, you just happen to not have to pay bills, or work, that kind of stuff. A good game should take not much more than a month, two months top to make. Simple games for simple minds, make it fun to pass the time. |
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| A good game should take not much more than a month, two months top to make. Simple games for simple minds, make it fun to pass the time. I challenge anyone to make a good, polished game in 2 months. Seriously. I think it's delusional to think that can be done these days. Unless you're doing a knock off of an existing game, it's really not going to happen. |
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| Yes. And sorry, but why exactly is one year too long for a single programmer/artist/etc. to devote to a project? There's plenty of people in the independent game community who can and do spend 2 or 3 years on a project. Like me - I'm 2 years into my second project now. And of course, working and paying bills still happen... although I do think a 2 year game, (if it's good, if it's good) can certainly recoup costs so the NEXT game can be funded by the previous one. |
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| Except Tetris of course. But that seems to be a different story. |
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| Ah Tetris ... so elegant! Great story behind that game too. Anyway, I think you're under the misconception that in 1 year you could make a very complex game and also very polished. That's your first mistake. I've worked on two games that took about a year to make each ... neither of them is capable of competing with 'AAA' games even though I thought for sure with a full year to work on something I could blow 'AAA' developers out of the water. All I realized from my mistake is that 1 year is like NO TIME when working on games. Once you do your first project ... the next thing you know years are flying by. You need a big team to do big games. At least more than 1 - 2 people I can tell you that. Big companies wouldn't have these big teams if if weren't even close to being needed. Even id which always runs a tight ship has 17 developers ... and that's for a somewhat simple game in terms of concept. Anyway, go for it I say ... nothing like learning on your own. Aim for the heavens and your bound to land amongst the stars type stuff. |
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| yeah but Market value could have been done in 2 months if we concentrated on it 100% and worked full time rather than a few hours here and there when we could find them. Once we started working on it proper and agreed on a way of setting up the engine that suited both our tools we did the last 60% in a fairly short time. |
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| I wasn't talking about Market Value at all ... was talking about True-Vol and Aerial Antics ;) |
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| Except Tetris of course. Even still, I wonder. How long did tetris actually take to make? From the first conception, to the finished product. I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it was longer than a couple of months. And a team of 3 people IIRC. |
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| Yeah it took ... hold on let me look it up ... OK, Game Over doesn't say how long the initial version took (it used brackets and text only graphics stuff). The IBM port took 3 people 2 months with graphics, sounds, etc... |
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| lol guys. I downloaded True-Vol and i cant imagine what you spent a whole YEAR on with that? Maybe if you use a few hours "here and there" but not if you got full hours to devote to it. No way! And no offense please, i just viewed the help files cos i couldn't connect anywhere i didnt even play it so i might be wrong, but from the looks of it, you either needed a better artist or i dunno what it is. As for me, i mentioned before, i THINK i'll have enough support to pay bills for a while from another source. If this source prooves to be doing very well then i might devote all my time to it and nothing to developing, but if it prooves to little i might have to find another fulltime job quite simply. I'm just summing up this thread for me cos it is getting a bit long ;) you dont have to read this. But i have another friend who has free time to develop with me. If things go "idle" enough for me i might see that big project through. As I concluded but noone agreed so far, for a turnbased strategy game with many mini-games that i'm planning to make you dont need exactly Dx9 shagadelic graphics, so Blitz itself will do just great. I've been persistant before in many things so i also believe i would be able to finish this thing if i started it. Now that was just me, and my personal situation, also trying to explain the reason of this whole (now very long) thread. This outlook was also shaped by many of your opinions :) so thanks, i have some confidence now. Or shouldn't i? Oh i didnt mention i can do sound as well, i play guitar piano and sing so there you go. I also worked a lot with my brother who likes electronica we made some sounds so i would know how to make sound effects, though i do not have a studio :( thats the only potential problem for me but nothing a small investment wouldn't sort out. Sorry if this is getting to long!! |
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| I say spend less time on a project and put out something (a finished product(s)) rather than spend inordinate amounts of time on a game you may never complete. Even if you have every intention of completing a big project get your feet wet first if you haven't already. |
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| True-Vol was made by me only (artist came later). It's a very complex game due to the weapons system. You make your own weapons and then you can trade them with other players online. So it would be like the characters in Dragon Ball Z etc... could teach your techniques to others. You might only know a player by the technique they made and then you'll actually run into them later. It was also my learning project in Blitz ... first game I ever made with Blitz. To bug test it in networked mode alone took hours and hours to make sure all the behaviors of the weapons worked right ... You have no idea the amount of hours I spent on that game. You also have no idea the complexity of it so I'll forgive you. A quick peek doesn't give you any idea. There are also ulockable ojbects and levels that you get by defeating common enemies. In the middle of battle all opponents must work together to lore the common enemy to a spot where it's shield drops so it can be defeated. Anyway, I can't even mention everything to that game ... it's complex I worked on it for more hours than you'd care to know and I learned a lesson. Sure I could remake it now in a shorter time ... but it took 10 months from conception to create the editor the game in one form ... then completely revamp it from ourdoor levels to indoor ones ... you just don't know! Judging by your comments you really have no idea what it takes to make a game. You'll learn ;) |
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| Lenn, where are your games, then? Couldn't find them from your profile. Please point me to some links - would be nice playing a demo of yours. |
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| Lenn, also you may think True-Vol is nothing more than FPSNetUpdate with media ... but that's totally not the case. I made FPSNet in one night for a comparison: http://www.blitzbasic.com/codearcs/codearcs.php?code=1149 It could also be that I'm just that much more experienced ... but that's what I'm trying to get across. Without seeing a few projects through to the end you just have no idea what I'm talking about with time consumption. |
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| Yeah, netcode. It's a bit of a nightmare to say the least. Even with the net libs that are available. I can see how that took so much time. |
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| The big guys bigger than the small guy. |
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| I've read this whole thread from start to finish, and I must say there's plenty of negativity in it. If he wants to attempt an A, AA, or AAA title, then more power to him. The only real problem you have of doing a project of any size in any amount of time is you. And if you spend a while on a project, you will definately get to the "I don't want to do this anymore" point. Even a short one. I made a small puzzle game in a month in C with directdraw. It had music, sound effects, and art all done by myself. It's nothing to speak of, in fact I don't even think it's very fun, but it's finished. But even on that 4 months, I got to a point where I just didn't want to look at it. But then that's the point where you say, Okay, i'm going to work harder now, this is the hump, and i've gotta get over the hump. That's all there is to it. Even something very simple can look like doom 3, if they haven't done it before. And you're always learning, so if you have to learn something to make it happen in your game, then you do it. And yes it will take time, that's a given. So with that in mind, you can make anything you want, just as long as you don't quit. It could take a short amount of time, or it could take years, it doesn't matter, if you don't stop you'll have something complete, and maybe even fun to play. You might even sell a few copies, or you could sell millions of copies... Point is, it doesn't matter, as long as you're doing it. 2c |
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| Hey, if he wants to attempt a AAA game then that's his thing. But questioning the judgement of everyone else for not attempting a AAA game is something to take umbrage with. |
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| Exactly! No one has a problem with him attempting a 'big' game. Just don't go insulting/looking down on other people here. After some comments where people were just trying to answer his question and he responded with some fairly insulting remarks then he got some negativity back ... as far as I'm concerned it was negativity bounced right back at him. Lenn is cool with me, from some things he's said he does care about other people in the community and didn't mean to offend anyone. Still just to explain where it originated from ... I'd think you could understand. Other people don't attempt those types of games because they're just not ready yet. I tried to say that I did attempt a big idea game and failed in a certain respect. Yes I completed it but it was also a mess because I just wasn't ready for it at that time. After going straight for the top I learned to calm down and make games that I can complete and make some money from. I don't think I should be looked down upon because of that and he insinuated at first that it seemed a whole year on that game was ridiculous. The funny thing is other projects around the same time were Halo's Singularity (never finished) and EdzUp's (I think) Hunted (not finished yet). Just to give you an idea of other games that were being worked on at the time and other developers who had an even harder time somewhere along the line completing their projects. In other words this stuff is hard to complete and do right, if it were easy everyone would do it. Maybe you can do it, maybe you can't ... whatever the case give it some time before you start boasting! |
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| Ugh... let this thread die already. I was stupid, i didn't express myself carefuly enough, i insulted people and its too late to apologise. I hope some understand what i was trying to ask, by saying certain things. I'll just post worklogs from now on, and a few Art and Blitz showcases. Its not the first time in life that i decided that i'll just do it, show it, and when someone sees it, then talk... meaning I'll shut up now. |
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| Don't worry Lenn, I totally understood your perspective and I think you'll be fine. I hope my last post didn't seem like I still had any beef with you. Just wanted to explain to other people who thought the whole community was being negative on you why it happened. I know you understood and I think you're very cool for admitting that you might have been somewhat carelss in the post. Don't worry about it, develop your stuff but still participate in the community! Sorry it was a rocky 'welcoming'. |
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| WE WILL NEVER FORGET! Some day months from now, when you least expect it, one of us will bump this thread just to SLAP YOU IN THE FACE! A HA HA HA HA HA! Seriously though, I imagine there are a number of threads I started when I first got here that I regretted. It's no biggie, just so long as you don't cop an attitude habitually. One bad day, that happens to everyone; chronic "bad days," that's the sign of a jerk. As for why you got such a tremendous counter-response to this one careless thread, you happened to touch a nerve is all. |
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| one of the most annoying things fora lot of people using blitz is that they are capable of producing a AA quality game with blitz, but there are a lot of factors that get in the way, usually involving lack of deep enough pockets and a life that doesn't typically revolve around them. I know I fall in this category, but an ambitious project just isn't feasable right now, if it was 10 years ago when I was a student and not married, I'd havea lot more time, but unfortunately not the skills and motivation to do it and get it finished. theres a lot of chicken and egg in this business, and very few people get the change to start with a chicken unfortunately. |
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| Seeing as everyone has thrown in their few coins worth, heres mine. I started writing games on the PC1 8086 as a hobby, A few years ago I was gutted when I lost everything I had ever done to a fire. I discoverd Blitz and Darkbasic a year ago, and after 6 months of learning it and 6 months development I have written my first game since the disaster. In answer to lenn's original comment, I do it for the satisfaction of just doing it. I will try and sell my game as shareware to make a few quid of course, but i will be just happy if someone enjoys it. -Dan Harvey |
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| Maybe a current day AAA title can't be made in blitz because of lack of pixel shaders, and whatever other new technology it doesn't handle, but guess what? Only hardcore gamers have ANY clue what the hell a pixel shader is! I am still fuzzy on it, and I don't really care. I really couldn't tell you which games use pixel shaders and which don't, because i'm not a hardcore gamer. Yet I love games. But start talking pixel shaders and zzzzz.... Most gamers are not so hardcore, and if the market is going to grow, there will be more and more people who don't care anything about all these details. I think it's ridiculous that a game gives you a feature list that contains all kinds of technical terms. When you buy a movie, you don't buy it based on a list of technical features, you buy it based on actors and story. The continuing trend of listing all these technical details on games will go away as games become more mainstream and publishers realize they are seriously alienating many of their potential customers. Guess how advanced a movie like Casablanca looks nowdays? Yet, it continues to sell. |
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| main reason I am lokoing forward to early pixel shader cards being the minimum spec is that for an artist it's a lot more fun to make the stuff look like you want it to. Working on something thats 2 years behind the mainstream (not cutting edge)can be frustrating, particularly when your used to pixel shader engines, and the benefits that the most simple shaders have. A lot of effects can be done in blitz without shaders but require a lot more effort, less speed (and blitz isn't that fast) and a lot of incosnistencies limiting how you can use them, plus R&D in how to best implement the tricks in a way thats useable in a game rather than a tech demo. Shader 1.x stuff is still pretty usefull and would do a great deal in the way of giving artists more flexibility in the lighting, shodow and blending department. But I think you need a Geforce 3 to use them, which is still not low end in low end gameing market. |
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| #1 reason for sure. ^^ by Sybixsus (Posted 2004-09-03 08:02:02) 1) Most big projects don't get finished. |
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| To my understanding blitz is no where near capable of producing an AAA game at its current standard. If you want to compete with the big guys you need Dx9 shaders etc + super fast assembly routines etc + a huge team. If you wanted to make something to copete with Doom 3 it would take one person more like 10 years. 4 years is a probably a fair estimate with about 3 people. Getting under 2 years would require about 10. Oh, and in those 4 years or so of dev time Doom 3 will be old hat - so your game would need to be made to a level that games will be at in 4 years time. Thats a HUGE undertaking. Now, unless your a well known developer, getting a retail publisher wont happen unless your game is seriously hot, REALLY RED HOT. And, even if you do, you will not make a huge amount of money, most of that $50 goes to shops, marketing, and the publishers pay cheque. Selling a game at $20 will earn you more per sale than you would get at $50 in retail. (not to mention to make a $50 game youd need loads of people, so thats even less that you get into your pocket). So in a 10 man project, you would probably each get 1$ per sale. 2 years of your life, as a programmer of the level you'd need to be at to make this super game would be worth at least $60,000. So you have to make $60,000 sales. Which suprisingly is about the average that most retail games make. So you made your money - cool. But just think, Steve Pavlina (dexterity.com) makes 100s of thousands of dollars a year from making tiny puzzle games. Lets think, which is the better route... |
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| And, in fact, Steve Pavlina hasn't even made a tiny puzzle game in over 5 years. |
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| And who says we want to compete with the big boys? I think everyone here realizes how insane that concept is... |
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| its a shame to admit it, but my coding isn't good and even if it was, the tabloids would rip holes in your hard work and make you feel like crap. Blitz is a gaming language, lets impresses other Blitz user the power the blitz realy has. I ramble, so what |
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| a AAA quality game doesn't even mean doom 3 (which I don't even consider AAA except in recognition and Carmacks reputation), I think when people talk about AAA they mean games that can compete with commercial games of the last couple of years. blitz can for the most part compete with last years PS2 games for example. AAA doesn't mean it needs cutting edge graphics, just good graphics, and an overall great game. Quite doable I think, but you would need a 4 man team with a good talent/skill distribution to pull it off in a 18 month timeframe. If your game concept and demo are good enough, it's quite possible to get $ with which to create a prototype, but your going to need to know the right people, and probably do the rounds at E3 and GDC in person, face to face with publishers, and get lucky. Thats what a lot of small developers do, that or they work in the kids game department, where its a lot easier to snap up projects. As a small Dev your going to find it really hard to make your wn dream game. And don't think your going to have control of it once a publisher agrees to carry it. But anyway, a AAA game is quite possible, I just don't think most people in the community are dedicated or wealthy enough to take the risk, and work full time on something without pay. If a bunch of us that had worked on commercial games got together, and also got some legitimate office space, even if we all only hauled our stuff there for publisher meetings, we might possibly get a publisher and financing for a game lol. |
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| I think episodic games are the future of indie development, I mean as you say 18 months with 4 people for a AAA game(given a good enough concept), but imagine the epidosic model(Which kuma does already and is succesful)..You simply have to do one level at a time.(Before you start to see profits..making the extended time-frame less of a risk) imo anyway. |
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| yeah, but so far episodic games have failed, in the commercial game dev. And your episodes still have offer a lot of gameplay time for people to fork out the money. I'm not sure how that would work, but I can think of all sorts of problems. Like once the first episode is done, thats most of your coding out the way, and then your going to expect the rest of your team to work for you indefinately earning your keep. You will need several episodes I think, before the community will take you seriously and start buying into your scheme. So I'm not really sure how that would pan out. If it worked it may work really well, but I think to be successful you would need a pretty big initial episode, or people might just treat it as a game demo. don't know, shrug, but I think its a risky gamble, and i'm not sure as a gamer I'd buy into something like that. most games I get, if I don't finish them within the first 2 weeks of purchase, I'll often get ditracted by real life, and not bother coming back. what happens when people have to wait a couple of months to get the next part of the story? |
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| Well you add multiplayer, and possibly make it subscription based, persistant multiplayer has to be the future..not these death matches variations. Throw in a good sdk/script engine and with a good enough game/engine, people will start to use it for their own creations,be it levels or full modifications. There's a second means of income..licensing the engine out, as a one time fee or a slice of royalities. Only instead of 250,00k, you charge 100quid for sharewhere version,10k or royalties for a commercial published game... And it's only one game..it's not like you stop making 'em after that..just pay some webmaster 50 a month to take care of the day to day crap ;) |
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| yeah, but I think you will be surprised how hard it is to sell anything no matter how good it is without proper marketing. Maybe you will be lucky and not have to face a reality check :) My experiences in both commercial games and independent makes me a bit sceptical that it would work. Good luck with Vivid though, hope its as good as you say it is and that you get artwork for your demo's that show its true potential. I havent really seen much that makes it look like a highly marketable product but if the feaure list and specs are anything to go by it does look very nice indeed :) But you have a lot of work ahead of you and your team if your going to get people to buy it and build a success out of it. Thats going to keep you pretty busy for months to come I'd imagine. |
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| Considering it'll be the only blitzmax 3d engine for at least six months(Guessing), i think if it's good enough, it'll sell. I'm confident by the pro bmax version even die hard anti-vivites will be won over. Time may prove me wrong, but then i've already made plans for time...it's going for a ride... but I think you will be surprised how hard it is to sell anything no matter how good it is without proper marketing. I think it's down to quality of product. You make wierd games in wierd genres no one cares about, be prepaid for lousy sales. More common sense than a reality check ;) Look at those marble games..simple and hardly pushing the enevelope..how many millions do they make a year again? ;) And think tanks. they all targeted areas that are popular.Think tanks may be umm, not amazing, but it is the best of it's kind and is a 3rd person shooter. Tanks are a popular subject, online...you know. |
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| I think it's down to quality of product. You make wierd games in wierd genres no one cares about, be prepaid for lousy sales. More common sense than a reality check ;) Nevermind ... you're not even worth it. |
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| Hi Folks..this is my first voice on any forums here..acording to all problems what peoples before me talking about, everything can be separated in to few steps: 1) Your team abilities/money/time 2) Publisher thoughts about your game 3) If you pass first 2, then you already doing good AAA games job.. Anyway, thats my experiance from CRO team . And 'cheers for Arli, hes now in Intergraph'. :)) |
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| Nevermind ... you're not even worth it. I wasn't even on about your games. Here's a reality check, I don't even play your games.(Or any sharewhere games.) Anyway, I did try them, and they're not mainstream genres. |
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| Make a game in a mainstream genre, and be prepared for lousy sales. |
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| Only if it's not better or as good as all other games in it's class. Half life was a no name wonder. Five years later it's played by an average of 50,000 people online a second. Why? Quality multiplayer, mod support and <mainstream genre. Compare it to say deus ex..an fps/rpg, not mainstream, yet clearly the best pc game yet. Yet it's sales stank.. |
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| Only if it's not better or as good as all other games in it's class Gee, and making it the equal best (or better) will be such an easy thing to do. Why didn't anyone else think of that? |
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| If you want it easy you're in the wrong field. |
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| I don't want it easy, I'm just not naive. |
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| If you don't try to make it big, you never will. You're happy selling small games? Good for you. Some of us have bigger plans. And yes, most of us will fail, that's true of any creative profession, no matter how big or small your ambitions are, but i'd rather aim for the top before I settle for the bottom. |
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| You have to walk before you can run. |
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| Wow. |
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| Thats exactly true SpaceMan, I'm with you. Now, what happened to me is i listed 3 decent ideas for games i could make in 2 months or 1 month of full-steam work. They're "OK" but I just can't intrest myself to work on such small games and try sell them. I mean there's so many variatons, it's hard to impress any potential gamer into buying them. Any bigger idea that is mainstream yet unique requires a bit more work... Instead, for practice I decided I will model and code certain things for fun that will not be complete games. After that, I will start work on 1 medium project. I just can't make myself like the idea of making small cheapo games. Some people like it, some cannot afford otherwise. I dont like it and can afford otherwise. It's just an option and an opinion pretty much, no need to discuss who is right or who is wrong. This thread is getting BIG. Do I open part #2 now or something? |
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| Hang on, I don't even think being "as good if not better" is nearly good enough to guarantee massive success in one of the hotly-contended genres. Also: aim big, yes. Follow the dream, sure. But what has that got to do with targeting mainstream genres? I'd consider making a decent living doing whatever it is I like to do, regardless of how mainstream it is, a much better definition of success. Lenn - one month, two months... that's not just small, it's tiny small. Try one or two years. That would also be a small game, unless you have 50 people to help you. |
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| I don't think small or big has to do anything with delivering high quality or doing the 'good stuff'. There are big games that are crap and small gems too. And vice versa. It's just all about what you want to do and what you can accomplish. Do you just do it for fun besides your 'normal' job? Then sure, try something big. You have all the time you want. Even If you fail (like 99% of the lonewolf-devs who try something 'big'), who cares, you surely learn along the way and have fun. Mission accomplished. Other people prefer living from their hobby and have to aim for smaller stuff that actually pays the bills. Better than wasting 8 hours a day in a less fun job. :) Don't see how anyone can say one approach is better than the other. It's just personal preference and depends on if you like your normal job or not I guess. :) |
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| Yeah, I never said it's for everyone, if you just want to make fun little games, there's nothing wrong with it. But it's possile. Id were a bunch of shareware coders once. Anyone played halo on the pc? by a team who used to make mods for half-life, on the net. Just like us in a way..they made it. And only last week,a team of battlefield modders were signed for like half a million by the team behind battlefield... And that's just modding. |
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| Those battlefield modders were already discussed, and the money they each get isn't spectacular. Even most succesful developers are not as rich as say most succesful lawyers (kill them all!), doctors, dentists or oil distributors who pose as politicians. Especially not compared to the work they put in compared to the rewards. But most people who do it, like to do it, unlike many other professions. Being an indie game dev is best if you have a day job, I'd say. You get home, you do something fun, that's your hobby! Or in my case, bring the PC to work and do it there in free time as well, since i spend 70% of the time in "idle mode" there, and I've seen many people that work like that too. Those who try make "games" of some sort by themselves just to live off it will hardly have a nice experience. If you just want a paycheck, you go and get SOME sort of exhausting job. It will still be less exhausting. It comes down to it that making games is a hobby, and should stay that, in my opinion. |
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| Hey, I'm all for making big games. That's also been my aim all along. However, I couldn't go from not making a game to making a big game done right (in fact I keep making smaller games to retrace my steps in case you hadn't noticed). Also, only Market Value and Enigma-X would I consider small games (sometimes those are successful though). Aerial Antics was a decent undertaking (at first the physics were too buggy and I thought I wouldn't be able to make it work as I wanted ... took a lot of trial and error) and is a fairly big game ... someone called it 'AA'. It is a game I dreamed about making since I was about 13 and fell in love with jet packs. It's not exactly has I planned ... but a game with a jet pack is something I wanted to make since I was 13. Anyway, I discovered with True-Vol that I just wasn't ready to make that big game. I had this idea. I wanted an online game with power increases where you could see farther, move faster, fly higher, and attack faster ... like Dragon Ball Z. Then I wanted to go the next step where it was an RPG where players could created their own techniques like players in fighting games etc... who have techniques but in fighting games they're static. In True-Vol I wanted everyone to create their own and then name them. This way it'd be like Ryu's Dragon Punch ... but it could be like Bandit's Ball Breaker or something ... whatever the player wanted and the button combinations had to be adjustable. Then I wanted the players to interact with each other on other levels beside combat ... they had to be able to learn each other's techniques, and you had to know who created a technique so your name was attached to it. Heck, you might get a really powerful technique and be amazed and wonder who originally created it only to wind up in combat with them a month later after the technique had be traded thousands of times. Then I wanted to have common enemies which could be cooperatively beaten which added clue/puzzle elements and rewards to break up the monontony of just deathmatching each other. The bosses were not unlike things in Zelda where you had a clue and had to figure out how to use the environment to beat them. For example in one level there's lava in a room. The clue is "cook roaster" or something ... so if you lead him into the room with the lava his shield goes down and you can blast him ... players did this coop and if they did it fast enough then they'd get extra experience points and unlock new levels. Then I added the armor system (hats and sunglasses are armor) If you tag someone on the body or guns it's more damage. Not only were the hats and sunglasses kinda humourous but they were relevant to gameplay ... everything was. You could create a freeze technique and then fire it at a common enemy or anyone over the lava and freeze them which would drop them into the lava if they were over it and they'd take damage while under the ice was melting. The amount of detail that's in there ... can't really be described ... mainly because it pisses me off that not a lot of people understand it ... the game is truly deep and even when I had 30 people playing it (had a little group of my younger brother's friends who'd im eachother to play after school) only a few kids really understood what the game was about. Anyway, learn however you must ... maybe you can make the jump from no games to a big great one on your own ... if reading about my experiences can help you make the jump to that big game without having to screwup first for yourself ... then great ... MAYBE my messup helped someone. The game did get me noticed ... so it's not all bad. Garage Games saw True-Vol and commended me on the effort although they blasted me on the presentation. When I came back a month later with the AA prototype I was actually afraid to open the email. However, I did and they liked it so I was happy. Truth be known I have plans for games ranging from tiny to huge ... all of them have some form of prototype and I'll get to all of them in due time. Oh and about work and money and lawyers yada yada. I can make more money with my own business doing hardwood floors than just about any position in the game industry. It's not about money. I'm making nearly 2 grand this weekend busting my ass as hard as possible (10 hours of blood, sweat, and tears today and my hands are still buring as I type this) just so I can live for another week to work on games (and pay for the house). My friends last night were pretty much amazed at the amount of money you can make in that business ... and were like oh we're all about money ... we hate our jobs too but we'll do almost anything for money. Luckily they didn't prod me too much about why I want to make games so bad (they know me) even though I can make more money at the moment doing the floors. I could literally become a millionaire doing floors (I know a few people who are), but at what REAL cost? Money isn't an end. I work hard for money so that I can have more time to work hard at hopefully making a hit game ... I'd really like to be able to live off my games though so I don't have to break my back forever or listen to anyone besides a paying customer (floors great, if it's for games even better). I wouldn't even want to work for most game companies ... it'd have to be a really special one ;) This is just a huge rant because I'm dead tired and I use forums as a diary ... but you know what's funny? When I was a kid there were only 3 things I said I wanted to become (you know how people are like I want to be a Fireman when I grow up) and I said all these before age 10. I wanted to be a professional tennis player, a carpenter, and a game designer. I just realized that they were all coming true last week when I went to the US Open and said if I ever make it with these games I'm going to train for however many years it takes me to play in the US Open. When I thought it I realized ... my childhood thoughts of what I would be when I grew up had actually manifested ... well mostly. I still need to become a very successful game designer and then train for a few years to try and be a competitive tennis player... OK, that's done ... time to crash ;) |
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| Really? 'Cos I've worked with pros including an artist who did fmvs for tomb raider, and even lead graphic artist from reflections(Driver/Stundman), all working for a equal percentage. Those two projects fell through obviously, I was only just started serious 3d coding at the time..bit off more than I could chew. But the point, finding good artists is easy with good ideas. So to me it's one of the less worrying aspects of game developement. Hell, even when me and evak were going to do an fps, I got us about 3 or 4 other artists, including a pro...Though evak did his usual routine and pulled out at the last moment ( :)@Evak) and I quit to work with evak on something that never came to be iirc...(Which I probably don't) but again, the point is finding artists? Easy.(Not to diminish what an artist brings to a project) |
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| Really? 'Cos I've worked with pros including an artist who did fmvs for tomb raider, and even lead graphic artist from reflections(Driver/Stundman), all working for a equal percentage. Where is the 'work'? you mean you had a conversation once? Otherwise there would be something to show. |
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| Bloodlocust, I can make my own art. I consider myself primarily an artist and secondarily a coder. I don't have online portoflios cos recently i had my HardDisk crash (for the 3rd time this year) so all i have is on backup CDs which i dont bother to dig out and show off. I didn't make a website yet either. If i put my work into it, I could make just about anything graphically. Also, my first hobby is music (the second is computer graphics and Blitz) and i know how to work well with sound. Coding in Blitz is very easy, that is why im here. I consider Blitz as something to allow me to make my art creations animated and give them life, thats why i like it. That said, it is possible that in future i will be doing ONLY art if my cooperation with my friend works out and he learns to code well enough. I just love modeling but sadly lately i have much less time than before due to private life obligations. Perhaps i will be able to show what i got one day, until then, fell free to doubt me and my reasoning ;) |
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| Where is the 'work'? you mean you had a conversation once? Otherwise there would be something to show. Belive me or don't, doesn't matter to me. |
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| yeah, I was tempted to work with you spaceman and I kind of wanted to, and still wouldn't mind, but every time I give it serious thought I have to turn it down. For anyone that lives in the real world and not on handouts from the government, what your doing isn't viable. Even though my projects aren't earning me a living, and I have to work pretty hard part time to balance out the income at least I know the limits of what cen be done in a short time. Don't really want to talk about FMC again, but I told you that was the last time I'd work with you, because busting yor guts out fulltime on a project that you believe in, and risking not paying the rent and being evicted isn't something I want to do again. My wife actually worked her full time day job, and 2 contract jobs a week whilst we were working on FMC, just so we could finish it, because she believed in it too. Then I had to start my own contract work in earnest for a month, at which point you gave up. I can't afford to take those kinds of risks again. was tempted to work on your other projects, but when you look at your track record, and I look at my wife and how hard we have to work in order for me to try and build a business as an indie developer, I have to face a reality check and do my 'routine'. And it may be easy to find artists initially if you have a good idea, but you need to keep them, and that means keeping your end of the bargain. |
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| Let's get one thing straight, I never quit fmc, I said I wanted to go in a differant direction and we *both* agreed to work on a mecha game instead. Though we had to wait until you finished up some contract work, then it was waiting on the job position of yours with that company, then it fell apart all together. IT's not like I turned around and said 'sod it, finish it on your own'. If at the time you said 'No, we finish fmc or we stop working together now' I would have stayed fmc out. I don't even care anymore, but as long as we're talking a walk down memory lane, let's not get lost...;) |
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| yeah, that was a compromise when you had allready had enough, mainly because the physics and MP wasn't working. So we considered a mech, but I'm not really into japanese mech stuff, and wanted something more realistic military, at which point we wandered off someplace else with an entirely different game and 5 other guys, too many for the beginning of a project, no real leadership as no one wanted to step on any ther persons toes when the game is being done by voulaneers. I don't think you can really make a big game, without a definate heirarchy, unfortunately thats where money comes in handy. As once people are getting paid its a lot easier to establish a team structure with definate leaders. I think thats why in commercial games with small teams a lot is done by how much time you have spent with the company, unless your talking about contractors. Since a game usually starts with 2-4 core people, and people get added as needed its pretty easy to establish the look feel and gameplay of the game, so when new people come aboard they allready know where their place in the scheme of things is, and where the project is heading. |
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| Well, as far as it not working, physics was mostly... Remember my g4 died, so it's hard to describe how frustrating it was writing a high poly game with tons of fx and watching it run at around 4fps(on the simpliest level..You don't wanna know what it was on like on the ion station one ;p)..That played a big part of it too. Especially on the multi-front, as the voodoo refused to run two dx apps at once...Remember those ever so joyful testing seassions? Change one line, recompile...send, test. Didn't work? change another line. recompile. send wrong version. test. get confused. Blame god. shoot the dog. recompile..send...argh. Mental scars for life...;p Though when did I get my g5? Sure it was well after fmc. I agree it's hard getting off the ground with a team with no money though, which is why I've not even looked for artists for cryo yet. Not until it's a playable game beyond just a concept....Then there's no arguements. 'I made it biyach.' ;) |
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| hehe, good luck with that. I honestly think that if you stick to your guns you'll make it eventually :) I just can't afford to help you out. A couple of times I thought I might be able to, usually during a quiet spell, but then things get hectic again and it all falls appart. |
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| lol well I wasn't even asking, but thanks for the rejection anyway :) Far too busy with vivid to worry about a game atm anyway. |
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| I agree it's hard getting off the ground with a team with no money though, which is why I've not even looked for artists for cryo yet. I thought getting artists for a percentage was easy? |
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| It is, we get around 4/5 artists, one a industary pro(well two including evak) in less than a week, but we did it far too early, before the game's concept was even locked down, and then you have four/five talented people all wanting to steer the ship creatively speaking. Not an ideal situration. |
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| I didn't think 2-man teams could fall apart. But again life is full of suprises, as in one can always be forced out of the path he was intending... Anyway, you were working on that mech game? I remember when i first came to the Blitz site, i saw some screenshot of a Mech and I thought "Wow, this thing (blitz) seems to really work!" It, your game, looked like something very nearly finished, and something i'd like to play. Unless the screenie wasn't from your game. As for artists, noone answered my question or rather gave me an opinion on this statement of mine: If you want to make a turn-based strategy game, you pretty much can do without even 3d artists, or if you need some, it is minimal effort, unless you want a graphically intense kind of turnbased game which is unnecesary. Right? Not only do you not need to spend much on art, but Blitz doesn't show its limits in that type of game. And maybe some other types too. With that in mind i started this thread in fact. BTW can anyone show me the BIGGEST 'project' or game EVER finished in BlitzBasic3D ? |
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| There isn't a "biggest" but there are plenty of commercial games. Probably about fifty ish. |
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| Wasn't our mech game you saw, it never made it past a loose concept. We did release shots of fmc though. But you're right on why a two man team can fall apart in a way, fmc wasn't an idea I ever really into..which certainly didn't help during those frustrating moments. |
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| the mech game was going to be FMC with big robots, in order to get rid of the physics/net code mess that was in FMC. Can't realy say about big projectsm as I can't realy think of many big indie projects generaly let along done in Blitz3D. |
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| Remember my g4 died, so it's hard to describe how frustrating it was writing a high poly game with tons of fx and watching it run at around 4fps(on the simpliest level..You don't wanna know what it was on like on the ion station one ;p)..That played a big part of it too. Especially on the multi-front, as the voodoo refused to run two dx apps at once...Remember those ever so joyful testing seassions? Change one line, recompile...send, test. Didn't work? change another line. recompile. send wrong version. test. get confused. Blame god. shoot the dog. recompile..send...argh. Mental scars for life...;p Yeah, that's what it's like ... testing multiplayer for real. I went out and bought a laptop just to test True-Vol's multiplayer myself ... that crap took so many hours ... due to so many possabilities. Get a job and buy another computer and another net connection ... testing your game takes the longest and you need unlimited patience. I didn't think 2-man teams could fall apart. They don't when both people are willing to work and actually complete projects. Watch Leadfoot, Evak, and I ... we'll be full force one day ... it's only a matter of time. |
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| Yeah, that's what it's like ... testing multiplayer for real. I went out and bought a laptop just to test True-Vol's multiplayer myself ... that crap took so many hours ... due to so many possabilities. Get a job and buy another computer and another net connection ... testing your game takes the longest and you need unlimited patience. the problem wasn't the net code(In the larger sense) but the fact all these multiplayer tests/problems came about with TOKAMAK. we briefly switched physics engines at one point(Whole sale)and it was during that switch that all the mp problems popped up. The multiplayer code was working fine with reflex(my custom lib), in the sense it was bug free. All that it needed was cubic splines to smooth out the data, but the point is, it worked. Not sure what my point is, other than I know what it takes, It's just tokamak coupled with the g4 dying(I just ran two apps on the local machine to test before..worked fine.) just made it nigh on impossible. But anyway, I have three working pcs now ;p They don't when both people are willing to work and actually complete projects. Granted, but comprimise is another element of team work, it can't be just fufilling one person's goals, while the other's left to work in quiet frustration. Well, not that I was ever quiet about it! |
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| Maybe you need to cut your teeth on a project that's a bit smaller, Antony? The mark of a great game designer is someone who can make a game shine, without the need for oodles of content to add to the replay value... |
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| It wasn't so much the game being a problem, as far as we were concerend it was shaping up to be one of the best vehicle based game ever made, in terms of feel/controls, and evak's graphics were obviously pro quality... it's just the whole genre doesn't really appeal to me. I wanted it be a mix of vehicle/1st person based action, but evak didn't. And there in lies the heart of all my frustration, not what we actually did with the concept. I mean imagine ID being told to make a football managnement game. Could they do it? Yeah. Would they feel right doing it? not I'm comparing myself to id, just an analogy. I mean man, when I'm doing cryo it's never frustrating..and believe me that's a lot more work coding wise ;) |
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| I mean imagine ID being told to make a football managnement game. Could they do it? Yeah. Would they feel right doing it? Yeah, but id has a long history of released games in a genre they helped to create. It's not even close to applicable. |
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| And I have a long history of unreleased games in a genre they helped to create. ;p |
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| How can making games and finding artists be so easy if you've never finished one? |
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| Sometimes it seems that all the game projects you start are a stepping stone to creating your Vivid engine, which is fine except that in a round about way your using people who gain very little from working with you. Like your Netlib and physics that came out of FMC and chucks supply research material. you got a lot out of it, that still lives in your engine, some guy made you a pro quality web page so that you could sell it, in exchange for a free copy. The net lib never launches, and a few months later you give it away for free. FMC falls appart, but you still gain from it as your using almost all your 3 months work in your current engine, and look to profit from it. Unfortunately media doesn't really work that way, you usually can't really reuse it, and that is one of the reasons I gave up on working with you, and the 2-3 other game ideas that sounded great, but were over ambitious and would never go anywhere, but would allow you to develop your technology and knowledge further. But you would have been wasting months of my time experimenting and creating media that gets your engine up to scratch, and benefiting from it, but without completed games. It may sound like a selfish thing on my part, and the way I have written it, but on the other hand you have to see it from other peoples point of view. There are sacrifices that team members have to make, and all the hype and excitement early on in a game dies and leaves a lot of gritted teeth and staying power to get something finished. Seems to the the part that fails you and most other people that with all the best intentions fall on the wayside when creating their games. It's a real pain to have created all that work, and not even have people enjoy it, let alone profit from it. Maybe we should put FMC on the net for people to dabble with, allthough its pretty horrendous and broken, its stil lkind of cool. |
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| There are sacrifices that team members have to make, and all the hype and excitement early on in a game dies and leaves a lot of gritted teeth and staying power to get something finished. Seems to the the part that fails you and most other people that with all the best intentions fall on the wayside when creating their games. That's what it always boils down to: can you ship? The answer for most hobbyists is: no. Jumping from project to project once you become bored with something increases your personal knowledge, and makes you stronger in the areas that you're already familiar with, it doesn't really get you closer to your goal - releasing something. Sticking to the grindstone once the project ceases to be fun (aka the real work begins) is what seperates the pros from the hobbyists. |
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| I agree. I think you should put the whole FMC as it stands on the net for people to dabble with as it is only going to waste otherwise. Who knows, perhaps someone else will develop it into the game it desires to be. |
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| I'll second that BloodLocust. It sounds like a solution, but you guys need to figure out what you want. Maybe you can finish it some day? I always think in those situations you might go seperate ways, but should invest energy to regain intrest into that project once again in the near future. If you give it so much, you must be aware that you're not at the beginning though, and you have value up to right below the last worklog entry! At a point where it becomes "not fun" you have to decide how much it hurts you to waste all that invested time compared to continuing and finishing it. At that point all that matters is how much you hate waste. If there's a good team leader or at least a member who can tell people how horrible it is to waste that all, then projects will be more likely to finish. |
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| There are very few people I would unhesitatingly trust to not bail on a project. |
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| Who knows, perhaps someone else will develop it into the game it desires to be. In practise, they could. Legally, I wouldn't suggest it. |
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| Sometimes it seems that all the game projects you start are a stepping stone to creating your Vivid engine, which is fine except that in a round about way your using people who gain very little from working with you. You didn't contribute anything to fmc for the last month or two I was working on it, far too busy with all your contract work. So let's not pretend it's all one way. If you had within you to work on a design we BOTH wanted to do, this would never have happened. But you were intent on recreating motor-siege. You reep what you sow. FMC falls appart, but you still gain from it as your using almost all your 3 months work in your current engine, and look to profit from it. Since when? Vivid has not got ONE line of code from fmc. Fmc's code was deleted months ago. I'm not living in the past, I'm concentrating on the future. I don't really think we were ever meant to work together, obviously we don't want to make the same kind of games, and without comprimise a team is an excercise in futility. |
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| In practise, they could. Legally, I wouldn't suggest it. Legally? |
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| never mind, but you know what I'm talkimg about. And at the end of the day in regards to compromising on games, you only want to make one kind, a shooter, usually copying splinter cell or MGS, and not much else. And I'm not really interested in that. A vanilla fps is comparitively one of the easiest to code, allthough you are taking it a bit further than a tedious vanilla one like the one or 2 or 3 vanilla ones that come out every month. It's also probably one of the hardest to succeed in, since there is a hell of a lot of competition. Also means that the quality and length of gameplay has to compete too. It's just not worth doing a shooter of that type unless your being paid, to make it competitive with other products is almost impossible on a shoe string budget, and the sheer amount of modeling and texturing to get any detail and make your world interesting, and not to repetitive is phenominal. FPS and TPS must be the sinngle most popular types of games, what with dozens coming out commercialy every year, all with Modding tools, thousannds of mods, and engines directly targeting that market for newbie game devs, Like Torque and its competitors, which are written specificaly for that purpose. Need to come up with something completely different if your going to make an innovative FPS thats doable, and I don't see that. Anyway, I found FMC and can get it down to about 8mb :) with several different EXE's to try. |
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| In practise, they could. Legally, I wouldn't suggest it. Isn't this pretentious?FMC is at least 50% Evak's work so why not release it and let people have a look. What have you got to hide? |
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| DP. |
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| FMC is at least 50% Evak's work so why not release it and let people have a look. What have you got to hide? Full metal conflict the name and concept were my idea. Of course a lot of what I had planned, troops/soldiers/online wars never happened because evak didn't want to do all the media required, but it's my concept in princible, and the work actually done both of ours(Well all code me, all media him..to be more precise). And while I don't have a problem with evak finishing it off, that's because I know him. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with you or anyone else on this board. So butt out. |
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| I still don't understand your legal threat. Have you registered these trademarks, IP, code or content? If not, you have no leg to stand on... |
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| Coming from an epicgames employee or should i say,ID-lite, that's not an surprising attitude at all. Disgraceful? Yes, surprising? NO. |
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| I'm not arguing right and wrong, I'm arguing legality since you made a legal threat. What's your legal basis? |
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| He hasn't got any right to stop Evak from posting the demos online. In actual fact he said that he doesn't even have the source code. |
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| The code/concept/.exes are copyrighted using an old fashioned method of (C), and let's leave it at that. I've been in this game long enough to know to cover my back, at least enough to win any law suit that may arise from it. Anyway, I have a 3d engine to get out, I can't waste another day getting dragged up in petty arguements, so i'm out. |
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| Evak Go for it, he's got nothing. |
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| When did I threaten to sue evak you stupid man? I threatened to sue anyone else trying to steal the fmc concept/code in any shape or form. As far as evak goes I'd expect him to have the decency not too considering I was kind enough to extend them same when I had his private betas. I don't sue people I've worked with, only the arseholes it attracts. Now, why don't you trolls piss off? |
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| Well evak, do whatever the hell you want. I'm glad I'm finding out what an untrust-worthy double crossing 'person' you are now, before we did sign any contracts. This is the last time we speak, so enjoy your moment. |
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| btw, I forgot to mention the part about not making the demo public without your consent, you beat me to it. And I told you about considering picking up the game where we left off with someone else before I sent Rob a copy of the FMC demo. Only other person to have seen it is Jeremy, which is only fair since he was one of the people that we originally started the project with. As far as I'm concerned I did nothing wrong, the fact that you and Rob don't like each other, is no reason for me to not work with him. All I said was that I was within my rights to post it, but I won't. |
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| I think that just about answers your question, Lenn. |
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| rofl |
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| think that just about answers your question, Lenn. yup. I realise this: In reality there's two options: 1-Work alone 2-Work with a team that is being bossed by a single person or entity Why? Cos humanity still has a lot of evolving to do :) |
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| pretty good example, and its usually worse the more people you have working for free. Probably why typically its often best to take on shorter projects. Jeremy and I think about what we can produce in about 3-4 months. We usually get the meat of it done in time, but then, often there is a month or 2 of fixing after the public have gotten their hands on it and tested it thoroughly. I think AA took about 3-4 months initially and at that point was a complete product, just needed a lot of tweaking. It still needs a lot of work to keep people interested in it and give it some longevity. Maybe a sequel will include all the things that should have realy been in the original, like multiple characters, multiplayer and mission based gameplay. |
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| The code/concept/.exes are copyrighted using an old fashioned method of (C), and let's leave it at that. Well, firstly, you can't Copyright concept. Secondly, (C) doesn't mean a thing, unless it's accompanied by a Copyright (ie Copyright (C) 2004), and in this case, it's the Copyright that is the actual declaration. You'll want to use ©. I've been in this game long enough to know to cover my back, I told him originally that we needed to write a contract to protect our work. He couldn't be bothered, Hmm... at least enough to win any law suit that may arise from it. I'm assuming that you are talking about the poor man's Copyright (from what Ad says) - AFAIK (though IANAL) this hasn't been properly tested in court, anywhere. It certaintly isn't 'at least enough to win any law suit that may arise'. Well evak, do whatever the hell you want. I'm glad I'm finding out what an untrust-worthy double crossing 'person' you are now, before we did sign any contracts. Is this you admitting it's not easy to find good artists? :P |
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| heh, leave the guy alone. He's a decent sort and I feel a bit bad about picking on him this morning. I think someday he will do well, he seems to be sticking to his vivid thing and allthough I think its going to be a long and drawn out process, if he sticks to it he will get there in the end. Personally I think what he did in FMC was very cool, but a bit beyond what blitz3D was really capable of at the time. Certainy not something to smirk at and make fun of and even in its rather broken state there are some cool things to look at. at the end of the day it suffered from trying to jump the technology immediately avaliable to blitz, and therefor requiring 2-3 different types of collisions, ants own, blitz, and towards the end tocomaks too, naturally this made it a bit of a nightmare to work with in multiplayer. but for just driving around and shooting at another non AI vehicle who's physics reacts to location based hits, and concussion from explosions, neat controls, variety of weapons, pickups and cool sound tied inot the physics engine. He did a lot of good work. I think at the end of the day thats what was so frustrating about the whole thing, it really was leaning towards being something that could compete with a AAA game, if only the MP worked, and there was gameplay and reliable intervehicle collisions. Probably an extra month for him, and maybe 3 for me to produced 4 more larger poliched levels. Of which 2 were allready fleshed out, plus the small arena that was shown in some of the published screenshots. Tr |
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| I threatened to sue anyone else trying to steal the fmc concept/code in any shape or form The concept? I hope it wasn't the concept of that flying hammer vehicle around a landscape shooting at each other in multiplayer mode because I was the one who made the first working prototype of that anyway. Beside that you really can't just copyright/protect the concept. Ant, man ... you just need to grow up. When's it going to happen already sheesh! I can't believe you wouldn't even take Ad's advice and get an agreement. We have one ... everyone working together should have one immediately and before anything is exchanged. That's what Ad and I did ... nothing was done until the contracts were at least in the mail and even then it was very minor stuff. Everything that you seem to have trouble with stems from you not being bothered ... can't work because you can't be bothered, can't complete a game because you can't be bothered, can't just get a friggin' contract together because you can't be bothered. The one thing you can be bothered to do all the time though is complain about the industry, other people's games, and then give other developers on these boards mostly useless advice, typically your advice is given just to slag on someone else's decisions (which are obviously poor ones since hindsight is always 20/20) so you can make yourself feel better. Let's see if you can be bothered not to reply to any more useless posts like this one ... until you release Vivid. |
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| The concept? I hope it wasn't the concept of that flying hammer vehicle around a landscape shooting at each other in multiplayer mode because I was the one who made the first working prototype of that anyway. No. I came up with the entire concept, full metal conflict. What happened was while we were busy working on the game, and the fx engine more specifically, you were busy trying to take over the whole project by recoding the main engine. What you produced(and yes, I did get a copy) was a single vehicle with no phyisc and a blurry motion blur effect. It was a prototype derieved from my idea, and it was not a game. Everything that you seem to have trouble with stems from you not being bothered ... can't work because you can't be bothered, can't complete a game because you can't be bothered, can't just get a friggin' contract together because you can't be bothered. What a load of crap. Typical Jeraism and you know what. just mind your own f$%$%ing business. Does that compute hey J? This has nothing to do with you. It never has, never will. I'm don't need no pep talk.( From a lady....;p) Is this you admitting it's not easy to find good artists? :P Let's just say i'm stood at the crossroads of indicision and al Johnson is stood beside me playing 'the hellhounds are a coming' and it's spooky, man. (I have no idea what that means either.) |
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| I can see how babbling nonsense is furthering your cause here. Good work! |
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| -Edit/Snip- Can't be arsed. |
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| Awesome! |
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| Seriously mods, how many times does the troll known as bloodlocust/rob have to break the rules? You've banned him twice, can we get a aye on a third time? I mean, what was the whole point of telling us not to provoke each other recently if doing so is done so without consequence?(SimonH?) Stop the trolls, for christ sake. |
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| Cry me a river. |
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| Its a shame that AAA games seem to be based on graphics... Im building supernova on super low poly, with enough detail to know what it is... The idea is to get the gameplay in there (low poly gives room for a humongous amount of players on screen) and THEN pump up the graphics after.. I have not come acros a game idea such as supernovas that actually worked well. It also has a consept that i havent seen before. (cant think of a way to describe that bit.) The problem im having is artwork and graphics... I know one excelent modeler ( http://www.realitysideways.com ) but he made no money and ended up in full time work.. My other modeler who was a newbie when he begun is now off to uni. Im stuck... i know the game requires levels and i know simply what kind of levels, but i dont have a clue how to build them, though i have rules to keep them working with the game engine. (such as naming meshes so some are colliding and some arent.) My deadline was xmas which im going to miss, i dont even have level 1 of about 20 finished. The problem was caused by no cash. if you cant afford to pay for something, you cant expect things to just happen. it is a real shame. Anyway enough rambling bout this game. |
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| [quote[Cry me a river.[/quote] *yawn* SimonH, here's another one of the list of trolls you warned. Are your rules for real or are they for show? Because from where I'm standing, there are no rules.. just a bunch of immature brats with too much time on their hands. |
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| Yeah, don't you just hate trolls? Let us not forget your contribution to the thread: Yeah, sorry Lynn but it takes months of dedicated incompentence to ruin games like the pros do (It's hard work being that bad.) My advice, aim higher than them..aim so much higher, even if you make it, no one down here will even notice you. You're never going to compete on their terms, so you have to do what they can't..and that's make an innovative game. It's not possible for most pros..they lack enough vison to see past the doller signs of another safe doom1 clone with pretty graphics...that's REALLY not something to aspire to, imo. |
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| Its a shame that AAA games seem to be based on graphics... Without good graphics, your game won't sell. Period. |
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| Are your rules for real or are they for show? Because from where I'm standing, there are no rules.. just a bunch of immature brats with too much time on their hands. I'm amazed how you guys learned to mix some sort of flaming (for the lack of a better word) while sticking to the subject of the thread. As long as you're doing that :) no reason for the mods to wave the rules infront of anyones noses. Keep it up! Interesting reading for me. Without good graphics, your game won't sell. Depends what good is. Masters of orion 3 had nearly no 3d graphics of any kind, just a bunch of menus and alien portraits. Civilisation had a bunch of tiny tiles on the screen. MMOG-s usually have little or no graphics and people subscribe like mad. On the other hand, like someone mentioned earlier, I agree that most players dont give a damn and do not really realise much difference from Dx7 to Dx9 features, as long as the art is well executed. Cygnus, you can do it! |
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| it depends on the type of game, an the gamer that typically plays those games. But the first impression people have of a game is the graphics, and if the graphics suck most will assume that the developer didn't make the effort on that front, so the rest is probably crap too. And most of the time they are right. A lot of strategy type games don't need the crazy sophisticated graphics, but most action games do now, since everyone is so used to them that to not have them usually ruins the experience. |
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| Cheers Lenn, determination is required in alot of these circumstances. All those people out there, if you havent got the software to do an AAA Comercial, off the shelf game, go for a different route. there are still TEXT based adventure games out there you can pay for, and people do pay. I noticed something the other day while playing MGS on the playstation.. i know that the playstation wasnt DX at all, but if it was, what level would you say its at? id say pretty damn early (pre DX maybe)... Anyway thats not the point- its hardware can cope with it. MGS had fullscreen motionblur and a realy nice water effect that i assume was done by rendering to a texture and placing the texture onto a warping mesh infront of the camera. Why do we struggle to do these on modern day AMD 2600+ systems with a nice nvidea 6800 card? okay, so if we had modern software, itd be easy. The fact is we already have enough stuff to do some amazing things, we need inovation and ideas. To the point: If you want something, you will (or at least shopuld) do what is in your power to get it. |
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| Mgs looked great not because of the underlying tech, (Although it's obviously a factor), but because of the brillant art design. To this day no artist has come close to their work on mgs1/2 Imo.. Though it's easy to say shaders wern't needed so arn't important..just imagine what they could have done with shaders from the outset.. |
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| To this day no artist has come close to their work on mgs1/2 Imo.. If I wanted to insult you I couldn't make it up surely.How on earth did you come to that conclusion? |
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| hmm, MGS looks like run of the mill generic semi real scenery to me thats common place in most modern world shooters these days. whether it's hitman, splinter cell, time splitters, freedom fighters, Max payne and even in some places Doom 3. Hardly the be all and end all of graphic style. |
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| What happened was while we were busy working on the game, and the fx engine more specifically, you were busy trying to take over the whole project by recoding the main engine. I call BS, I wrote a story and produced the first prototype which did have physics (jumping ... etc...) and I was the one who wanted it to have control like the Ghost in Halo. At that time your whole concept was still going to be a FPS with vehicles (some sort of little robots coming out etc..) and not the hover vehicle combat game that it turned into. You hadn't produced jack squat when I had something up and running to toy with what the game would be like. I knew that you wouldn't be able to produce the game and that you'd only be good at contributing some tech to a project which is why I insisted on having control of the main structure or I was out because there was no need to waste my time. Now nearly a year later ... guess what I was right. You didn't have the ability to produce the game and you're still toiling with technology ... completely failing to understand the importance of a good producer who can actually hold a project together and sell it. I did say go ahead without me but that doesn't mean I didn't produce the very first prototype of the concept with the hammer. The demo I produced was 2 player split screen with different weapons and I know Adrian at least had it ... I thought you both did. It is my business too. First of all you were attempting to work with my partner in Leadfoot Productions which was always going to lead to us conflicting at some point. You try to move in and work with someone's teammate and that's just asking for problems. I'm don't need no pep talk.( From a lady....;p) You know, I actually work my own business and part of my work is carrying around 200lb machines. Are you sure you want to say something like that to me ;P |
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| If I wanted to insult you I couldn't make it up surely. Trollific. |
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| I call BS, I wrote a story and produced the first prototype which did have physics (jumping ... etc...) and I was the one who wanted it to have control like the Ghost in Halo. Total crap. Firstly, I originally pitched the idea to Adrian TWO MONTHS before you were even involved. You came on board, came up with some backstory, which was never used. Everything IN GAME is either my idea(Controls/hud system) or ad's idea(Weapon systems). Secondly, the controls are nothing like halo's. Halo is a point and go system, in fmc you simply steer, there's no absolute turns like halo. Not to mention the cursor system which is differant also. I did say go ahead without me Again you rewriting history...why? You're making out like you quit on the grounds I was coding or something along those lines. What really happened of course is I QUIT, completely. I even sent ad an e-mail saying he could use the code I already did, as I didn't want to cause any trouble. Then, ad got back to me saying he'd rather do the game with me. So, you had no choice but to leave. You were fired to be blunt. I take no pleasure in that..In fact I even spoke to ad a few times about getting you back on board mid-project, but for whatever reason(who knows, ask ad) it never happened. Anyway, let's just leave it in the past man. I mean tell me what's wiser...wasting time argueing over dead projects or spending that time coding/talking about new developements. I know which I'd prefer to be doing right now...;p -EDIT- You try to move in and work with someone's teammate and that's just asking for problems. Hey he came to me, so speak to him about that! You know, I actually work my own business and part of my work is carrying around 200lb machines. Are you sure you want to say something like that to me ;P (Best neo voice): I know kung-fu. ;) |
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| I even sent ad an e-mail saying he could use the code I already did, as I didn't want to cause any trouble. So he has an email where you give up your rights to the code? What's your legal basis again? |
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| I sent that e-mail right at the start, it was for the start of the fx engine. Stop stirring trouble. |
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| It seems to me that spaced is afraid to stand by his opinions and has to make a little joke at the end of everything just in case he's really challenged. It provides him with a number of classic excuses. |
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| My god, it's full of trolls. |
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