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Return of the Independent Game Developer?
chromatic writes "Several of the trends that make open source development possible are affecting other programming worlds. I've written an article about independent game development. Perhaps the gaming industry is ready for the craftsman-team approach."
I'm gonna plug the Independent Game Developer's Association
Purhaps this will lead to a better game play and new ideas instead of the rehash we keep getting- after all how many war simulators are there- and when you look at the SWAT sim's the patches on the sleve are the only change.
Hopefully we will see an infusion of new ideas and styles like Carmagedon was when it came out....
Check out this game mod that a team is developing, i do believe its the largest organized game mod development team yet. The Elemental
I've been trying to get people to work on an open source game for several months now.
Nobody wants to do the bitch work... all the hardest stuff to get started. They just wanna join in and help after it gets goin.
I'm no coding wizard, i can do enough to get by... I write the working shit code and the people too lazy to help at first fix it. Maybe it works better than i thought.
In my day we used to program with just zeros we didn't even have ones
I'm not a big gamer, but in the Mac world some of the best known, and highly regarded game developers are small. One example is Pangea Software whose games are shipped on all iMacs. It's a one man outfit (although he hires out graphics and music).
Eh Return?, did they ever go away? There are loads of open source and freeware gaves out there. It's just that people seem to pay more attention to music/video ripping/sharing stuff righ now
We're a group of four developers working in SDL+Opengl1.4 + DirectX + QT ... trying to produce an industrial-strength multi-platform FPS game, and there are a few obstacles along the way that seperates us from the bigger companies:
(1) Artists. We can only go so far with our limited time and budgets with blender, (to a limited extent, with demo versions of truspace, 3dsmax..)
(2) Programming man-hours. I spent a month building a truspace object importer, that also optimises the polygons and faces. We tried Polytrans, but we still have to use our little (will be GPL) prog for optimisation and correction purposes. We now need importing filters for several other file types but dont have the time to program it.
(3) SDKs. Playstation, gamecube, Xbox development kits are out-of-reach for us, unless we've already sold a couple of games. These kits are priced for companies that can pay.
(4) Investment. We'll need to feed ourselves for a few months while we develop. This hasnt been possible and the development work has taken a back-seat to our jobs/studies. I'm sure many cottage-industry developers can relate to this, despite the open possibilities and chances in the market for ideas.
I'm sure people can come up with more problems but we've discovered these to be the biggest ones ensuring the market belongs to the relatively few larger companies. Theres sure is skill out there, and so are ideas. I can just hope the opensource spirit enters the game-developer circles, and sourceforge gets packed with high-quality competing games that has revolutionised servers and operating systems.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
The open source model would apply, with people taking already existing programs and modifying them, to make the world richer and richer. The world (the construct?) would be an enormous continous space, with parts being fantasy, parts futuristic sci-fi cities, and other parts being similar to the real world.
Once a "critical mass" of programs had been achieved, it would become possible for people to create their own games in this virtual world. I love playing Supreme Snowboarding, it's a bit old now, and pretty simple, but I love the feeling of speed you get as you board down the course. Perhaps that world could be a virtual ski resort - some people could play "Sim Ski Resort", I could play snowboarding, and 007-wannabes could use it as a virtual film set. We'd all play together in this huge virtual world, adapting it to create new games and scenarios as we saw fit.
Of course, there are lots of practical design problems here. How to make a programming language that is simple enough to be understood by people without lots of prior programming experience. How to build a world that doesn't get killed by latency. Can you even simulate the natural world using only mathematics etc? I think so - look at some of the GIMP filters for instance.
It's just a pipe dream of course. I for one don't plan on attempting it anytime soon. I think WorldForge are trying something similar though.
The fact that they have released a second game lets me hope they're not doing too badly...
So you can claim intellectual property on the 256 color trick on ALL QVGA games made for the 8086-80386. I can help you sue microsoft, for a commission of course.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
It's about time... How about another Revenge of the Mutant Camels? How about Sheep In Space? All hail llamasoft. http://www.llamasoft.co.uk/.
This is a really cool free game that just came out for Linux and windows.
Machine Ball
It's very original and has great gameplay.
It was created by one lad in a period of about 6 months.
Essentially what happens is a game company lanches with a hot idea, a sexy game everyone has to have and a console maker feels they have to have, too. All is right with the world and there's money in the coffers. Then after a few games, or extentions of the first successful title, it's a scramble. Take anything, a dead horse which can spare a little more hide for whipping, and dress it up. Reviews say it stinks, nothing like their glory days, etc. The only company which seems to be eluding this downfall is EA, but in my book they're still rehashing old titles every year, 2002 football, 2003 football, etc.
It's not really unlike what happens with rock bands. The great songs they've played in clubs and garages for years are finely honed, they cut an album, it's hot, they're stars. Then the sophomore jinx kicks in and they release a mediocre second album and disappear.
What boggles my mind is the wealth of original ideas explored back in the day on C64, Apple][ and Atari 65xx processors. Almost all were designed by some guy in his basement, submitted to the emerging game companies, and sold 10,000-30,000 copies. You rarely hear their names anymore, but that's like the band analogy, they had one great idea. Imagine mining those things, finding the owners to get that stamp of approval (to keep the lawyers out of it later) and do a new release. I know a lot of those games still kick ass in emulators. Imagine what a Gavin Camp could do with them, with OpenGL, etc.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You had zeroes? We had to use the letter 'O'
Go see LiveForSpeed and see for yourself! More realistic simulation than almost anything out there, free while in beta test, netplay.. Worth a try, really.
have you been defaced today?
It would be nice to see a return to the days when the commodore ruled. Where there where a lot of interesting and new games being made by little development teams instead of large ones trying to copy half-life.
Does anyone else remember when games came in cardboard folders that on the insert had a picture of the development team dressed up to fit the theme of the game? Nowadays, they would need a full sized yearbook to do that.
all board mad just got sent home to see our friends (in our heads) for xmas nut cases.
didn't you know that, more prozak please.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Doom flourished with third-party maps. Modifications for Quake and Half-life took on lives of their own, leading to commercial releases.
This also has surpassed the programmers expectations. It also can lead to an interesting point that sometimes the developers do not want to spend so much time supporting/developing for the game. Sure the fans help, and it is the fans that make their material free to use. There are plenty of talented CGI people and programmers, they just don't want to devote their entire life for peanuts and a divorce.
I personally always look at the "other" games. The ones made by a common Jane/Joe. It is kinda of like going to the old theater on campus and seeing what the no-name director/artist can do. Sure graphics is great, but so is the game play. For instance look at Neverwinter Nights. The capabilities are amazing, not to try to sell it, but you can pretty much add anything you want to your modules, sound, graphics, tile sets, scripts, and even more. Granted to really cruddy part is the the tool-set is for Windows only. Just think of is a a fact that this game was in development for 3-4 years before Linux started entering the scene. Any how the main point is that most of the games that live so longer are due to the fans. They are the ones creating the materials and keeping it going. The businesspeople have already made their money so they could careless about the continuing life-unless they see a sequel out of it.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
One of the regular columns of Game Developers Magazine, is a feature called: "Game Postmorten". In this column, different game companies talked about their experiences writing some of their games.
You'll notice that more and more games are resembling big hollywood productions, with multi-year engaments, and dozens of contributors. This has come about because users expect photo-realistic graphics, and true-to-real physics engines. A small group of developers have little chance of having this resources at hand.
For an example, check the Postmorten for Dungeon Siege Here.
John
The drops of water don't know themselves to be a river; and yet the river flows.
You had letters?!!!
>> Practice Safe Hex
but how did you keep track of them?
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
another instance of the mysteryus postblock(tm) effect? is 40 a significaNT # to this abnormalady?
& what does stock/bank fraud, or robbIEs payper billyuns, have to do with game developmeNT, or anything else that gooed folks think about IT?
They say a top end game now costs a couple million to develop and market. Not as as high as top end movie to produce, but similar to a low end studio movie or moderate indie movie. game revenues now exceed the movie industry by a bit. Of course, just as one can now go out with digi-cam and the iMovie editor and shot a decent indie movie for tens of thousands of dollars (I've seen a few decent ones at film festivals) a independent game developer can do a lot more on his/her own for a few thousand bucks.
QVGA is a standard for Palm devices. Do you mean EGA? Never heard of getting 256 colors out of that, but I imagine you could have done it in the same way you got 16 colors out of CGA.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
but how did you keep track of them?
Quoting GrandPa Simpson..."We used to tie an onion to our belt"
Publishers currently handle the printing of the manuals, the stuffing of retail boxes, distribution, advertising, and money. According to the article on Garage Games, the Independents would still be outsourcing printing and stuffing. They gloss over the problem of distribution, but imply that the independent would be well served by their services. Advertising they claim is a pittiance, though that could be simply because it is executed so badly by the major distributers. And finally MONEY... The article implies that every independent can become an Ambrosia if they just aim at an underrepresented market, but this, quite frankly, is unrealistic. Despite what the article says, you cannot hire real artists, sound personnel, video editors, coders, and testers for six months for 5,000 dollars. That budget should be more like 200,000... and that would be a lean and mean 4 person crew. If you can convince everyone to work pro-bono and can find a spare pair of rooms in someone's house, that will offset most of the costs but will put the talent into an even worse position than they started out in.
The dream of relaiming IP from the publisher, as well as creative control, is an alluring one. But the fact is the publisher serves several vital roles in this industry, most of which are underappreciated by veterans who have had several great ideas and a lot of bad projects canned by the major houses. What climate has changed? What power shifted to the independents? Doesn't the lowered entry barriers into game development, as mentioned in the article, make publishers a relatively rarer and therefore more powerful entity?
-C
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
This is a re-hash of 50% of the alt.games.programmer posts and half the sourceforge "GAMES" section
Independents (no matter whether it's music, films or games) are those who aren't afraid of risk. Therefore, lots of innovation will happen there.
As I see it (disclaimer: I am the project leader of an indy game), the games industry may well be where the music industry is already: Small unknowns creating new ideas that the big publishers than dumb down for the mainstream and rehash for a couple of years until they've found the next trend.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
As I look across the video game market today, on the PC and on the various big three consoles I've noticed a lack of games that absolutely fundamentally suck in just about every way imaginable. Its like game developers have suddenly "forgotten" how to create jerky blocky video game characters using 2-bit graphics. I mean is it impossible with all the power in these boxes to create something on par with Pong? I guess you can call this the pre-madonna syndrome.
e owulfed"
Fortunately the Open Source community rides to the rescue once again to drive back the night. If there's one thing the OS community is known for its bad interfaces and horrible graphics. I have no doubt that right now a crack team of 3l33t h4x0rz are working on the very first 16-bit version of Tomb Raider, Daikaitana and Halo. Once they get all the bugs out and do some serious regression testing those games should be down to 8-bit and by the time they're proud enough of their work to offer it as a come one come all beta those games should be purring along at 4-bit goodness.
They'll probably call their gaming platform the "Emulator-Within-An-Emulator-Within-An-Emulator-B
or EWAEWAEB for short. EWAEWAEB will revolutionize the video gaming world. Founding and core EWAEWAEB developers will be asked to go on the G4 Video Game Channel on Cable TV for endless interviews on how they pulled the rug from under the established gaming powers and saved the day for all of us.
Its truly good to know that there are still some people dedicated to REAL gaming in the world and not just sell outs who have a perverted blood lust for the blasphemous "realism" in today's games.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Years ago, when gfx developers ruled the demoscene, content was not that important. Today, it's the other way around: developers can program whatever they want, if you don't have awesome 3D models, textures and sound, it will not draw the attention expected.
:). No, what's needed is a big pile of content: 3D models/textures, backgrounds, fonts, sounds, musicscores etc. etc.
The same goes for games. A 3D engine/2D tile engine is one thing, but what will you show with that engine? The programmer art cooked up by the developer? I hope not
So I don't see the 'independent game developer' as a valuable jobdescription. What's needed for development of a good game is a complete team, with of course one or 2 developers but above all: a couple of contentproducers with excellent skills.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Not likely. Independent developers are known for innovative and new ideas. The game industry is only interested in sequels. Proof? Every popular game last year was a sequel. Every one.
LadyStar - Your Magical and Mysterious Adventure Awaits
Since nobody seems have mentioned him yet, I will. He belongs in any story about independent game developers (and people who destroy Coke machines).
Derek Smart! Derek Smart! DEREK SMART!!1!
Since I was very young I have been using a Macintosh and when I first started to learn game development, it was on a Macintosh platform. I recently picked up programming under Win32 since I have more access to machines running Windows. When I was going to school at night, I meet a kid who wanted to get into game programming. Our biggest problem was we could not come up with a game idea that was good, and didn't already exist. (Apparently we are not the creative bunch) Then it hit me. Alot of people have written very successful games for the Macintosh and released them as shareware. I would email the person who wrote the game and ask if they would like to port their game over to Windows to expand the user base. Alot of people took me up on the offer, My friend and I would write these games after work and then the author would sell them on their site and we get a check every once and a while for a couple of bucks, which would usually be exchanged for Beer at the bar right next to the school. Basically, I get to enjoy my hobby, and make a few bucks at the same time.
As well, the notion that developers write software to scratch their own itches may not translate well into games
Speaking of my case in particular, and I'm sure there are many out there like me, I love writing code in general. It's not so much the "pragmatic utilities" as it is doing something cool with the machine, whether it's a compiler, or a game, or writing stuff to run on the dreamcast.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
First sign of a newbie: "I'm gonna build a totally generic engine that can do ANYTHING!!". I love how newbies never stop to think why the pros aren't already doing this. Because it's a fucking stupid waste of time.
Gee, and we only had capital numbers...
As everyone knows, Open Source software is the wave of the future. With the market share of GNU/Linux and *BSD increasing every day, interest in Open Source Software is at an all time high.
Developing games within the Open Source model benefits everyone. People can take your code, improve it and then release it back to the community. This cycle continues and leads to the creation of far more stable software than the 'Closed Source' shops can ever hope to create.
So you're itching to create that Doom 3 killer but don't know where to start? Read on!
2. First Steps
The most important thing that any Open Source project needs is a SourceForge.net page. There are tens of thousands of successful Open Source projects on SourceForge.net; the support you receive here will be invaluable.
OK, so you've registered your SourceForge.net project and set the status to '0: Pre-Thinking About It', what's next?
3. Don't Waste Time!
Now you need to set up your SourceForge.net homepage. Keep it plain and simple - don't use too many HTML tags, just knock something up in VI. Website editors like FrontPage and DreamWeaver just create bloated eye-candy - you need to get your message to the masses!
4. Ask For Help
Since you probably can't program at all you'll need to try and find some people who think they can. If your project is a game you'll probably need an artist too. Ask for help on your new SourceForge.net pages. Here is an example to get you started:
Thousands of talented programmers and artists hang out at SourceForge.net ready to devote their time to projects so you should get a team together in no time!5. The A-Team
So now you have your team together you are ready to change your projects status to '1: Pre-Bickering'. You will need to discuss your ideas with your team mates and see what value they can add to the project. You could use an Instant Messaging program like MSN for this, but since you run Linux you'll have to stick to e-mail.
Don't forget that YOU are in charge! If your team doesn't like the idea of giant robotic spiders just delete them from the project and move on. Someone else can fill their place and this is the beauty of Open Source development. The code might end up a bit messy and the graphics inconsistant - but it's still 'Free as in Speech'!
6. Getting Down To It
Now that you've found a team of right thinking people you're ready to start development. Be prepared for some delays though. Programming is a craft and can take years to learn. Your programmer may be a bit rusty but will probably be writing "hello world" programs after school in no time.
Closed Source games like Doom 3 use the graphics card to do all the hard stuff anyhow, so your programmer will just have to get the NVidia 'API' and it will be plain sailing! Giant robot spiders, here we come!
7. The Outcome
So it's been a few years, you still have no files released or in CVS. Your programmer can't get enough time on the PC because his mother won't let him use it after 8pm. Your artist has run off with a Thai She-Male. Your project is still at '1: Pre-Bickering'...
Congratulations! You now have a successful Open Source project on SourceForge.net! Pat yourself on the back, think up another idea and do it all again! See how simple it is?
Your idea may fly eventually, but right now Moore's Law hasn't caught up with it. Workable 3D game engines have a very tightly honed feature set. They work because of a massive, carefully chosen set of compromises.
This is how it will turn out. Assume everybody will come and throw a stone soup party on the engine. A few months later you're already getting 0.25fps, and everyone is pointing fingers. You have to pick and choose, or give up. Well, picking and choosing is what everyone is already doing, and moreover they set out from the start to do it, so...
With a very, very well managed project - I almost think of a couple people working full-time on managing it, you can go farther than a few months, and maybe do some interesting things, but at the end of the day, you won't get to the destination you're imagining for another few years at least.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
I'll utilize this topic to drum up support for an Open Source game I'm helping to push forward. It's Open Source Zelda and can be found here.
This project was started by Nehe (of famed OpenGL tutorials) and he maintains posting the stable milestone check-ins. Even if you aren't interested in OSZ, check out his site...his tutorials are the best on the web, IMHO.
The idea is to re-create the original 8-bit Zelda which Nintendo released in the mid-80's, but for it to have an open architecture so that other developers may reuse the engine for similar games. The code is also highly OO, and well documented in the hopes that those interested in knowing how to create a game (or apply OO design) can glen some knowledge from other developers' work.
It's Win32 now, but we have had interest from a developer in the BaltoLUG who may begin a Linux port. Anyone is welcome to attempt this, branch it, or do whatever they want with the code (under the GPL). =)
Gaming houses can rake in the cash nowadays. Thus, most of the good game programmers are already getting paid to drink beer at work while coding obscure bits of code. Sure, the bulk of them aren't driving Carmack's cars or funding experiments to drive commercial space flight. But they're not starving, and they're being paid to do what they love.
There's the problem with open source games. No one wants to do the bull work for free. There's plenty of artists and musicians out there who would just love to do stuff for any given game, but the point is - they're all useless until you have an engine and accompanying code written to *use* their work.
There's plenty of people who would want to write sexy code, level editors and such. That's great, and useless, without an actual game.
There's boatloads of folk who would take care of all the minute details for you. Great, anyone want to help out with the boring dirty work? Nope.
Solutions to this aren't easy, but they're not terribly hard. For example, iD has released various bits of source that can take care of the 'hard' stuff. True, it's GPL, and thus, if you distributed the game, people would easily find ways to cheat and such since they'd have yer source.
Suck it up and make your game able to be played between friends who can trust each other. Realize it won't become the next Counter-Strike. (Which, in itself, is a constant battle between cheating and developers of anti-cheating software.)
You're in this to make games, not get rich, right?
If you're in it solely to get rich, suck it up, throw proposals around, get some venture capital, and *hire* people. If you're in it for the purposes of doing it, or for popularity, open source gaming development could be a good option.
I can't count the number of hours I've lost to FreeCiv, conquering the world in the name of the Lidless Eye.
It's not Independent, but International.
Independent game developement is really cool. It's a lot like independent movie developement. You get games from "dead" genres like adventure games. And you get RPGs with plots that just wouldn't work for a commercial game.
However, there is one problem. Independent film succeeds because the equipment necessary to create a modern film is difficult, but not impossible to come by. And those who are truly going to make a quality movie can obtain it.
In order to make a modern video game with the latest in graphics, sound, etc. You need the dev kits and the info that the "real" game companies get. John Carmack at Id had GeForce3's before anyone else so he could make Doom 3. The guys who made Metroid prime had GameCube kits before there were GameCubes. Even if I had the money I doubt I could acquire a GameCube developement box. But if you're strictly talking PC here, just think of DirectX9. It's out, but there's no SDK, yet. But you know what? I bet you all the fancy games under developement right now know what's up with DX9 and they have NDAs not to tell us.
Independent games are really cool. But they will always be a step behind commercial games because they don't have access to the latest and greatest technology. It takes years to make a game and unless you have graphics hardware that is as good as what consumers will have in 2 years your game wont be top of the line, graphics wise. Not to say that graphics are a necessity, Moonbase Commander rules.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Ambitious mods like elemental and others beg any number of questions about the changing nature of game development and the industry itself.
./demogorgon_alpha
One major question I have is about the representation of mods/total conversions at the IGF/GDC. I see a lot of shitty little 'independent' games that no one cares about or has ever heard of. Where is the representation for the REAL underground? Counterstrike, Elemental, DoD, Natural Selection, Team Fortress, ThreeWave, etc. The mod community has changed development as we know it; Counterstrike alone accounts for something like 80000 to 100000 players a DAY, more than any other game, retail or otherwise.
It's an incredible and depressingly political oversight that the people at the IGF have neglected to recognize mods for what they are - an enormous and increasingly influential paradigm shift in the history of gaming.
One hopes they'll remedy their error and quit telling us games like "bad milk" are the independent game of the year.
If independent game development is to have much of a future, some foundational building blocks need to be created. An open source real-world physics engine would be a good first step. If this were done correctly, it would free independent game shops from thousands of hours of work.
Just as we have an open source operating system that we can use and manipulate however we choose, it would be an incredible advantage to have a few open source base gaming engines that could be used or manipulated.
Or maybe that's unrealistic...I don't know.
The problem lies in just how complex you want to make everything. I mean, it's relatively simple, in that everything inherits properties, and you just have to code the properties. But well, you add some new super-cool property, and well, you then have to go back and re-do all of the inheritables. This isn't so bad, if you come up with a good organizational library system, but you also need to develop concepts of material types [ie, a glass object doesn't degrade when hit by something with acidic properties, but you'd want to file things by object type, not by material type, or it'd be a bitch to deal with] or whatever other groupings of properties you'd want to deal with.
Anyway, about 6-7 years ago, a few folks that I knew started working on a mud, with the basic concept that there were two types of people who wrote for muds -- the ones who were creative, and had no idea how to code, and the coders, who couldn't come up with something artistic to save their life. Our goal was to come up with basic system that would accept templates and configuration files so that the artistic folks would never have to write any real code. [eg, I want an orc, a bit bigger than normal, barehanded, and generate the armour randomly]
The only way to ensure that everything would work well down the road was for everything to inherit correctly, and to do that, you'd have to figure out how you were going to organize your generic objects so they could be maintained in the long run. But well, we didn't have all of the properties that we were going to use in place, as I was in the process of rewriting the combat system, so no armour/weapons/attacks could be written, and got sidetracked from work and nothing ever happened.
I still think it's a good idea, but it's a major undertaking [and hell, we weren't even dealing with graphics back in those days]. You'd need to keep the back end fairly tightly controled, so that you don't cause odd interactions when people make new properties. I'd think that you'd gain the most benefit by keeping the core engine tightly controlled, having a screening process for the inclusion of new inheritables, and releating it to the public for creating worlds (basically, collections of objects). Otherwise, you'd end up with 'well, this object only works if you use Bob's distribution, and apply the patches from Dave and John' situations, which makes it very difficult to support in the long run.
Oh...and after taking 4 years of civil engineering courses, I can tell you that sand is most definately not a liquid, although it can behave like a fluid in times of liquefaction, as can all soils with a high enough moisture content and sudden shock. I'd also say that sand is a property of desert (sandy, rocky or ice composition), and viscosity is a property of fluids. This is part of the difficulty in modeling how items inherit properties, and why you need to worry about it before you get too far into the project
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
There is a pretty stable beta available for download at the site.
"Starshatter is a military space combat simulation set in the far future. Unlike most space sims, Starshatter allows you to directly command a wide variety of ships, from small atmospheric and space-based fighters, to giant cruisers and fleet carriers. Starshatter will take you through the ultimate space combat experience, from planet surface to interstellar space, with several dynamic campaigns set in a persistent simulated universe.
Starshatter is currently in development, and is expected to begin beta testing this summer for a general release later in 2002. Several functional public demos have been released, check the downloads page for more information.
The game is independently developed and funded by one person: John DiCamillo. This represents a return to the old days of PC game development with a small studio producing an entire original game from scratch."
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Great, Slashdot is now accepting articles on writing videogames from the technical editor of O'Reilly. That's like having George Lucas write an article on Perl syntax.
chromatic seems to presume that the primary problem in developing a game is determining which scripting language to use. That's like saying that the primary problem in making a movie is determining which camera to shoot with... it is a valid technical concern but there are about 300 other technical, artistic, and business concerns that are more relevant.
chromatic suggests that you can make a game that sells 20k units and costs $5k to make. Again, check your sources. More experienced studios than chromatic have desperately tried to perfect the cheapo game... guess what, people: consumers don't give a shit about your cheesy-ass Tetris clone. You'll be in the hole for the cost of the media, and Best Buy and Wal-Mart will laugh loudly when you ask to get shelf space from them.
This guy chromatic has clearly never worked on a real videogame project and has no knowledge of the current nature of the business. Caveat emptor Slashdot.
>> Nobody wants to do the bitch work... all the hardest stuff to get started. They just wanna join in and help after it gets goin. ... ] ...the point is that until you have something that builds and mostly works, there's no point in shopping it around for opensource help...
;-)
>
> Ahhh, young grasshopper, it sounds like you don't want to do the 'bitch' work either.
> [
>
And therein lies a key problem. (Comments not directed at the original author.) Xdroop, you nailed it on the head. You see so many people who want to be an Instant Producer(tm) w/ no experience or budget. Usually goes something like, "I have this GREAT game idea, all I need is volunteers - a programmer or two, some artists, and..."
In other words, "I scribbled this on a napkin and now I want others to make it happen."
DoD sims were my mainstay prior to taking the leap. I was as a one-person start-up that crumbled just prior to beta release due to divorce. (DOH!) But I built the project from the ground up with OOD/reuse/robustness in mind, cross-platform, OpenGL, networking, etc. Took my time to do it right. My kids were enthusiastic beta testers, found more bugs than any team of grown-ups ever could.
I still have the project and will resurrect it some day (solo, thank you). But if I really wanted to, I have enough that I could release the design docs (technical and gameplay), business plan, and commented source to a prospective team and they could see that it works, review it, play with it, and decide if it was right for them to join a team.
If instead I'd gotten on an IRC channel/Usenet group and said, "I've got this great idea for a realtime cross-platform 3D networked series of games, all I need is...". That's like standing up in the middle of a shopping mall and hollering, "I'm looking to get laid by a gorgeous model, all I need is..." Your odds are about the same.
There aren't many of us, but open source composers do exist.
It's interesting, because I think in many ways, OS music composition still reflects the more early (idealistic?) days of OS programming. The entry price to make good sounding music is still steep. There's no OS DAW that I know of that can do what you need one to do, and music production still relies heavily on hardware, both to mix sound and to generate sound (thought this is changing!). So the people you get donating the stuff they write without a thought to recouping the monetary investment they've made are passionate about music and the community. Sharing the music is its own reward, as it were.
And there's demand. Now a person starting up an OS project has to have a muse. They have to have an idea that hasn't been done. But back in the early days of GNU, it wasn't so much of a question. It was like "We don't cp or ls yet. Work on that." or "emacs doesn't read email yet. Clearly it must before it can be considered complete."
That's still the state of things in OS music -- there's still that need. The community provides the inspiration for you and you just bang out a(n elegant and awe-inspiring) musical representation of it. I know many digital composers that, when hard up for new ideas for their own stuff, take gratis commissions or other free work just to get the juices flowing.
At any rate, if your game needs music, drop me a line. I may be able to hook you up. skiaatskiadotnet
--
For all you people complaining about not being able to "get into consoles", may I humbly suggest a Dreamcast?
You can find a fully free SDK here, a thriving homebrew community here, and there are already hundreds of homebrew games out there, many of them with source code.
A top of the line dev station will run you about $200 -- $50 for a used DC console, ~$15 for a serial cable, ~$135 for a BBA (100mbps ethernet), and a Cygwin install if you use Windows.
We're also working on opening up a market again with various others which, if not as large as the PS2 or GameCube, would certainly qualify as one of Garage Games' "niche markets". There are millions of DCs out there, about 90% of which can run games burned on CDR or pressed on a CD with no modifications.
So what are you waiting for? :)
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
Nobody wants to do the bitch work... all the hardest stuff to get started. Hmm... let me think, what was another hard CS project? What languages try to provide the highest level abstractions, yet have had years for their compilers to mature?
I've been playing video games pretty much since the NES came out, and know many who have been playing since earlier. I love playing console
and PC games, and love the idea of making my own game, even if it is just for fun.
Many game players (at least among those with some computer knowledge) dream that they could make a game of their own.
However, there is actually quite a bit of work to go into a game, besides just programming. Unless it is a text only game, you need art and music. You also have to come up with the concepts and story for your game, as well as the "rules" for the game itself (for example, if you want to make an RPG, you need to figure out all the stats, etc. that you'll need).
If you are making the game for fun, it is doable. It doesn't really matter if the game ends up looking like a Super NES game. As long
as you enjoy the end product.
But then there are those who might try to start making games professionally. It seems that starting from scratch will only get more difficult as time goes on to make a game that will sell.
In the early to mid 80s, if you could code well, you could probably make a text adventure game by yourself and have a shot at actually selling it if it was good / interesting, especially if it was well liked by other computer geeks.
Unfortunately, things have changed. The top selling PC games nowadays were made with many people. To make a similar game you not only need programmers, but you need 3D artists and someone to make an entire music score. You might need voice actors, and someone to "direct" the cutscenes. Finally, you need to market the game to an audience of the lowest common denominator.
Such a game would be quite hard for someone starting out to produce and then break into the business with. Even if someone can manage to make a good game, they still have to get it out there.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
My company has recently received a patant on the process you have described in your posting.
/. and other boards.
We therefore request that you either:
A. Discontinuing the free disemination of our process
B. Obtain a license (only $10,000/year) which will allow you to post this information on
You have been warned.
Well, firstly there is the inability of free software to make money. The argument that the money is in support doesn't really work for kids who expect to put the software in and have it go...
Then there is the way in which the console makers (2/3rds of the market says the article - and they are getting bigger) are acting to lock up their machines. You have to bow down to the Great God Microsoft to get something to run on the Xbox for instance.
And then...well it all comes back to the first part. Sure you might be able to make a little bit of money from a closed software game but to really hit the big time you need big bucks marketing.
The alternative - of destroying the commercial market through free software - the way in which Linux gives BillG nightmares - is stopped by point 2 (for now).
I don't know how many of you have seen this movie but I thought it was interesting when they mention while driving along that the countryside is full of game developers.
I'd like to see game development take that sort of direction where programmers, designers, artists, musicians, etc. start gathering in random locales, especially those outside the big cities. It's discouraging for those who are looking to get into game development to think that their options for living are limited to Seattle, LA, and Texas. The net certainly makes this sort of do-it-wherever business possible.
I'm working on a GPLed chess game in Java (cause I get sick, when I try to play these ego shooters). Do I still qualify?
I've seen some virtual worlds done in Alan Kay's Squeak that are more or less what the original poster described. Because Squeak is done in SmallTalk, you can use late binding to add properties at run time anywhere in the class hierarchy. Also, because Squeak is done in SmallTalk, it's kind slow so I can't imagine doing a fully functional virtual world in it...
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Whoever modded this down is obviously anti-semitic racist and a terrorist sympathizer!
is more difficult and takes more time
than making a HollyWood blockbuster movie.
The real difference is that you don't get
to rub against Halle Berry's naked skin.
And when the movie is finished beautiful
people still don't want to have sex with you.
You get paid less too! Sucker!
-J
See the problem is people don't have the initative to sit down and write the graphics algorithms. The math is actually simple once you absorb the terminology. There are quite a few good website out that are very good at explaining the math.
.com is good for ideas. Some of the articles on there are very technically oriented.
http://nehe.gamedev.net
http://www.gametutorials.com
nehe's will get you started with the basics and game tutorials' is for the collision detection.
www.gamasutra.org or
I've been working on my game for about a year. I had to learn Blender and python but it only took me 3 months to catch on and have a exporting script where I could load the models in my game. To be honest, Unemployment was a real angel in disguise. I could stay up all day and all night coding on my game. Now that I have a job I don't have the time I once did to acomplish the large factors that make up a game's design. World transversal, Model loading, Collision systems.
But I will say this, It is totally possible to develop a game on your own and without expensive propriatary products. They did it alot in the 80's with the exception of the propiratary products....
--got milk?
They don't have a big budget, major investors or even a confirmed publisher, so they've modified open source programs like Cal3D and written their own scripting language for the game. They currently have something like 10,000 beta testers and the game is looking more promising than most of the other MMORPGs in the current and near-future market. All it takes is a good and well thought-through idea; if it appeals to people, that's all that's needed to create a successful game other than commitment.
- Stormcaller
http://www.stormcaller.net
I was just reading up on the xbox dev licensing programs
They have an incubator program
here: http://www.xbox.com/dev/incubator.htm
lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
If someone would make an open source replica of Final Fantasy Tactics, I would open my wallet for you and allow you to take what you please. I can't code well enough to do it yet, but if that existed, I would die happy.
NES games and earlier could be created by a couple of people. But obviously, with the enhanced audio visual capabilities and data capacities, recent games have suffered from bloat.
With all the new audiovisual capabilities, the big companies with money to invest in a project can now go full blown with multi million dollar games to compete with other companies, and unfortunately the game industry has become a battle between the big guns.
These better looking, bigger games often sell, but not that much more than the popular games of the past, resulting in lower margins, higher risk, and a higher barrier to entry for newcomers.
SDKs. Playstation, gamecube, Xbox development kits are out-of-reach for us
So develop on Game Boy Advance. You can get the compiler, libraries, and demos as free software, and you can get a flash cartridge for under 100 USD.
You can develop for a modded Xbox or a PS2 running Linux until you get enough dough to buy the DVD consoles' devkits.
Will I retire or break 10K?
First, it was never ECA. It was always EA.
You refer to the box-sphere-pyramid logo of Electronic Arts before the company began to use the EA Sports logo company-wide. It has been suggested that the sphere represented a G: "Electronic Gaming Arts" or something. Others have suggested that the logo change (from box-sphere-pyramid to EA Sports) represents when EA jumped the shark.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The idea is to re-create the original 8-bit Zelda which Nintendo released in the mid-80's, but for it to have an open architecture
Open Zelda? If you use <sarcasm>even one pixel</sarcasm> from the original game's graphics, Nintendo will sue you into the ground.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The Game Boy Advance has a homebrew scene about it as well. You can get a full dev kit for $200: $70 for a GBA, $30 for an MBV2 cable (used to test small programs), $80 for a flash cartridge (used to test large programs), and $20 for a month of Internet access (used to download the tools from gbadev.org).
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm interested. I'm tired of having music that sounds too much like Marilyn Manson's band and Puff Daddy's band jamming together (the music in TOD for GBA), and I want something fresh.
But how do you plan on guaranteeing that the music you write is actually original and not unconsciously cribbed from something else?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Then there is the way in which the console makers (2/3rds of the market says the article - and they are getting bigger) are acting to lock up their machines.
The GBA is not locked up so tightly. Booting a GBA into your own code requires only a 192-byte header, and since 1993, US courts have considered copying that header to constitute a fair use of a copyrighted "official" game (Sega v. Accolade).
Will I retire or break 10K?
What good timing; only last week, I bought my first game in ages, and it was programmed by just a couple of guys. Uplink, the "hacking simulator", while bearing only superficial resemblance to the real thing, is a lot of fun.
Gerv
there are many open source freely avialable game engines out there that let one developer (or a small team) create their own games that are comparable, or better than commercial games... http://rfactory.uber-geek.ca [begin shameless self promotion] This is the engine that I have been using to build my own game - the engine was programmed by one developer almost exclusively, with a few others contributing code fixes & features here and there...all open-source & independent...no big corporation here... http://www.uber-geek.ca/games/turing/ [/end shameless self promotion] just an example of what can be created with no budget, no publisher... the indie community is just gettin started ;P
The article focuses on Garage Games's Torque engine being priced for the little guy, which it certainly is. But a so-called "engine", even when priced at $200,000 is only roughly 2-5% of the cost of a commercial game. Seriously.
On another note, indie game development won't really take off until it has some kind of real soul behind it, not just the blatant me-tooism that's been fueling hobbyist development (clones of Boulder Dash, clones of Arkanoid, clones of Tetris, etc).
Purhaps this will lead to a better game play and new ideas instead of the rehash we keep getting
Sadly, indie game developers are just as bad about this, if not worse. At least you don't see commercial developers writing Yet Another Arkanoid and such.
As was the style at the time
hahaha!!!
Do you honestly want us to believe that the only reason Carmack is so good is because he has access to better hardware than you?
And I suppose then that you would be able to compete with iD and John Carmack if only you had a GeForce5million before everyone else.
It's an interesting theory, I'm sure... Well, funny, anway.
People have written object-oriented world-simulation languages, just not in exactly the way you describe; they're languages designed for writing "interactive fiction", and the two best known are Inform and TADS (with Inform being my personal preference; kind of like C, only comprehensible and with a free Designer's Manual available for download).
The only problem is, even with these, it's very very hard to write a consistent and bug-free model of the world, simply because there are so many states for a text adventure game to get itself into. Then you have players who do crazy things in them, deliberately looking for bugs. Still, they're very flexible and it can be a lot of fun to use them.
Inform (and its standard libraries) is currently on something like release 6.10, so it's very stable and likely won't be changed at all in the coming years. TADS is currently on version 2, but work on TADS 3 is advancing well.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
The Bible on letters of reference:
Are we beginning all over again to produce our credentials? Do
we, like some people, need letters of introduction to you, or from you?
No, you are all the letter we need, a letter written on your heart; any
man can see it for what it is and read it for himself.
-- 2 Corinthians 3:1-2, New English translation
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