Slashdot Mirror
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
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/.
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.
It was created as a mod to existing, non-free software (Half-Life).
Subtle, but important difference and in line with what the poster above you said about people not wanting to contribute until the ball is already rolling.
but in my book they're still rehashing old titles every year, 2002 football, 2003 football, etc.
Yea, they are doing that, but have you played them? Football, is football, so the actual game isn't going to change, but there are inmprovemnets in the graphics, extras, etc. It really makes a difference. Playing the old game isnt nearly as much fun as the news one. You may be right someday, but for now I love the newest releases of thier football (sports) games.
Great Linux Site
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.
Well, why not hook up with the Cube developers?
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
--
I agree with you.
I have been working on some projects and I find that after the initial entheusiasm has worn off in the team, the project would gather dust.
However, im working on it alone for now and will "release" it for the public when its of alpha quality
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?