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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 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).
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.
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?
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!)
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.