Slashdot Mirror
Postmortem on a Student Project
Gamasutra continues to expand their coverage of student game design programs, with a postmortem on the student project Insignia. A group of six students spent most of a year working on an RPG/RTS hybrid using the d20 license from Wizards of the Coast. From the entertaining writeup: "The process of pitching our idea was highly informative and gave us an industry perspective, insight and positive feedback from the judges. The pressure of competition also helped really focus the team's efforts rather than the more nebulous approach of most student projects."
Is this feature new?
Yes, it is just you.
My karma is in a nose dive
but that shouldn't stop them.
Perhaps they should pitch the game idea to some companies. It sounds like a cool enough concept, especially with an industry that's lacking creativity these days.
Granted, I would have thought that modding the Neverwinter engine would have been easier than the Unreal engine for what they were doing. But I wouldn't know. Would creating the content and effects in NW be all that hard/involved?
Probably the most valuable lesson to be learned from this is that the nebulous approach never really gets a person anywhere. No matter what the industry, it's all about follow-through. How many folks out there started writing/coding/desinging the perfect game? How many folks still have a stack of notes out there in a closet somewhere, under a stack of 5.25 floppies, that would have been a great novel, or the next Freecraft?
Which brings me to my next question, can schools teach follow-through, or is that something innate?
(And on a related note, if schools figure out how to teach follow-through, will we see some "entertainment" that's better than mass produced game sequels, reality television, or yet-another-AD&D knockoffs we have now?)
(Or is the internet living proof that there really is nothing new under the sun?)
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
From The Article: > It would have been easy to get lost in the development process and let production slip away from us if we hadn't addressed our priorities at the very beginning and throughout the academic year. So for every production decision we made, we asked 'is this going to get us higher marks at the end of the year?' and if the answer to that question was 'no' then we didn't focus on it.
It sounds like the learned the most important lesson in any large project!
> We ran into institutional barriers within the University, with the IT department loathe to install certain software and vehemently opposed to giving us access rights to install it ourselves. We often found that they did a bad job and did not test the software they installed, leaving us to wait for a week or two before they would come down and try to fix the problems.
And ... the second most important lesson too!
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
It's just you.
I have no sig yet I must scream.
I'd better watch my ass. The CPAA (Card Player's Association of America) might subpoena me for playing poker last night without authorization.
(anyone who thinks the above is really farfetched hasn't been reading nearly enough slashdot lately)
Looks like a solid concept. However all the data on the page is from mid -05, any idea if they are going to push the development forward? This looks like a game I would buy, which happens almost never.
You say you want a revolution....
RTS/RPG hybrid sounds pretty interesting. Student game projects are often pretty inovative, because they come up with some great ideas and not just think profit. Here's another student project, OpenRTS.org, an open source RTS game engine. If you're interested in game developent, then have a look at the project. It has a working prototype of a RTS-game developed in Python. It's still in the early stages, but is very interested in more developers.
Fun?
"Our game was intentionally grim, dark, and morally ambiguous. That was the game we wanted to make and the University was happy to let us work towards that end."
Ever think that a game should be fun? The games that have stood the test of time tend to be fun.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"2) the publishers won't risk their money funding the polish on a new game design."
Well the slashdot community is flush with cash, and willing to put their money were their mouth is by funding these new game designs.
So, to recap:
What went Right: We got a license, a good team of folks, ambition and potential up the ying-yang...
What went Wrong: Everything else. Too big an idea, using a complex engine that no one was familiar with in a way that it probably wasn't designed, low skills, not enough resources, not enough time...
I've attempted enough game-programming to know that a good idea, early ambition and motivation and basic programming skills account for about 3% of the success of a project. The HARD part is turning those huge ideas into a reality, and sticking with the same project over months and years.
Still, better to try and fail than to sit on their asses. I don't mean to sound too critical, as I'm sure they learned a huge amount, both technically and otherwise.
Adman
Sounds pretty similar to Dragonshard.
6 Industry Support. When we went to seek advice on how to make our game, we discovered that there were few industry resources available. Game development studios do not share their information, techniques, time or ideas as a general rule, and tend to be overly protective or non-communicative. ...
As someone involved with UnrealEngine modding, and other stuff. I have my doubts on that whole section.
I don't know how the deal is with other engines\companies. But Epic provides a lot of information and support to the modding community. Also the unreal modding community has quite a few active people that also work with the UnrealEngine for a living.
So they're either making stuff up or asked the wrong people (like the publisher, or a UnrealEngine licensee). Or they tried to get answers via private channels (e.g. directly emailing a certain , already swamped in work, developer) because the stuff they were working on needs to remain secret (or insert some other lame reason).
I'm frustrated to hear that people consulted in "the industry" as well as the panel of judges for the competition thought that the game concept was too edgy to be marketed. We NEED edgy. We NEED an injection of fresh ideas like these in the industry.
The problem is that it's grown beyond "by gamers, for gamers" into a huge industry run by corporate executives and marketing groups, with the people actually putting their souls into the games being the lowest on the ladder.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Look at Total Anhilation. It is one of the best RTS games of all time and has elements that were (and still are) groundbreaking. AND it was a hot seller (I believe). So, why hasnt anyone pinched all these good ideas from it yet?