What Nobody Tells You About Being a Game Dev

Wait... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-24 08:17 · Score: 5, Insightful

People didn't know this?

Re:Wait... by Canazza · 2012-11-24 09:13 · Score: 4, Funny

People do, that's why no-one tells you it.

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It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Re:Wait... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-24 09:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

Young people never listen to other people's advice.
It's very good, because it means young people will sometimes succeed where older people failed.
Re:Wait... by Mitchell314 · 2012-11-24 09:30 · Score: 2

Heh, reminds me of a clip from "Triumph of the Nerds" where one of the personal computer pioneers admitted to getting involved because they were too naive to see how crazy it was. Now look where we are.

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I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Re:Wait... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-24 14:36 · Score: 1

People do, that's why no-one tells you it.
Actually they do tell you, all the time.
In other news, earth is round, sky is blue and Santa Claus does not exist.
Re:Wait... by uninformedLuddite · 2012-11-25 08:05 · Score: 3, Funny

You have just reduced a multitude of Winnie the Pooh laptop hackers to tears. I hope you are proud of yourself.

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The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Re:Wait... by Hognoxious · 2012-11-25 09:09 · Score: 1

I agree. I'm sick of those old farts who were at Gettysburg. What do they know? This is France or something and it's like totally 1916!

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."

Agree with the first project warning by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-24 08:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

I fully agree about not making the first project an RPG. A good RPG needs good story, graphics, game balance, hopefully multiplayer and there are a lot of "gotchas" to be found. Plus any good-sized RPG will end up being huge. Almost any other type of game is probably easier for a single-developer studio to create.

Re:Agree with the first project warning by preaction · 2012-11-24 08:33 · Score: 1

Easier, sure, but who ever had fun doing easy things? I've been the lone developer on an MMO RPG for about 3 years now, and we've just started releasing previews to small groups of our followers.
If you can keep at it, do it. If you can't, try something different. The only necessity is to finish: Anything finished is better than anything not finished.
Re:Agree with the first project warning by Cinder6 · 2012-11-24 08:41 · Score: 1

Multiplayer? Outside of MMOs, I can't think of any (popular) RPGs that support more than one player. The Tales series comes close, but you can only have more than one player during combat.

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If you can't convince them, convict them.
Re:Agree with the first project warning by godrik · 2012-11-24 08:41 · Score: 1

I guess one of the point of being a game developer is to make money out of it. If you are doing it for fun, then sure, you can spend 3 years on your pet project. If you are planning to make money, how do you eat for 3 years?
Re:Agree with the first project warning by sammyF70 · 2012-11-24 08:45 · Score: 2

NWN ...

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"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
Re:Agree with the first project warning by TFAFalcon · 2012-11-24 08:57 · Score: 1

Baldur's gate, Icewind dale.
Re:Agree with the first project warning by Canazza · 2012-11-24 09:15 · Score: 1

Torchlight 2.
Diablo 2, and Diablo 3.

--
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Re:Agree with the first project warning by damnbunni · 2012-11-24 09:43 · Score: 1

Baldur's Gate had multiplayer.
Re:Agree with the first project warning by mypalmike · 2012-11-24 11:58 · Score: 1

AFAICT, if you're like many indie game devs, mom and dad feed you.

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There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Re:Agree with the first project warning by preaction · 2012-11-24 14:41 · Score: 3, Interesting

You get a Real Job (tm). At my Real Job I make enough money to pay some contractors at my game company, and I spend my nights and weekends coding for the game.
No, I don't have a spouse or a social life to speak of, why do you ask?
Re:Agree with the first project warning by bfandreas · 2012-11-24 16:05 · Score: 1

Torchlight 2. Diablo 2, and Diablo 3.
Calling those three RPGs is like calling watching porn "sex".

Multiplayer online RPGs tend to ruin the experience for everyone. When the roflcopter lands the immersion is gone.
Just a nit I had to pick.

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20 minutes into the future
Re:Agree with the first project warning by kur0saki · 2012-11-25 04:29 · Score: 1

Code hard, die young. That's the spirit!
Re:Agree with the first project warning by tehcyder · 2012-11-25 21:34 · Score: 1

I guess one of the point of being a game developer is to make money out of it. If you are doing it for fun, then sure, you can spend 3 years on your pet project. If you are planning to make money, how do you eat for 3 years?
Get an intellectually undemanding part time job in the same way that budding actors or musicians have to.

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To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Re:Agree with the first project warning by Xest · 2012-11-25 22:02 · Score: 1

This is what anyone starting their own business deals with. Either you have a business plan that allows you to make enough money to live from it, or, if you don't, you start your business alongside a job and grow it until it's making enough money to quit your full time job.
I started writing a game 2 years ago, I started at christmas, and had 2 weeks off over that period. During this time, as well as learning XNA I managed to build a full blown world editor for manipulating terrain, placing entities, setting properties and basic scripts on them. Had I carried on, by Easter, I would've taken another two weeks off whilst also doing some in my spare time I suspect by this time I'd probably have something beginning to resemble a decent little game and the bulk of the remaining work would've then been art assets and bringing it all together with level building etc. Off loading level building to trusted friends or volunteers, and buying in art assets or using free ones, or again, having friends to do it I believe would've made it feasible to release a sellable indie game within a year whilst also working full time.
I didn't do it though, because I decided to do further studies and get another degree, and when you study full time, and work full time you really do have pick and choose what else you do on top.
A lot of people, not just wannabe game devs, but musicians, artists and so forth too seem to have this entitlement attitude- that the world owes them a reasonable wage doing whatever it is they want to do. That economics and business are irrelevant, they should have the right to profit enjoying themselves engaging in their hobby.
The real world isn't like this though, the real world is a much harsher place, unless you're one of the lucky few that win X-Factor or whatever it's up to you to figure out how to live first and foremost and then try and make money doing what you want to do. Life isn't easy, and I find those with an entitlement attitude are those who most often fail because they have that attitude because they're too damn lazy to work for a living and want everything handed to them on a plate.
Most people have to work hard in life to get what they want, unless you have rich parents, win the lottery, or win some talent show, then life will be no different for you.

Re:Um,,, by clickclickdrone · 2012-11-24 08:29 · Score: 1, Insightful

Elite too.

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I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil

Why? by Kral_Blbec · 2012-11-24 08:32 · Score: 3, Interesting

In the article he claims that it would take three weeks to walk across one segment of the map, even with noclip enabled, and then it would just create a new segment.
I just am wondering who would play a game that much that they would even care? Few people are going to really "complete" even Skyrim much less an "infinite" world.

Re:Why? by arth1 · 2012-11-24 08:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

In the article he claims that it would take three weeks to walk across one segment of the map, even with noclip enabled, and then it would just create a new segment.
I just am wondering who would play a game that much that they would even care?
For an MMORPG, it would matter a great deal. Being able to find a pristine area for yourself that 14 year old Kevin and gold farmer Deng Wu are statistically unlikely to ever find would be great.
Re:Why? by loneDreamer · 2012-11-24 08:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

Why are you playing an MMORPG if you prefer not to interact with other players? You would probably be better with a plain old RPG.
Re:Why? by slippyblade · 2012-11-24 09:24 · Score: 2

I keep saying this over and over and over.
Real life is the biggest MMO out there, and strangely enough, I like to do things by myself sometimes. So why shouldn't I be allowed to do stuff by myself in MMO's occasionally. I've played far to many MMO's where you have to be in a group to wipe your ass for crying out loud.
Just because a game has multi-player in the title does NOT mean I should HAVE to be in a group to accomplish every little thing.
Re:Why? by drinkypoo · 2012-11-24 09:39 · Score: 1

You don't see how it would enhance MMORPGs to be able to have a bigger world, so that players could create locations you're unlikely to stumble upon by accident?

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Why? by gl4ss · 2012-11-24 09:39 · Score: 1, Interesting

well.. daggerfall, an older game in the elder scrolls series, is actually much bigger than skyrim(iirc about the size of england in real life), because it uses generated content. which on that days graphics and level complexity worked pretty nice.
also there's of course frontier which gives you an entire galaxy(albeit only a smallish portion near sol of it is populated).
the point though with it is that it gives you a sense of being an explorer - but the novelty gets ruined if there's no special places to find in there(which gets us to why only hundreds of systems in frontier are interesting.. however in frontier first encounter there's thargoids to find - which you could find by pure chance or more likely by following the buggy plot, which does send you on a cool mission into deep, deep space. that's much cooler than taking a jump in freelancers insanely limited world).

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world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Re:Why? by vux984 · 2012-11-24 11:15 · Score: 3, Insightful

Why are you playing an MMORPG if you prefer not to interact with other players?
I'm happy to interact with other players. Doesn't mean I want to interact with every single asshole in the game.
Re:Why? by arth1 · 2012-11-24 11:18 · Score: 2

Why are you playing an MMORPG if you prefer not to interact with other players? You would probably be better with a plain old RPG.
I could turn your question around at you and say why do you play in an MMORPG at all if all you want to do is interact? Why not have a dogpile party where ALL you do is interact?
It's really simple. Wanting to be alone some of the time does not imply wanting to be alone all of the time.
Nor does wanting to avoid 14 year old Kevins and Chinese gold farmers imply that you do not want to play with a trusted group of people. You may want the latter without the former.
Instancing doesn't solve the problem - it imposes limitations, and by nature makes the world non-persistent. An infinite world would solve it nicely.
Re:Why? by Tackhead · 2012-11-24 13:39 · Score: 2

You don't see how it would enhance MMORPGs to be able to have a bigger world, so that players could create locations you're unlikely to stumble upon by accident?
Back in the day, SWG actually had that feature - you could buy certain scriptable items and set up a player-driven quest/event. IIRC you could even arrange a event coordinator (a human-controlled NPC working on behalf of the game company) to show up for 5-10 minutes as Vader, Solo, Leia, etc...
The problem is that if you give MMORPG players too much freedom to create, you get the Spore problem: every dungeon entrance looks like Goatse.
Re:Why? by bfandreas · 2012-11-24 16:15 · Score: 4, Insightful

well.. daggerfall, an older game in the elder scrolls series, is actually much bigger than skyrim(iirc about the size of england in real life), because it uses generated content. which on that days graphics and level complexity worked pretty nice.
No, it didn't. The generated dungeons very often had unreachable segments that contained the McGuffin you had to find for the mages guild. It was a soulless game all in all. I wouldn't call it a successful application of procedurally generated content but rather a cautionary tale.

TES has had a rightfully deserved reputation of shallowness. Especially RPGs live and die by carefully crafted worlds. Given the choice between Planescape: Torment and Daggerfall I know which one I'd choose.
Of course there is the other extreme of RPG where you are basically on rails and you are basically relegated to the position of spectator. Or the game isn't about the world but constant repitition of the same old. MMOs and ARPGs fall into the latter category.

--
20 minutes into the future
Re:Why? by Keen+Anthony · 2012-11-25 14:02 · Score: 1

I would, but I have an especial interest in infinite game worlds. I'm finally getting around to "Dear Esther" which is not infinite, but the aim of the game is to travel and experience the game's narrative. I've always liked exploring game environments for the sake of appreciating the virtual world. Grand Theft Auto Vice City and games like Midtown Madness and Test Drive remain favorites for that reason. I wouldn't even call the activity meta gaming as I might for my activities in EVE Online where I enjoy exploring deep space most. I would be interesting in exploring a PG infinite world providing the world was immersive. Skyrim with all the high res water and flora mods is beautiful to explore and take in. Something has to happen though, and for me it has to be more than just a random encounter. It would be fun to explore an infinite map in Skyrim and happen upon something unique and cool, like say a UFO crash site a la Fallout. I have to wonder if game like that could be made by anyone other than an indie. Who would spend AAA money to develop a game like a GTA Vice City that focuses only on cruising a photorealistic 1986 Miami for what has to be a niche within a niche market of consumers?
Re:Why? by Keen+Anthony · 2012-11-25 14:02 · Score: 1

Oh, you play EVE too?

Re:Um,,, by fph+il+quozientatore · 2012-11-24 08:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

I know almost nothing about Minecraft, but why should it be absolutely mentioned? Is it the first of the genre? The most successful? Is it an innovative modification of the original idea?

--
My first program:

Hell Segmentation fault

Infinite by arth1 · 2012-11-24 08:34 · Score: 3, Interesting

Ok, so how do you create an infinite world with procedural generation?
You can't limit yourself to, say, a 64-bit int, cause that's not infinite. You could, presumably, use linked lists, but then you'd run into speed issues. Arbitrary length BCD (or similar)? Yeah, but the procedural generation routines have to be able to handle them. The memory required quickly grows towards infinity too.

Also, a procedural generation based on coordinates (which, when all comes to all, just is a seed number) has to be robust enough to not repeat as the seed becomes arbitrarily large. A simple PRNG won't do, or someone may find out that the world repeats if going flaxtythree billion miles in either direction.

Too bad there are no details in just how this is done, because that's clearly the interesting part.

Re:Infinite by arth1 · 2012-11-24 08:37 · Score: 5, Funny

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Re:Infinite by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-24 08:41 · Score: 1

Your pedantry is noted. However, from a mortal human's perspective, 64-bit is infinite. Nobody cares if it repeats at a distance that you could never reach if you started the game today and left the "move forward" button mashed down until your death.
Re:Infinite by arth1 · 2012-11-24 08:48 · Score: 1

However, from a mortal human's perspective, 64-bit is infinite.
Computers don't have a human perspective. Yet.

Nobody cares if it repeats at a distance that you could never reach if you started the game today and left the "move forward" button mashed down until your death.
You're presuming that you'll be limited to walking or other slow means of transportation. And that there are no bots involved.
Re:Infinite by ThunderBird89 · 2012-11-24 08:56 · Score: 2

If the game is offline, it could just as easily unload portions of the map that are outside of line-of-sight, or a given radius from the character. Events taking place in the unloaded areas that impact the visible ones may be abstracted away to use less memory, with terrain and mob states saved and loaded as the player approaches them again. That should take care of repetition as well as keeping the memory use constant.

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Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
Re:Infinite by romiz · 2012-11-24 08:57 · Score: 1

Just implement the calculation of any irrational number. If I remember well, you get an infinite string of digits, non-repeating, in any base you take.
Re:Infinite by Derekloffin · 2012-11-24 09:01 · Score: 1

Pretty easily actually. Giant endless featureless flat plane... don't even need the character's current coordinates, because they are irrelevant, as nothing noticeably changes as you move around the plane. Only if you demand that the environment cannot repeat do you require infinite memory, but infinite itself does not require that restriction.
Re:Infinite by Nationless · 2012-11-24 09:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

In fact surely by definition an infinite world will repeat itself due to it being infinite and therefore an infinite amount of repetition?
Isn't it like saying the second full rendition of Shakespeare that was just created is a bug and the infinite monkeys will be adjusted accordingly?
Re:Infinite by nabsltd · 2012-11-24 09:27 · Score: 5, Informative

However, from a mortal human's perspective, 64-bit is infinite.
You're presuming that you'll be limited to walking or other slow means of transportation. And that there are no bots involved.
Actually, no, he isn't.
Let's just say that you have millimeter precision in a 64-bit integer, which would make the world 18,446,744,073,709,551 meters across. Even at the speed of light, it would take 61,531,714 seconds to traverse that distance, or nearly two years. Got that...we're talking about a world that is two light years across.
So, as long as you limit travel to some reasonable speed (e.g., 300km/sec, or nearly 10 times faster than anything man-made has ever travelled), the world is infinite for all practical purposes, even with a "faster time passage" UI. Likewise, teleportation could have a limited distance (even thousands of miles) and not be a problem unless it took literally zero time to complete.
And, this is assuming that the 64-bit number is used to directly map each millimeter. If, instead, it is a more granular area and the sub-areas are procedurally generated (which is what TFA says), then perhaps the resolution is a somewhere between 1 and 100 meters. This increases the world size to anywhere from 2,000 to 200,000 light years.
I bet even with a world as big as the Milky Way galaxy, there will be people who complain that the game is overpriced.
Re:Infinite by arth1 · 2012-11-24 09:31 · Score: 1

It's not that difficult, really. For one, you don't have to keep the entire world map in memory, or even on disk. With a procedural generation you can begin with a random seed and feed that into the generator. Then save that random seed. Wherever the character goes, the local area can be created with a combination of that random seed and the current X,Y[,Z] coordinates. This means very little stays in memory or on the disk, you just need to know 1) where you are and 2) what your original random seed was.
That part is the obvious part. The less obvious parts are that (a) that the seed adjustment (i.e. your coordinates) have to be infinite too, and (b) the procedural generation routine has to be able to handle infinite size seeds.
That's what I wonder how they handle - I'm sure they do, but would like to know how. (a) can be easily circumvented by using something like infinite length BCD for coordinates, but (b) isn't that simple.
Re:Infinite by davester666 · 2012-11-24 09:36 · Score: 1

Thanks. My browser really needed that.

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Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Re:Infinite by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2012-11-24 09:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

In fact surely by definition an infinite world will repeat itself due to it being infinite and therefore an infinite amount of repetition?
The set of integers is infinite; but has no repeated elements. There isn't anything forbidding an infinite world from being repetitive; but infinite size does not require repetition.
Re:Infinite by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2012-11-24 09:50 · Score: 1

It's not that difficult, really. For one, you don't have to keep the entire world map in memory, or even on disk. With a procedural generation you can begin with a random seed and feed that into the generator. Then save that random seed. Wherever the character goes, the local area can be created with a combination of that random seed and the current X,Y[,Z] coordinates. This means very little stays in memory or on the disk, you just need to know 1) where you are and 2) what your original random seed was.
It isn't difficult if you are willing to settle for 'pretty damn huge'. It gets rather trickier if you want 'arbitrarily large' or 'infinite'. Unless the world has edges(or some sort of edgeless-but-closed geometry) the memory consumption of storing the X,Y,Z tuple alone can grow without bound. You probably won't have trouble with maps far larger than you need; but you'll need to find an infinite tape for your turing machine before handling arbitrarily large or infinite maps...
Re:Infinite by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-24 09:52 · Score: 1

If you can't walk to the end of this thing within a human lifespan then that's perfectly good enough to call it infinite in the context of a game. It's impossible to make it actually infinite and non-repeating because you have to store something about the surroundings. There has to be a limit to what you can store since a computer has limited memory, so you can store at most N bits to describe the current state of the game for some N. If you walk in one direction for long enough, you'll have exhausted the 2^N possible states that those bits can be in, and after that point there must be a repeat of the state of the game, which means that for all intents and purposes you are now back to where you were before so it isn't actually infinite. It'll take you a lot longer than a human lifespan to reach all 2^N states on a modern computer so this is just pedantic wanking - if you can't tell that it isn't actually infinite, then that's as good as it being actually infinite in the context of a game like this.
Re:Infinite by Baloroth · 2012-11-24 10:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

There is a slight disconnect of what is meant by calling something "infinite". Technically, it means "without boundary", which in this context simply means I can walk in one direction and never reach an end. You don't need to generate the whole thing or store it in memory all at once (that would be absolutely impossible), you just need to be able to generate as much as would ever be needed. That is still a technical challenge. I'm guessing that if you really expanded far enough, your computer would run out of memory. Either that or he destroys segments of the world that aren't in use. There is literally no other option. As others have pointed out, the world can and probably will repeat over some segment, that isn't actually a problem or a qualification for infinite at all.
You can never generate something that is actually infinite, it will always have some boundary. You can, however, extend that boundary as far as your physical limitations (computer memory, in this case), will allow. In that sense, it is infinite (indefinite in size is a better word and is what he actually means).

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"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Re:Infinite by arth1 · 2012-11-24 10:57 · Score: 1

Let's just say that you have millimeter precision in a 64-bit integer, which would make the world 18,446,744,073,709,551 meters across. Even at the speed of light, it would take 61,531,714 seconds to traverse that distance, or nearly two years. Got that...we're talking about a world that is two light years across.
The standard mode of long distance transportation in MMOS and even some SPRPGs is teleportation. Travel speed doesn't enter the equation.
And I'm sure it was unintentional, but at your speed of light, time becomes irrelevant too. Any travel at the speed of light in vacuum becomes teleportation in the time frame of the traveler.
(And not that it matters if you have teleportation, but even at sub-light speeds, relativism enters the equation - at 99.95% of c, going your two light years would only take 22.5 days. Even at a pedestrian 95% of c, you don't travel 0.95 light years per year, but more than 3 lyr/yr, due to the Lorenz factor. And in a game, there's no reason to limit speeds thus.)
Re:Infinite by arth1 · 2012-11-24 11:02 · Score: 1

Just implement the calculation of any irrational number. If I remember well, you get an infinite string of digits, non-repeating, in any base you take.
Yes, but doesn't that become more and more time consuming as the number grows? Isn't this why no one does things like "the encryption key starts at the 10^175102457341-th decimals of e"?
Re:Infinite by Your.Master · 2012-11-24 11:05 · Score: 2

1. If you make the universe wrap-around as suggested above, how would you even *know* that you'd gone "past the edge"? A single wormhole taking you from (1, 0, 0) to (-1, 0, 0) is only giving you 2 millimetres of travel, not (2^64 - 2) mm!
2. Let's say your answer to the previous question is something like, you're in a space game examining the parallax of the distant stars. Even so you can only notice this if you can teleport a significant fraction of a light year (without spending a significant fraction of a year...). That's really just unnecessary. Limit the teleport radius to 1 light-second (if your wormholes are mobile, it's sufficient to constrain their initial state to be like that). You can still teleport a distance many times the length of Earth's equator, and yet you're still not going to reach anywhere near the limits. A light year is *big* and there's just almost no good reason in a non-space game to have a teleporter that takes you halfway across the universe to the edge in a reasonable timeframe; if you think there is you aren't grasping the enormity of a light year. For a space game you can address at much lower granularity, and planets can be instanced with one more 64-bit coordinate. Or your wormholes can travel between instances using that extra coordinate. Or...you could just have planets be much closer than they are in real life (it's not like it's any less realistic than the FTL travel to get there, or even relativistic travel).
Re:Infinite by Your.Master · 2012-11-24 11:08 · Score: 1

Imagine a world with trees radiating from a central point that are mysteriously shaped like numerals. The central point, where you start, has a tree that looks like a 3. You find the universe is symmetric but non-repeating. Going out from the center, is 1, then 4, then 1, then 5, then 9...
Re:Infinite by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-24 11:19 · Score: 1

Strictly speaking, the state space of a computer is finite and therefore every world that a computer can generate is finite or cyclic. On the other hand, even one 64 bit register provides enough variations to keep a person busy for a lifetime (8 billion different numbers per second for more than 70 years.) For all practical purposes, you don't need fancy arbitrary precision algorithms to build "infinite" worlds. They're just not truly infinite, only big enough that the difference doesn't matter.
Re:Infinite by arth1 · 2012-11-24 11:35 · Score: 1

For all practical purposes, you don't need fancy arbitrary precision algorithms to build "infinite" worlds. They're just not truly infinite,
"Infinite" isn't a practical purpose. It's a mathematical concept. Either you're infinite, or you're not.

only big enough that the difference doesn't matter.
On the contrary, the difference between "big enough" and infinite is ... infinite.
If you mean "endless for all practical purposes", say that, and not infinite. "Almost infinite" is like "almost having a job". Either it's infinite or it's not.
Re:Infinite by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-24 11:59 · Score: 1

In the context of algorithms running on real computers, nothing is truly infinite. There are only so many configurations that memory can hold and a graphics card can display. Even theoretically unbounded arbitrary precision algorithms are bounded by the finite state space of the actual machine they're running on, and the laws of physics bound the complexity of the computer, so there cannot ever be an infinite world generated by a computer. When the word "infinite" has no useful meaning in the current context, then it's acceptable to loosen the definition and imply "for all practical purposes". The guy's a game developer, not a math nerd in an ivory tower.
Re:Infinite by girlinatrainingbra · 2012-11-24 17:15 · Score: 1

They only said infinite; they did not say non-repeating infinite. An infinite plane with the same region tiled over and over again is still infinite.
Re:Infinite by wrp103 · 2012-11-24 18:40 · Score: 2

Ok, so how do you create an infinite world with procedural generation? You can't limit yourself to, say, a 64-bit int, cause that's not infinite. You could, presumably, use linked lists, but then you'd run into speed issues.
You seem to be assume the use of integers to identify the rooms. And there are many alternatives to linked lists.
A simple method would be to generate a pair of unique strings for each entrance/exit of a room. The first string would identify the current room / board, and the second string could represent the destination room. If you want to get really interesting, you can have one-way doorways, or even a different destination based on various factors. A simple hash table or an indexed database table could be used to locate the rooms. If the target string doesn't have a room associated with it, then you create a new room, save it, and then load the new room.
Just because an exit from one room takes you to a previously visited room doesn't mean the world repeats. In fact, if that never happened, the game would be boringly linear.
There is no reason that the entire world has to be in memory at one time, only the rooms where players are located. When memory gets tight, you can page out any rooms that are now empty, or perhaps where there has been no recent activity. When a new room is loaded, you can control its contents based on if the player has been there before, or if this is the first time that any player has been there within some time period. That would allow some one-time objects, others to be regenerated periodically, other items to be limited to one per party, etc.
Re:Infinite by arth1 · 2012-11-25 00:09 · Score: 1

You seem to be assume the use of integers to identify the rooms.
You seem to have stopped reading right before my "Arbitrary length BCD (or similar)?"
Thing is, though, that no matter what the unique identifier (or identifiers), you somehow want to use it to select the path your generating algorithm takes. The simplest way of doing this is through some kind of data type you can count with.

And there are many alternatives to linked lists.
A simple method would be to generate a pair of unique strings for each entrance/exit of a room.
Um, that is a linked list, by any other name.
Re:Infinite by KrimZon · 2012-11-25 05:21 · Score: 1

Pi still contains local repetitions - after about 200,000 trees, you reach a tree that looks like a 3, then a 1, then a 4, then a 1, then a 5 then a 9 (but the next one is a 7.)
Identical repetition isn't that much of a problem compared to everything just looking kind of similar. Same sort of trees, same sort of hills, and so on.
Re:Infinite by Hognoxious · 2012-11-25 19:13 · Score: 1

If you walk in one direction for long enough, you'll have exhausted the 2^N possible states that those bits can be in, and after that point there must be a repeat of the state of the game, which means that for all intents and purposes you are now back to where you were before so it isn't actually infinite.
This is exactly what would happen on a real, approximately spherical, planet (ignoring inconveniences like oceans).
I don't see why people, particularly the GP, are making such a fuss.

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:Infinite by Hognoxious · 2012-11-25 20:22 · Score: 2

The ability to teleport (via wormhole, naturally) destroys your thesis entirely.
The ability to do anything magical destroys any thesis grounded in reality.

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:Infinite by tehcyder · 2012-11-25 21:39 · Score: 1

</em>
Seriously... the italic tag is deprecated and not used anymore!
who says?

--
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Re:Infinite by nabsltd · 2012-11-26 07:39 · Score: 1

The standard mode of long distance transportation in MMOS and even some SPRPGs is teleportation. Travel speed doesn't enter the equation.
Sure it does, unless the teleport can go anywhere (as I stated, which I guess you didn't read). If you limit the distance, then even an enormous limit won't allow full exploration in a timely manner. Likewise, no system I know of allows infinite use of such powers as teleportation. The spell/effect takes time to cast, plus you must have the manna/energy/whatever to perform it, and collection of that takes time.

And I'm sure it was unintentional, but at your speed of light, time becomes irrelevant too. Any travel at the speed of light in vacuum becomes teleportation in the time frame of the traveler.
Not in the physics of my game. See what I did there?
That said, even if the game follows this, it doesn't matter, because it still takes time in an external frame of reference, which means that calculations have to be done for what happened to the rest of the world during the time the player was travelling, and that takes actual computer time. In addition, it would be no fun for the player to have to deal with time-dilation effects as the rest of the world ages but the hero does not.

(And not that it matters if you have teleportation, but even at sub-light speeds, relativism enters the equation - at 99.95% of c, going your two light years would only take 22.5 days. Even at a pedestrian 95% of c, you don't travel 0.95 light years per year, but more than 3 lyr/yr, due to the Lorenz factor. And in a game, there's no reason to limit speeds thus.)
Yes, there is a reason to limit speeds. For example, there may not be any way to travel faster than on the back of an animal, simply because the game is set in those times.
But, even with something like teleportation, if you require an ten minutes of game time to build up enough energy/manna/whatever to teleport one light second, you are only traveling at 0.17% of the speed of light. This is a very reasonable game mechanic, and something that every gamer would understand.
That speed is very fast, and you could cover vast distances very quickly, and even allow automation so that as long as every time you end the teleport if there is no hostile encounter, the "wait" is instant in real-time (still taking 10 minutes of game time). If it takes about 1 second to do all the calculations each time you move (it is a procedurally generated universe, after all), you are effectively "traveling" at the speed of light. So, again, it would take 2 real years of playing the game just to travel across the game world, not even exploring.
And, all this assumes my insane millimeter precision. Using the "seed' method from TFA, the actual size of a 64-bit universe is likely 3 to 10 orders of magnitude larger.
Re:Infinite by tragedy · 2012-11-26 12:53 · Score: 1

I'm not sure you quite grasped what the GP said. Take the set of integers. A subset of the infinite sequence of integers is [1,2,3,4,5]. Now, is that subset repeated an infinite number of times in the infinite sequence of all integers?
Also, that's the combination for my luggage.
Re:Infinite by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2012-11-26 15:44 · Score: 1

I'm not sure you quite grasped what the GP said. Take the set of integers. A subset of the infinite sequence of integers is [1,2,3,4,5]. Now, is that subset repeated an infinite number of times in the infinite sequence of all integers?
Also, that's the combination for my luggage.
In the case of the set of integers, my understanding is that no subset of the set of integers is a member of the set of integers, much less repeated(since the set of integers contains no sets, only integers, and even singletons whose sole element is an integer are still sets, not integers.).
That certainly isn't true of all sets(

true if you're a n00b developer by Press2ToContinue · 2012-11-24 08:40 · Score: 1

however if you are experienced and have a good game idea, how would this advice apply?

--
Sent from my ENIAC

Re:true if you're a n00b developer by Dunge · 2012-11-24 09:22 · Score: 2

"A large, loud portion of the public will openly hate you regardless of what you do. Learn to live with it. No-one will ever take your project as seriously as you, or fully realize what you're going through. ... The odds of you making money out of it are slim. If you want to succeed, you'll likely have to sell out. Just how MUCH you sell out is up to you.' This apply to every games. From indie title to AAA games.

Really. by Frosty+Piss · 2012-11-24 08:43 · Score: 2

What Nobody Tells You About Being a Game Dev

Unless you follow Slashdot and all the stories about the Game Dev Surfs and the sweatshops they work in... How many times a year? 5 or 6 or 10?

Poor, poor Game Devs... One really hurts for these people working in servitude...

--
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.

Re:Um,,, by arth1 · 2012-11-24 08:43 · Score: 4, Informative

Forgive me for breaking in here, but TFA mentions both Minecraft and Elite.

But then again, this is slashdot, so...

" If you want to succeed..." by blogagog · 2012-11-24 08:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

" If you want to succeed, you'll likely have to sell out." I'm fine with that. What are the steps required to sell out? Count me in.

Re:" If you want to succeed..." by Frosty+Piss · 2012-11-24 08:47 · Score: 3, Funny

" If you want to succeed, you'll likely have to sell out." I'm fine with that. What are the steps required to sell out? Count me in.
Seriously. I don't live in mom's basement, I've got a mortgage to pay. Where is the line to "sell out"? Are they playing Green Day in the background?

--
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Re:" If you want to succeed..." by Mashiki · 2012-11-24 09:18 · Score: 1

" If you want to succeed, you'll likely have to sell out." I'm fine with that. What are the steps required to sell out? Count me in.
Step one: Launch successful or semi-successful company(i.e. origin, bullfrog, maxis, bioware, etc)
Step two: Create and sell a series of unique or gound breaking products
Step three: Get semi-rich
Step four: Become deluded when mega-conglomerate comes along and tells you, you'll retain your "artistic integrity and nothing will change" then sellout
Step five: Leave the company after a string of failures because your new overlord has destroyed your once beautiful reputation

--
Om, nomnomnom...
Re:" If you want to succeed..." by phantomfive · 2012-11-24 09:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

"Selling out" means half your idea is good. Then someone tells you the rest of your idea sucks, and if you listen to them and make it better, it's "selling out."

So start by coming up with a half-good idea.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:" If you want to succeed..." by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-24 11:12 · Score: 1

Otherwise known as "Doing a Molyneux."
Re:" If you want to succeed..." by Waccoon · 2012-11-24 15:53 · Score: 1

I thought selling out usually resulted in people telling you to take out what you thought was good.
Apparently (if folklore is true) there are ways to deal with this
Re:" If you want to succeed..." by phantomfive · 2012-11-24 16:06 · Score: 1

I thought selling out usually resulted in people telling you to take out what you thought was good.
Yeap. The disconnect there is people don't realize that things they like aren't always good.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:" If you want to succeed..." by bzipitidoo · 2012-11-24 20:04 · Score: 2

Allow me to amplify "sellout", just in case anyone doesn't fully understand.
If your name, reputation, education, or whatever is seemingly worth anything, they'll want your endorsement. They want to slap your name on some product, report, or even just an idea. It might even be a good thing that you'd want to be associated with, but it is far more likely they are trying to take a shortcut and think that your name will help polish a turd. They may not even bother with the formality of asking for your permission or real opinion before using your credentials. They are likely to feel they already have your permission for such things because you are working for them. Probably slipped it into your contract.
Once your good name has been trashed because it was used on a few stinkers, then they want to get rid of you. Your reputation has been spent, and now you are no longer of any value. You're just an overpriced code monkey. They'll be extra anxious to see your back before you learn that you were slimed and figure out why you no longer get any traction. You might even cause trouble. They may also find it convenient to blame you for the stinkers being so stinky, to try to hang on to their own reputations, and you will be less able to trouble them or defend yourself if you aren't present.

--
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Re:" If you want to succeed..." by sco08y · 2012-11-25 07:01 · Score: 1

" If you want to succeed, you'll likely have to sell out."
I'm fine with that. What are the steps required to sell out? Count me in.
So, first, you do something that a handful of people like, and they hardly buy any merchandise or CDs because they're broke moochers. But they tell some other people how cool they are that they listen to you.
Over time you refine your act so that a lot of people now like it and they buy a lot of your merchandise and CDs. The original handful of fans assume that because they were your fans first that they own you. When they start to see that other people like you, they demand that you never alter your product from how they first heard it. When you ignore them, you have "sold out".
This has been happening at least since outraged hippies threw shit at folk bands for experimenting with instruments other than guitars, and probably far before that.

Re:I made a game recently. by sageres · 2012-11-24 09:03 · Score: 1

It is a great looking game, but unfortunately it seems to be buggy. After clicking around in the first scene (the island), there is a bad rendering issue going on, and the game becomes unplayable, text becomes hardly visible:
http://www.anonmgur.com/up/7b4104f09fe37214d5919c78e34c4f27.png

I feel for the man but. by davydagger · 2012-11-24 09:12 · Score: 1

"You can read 1000 praising comments, but if just one of them is bad, it will ruin your whole day.

The fact that I was trying to do something new with my game was evidently a horrible crime to many people and I would get utterly horrible comments ranging from put-downs to persanal abuse that would get them arrested if said in person… Even one or two death threats. It’s a sad fact of life that people who are too scared to follow their own dreams will often try to talk you out of following yours. It’s easy for people to say “just ignore those comments” but that’s simply not possible.
"

This is the internet, your not going to last long if your easy troll food. I don't anything as epic as this guy does, but we all get trolled every one in a while. If you

Advice - roll with the punches. Surround yourself with supporters.

Re:Um,,, by Baloroth · 2012-11-24 09:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

....and almost none of that has anything whatsoever to do with the procedural generation, which is actually pretty boring as far as it goes. Games have been doing complex procedural generated terrain since.... well, I don't even know (Rogue, at least), with complex variations much more sophisticated than Minecraft. Minecraft is insanely popular, but as far as good procedural generation goes, it's really not at all spectacular. I mean, hell, Dwarf Fortress (while non-infinite, it could be made so, if it was practical to do so as far as gameplay goes) procedurally generates weather pattern effects on terrain and political/economic shifts in population over an indefinite (user-set) period of time.

--
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton

Randomly generated terrain... by Dunge · 2012-11-24 09:31 · Score: 1

... always look like crap and gives bad gameplay

Re:Randomly generated terrain... by lahvak · 2012-11-24 09:54 · Score: 3, Funny

Not true, terain in nethack looks simply awesome!

--
AccountKiller

What does it mean in this context to "sell out"? by mark-t · 2012-11-24 09:40 · Score: 1

[nt]

--
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'

Re:Um,,, by fph+il+quozientatore · 2012-11-24 09:41 · Score: 1

it is the most successful example of a game designed around the concept of infinite, procedurally generated terrain

Most successful? Someone at Blizzard might not think the same way...

--
My first program:

Hell Segmentation fault

Re:I made a game recently. by phantomfive · 2012-11-24 09:46 · Score: 1

Yeah, another point about being a game dev, which your program demonstrates,

these days developers matter less and less as artists matter more and more.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."

Nobody hates your game? by griego · 2012-11-24 09:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

If I were a game developer and nobody hated my game, I might be worried about that. If all the public does is collectively shrug its shoulders at your work, you might be in trouble.

Re:Um,,, by crutchy · 2012-11-24 09:51 · Score: 1, Troll

i'm an engineer and a programmer and i've never heard of minecraft, let alone played it. i wouldn't know all that sort of crap about any game that i've ever played (you probably didn't know all that either before you looked it up on wikipedia immediately prior to your rant).
you're just a knob head, and i imagine real geeks don't give a rats about "geek cards".

My program is still paying the rent 10 years later by Press2ToContinue · 2012-11-24 10:03 · Score: 1

Sorry, my opinion still stands. When I was a n00b, I felt that I had to "sell out" to make make money selling software. Then, ten years ago I created some software purely guided by my own design ideas and principles, and today, 10 years later it still is paying the rent, so now I would have to disagree.

--
Sent from my ENIAC

Re:What does it mean in this context to "sell out" by Entropy98 · 2012-11-24 10:09 · Score: 1

Work for Zynga?

Sensationalist and stereotyped by Runesabre · 2012-11-24 10:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

After reading through the first couple paragraphs, the tone of his whole article feels sensationalist and stereotyped to the point I really didn't care what he had to say. While it's fun to spout of hyperbole like "my computer illiterate producer who's only game play experience is Bejeweled" as if it represents what one thinks a whole industry is like regardless of reality, it's not very useful or constructive except for generating page hits.

I've spent 18 years in the game development industry (LoL, UO, TR, SWG, LOTRO, DDO) and while there are those occasional low points, it's not the norm.

One piece of advice he has which all budding indie game developers need to take to heart is do it for love and passion and don't expect to make any money out of it. If you do it for love and passion, players will notice and provide the greatest possible path to financial gain if your product is worth it. Regardless of financial world, you will have something that you created with that's genuinely yours and can leverage to land you bigger and better paying game gigs down the road. The key is to create something you love.

--
Runesabre
Enspira Online

Re:Sensationalist and stereotyped by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-24 10:35 · Score: 1

Now who's stereotyped?
Game developers are a textbook case of Stockholm Syndrome. The working conditions suck, the rewards are slim to none, your audience despises you, and when it's all said and done and you're talking to your grandkids (assuming you can keep a positive relationship with your kids, who you won't see for months at a time thanks to scheduled crunch) you won't be able to say you did anything worthwhile. Oh, and your retirement is going to suck too.
No wonder programmers and artists of all kinds are fleeing the industry for something a little more sane.
Re:Sensationalist and stereotyped by Runesabre · 2012-11-24 10:51 · Score: 1

Any and every job can feel like you describe when you're only in it for the money or simply don't have the right skills.
I've routinely hired new engineers in their late teens/early 20s straight out of college for $70K+. There's not many, if any, career paths that can boast entry level jobs with that starting point that don't require graduate level education or specialized training.

--
Runesabre
Enspira Online
Re:Sensationalist and stereotyped by ShakaUVM · 2012-11-24 13:56 · Score: 2

>>After reading through the first couple paragraphs, the tone of his whole article feels sensationalist and stereotyped to the point I really didn't care what he had to say.
I more took out of it that he was bragging that he could create a procedural world THAT WAS BIGGER THAN SKYRIM to "the disbelief" of nay-sayers.
Well, yeah, great. Procedural worlds can be infinitely large. The actual size doesn't matter, but how much interesting content there is. Which is why there is less Daggerfall-esque generation and more hand-placed stuff like in Skyrim.
Procedural world generators around for a long time, even ElendorMUSH had a pretty sophisticated one back in the 90s. I wrote one in the same time period when I was working on creating VR arcade games. Heightmaps and his other tools have also been around and used for a really long time.
This tells me absolutely nothing about how interesting the game will actually be, just that he's proud of how large it is.

Re:Um,,, by Zalbik · 2012-11-24 10:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

Most successful? Someone at Blizzard [wikipedia.org] might not think the same way...

Yes, most successful

Diablo I sold 2.5 million million copies
Diablo 2 sold 4.2 million copies
Diablo 3 was not by any stretch of the imagination procedurally generated.

Minecraft has so far sold 11 million copies. Almost double what Diablo 1 and 2 ever did. And it's still selling very well.

Stats sourced from here and here

incorect header by leaen · 2012-11-24 10:45 · Score: 3, Funny

should be What Internet Nobody Tells You About Being A Game Dev

Re:incorect header by Runesabre · 2012-11-24 10:56 · Score: 1

Have to admit this made me chuckle! +1

--
Runesabre
Enspira Online

Earning your console license by tepples · 2012-11-24 10:52 · Score: 1

Game developers are a textbook case of Stockholm Syndrome.

How much of this is due to having to "pay one's dues" by moving several states away and working for a well-known company for years in order to have a chance to earn the privilege to develop for a platform that has a gamepad? There are several genres that don't work well on mobile, where the only controller you can depend on is a flat sheet of glass.

Optimax, a genetic optimzer by Press2ToContinue · 2012-11-24 11:14 · Score: 2

It's an add-on for Tradestation. It enables traders to optimize the code which implements investment strategies.

--
Sent from my ENIAC

Re:Um,,, by mrchaotica · 2012-11-24 11:15 · Score: 4, Funny

I was going to post "And it should have mentioned Daggerfall!" but then I did a search to check whether Daggerfall really was procedurally generated, and the 3rd result of the search turned out to be TFA...

--

"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

Re:Um,,, by drkim · 2012-11-24 14:59 · Score: 1

- 10 points: Failure to read article.

"But I can tell you that Malevolence doesn’t suffer from the Minecraft world-edge issue, it just keeps going on and on."

Indie Game by Fnord666 · 2012-11-24 16:53 · Score: 1

If you want to get a feel for what it's like to be an independent game developer, check out the movie Indie Game. Quite interesting and a bit frightening in some ways, particularly in how emotionally invested these guys are in their games.

--
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables

Re:Um,,, by crutchy · 2012-11-24 19:34 · Score: 1

the compliance dec is actually CASA form 979

Re:Um,,, by Hognoxious · 2012-11-25 09:14 · Score: 1

A beowulf cluster of 3D printers, in Soviet Russia.

(It should have been in Kenya, because they won the popular vote).

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."

Procedurally generated cliches... by PyroMosh · 2012-11-26 06:00 · Score: 1

This drives me crazy.

First, everyone tells me this about being a game dev. Everyone. Oh, and how it's not glamorous and some companies (read: most of them) treat you poorly.
But once a week, we get a "what nobody tells you" about game devs article here or on Extra Credits or the Escapist or wherever.

Stop it.

Second, there is nothing interesting about procedurally generated anything any more. Diablo did this. The first one. In 1996. It can be a nice feature, but it's not noteworthy any more. The move from sprites to polygons was noteworthy for early titles like StarFox. But nobody is putting "polygon-based graphics" stickers on their game boxes today.

--
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.

Re:Um,,, by crutchy · 2012-11-26 08:38 · Score: 1

you're a moron for even assuming i need to justify myself... fuck knuckle

if you don't like what i say, go back to fucking your sister

Re:Um,,, by crutchy · 2012-11-26 08:42 · Score: 1

so you're a dupe... but you're right that dupes like you subsidise the geek gaming world. your efforts are appreciated :)

Re:Look @ that "ReAcTioN" (lol, says it all)... ap by crutchy · 2012-11-26 17:49 · Score: 1

go find your bug, idiot

Re:'CruTcHy' (lol): 5 perfect outputs shows otherw by crutchy · 2012-11-28 09:00 · Score: 1

"output data" that you probably manually typed

i really don't care much about your code or your bug, but its fun stiring you up about it, and there is a bug in the posted code - the code you supposedly run is apparently not the same as what you post, but whatever... noob

Watch what happens if you ask 'CruTcHy' by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-28 14:02 · Score: 1

To PROVE he is actually a "professional programmer" everyone:

"you're a moron for even assuming i need to justify myself... fuck knuckle if you don't like what i say, go back to fucking your sister" - by crutchy (1949900) on Monday November 26, @03:38PM (#42097505)

FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3272015&cid=42097505

Gee 'CruTcHy' (lol) - did someone touch a "sensitive spot", LIKE THE TRUTH ABOUT YOU NOT BEING WHAT YOU SAID?

At most/best? You're some arrogant little noob who codes in 2-3 "languages" (wuss tools imo, since I've used them & FAR more in my time) & considers himself "expert"... lol, you're THAT? When others SAY you are, not until then.

APK

P.S.=> I also note you can't show you've done a DAMNED THING in the art & science of computing that anyone noted as any good in trade publications (books, magazines, newspapers, etc./et al), esteemed trade shows like MS Tech Ed, & commercially sold software by certified MS partners (that YOU did the work for).

I've done all of the above, WHILE "the trollish likes of you" were STILL IN DIAPERS... which is how I know you're not telling the truth (or you are just SO "average" you'll never create anything of worth others notice - take your pick!)...

... apk

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