I used to use Windows exclusively, with Linux at work when I had to. I recently got a Mac and figured that I'd still use Win32 most of the time. Boy was I wrong.
After using OS X for a few months, I'm very happy to use it *all* the time. My 'favorite' apps--Firefox, PowerPoint, Excel, Word, iTunes, PhotoShop--all run there. After I figured out the OS it seemed slick and easy to use compared to Windows. And the things I like about Unix are all there at the command line when I want them. Now my PC is for games only, and with the amount of hassle of PC gaming, it is second string there to consoles.
G3D is a commercial-grade 3D Engine available as Open Source (BSD License). It is used in games, tech demos, research papers, military simulators, and university courses. It can support real-time rendering, off-line rendering, back-end game server management of 3D worlds, and use of graphics hardware for general purpose computing. G3D is the basis for several university games and graphics courses, including ones at Ivy leagues Brown and Harvard Extension.
Check out the community sites garagegames.com, flipcode.org, and gamedev.org to meet other people in similar situations. The forums are really good for getting quick answers to beginner questions.
Gabe, how do you create your artwork and the daily comic? Do you sketch on paper or with software? Is the inking and coloring done digitally? What about lettering? What software do you use?
While game developers are not exactly suffering the worst possible lives, they are in a case where the work is popular and so many employers treat them poorly. This is why unions arose in the first place-- when there is a labor surplus, in a free market employers can drive down wages and working conditions.
First, People with lousy jobs can always quit and find other jobs. That isn't a reason that they should, however. I think that people should be fairly compensated for what they contribute to a company, whether the employer can get away with paying less or not. I don't think a game developers union would be a good thing in the long run, but it is one solution to this problem.
Second, most game developers don't get paid very well-- 30k-40k for an 80 hour a week job. That's $10 an hour, which is not the realm in which the overtime exemption laws were intended to operate. Overtime exemption is intended for salaried employees (e.g. , executives) who are well compensated for doing "whatever it takes."
Precisely. The major issue in porting graphics applications from Xbox/Win32 to the Mac is DirectX. System calls are almost identical on the two platforms and there is little CPU-specific code. However, applications written to DirectX cannot be trivially ported to OpenGL even though the APIs have the same functionality. They use different paradigms, (slightly) incompatible shading languages, and wind everything from input to networking into the DirectX layer. This isn't to say that DirectX is a bad API-- in fact, it is superior to OpenGL in many situations. It is just a different way of accessing the same hardware. Porting games requires rewriting the graphics layer, which is often the most optimized and specialized piece of a game.
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G3D - The Open Source cross platform 3D engine
Get in touch with Gary Bishop. He's a professor at UNC who has been working on maps and user interfaces for the blind. I believe he's got working software that you can download and is always looking for people to work with and help.
You don't need to translate OS calls if you license the other operating system and run it behind the scenes. OS2 provided flawless Win16 emulation by this method.
Most of the core code in a game isn't related to content anymore-- it is middleware. Physics, sound, AI, 3D rendering, data processing, and tools are rapidly becoming off-the shelf components one can plug together to make a game.
I think that open source middleware makes perfect sense. It is reused between products and between companies. The primary consumers are themselves programmers. It benefits from
I believe this so strongly I started a project four years ago to produce open source middleware for 3D rendering in games--
G3D (http://g3d-cpp.sf.net).
It is now used by commercial game developers as well as hobbyists, researchers, and students. There are various networking, physics, and sound packages. We need more open source middleware for games, particularly on the tools side, where Blender and GIMP aren't yet sufficient alternatives to 3DS MAX, Maya, Photoshop, and level editors.
Or rather, Age of Kings/Conquerors Expansion is a 2D DirectX 5 game that still plays better than any other RTS, including the recent 3D RTS games. I dabbled with Age of Mythology, Rise of Nations, etc. and went back to Age of Kings.
Half-Life is still one of the greatest games ever made, and the mods on that ancient are competitive with everything short of Far Cry and Doom III.
Microsoft was right to use DirectX as the API for Xbox because it allowed PC developers to move content and code to Xbox. The PS2 API instead required a complete rewrite of graphics code-- not an easy way to start your console game project.
I hope that PS3 will be OpenGL-like and support open formats because it reduces the cost to developers and increases portability between platforms (Xbox -> Xbox 2 will be a much easier engine port than PS2 -> PS3).
Carcassonne is the game that bumped the excellent Settlers of Cataan from the top spot for me.
Carcassonne is incredibly elegant. You place new tiles to expand the world, optionally claiming them for your side. Play is simultaneously competitive and cooperative between players as temporary aliances are formed and broken based on mutual interest. There are several ways to earn points, leading to vastly different strategies (like in an RTS on a computer), and enough expansion packs to keep the game ever fresh.
I'm really glad the book has been updated to version 1.4. The problem is that the API is currently on version 1.5 and the useful functions are all in extension (GL_vertex_buffer_object, GL_shader_objects) that aren't covered at all by the main API.
The OpenGL consortium needs to get its act together. DirectX has an incredibly streamlined API with up-to-date documentation that includes all of the latest hardware features and runs identically on all cards. OpenGL is saddled with backward compatibility across 10 years and the latest features are all vendor-specific. The OpenGL 2.0 proposal doesn't go far enough; it basically brings OpenGL up to DirectX 9.0, while Microsoft is already releasing information about DirectX NEXT, which will be the new generation of graphics APIs.
Frankly, the only reason I put up with OpenGL is that it runs on Linux and Mac. Portability is ceasing to be a compelling argument when the common.NET runtime across all versions of windows (embedded, CE, Xbox, desktop, server) and new features of DirectX NEXT are available.
We successfully used instant messenger and trusted each other for rolls in my group. The major problem was maps-- we e-mailed around an Excell spreadsheet and told each other our grid coordinates during combat.
We've also played with (almost) everyone in the same room, but running IM. This lets you have secret side conversations with each other and the DM without note passing.
Sometimes one player is at home and the others will give him a running discussion of what is going on.
Rather than technical difficulties, gameplay difficulties are more likely. The original was run-and-shoot and the new version is more run-and-hide. Perhaps they couldn't find a way to make it work within the schedule without ruining the feel and balance of the game.
I have great faith that Doom3 will be extensively mod-able (on the PC, not Xbox!) and that the community will add co-op mode. Co-op is definitely one of the best features from Doom and is something sadly lacking from every FPS I've played until Halo (when I loved it all over again for the first time).
Slashdot Mirror
I used to use Windows exclusively, with Linux at work when I had to. I recently got a Mac and figured that I'd still use Win32 most of the time. Boy was I wrong.
After using OS X for a few months, I'm very happy to use it *all* the time. My 'favorite' apps--Firefox, PowerPoint, Excel, Word, iTunes, PhotoShop--all run there. After I figured out the OS it seemed slick and easy to use compared to Windows. And the things I like about Unix are all there at the command line when I want them. Now my PC is for games only, and with the amount of hassle of PC gaming, it is second string there to consoles.
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http://g3d-cpp.sf.net/
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Check out the community sites garagegames.com, flipcode.org, and gamedev.org to meet other people in similar situations. The forums are really good for getting quick answers to beginner questions.
-m
On Win2k, the installation fails with the error 'data1.cab' is missing :(
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First, People with lousy jobs can always quit and find other jobs. That isn't a reason that they should, however. I think that people should be fairly compensated for what they contribute to a company, whether the employer can get away with paying less or not. I don't think a game developers union would be a good thing in the long run, but it is one solution to this problem.
Second, most game developers don't get paid very well-- 30k-40k for an 80 hour a week job. That's $10 an hour, which is not the realm in which the overtime exemption laws were intended to operate. Overtime exemption is intended for salaried employees (e.g. , executives) who are well compensated for doing "whatever it takes."
-m
Precisely. The major issue in porting graphics applications from Xbox/Win32 to the Mac is DirectX. System calls are almost identical on the two platforms and there is little CPU-specific code. However, applications written to DirectX cannot be trivially ported to OpenGL even though the APIs have the same functionality. They use different paradigms, (slightly) incompatible shading languages, and wind everything from input to networking into the DirectX layer. This isn't to say that DirectX is a bad API-- in fact, it is superior to OpenGL in many situations. It is just a different way of accessing the same hardware. Porting games requires rewriting the graphics layer, which is often the most optimized and specialized piece of a game. -m G3D - The Open Source cross platform 3D engine
If you're interested in actual 3D displays you can buy today, read my review of the existing products at:
8 .h tml
http://vancouver.siggraph.org/12_archive_2004-0
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You don't need to translate OS calls if you license the other operating system and run it behind the scenes. OS2 provided flawless Win16 emulation by this method.
-m
Most of the core code in a game isn't related to content anymore-- it is middleware. Physics, sound, AI, 3D rendering, data processing, and tools are rapidly becoming off-the shelf components one can plug together to make a game.
I think that open source middleware makes perfect sense. It is reused between products and between companies. The primary consumers are themselves programmers. It benefits from
I believe this so strongly I started a project four years ago to produce open source middleware for 3D rendering in games--
G3D (http://g3d-cpp.sf.net).
It is now used by commercial game developers as well as hobbyists, researchers, and students. There are various networking, physics, and sound packages. We need more open source middleware for games, particularly on the tools side, where Blender and GIMP aren't yet sufficient alternatives to 3DS MAX, Maya, Photoshop, and level editors.
-m
Or rather, Age of Kings/Conquerors Expansion is a 2D DirectX 5 game that still plays better than any other RTS, including the recent 3D RTS games. I dabbled with Age of Mythology, Rise of Nations, etc. and went back to Age of Kings.
Half-Life is still one of the greatest games ever made, and the mods on that ancient are competitive with everything short of Far Cry and Doom III.
-m
Microsoft was right to use DirectX as the API for Xbox because it allowed PC developers to move content and code to Xbox. The PS2 API instead required a complete rewrite of graphics code-- not an easy way to start your console game project.
I hope that PS3 will be OpenGL-like and support open formats because it reduces the cost to developers and increases portability between platforms (Xbox -> Xbox 2 will be a much easier engine port than PS2 -> PS3).
-m
Don't bars have 100x the problem with late night crowds and fights?
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Indeed, there's a specific exemption for computer programmers:
p ay /fs17e_computer.htm
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fair
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Carcassonne is the game that bumped the excellent Settlers of Cataan from the top spot for me.
Carcassonne is incredibly elegant. You place new tiles to expand the world, optionally claiming them for your side. Play is simultaneously competitive and cooperative between players as temporary aliances are formed and broken based on mutual interest. There are several ways to earn points, leading to vastly different strategies (like in an RTS on a computer), and enough expansion packs to keep the game ever fresh.
-m
... nor is Ishtar, my absolute favorite movie, which is now unavailable in *any* format. The best you can do is a really scratchy VHS copy from EBay :(
-m
I'm really glad the book has been updated to version 1.4. The problem is that the API is currently on version 1.5 and the useful functions are all in extension (GL_vertex_buffer_object, GL_shader_objects) that aren't covered at all by the main API.
.NET runtime across all versions of windows (embedded, CE, Xbox, desktop, server) and new features of DirectX NEXT are available.
The OpenGL consortium needs to get its act together. DirectX has an incredibly streamlined API with up-to-date documentation that includes all of the latest hardware features and runs identically on all cards. OpenGL is saddled with backward compatibility across 10 years and the latest features are all vendor-specific. The OpenGL 2.0 proposal doesn't go far enough; it basically brings OpenGL up to DirectX 9.0, while Microsoft is already releasing information about DirectX NEXT, which will be the new generation of graphics APIs.
Frankly, the only reason I put up with OpenGL is that it runs on Linux and Mac. Portability is ceasing to be a compelling argument when the common
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I'm a believer: the gameplay in Free Parking 2 is pretty good for a 1 week game. I hope he keeps extending it.
I sure wish I had time to hack out a game a week. This project sounds like a blast to work on.
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We successfully used instant messenger and trusted each other for rolls in my group. The major problem was maps-- we e-mailed around an Excell spreadsheet and told each other our grid coordinates during combat.
We've also played with (almost) everyone in the same room, but running IM. This lets you have secret side conversations with each other and the DM without note passing.
Sometimes one player is at home and the others will give him a running discussion of what is going on.
-m
Games are rated-- it sounds like you want games rated eC or E. You can see full descriptions of the ratings on the ESRB site.
-m
Rather than technical difficulties, gameplay difficulties are more likely. The original was run-and-shoot and the new version is more run-and-hide. Perhaps they couldn't find a way to make it work within the schedule without ruining the feel and balance of the game.
I have great faith that Doom3 will be extensively mod-able (on the PC, not Xbox!) and that the community will add co-op mode. Co-op is definitely one of the best features from Doom and is something sadly lacking from every FPS I've played until Halo (when I loved it all over again for the first time).
-m