If that's true I guess there is a reason he can't find anyone to do this for him... who would want to handhold someone to teach them the basics required to develop a simplistic game concept as a learning exercise without being paid anything??
I suppose that's the answer he needs to hear: you won't find a expert game developer to "partner" with you on this, so do what most other hobbyist game programmers do - try to figure it out for yourself, and when you can't then ask questions on any of the many developer forums available for that purpose. I guess many of us here probably started our hobbyist game development careers as kids (back when rec.games.programmer was the height of game development discussion) so figuring it out yourself was the only real option...
The whole post doesn't make any sense. He wants to make a simple non-commercial game for the purpose of learning, but he doesn't want to have to figure out how to program it and would like to find someone who already knows how to do it to write it for him. Wha?!
Mine does. But then again it's my own prototype. Thing can dispose of an iPhone in 15 seconds, and douche bags are almost instant. But it does get tiring wiping off the ceiling after I use it.
Actually, I think that general concept is very likely...
If you look at a lot of the research on photorealistic quality CG for faces, etc, the source material is not procedural or hand-drawn, it's scanned (both model and textures) from a human source (also gives them a good reference for comparison).
Starting with real actors and then adding much more complex lighting (modelling multiple skin layers & blood, etc with refractive and reflective lighting - the kind of thing that is being done in CG movies, but not games yet) might end up being a much more expedient solution than the "procedural faces" argument everyone keeps using to dismiss the complexity but probably has no clue how it would work in practice. Still, using human models is going to add its own costs and complexities in other ways...
In which case, like most game technology that makes it to the public domain, will have long been replaced by something better:)
If you read about the development of Skyrim, they talk about how while they had previously used SpeedTree in their older games, they ended up writing their own custom tree generator to support features that SpeedTree didn't. Also, they didn't procedurally generate the terrain or object (including tree) placement from what I have read - they may have generated some of the models, but almost everything was placed by hand.
Yeah, of course I understand you don't have to hand draw and texture each object. But the problem I'm talking about is the uncanny valley - sure, it's possible to generate a bunch of cartoonish faces with skeletal/etc structure that won't work for proper human facial movements, conversation, etc, but what's the point of 50B poly/sec and 8000x4000 screens if everything still looks and moves like a robotic cartoon character?
Like almost every aspect of game development (physics, AI, animation, 3D sound mixing, etc) these technologies will keep getting rewritten/modified to work with the current capabilities of hardware (as has already happened many times). And hitting that 2000x GPU performance is not going to happen in one HW generation. If someone could have trivially written the perfect cloth, skin, face, etc generators independent of existing graphics and CPU hardware, it would already be done and everyone would be using them now. And every time a new generation is written, it will likely be more complex, require a larger team, and provide smaller and smaller benefits. If you think about it, that's the exact path computer games and the tech behind them has taken ever since one guy could write a simple game on a Commodore 30 year ago...
It just seems naive to me to think there will ever be "one final implementation" to do all of these things... about as naive as thinking that we are on the final stages of graphics performance, which was the point of the article:)
Most businesses are not profitable when they start, and many have a business model of selling a loss leader for future profit. That's how the Playstation started, and for a while (until the PS3 fiasco) it was Sony's most profitable business.
The XBox 360 is only 5-6 years into its "10 year lifespan", and Microsoft has built a huge dedicated customer base with Live (40M paying Gold subscribers, many of whom, just like with Apple and iTunes are at least somewhat locked in with various DLC, games, movies, and gamer rating, etc). I think your information about the Xbox's profitability is way out of date - Xbox/entertainment now makes up about 20% of Microsoft's total revenue, compared to about 30% for its business division.
Wagering a careful look (ie a couple Google searches for quotes), from their last quarterly releases & analysis:
"Microsoft's strongest growth came from the Entertainment division where the Xbox resides, however. That group's revenue jumped 14 percent to $4.24 billion, a new high. The Xbox 360 installed base now totals approximately 66 million consoles and 18 million Kinect sensors, Microsoft said. Xbox Live now has 40 million members worldwide, an increase of 33 percent from the prior year period."
"Microsoft's fourth-quarter results showed an interesting shift, as Microsoft's Xbox business unit threatens to pass its Windows division in terms of revenue. If the current trends continue, Windows and its related businesses could rank fourth within the company, ahead of its perpetually money-losing online business."
I'm sure praising anything Microsoft has done in any way will get me modded down (I already see my first comment was "Overrated" and my 2nd "Underrated", nice!) - but you have to give some credit where it's due in this case, they stuck with it and finally figured out how to build a real business around the Xbox.
Getting consumers really doesn't have much to do with quality, though. In the end "getting consumers" is proven out by sales and market share (both initially and over time).
Xbox is thoroughly dominating those categories. Wii has had more console sales, but everyone knows game console profits are made from game title licensing, not hardware, and there are a lot of Wiis sitting around collecting dust right now. And the PS3 is selling reasonably well now, but mostly lost out on the massively profitable (and growing) online marketplace.
Anyway, no matter how much anyone wants to debate those little details, the Xbox and particularly Live has been a clear success story for Microsoft. They need to get some of those guys thinking about the rest of their businesses...
Try using a spreadsheet (or a code window) with a 16:10 monitor turned vertically - it's awesome.
Anyway, the real issue I have with phones and tablets is that despite what people claim, they are still *far* from general purpose computers. Eventually (though it may be a while) mobile processors will likely be plenty fast for 95% of potential users. But if we end up in a world where everyone has to develop and publish all of their software through an app store of some sort, please drown me in an apple barrel.
I think their dominance in the home is because for a while they were the only choice if you didn't want to pay $$$ for overpriced hardware and a crappy OS - they basically had no competition. A significant percentage of the working population with home computers doesn't actually sit all day at a desk staring at a computer monitor (especially 15-20 years ago when MS took over the home market).
Now that Apple has addressed those 2 issues (and just completely dominated in marketing and industrial design) the market has changed drastically...
Exactly. I hate people getting their greasy fingerprints all over my computer screen almost as much as I'd hate them taking a dump in my kitchen sink. Separation of input and output has its advantages...
Oleophobic screens only work so well, someone needs to come up with a better solution (and then a better garbage disposal).
Yeah, but you are now limited to those algorithms, which will be way inadequate when other objects, textures, etc are photorealistic. All of the new R&D costs to come up with something better is an extra cost, as well.
Not to mention you have to improved everything to match when you improve the poly count and lighting - making perfectly lifelike characters does no good if their animations look robotic... yet more dev costs (probably, in algorithms, mo-cap, and hand animated/tweaked animations/keyframes/etc).
Added complexity takes added effort with takes added $$$. If it didn't today's CGI movies wouldn't have to keep adding more and more TDs, animators, artists, etc.
I'm not really a fan of paying for your content twice, but sorry, this comment is just silly.
Why should Warner give a crap about a user's bandwidth costs any more than they should care about the amount of electricity their TV uses when they watch a movie? You already have the DVD if you don't want to use the bandwidth. This is a convenience to let the user watch the content on any device with an Internet connection, and yes, there are marginal bandwidth costs that weren't included in DVD prices, etc.
Anyway, if you don't need that convenience, just ignore the service and move along. Personally, if it cost ~$1 each and made the movies permanently available on real streaming services like Netflix, VUDU, Amazon, etc (ie. that are on a lot of devices - not some crappy Warner Bros website) I'd probably take them up on it. Of course those services need some incentive to pay to stream it to you (which was my POINT) - the "fee" could be shared with them, or maybe they could consider it a customer acquisition cost, etc.
The summary is misleading (as usual). There is no ripping and copying of each DVD, that would be stupid.
From what I have read about it they just verify that you own the DVD, mark the inner ring with some stamp so that you can't just give it to your friend to take back to the store, and then charge you a couple of dollars for each to add the movies to a digital rights locker (Ultraviolet, or whatever). After that you can stream it on any computer/device/tablet/whatever that supports it.
Better deal than buying a whole new streaming version, I guess, but given how they always make the distinction of "ownership" vs. "right to watch" you'd think you already paid for the right to watch it and should get this service for *free*. I guess *if* the streaming service actually stays around it will cover their lifetime streaming costs, etc, for the movie (though I think = $0.50 would cover that, given most people don't end up watching most movies they buy more than once).
Hmm, maybe you should read the bit you highlighted again. It said the larger their *peers'* (i.e OTHER people they associate with) body mass, the lower their chances of being anorexic. Not even remotely what you paraphrased.
Not that I think regulating pictures of thin people makes any sense at all, it's ridiculous. Might as well ban all food and drink ads to prevent obesity (which would cut out 1/2 of all advertising, it seems).
I was going to say - according to studies 0.5% of women in the US are anorexic, and 30% of the whole adult population is overweight.
We'd be better off banning advertisement of all high calorie-low nutrition food (fast food, soft drinks, alcohol, etc) than models (many of whom, though way at the low end of average body mass, are not anorexic themselves but in excellent shape).
Actually, no, you're missing the point - and I wasn't really very accurate in my previous statement, either. Currency is by definition the *material* medium of exchange in a money supply. Humans and/or the market in general may have arrived at an arbitrary value for that currency (relative to other physical goods, etc) but if you can hold it in your hand the currency itself is most definitely NOT imaginary.
In economic terms I would argue that money itself (which may be what you are thinking of, and is not the same as currency) is not imaginary. It's a representation or symbol of a commonly accepted value for exchange of goods, services, etc. Non-corporeal does not have to equal "imaginary".
Anyway, bitcoins really aren't in any practical terms a currency, anyway, they are a commodity. Once you can go spend them at the supermarket they might be a currency, but don't hold your breath on that.
No, that's not true - in fact you have it reversed.
Currency = physical. Money = abstraction. You can have money in a bank account that's purely digital, but that cash stashed under your mattress is currency. Look it up...
Yep, gold is not a currency either. Hasn't been in a while. Now it's mostly a commodity traded on the market like other commodities. I think I'd prefer to trade in gold than freaking bitcoins, though.
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If that's true I guess there is a reason he can't find anyone to do this for him... who would want to handhold someone to teach them the basics required to develop a simplistic game concept as a learning exercise without being paid anything??
I suppose that's the answer he needs to hear: you won't find a expert game developer to "partner" with you on this, so do what most other hobbyist game programmers do - try to figure it out for yourself, and when you can't then ask questions on any of the many developer forums available for that purpose. I guess many of us here probably started our hobbyist game development careers as kids (back when rec.games.programmer was the height of game development discussion) so figuring it out yourself was the only real option...
The whole post doesn't make any sense. He wants to make a simple non-commercial game for the purpose of learning, but he doesn't want to have to figure out how to program it and would like to find someone who already knows how to do it to write it for him. Wha?!
Mine does. But then again it's my own prototype. Thing can dispose of an iPhone in 15 seconds, and douche bags are almost instant. But it does get tiring wiping off the ceiling after I use it.
Actually, I think that general concept is very likely...
If you look at a lot of the research on photorealistic quality CG for faces, etc, the source material is not procedural or hand-drawn, it's scanned (both model and textures) from a human source (also gives them a good reference for comparison).
Starting with real actors and then adding much more complex lighting (modelling multiple skin layers & blood, etc with refractive and reflective lighting - the kind of thing that is being done in CG movies, but not games yet) might end up being a much more expedient solution than the "procedural faces" argument everyone keeps using to dismiss the complexity but probably has no clue how it would work in practice. Still, using human models is going to add its own costs and complexities in other ways...
If you can name any AAA titles that uses Blender I will agree with you...
In which case, like most game technology that makes it to the public domain, will have long been replaced by something better :)
If you read about the development of Skyrim, they talk about how while they had previously used SpeedTree in their older games, they ended up writing their own custom tree generator to support features that SpeedTree didn't. Also, they didn't procedurally generate the terrain or object (including tree) placement from what I have read - they may have generated some of the models, but almost everything was placed by hand.
Yeah, of course I understand you don't have to hand draw and texture each object. But the problem I'm talking about is the uncanny valley - sure, it's possible to generate a bunch of cartoonish faces with skeletal/etc structure that won't work for proper human facial movements, conversation, etc, but what's the point of 50B poly/sec and 8000x4000 screens if everything still looks and moves like a robotic cartoon character?
Like almost every aspect of game development (physics, AI, animation, 3D sound mixing, etc) these technologies will keep getting rewritten/modified to work with the current capabilities of hardware (as has already happened many times). And hitting that 2000x GPU performance is not going to happen in one HW generation. If someone could have trivially written the perfect cloth, skin, face, etc generators independent of existing graphics and CPU hardware, it would already be done and everyone would be using them now. And every time a new generation is written, it will likely be more complex, require a larger team, and provide smaller and smaller benefits. If you think about it, that's the exact path computer games and the tech behind them has taken ever since one guy could write a simple game on a Commodore 30 year ago...
It just seems naive to me to think there will ever be "one final implementation" to do all of these things... about as naive as thinking that we are on the final stages of graphics performance, which was the point of the article :)
That hasn't happened to my notebook or tablet..... who did you piss off?
Or piss on...
Most businesses are not profitable when they start, and many have a business model of selling a loss leader for future profit. That's how the Playstation started, and for a while (until the PS3 fiasco) it was Sony's most profitable business.
The XBox 360 is only 5-6 years into its "10 year lifespan", and Microsoft has built a huge dedicated customer base with Live (40M paying Gold subscribers, many of whom, just like with Apple and iTunes are at least somewhat locked in with various DLC, games, movies, and gamer rating, etc). I think your information about the Xbox's profitability is way out of date - Xbox/entertainment now makes up about 20% of Microsoft's total revenue, compared to about 30% for its business division.
Wagering a careful look (ie a couple Google searches for quotes), from their last quarterly releases & analysis:
"Microsoft's strongest growth came from the Entertainment division where the Xbox resides, however. That group's revenue jumped 14 percent to $4.24 billion, a new high. The Xbox 360 installed base now totals approximately 66 million consoles and 18 million Kinect sensors, Microsoft said. Xbox Live now has 40 million members worldwide, an increase of 33 percent from the prior year period."
"Microsoft's fourth-quarter results showed an interesting shift, as Microsoft's Xbox business unit threatens to pass its Windows division in terms of revenue. If the current trends continue, Windows and its related businesses could rank fourth within the company, ahead of its perpetually money-losing online business."
I'm sure praising anything Microsoft has done in any way will get me modded down (I already see my first comment was "Overrated" and my 2nd "Underrated", nice!) - but you have to give some credit where it's due in this case, they stuck with it and finally figured out how to build a real business around the Xbox.
Yeah, they keep getting stuck in the rotor blades...
Getting consumers really doesn't have much to do with quality, though. In the end "getting consumers" is proven out by sales and market share (both initially and over time).
Xbox is thoroughly dominating those categories. Wii has had more console sales, but everyone knows game console profits are made from game title licensing, not hardware, and there are a lot of Wiis sitting around collecting dust right now. And the PS3 is selling reasonably well now, but mostly lost out on the massively profitable (and growing) online marketplace.
Anyway, no matter how much anyone wants to debate those little details, the Xbox and particularly Live has been a clear success story for Microsoft. They need to get some of those guys thinking about the rest of their businesses...
And I have developed for the Xbox, ps3, and wii ;)
Try using a spreadsheet (or a code window) with a 16:10 monitor turned vertically - it's awesome.
Anyway, the real issue I have with phones and tablets is that despite what people claim, they are still *far* from general purpose computers. Eventually (though it may be a while) mobile processors will likely be plenty fast for 95% of potential users. But if we end up in a world where everyone has to develop and publish all of their software through an app store of some sort, please drown me in an apple barrel.
If you are holding your PC in your arms maybe you should be considering something else after all.
I think their dominance in the home is because for a while they were the only choice if you didn't want to pay $$$ for overpriced hardware and a crappy OS - they basically had no competition. A significant percentage of the working population with home computers doesn't actually sit all day at a desk staring at a computer monitor (especially 15-20 years ago when MS took over the home market).
Now that Apple has addressed those 2 issues (and just completely dominated in marketing and industrial design) the market has changed drastically...
Well, *someone* there gets consumers. Look at the Xbox as a response to the Playstation...
Exactly. I hate people getting their greasy fingerprints all over my computer screen almost as much as I'd hate them taking a dump in my kitchen sink. Separation of input and output has its advantages...
Oleophobic screens only work so well, someone needs to come up with a better solution (and then a better garbage disposal).
Yeah, but you are now limited to those algorithms, which will be way inadequate when other objects, textures, etc are photorealistic. All of the new R&D costs to come up with something better is an extra cost, as well.
Not to mention you have to improved everything to match when you improve the poly count and lighting - making perfectly lifelike characters does no good if their animations look robotic... yet more dev costs (probably, in algorithms, mo-cap, and hand animated/tweaked animations/keyframes/etc).
Added complexity takes added effort with takes added $$$. If it didn't today's CGI movies wouldn't have to keep adding more and more TDs, animators, artists, etc.
I'm not really a fan of paying for your content twice, but sorry, this comment is just silly.
Why should Warner give a crap about a user's bandwidth costs any more than they should care about the amount of electricity their TV uses when they watch a movie? You already have the DVD if you don't want to use the bandwidth. This is a convenience to let the user watch the content on any device with an Internet connection, and yes, there are marginal bandwidth costs that weren't included in DVD prices, etc.
Anyway, if you don't need that convenience, just ignore the service and move along. Personally, if it cost ~$1 each and made the movies permanently available on real streaming services like Netflix, VUDU, Amazon, etc (ie. that are on a lot of devices - not some crappy Warner Bros website) I'd probably take them up on it. Of course those services need some incentive to pay to stream it to you (which was my POINT) - the "fee" could be shared with them, or maybe they could consider it a customer acquisition cost, etc.
The summary is misleading (as usual). There is no ripping and copying of each DVD, that would be stupid.
From what I have read about it they just verify that you own the DVD, mark the inner ring with some stamp so that you can't just give it to your friend to take back to the store, and then charge you a couple of dollars for each to add the movies to a digital rights locker (Ultraviolet, or whatever). After that you can stream it on any computer/device/tablet/whatever that supports it.
Better deal than buying a whole new streaming version, I guess, but given how they always make the distinction of "ownership" vs. "right to watch" you'd think you already paid for the right to watch it and should get this service for *free*. I guess *if* the streaming service actually stays around it will cover their lifetime streaming costs, etc, for the movie (though I think = $0.50 would cover that, given most people don't end up watching most movies they buy more than once).
Hmm, maybe you should read the bit you highlighted again. It said the larger their *peers'* (i.e OTHER people they associate with) body mass, the lower their chances of being anorexic. Not even remotely what you paraphrased.
Not that I think regulating pictures of thin people makes any sense at all, it's ridiculous. Might as well ban all food and drink ads to prevent obesity (which would cut out 1/2 of all advertising, it seems).
I was going to say - according to studies 0.5% of women in the US are anorexic, and 30% of the whole adult population is overweight.
We'd be better off banning advertisement of all high calorie-low nutrition food (fast food, soft drinks, alcohol, etc) than models (many of whom, though way at the low end of average body mass, are not anorexic themselves but in excellent shape).
In the end both ideas are absurd, of course...
Actually, no, you're missing the point - and I wasn't really very accurate in my previous statement, either. Currency is by definition the *material* medium of exchange in a money supply. Humans and/or the market in general may have arrived at an arbitrary value for that currency (relative to other physical goods, etc) but if you can hold it in your hand the currency itself is most definitely NOT imaginary.
In economic terms I would argue that money itself (which may be what you are thinking of, and is not the same as currency) is not imaginary. It's a representation or symbol of a commonly accepted value for exchange of goods, services, etc. Non-corporeal does not have to equal "imaginary".
Anyway, bitcoins really aren't in any practical terms a currency, anyway, they are a commodity. Once you can go spend them at the supermarket they might be a currency, but don't hold your breath on that.
No, that's not true - in fact you have it reversed.
Currency = physical. Money = abstraction. You can have money in a bank account that's purely digital, but that cash stashed under your mattress is currency. Look it up...
Not so bad when you realize that's about the same AT&T is charging (adjusted for inflation) for SMS messages today!
Yep, gold is not a currency either. Hasn't been in a while. Now it's mostly a commodity traded on the market like other commodities. I think I'd prefer to trade in gold than freaking bitcoins, though.