I am also a proponent of not rebuilding human habitations on the peninsula. As much as I love that area and have fond memories of going there on vacation, I understand that there are some things you should not mess with and mother nature is on the top of my list.
If humans had to avoid any areas of the planet in which natural disasters could occur, we'd have a pretty short list of places in which we could live. Let's see, let's strike off the list:
* Any tropical or southern region that can be hit by hurricanes * Anyplace a tornado is likely to hit. Midwesterners, that's you. * Tsunami-affected regions of the world. Stay away from those beautiful coastlines! * We'll just have to evacuate Japan, and pretty much all around the Pacific ring of fire. Oh, and re-locate much of Southern California * Anyone living too close to a potentially active volcano - time to pack up! * Anyone in a flood-plain - out you go! * Anyone with a house surrounded by highly flammable brush or forest, sorry, you too. * Anyone living in areas with nasty critters that can maim, bite, sting, or even swallow you whole.
You start tallying up the ways nature can kick our collective asses, there's not a whole lot of 'safe' places on the planet. We all take our risks one way or another.
It's not all that mind-boggling. Let me throw out some counter-points... Sex isn't exactly free of issues either:
* It's one of our more primal motivators, and tends to get people in a lot of trouble. * It has the potential to be highly risky (STDs) * It carries with it potentially life-changing responsibility (creating a new human life).
If sex had no consequences, it seems unlikely our society would have placed so many stigmas on it.
Violence is bad, murder is generally considered to be the worst thing you can do. Sex is great, and actually required for human survival.
And which of these do we freely display in movies, while the other is only hinted at or avoided?
Keep in mind that violence, when shown in movies or TV, is quite often shown in a *negative* light. Or, if shown in a positive light, is often in response to unwarranted aggression. If you use violence to end a country's oppression and save the lives of millions of people, is that bad? Is violence bad if you use it to defend a woman from being raped by a thug? The answer is still probably 'yes', but we're often faced with choosing the lesser of evils in this life.
Not trying to be argumentative (well, maybe a little)... Just trying to point out that the 'sex and violence' issue isn't as black and white as 'sex is good, violence is bad'.
Dripping sarcasm aside, it's not about hate for Sony or love for MS... it's just that these sorts of patents seem to put up more roadblocks to widespread adoption of a technology than anything else, so they're not exactly bound to be popular. Take the example of rumble in game controllers, for example. My PS3, for example, has no rumble feature in the controller. As such, I either have to purchase a new controller AFTER the patent licensing has been worked out, or I can just buy the game for my 360 instead. For users that don't own all the current consoles, it was, I'm sure, rather annoying to go without a last-generation feature that adds a lot of immersiveness to games (at least for me, it does).
Personally, I'm not completely anti-patent like a lot of people here are. I do think software and 'business process' patents should be abolished, though, and I think the US patent office should take a hard look at reducing the length of some types of patents in which 17 years is an ungodly long time to have a patent.
You don't have to imagine. Plenty of people lease cars, knowing they can't re-sell them - technically, they don't really even 'own' the car, all for a reduced price. Other people like me would never lease a car, though. We prefer to own the thing outright.
Disclaimer: I'm a game developer working on MMOs, so used games aren't exactly a threat to our business at the moment, since you're buying an on-line account which you really can't sell - the client software is sort of incidental. However, even when I was working on single-player games, I still felt the same way. Which is:
To hell with publishers who feel they don't have to earn their customers' money just like every other business on the planet. The game development industry is big and booming, but it's also incredibly cut-throat and highly competitive, often with very slim margins and high risk. Tough nuts - we finally made it (as an industry) to the big time, and now they're complaining that their margins aren't as big as they'd like it to be.
Guess what - if there's a thriving used game market which sells used copies of your game for just a few bucks less than the retail price, maybe it's an indicator that your prices are a bit on the steep side, especially many months after its initial release. How about you drop your prices to remain competitive? Or release additional content to encourage new sales, perhaps?
I can't stand it when people whine about the reality of the marketplace like that. It reminds me of another entertainment industry that's become universally loathed because of their refusal to adapt to new marketplace realities, and instead use the force of law to bully and intimidate their customers. I hope to God my industry doesn't go in that direction. At least we seem to be seeing a backing off of those insane and intrusive DRM schemes (which most developers I know don't like either).
12. Every car that crashes will explode.
12a. Exception - if the hero is in the car, it will only leak gas.
12b. In such a case, there will always be an ignition source nearby.
12c. The gas will always run toward the ignition source.
12d. The gas will ignite only when the hero has just gotten free of the car, and is running away.
13. Heroes can outrun an explosive blast
14. Bullets don't fly straight for bad guys.
Optional Cartoon Physics Module:
1. You won't fall off a cliff until you realize there is no solid ground beneath you.
1a. Attempts to run back to solid ground will be successfully unless you look down
1b. Bonus points if you are the one to point out to your adversary that he has no ground beneath him.
2. Getting crushed by massive objects results not in death or serious injury, but an overall bodily compression with a look strikingly similar to an accordion.
2a. Bonus points will be awarded if victim puts up a tiny umbrella shortly before impact.
3. Accidental exposure to high explosives will result in no injury except for a blackening of face, mussing of hair, and tattering of clothes.
Well, do it like in the real world. If the bad guys headquarter gets blown up before some story mission, relocate him to a different building. Its not like reality stops working just because some building gets blown up, people work around it, construction workers repair it, police mean jail the person who did it and so on, a video game can do much of the same, especially when it is an open world game to begin with. Its also a simple matter of economy, blowing up big stuff requires lots of explosives, simply don't give the player a way to obtain them or just rebuild stuff on the right side of the map, while the player is blowing stuff up on the left. A single player can't level a whole world.
A lot of stuff like that is pretty simple to describe in a few sentences, but pretty hard to do in actual practice. At the moment, highly destructible environments will remain in the domain of a few specialized titles, because the entire game has to be *completely* designed and built around this concept - not to mention the technology.
Current game dev pipelines are set up around the concept of creating and importing geometric meshes, and applying textures and shaders to those to simulate a real-world material. These art pipelines are long, deep, and pretty complex. Given the fact that not every type of game will really benefit from the massive restructuring of both the game engine, tools, and the additional art and game development time, this is going to remain a bit niche for a few years.
As we approach the photo-realistic threshold (we're pretty close already), we game developers will start focusing on dynamic, rule-based interaction rather that the visuals, I believe. Instead of simply modeling/animating/texturing a tree, we'll teach the the computer to understand the materials, composition, and natural reaction that defines a tree, all in addition to the look. It will grow (or the designers can set an age), change with the seasons, and players will be able to take an axe and chop it down and turn it into lumber, or turn it into firewood, or furniture. Game engines will define a generic set of physics and material-based set of rules, and any sort of objects can just plug right into the system. Large libraries will be developed (including, ultimately, creatures and humans), and games will be developed using these advanced building blocks.
Oddly enough, this jump in technology will, may actually start allowing games development budgets to begin leveling off. At the moment, it's really not feasible to re-use art assets from game to game, except in the case of some limited episodic releases, or similar titles on the same generation of consoles. The technology is still advancing too fast, and each generation of games looks much better than before. But at a certain point, we'll be freed up to re-use more of our past game world 'components' instead of recreating them for each new game, because we'll reach a threshold where it simply doesn't make sense to throw away perfectly good art assets.
Interestingly, we've already seen this sort of transition with code, at least to some degree. It use to be that game engines were re-written from scratch practically for each new game. Nowadays, companies are developing and maintaining their code base for much longer periods of time, only re-factoring or rewriting specific components as required. Or, they are licensing an engine, which has undoubtedly gone through a similar iterative development cycle. As such, we can do more in a shorter period of time, because we don't have to start from scratch each time.
You know... all they have to do is wait 10 years and they can just pick up a few Playstation 5's or Xbox 4's from Wal-Mart to do the job. In case they didn't realize, all those nifty bullet-points are highly desirable things for computers in both the consumer and commercial markets as well:
* Highly efficient energy usage * New systems and programming models to develop for massively concurrent processing * Highly fault-tolerant
Advanced computer technology is something that the market is pushing ahead at a phenomenal rate anyhow, and specifically, computer gaming is driving it even faster. I don't think the defense department really has to push development of this to advance the state of the art - it will happen with or without their incentives.
Programmers are a dime a dozen. That ain't nothing but ten-cent coding.
I feel a bit silly responding to obvious flamebait, but it's been modded insightful for some bizarre reason. As a professional game programmer, I feel the need to respond. A *professional* game developer understands and appreciates the values of his co-workers in ALL disciplines. There's no room for some stupid 'us' vs. 'them' mentality. I'm fortunate to work with some brilliant artists and designers. We programmers produce not only the game code, but also internal tools that are essentially "force multipliers" for them. In return, they use our code and tools and produce cool and amazing things we would never have thought of.
They are the ones who shape and craft the game, much like I.M. Pei designs masterful works of architecture. The programmers are just the construction workers who make the design a reality. Both are skilled and necessary, but construction workers without an architect aren't going to build anything of great value.
This is Slashdot. You need a car analogy.
You're claiming the steering wheel (designer) is the most important part of the car, because without it, we couldn't control the car (direct the game development). But there are so many vital systems to the car - removing any one of these components makes the car useless, so it's silly to argue which one is 'most important'. What good is the car without wheels? Without an engine? Or brakes, or a body? Even the more minor roles (headlights and tail lights) are critical for specific circumstances.
Yes, coding is necessary, and this book has plenty of code. But if you are serious about creating a game, it's the design that matters, the implementation can be farmed off to any body shop.
I wish you well with that approach. Unless you take ALL aspects of game development seriously, you're doomed to failure.
Unfortunately both types of failures are standard stapples of capitalism, so don't expect them to go away any time soon.
Fortunately, capitalism also has self-correcting mechanisms, in the form of consumer choice. Most of these products, not surprisingly, ended in failure, forcing companies to improve their designs and re-think their methods.
In the case of Microsoft, do you think they would have focused as much on performance issues for Windows 7 without the bloated mess MS made of Vista? And HP's printer ink business will ultimately be self-defeating if they aren't providing consumers with enough value for the money.
I find more often than not that lawyers, especially older male lawyers, believe they are of superior intelligence and if someone needs to explain something to them, it is somehow insulting or demeaning. Perhaps this is not limited to lawyers, but I have to say, all of the male lawyers I have known seem to reflect this pattern of not being open to new information.
Generalization is *always* a bad thing. Being an older gentleman of considerable life experience, I think you should trust my judgment on this. And no, don't try telling me otherwise - you're just being contrary!
Having to design for input peripherals with two different levels of capability would discourage incorporating a core game mechanics designed entirely around the new device without severely degrading the experience. They risk watering down what they *could* do with the new device, as well as the risk of people without the new peripheral passing on the game for fear they won't get the best possible play experience.
Let's give a simple example: When the Wii and it's controller were announced, people immediately thought a Star Wars game in which you could wield and swing a lightsaber directly would be the killer game for the Wii. As it turns out, it wasn't very practical to do that with the standard Wii hardware. With Wii Motion plus, you actually *could*. Here's the kicker - the entire game would likely be based around the premise that you could swing a lightsaber and the game would track it with 1:1 accuracy. How exactly would you gracefully fall back to using standard Wii hardware? Would it be anywhere near the same experience?
There's a reason many games using peripherals come bundled with them (or are first-party). That way, they can design the game around the use of that peripheral knowing the customer will always experience the full benefit of that device.
I actually had to look up hybris to make sure it wasn't a simple misspelling of 'hubris'. Turns out it's a legit variation (although seemingly rarely used). I had already come up with a good joke definition for it too:
Hybris - noun. Excessive arrogance or pride in more than one field of knowledge.
Ogg Vorbis is also used in video games because it has some other advantages: it supports 6-channel audio, and has support for bit-accurate decoding, allowing seamless looping of audio, and it sounds better at lower bitrates. I know MP3s can be kludged to do some of these, but it's easier just to use Vorbis in these cases.
Our upcoming game will actually be shipping with both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis audio. The MP3 decoder we're using is significantly more efficient than the reference Vorbis libraries, and allows us to play more simultaneously decoded channels. However, if a piece of audio needs to loop, to use multi-channel, or if we're encoding a LOT of it (music, voice-overs, etc), we use Ogg Vorbis.
Honestly, the cost of the license isn't really an issue at all. It's all about what does the job best for us, and MP3 and Vorbis each have strengths and weaknesses.
Of course most players within a class will experience a similar story. Every true branch in plotline dramatically increases the cost of production for the rest of the story arc. Unless they expect players to choose the same class multiple times, it's really not worth branching off in too many different directions. The cost of development would be astronomical.
Essentially, the first "true" branches are when the player chooses a class, from what it sounds like. From there, it's all about the *illusion* of choice, while providing just a few minor branches that typically intertwine back with others a little ways on. At that point, the "choice" you made can be reflected in small choices of dialogue, whether or not a particular character is alive or not, etc...
So, yeah, I'd guess the actual divergence of the plot between characters of the same class will be sort of minor. But so what? I'm not complaining about this - just pointing out the reality of it. It's simply too expensive and time-consuming to allow a player total freedom - that is, unless you don't care about telling a cinematic story. Even the "sandbox" games out there, such as Fallout 3, end up reverting back to a scripted storyline which every branch in the game ends up meeting back up with.
I think the Jedi question is a pretty fundamental problem in any Star Wars MMO. I don't think arbitrarily limiting how many people can play a class would fly, though.
I suppose they could require you to reach max level in another class first, then begin training as a level one Jedi. Or, they could make Jedi a much tougher grind than other classes (they get 1/2 XP that other classes do). Or even combine these two ideas - only the dedicated go the Jedi route.
Of course, they'll probably won't do something like that. I think the way they'll likely do this is to try to figure out ways of making other classes as appealing - give them things to do that Jedi can't do (or wouldn't do). And of course, people won't care, and half the population of the game will be Jedi anyhow.
It's not that people abhor options, but you do have to look pragmatically at both the pros and cons of add-on peripherals in the console marketplace.
From a simple numbers perspective, it means you've split your consumer-base. An add-on peripheral is never going to be as widely supported as original hardware. It also means that developers will be much less likely to *design* an entire game around the functionality of that new add-on, because they also have to think about how to make the game functional and fun for original Wii hardware.
Unless it comes with EVERY Wii, new hardware simply won't be taken advantage of to same degree, and with the substantial improvements of Wii Motion plus, it just seems a shame it wasn't working like that to begin with.
The right to bear arms in the US, for example, is an explicit right that was granted to US citizens.
This was pointed out in another place, but it bears repeating. The US Constitution does not grant us rights. It limits the power of government by specifically *enumerating* our rights and telling the government what it can and cannot do. The premise is that all people are "endowed by our Creator" (or consider it natural law if you don't wish to involve a deity), and those inherent rights must be preserved.
It may seem like semantic nit-picking, but it's a crucial difference. If rights were granted by the government, it would also mean they could be taken away by the government. By declaring these inalienable human rights, derived from natural law, we draw from an authority higher than that of the government - something of a safety measure against an oppressive government that claims to have the authority to suspend our rights at will.
You don't need homebrew to break into the game development industry. A PC game will do just fine for that. Don't forget about Microsoft's XNA for Xbox 360 as well. You just need something that demonstrates you understand the fundamentals of programming, have a good working knowledge of C or C++ for instance, and that you can actually finish a game project. In most game development houses - or at least the ones I've worked at over the past decade, it's expected that there will be some degree of on-the-job training with regards to specific projects, platforms, technologies, APIs, etc...
It wouldn't have happened in the US either? Exactly how many counter-examples do you need? Plenty of game developers have created successful games and gone on to start successful companies. Many of those developers would now be classified as "rich" by most standards.
As an employee, you risk less and gain less. The company is paying your wages, and therefore, the company reaps the rewards. In order to strike it big, you must first be willing to risk your *own* capital to finance the chance of such achievement.
Slashdot Mirror
I am also a proponent of not rebuilding human habitations on the peninsula. As much as I love that area and have fond memories of going there on vacation, I understand that there are some things you should not mess with and mother nature is on the top of my list.
If humans had to avoid any areas of the planet in which natural disasters could occur, we'd have a pretty short list of places in which we could live. Let's see, let's strike off the list:
* Any tropical or southern region that can be hit by hurricanes
* Anyplace a tornado is likely to hit. Midwesterners, that's you.
* Tsunami-affected regions of the world. Stay away from those beautiful coastlines!
* We'll just have to evacuate Japan, and pretty much all around the Pacific ring of fire. Oh, and re-locate much of Southern California
* Anyone living too close to a potentially active volcano - time to pack up!
* Anyone in a flood-plain - out you go!
* Anyone with a house surrounded by highly flammable brush or forest, sorry, you too.
* Anyone living in areas with nasty critters that can maim, bite, sting, or even swallow you whole.
You start tallying up the ways nature can kick our collective asses, there's not a whole lot of 'safe' places on the planet. We all take our risks one way or another.
It's not just interesting, it's mind boggling.
It's not all that mind-boggling. Let me throw out some counter-points... Sex isn't exactly free of issues either:
* It's one of our more primal motivators, and tends to get people in a lot of trouble.
* It has the potential to be highly risky (STDs)
* It carries with it potentially life-changing responsibility (creating a new human life).
If sex had no consequences, it seems unlikely our society would have placed so many stigmas on it.
Violence is bad, murder is generally considered to be the worst thing you can do. Sex is great, and actually required for human survival.
And which of these do we freely display in movies, while the other is only hinted at or avoided?
Keep in mind that violence, when shown in movies or TV, is quite often shown in a *negative* light. Or, if shown in a positive light, is often in response to unwarranted aggression. If you use violence to end a country's oppression and save the lives of millions of people, is that bad? Is violence bad if you use it to defend a woman from being raped by a thug? The answer is still probably 'yes', but we're often faced with choosing the lesser of evils in this life.
Not trying to be argumentative (well, maybe a little)... Just trying to point out that the 'sex and violence' issue isn't as black and white as 'sex is good, violence is bad'.
Must we all conform to social convention?
Only if you want to actually live and interact within a society.
Dripping sarcasm aside, it's not about hate for Sony or love for MS... it's just that these sorts of patents seem to put up more roadblocks to widespread adoption of a technology than anything else, so they're not exactly bound to be popular. Take the example of rumble in game controllers, for example. My PS3, for example, has no rumble feature in the controller. As such, I either have to purchase a new controller AFTER the patent licensing has been worked out, or I can just buy the game for my 360 instead. For users that don't own all the current consoles, it was, I'm sure, rather annoying to go without a last-generation feature that adds a lot of immersiveness to games (at least for me, it does).
Personally, I'm not completely anti-patent like a lot of people here are. I do think software and 'business process' patents should be abolished, though, and I think the US patent office should take a hard look at reducing the length of some types of patents in which 17 years is an ungodly long time to have a patent.
You don't have to imagine. Plenty of people lease cars, knowing they can't re-sell them - technically, they don't really even 'own' the car, all for a reduced price. Other people like me would never lease a car, though. We prefer to own the thing outright.
Disclaimer: I'm a game developer working on MMOs, so used games aren't exactly a threat to our business at the moment, since you're buying an on-line account which you really can't sell - the client software is sort of incidental. However, even when I was working on single-player games, I still felt the same way. Which is:
To hell with publishers who feel they don't have to earn their customers' money just like every other business on the planet. The game development industry is big and booming, but it's also incredibly cut-throat and highly competitive, often with very slim margins and high risk. Tough nuts - we finally made it (as an industry) to the big time, and now they're complaining that their margins aren't as big as they'd like it to be.
Guess what - if there's a thriving used game market which sells used copies of your game for just a few bucks less than the retail price, maybe it's an indicator that your prices are a bit on the steep side, especially many months after its initial release. How about you drop your prices to remain competitive? Or release additional content to encourage new sales, perhaps?
I can't stand it when people whine about the reality of the marketplace like that. It reminds me of another entertainment industry that's become universally loathed because of their refusal to adapt to new marketplace realities, and instead use the force of law to bully and intimidate their customers. I hope to God my industry doesn't go in that direction. At least we seem to be seeing a backing off of those insane and intrusive DRM schemes (which most developers I know don't like either).
You forgot a few:
12. Every car that crashes will explode.
12a. Exception - if the hero is in the car, it will only leak gas.
12b. In such a case, there will always be an ignition source nearby.
12c. The gas will always run toward the ignition source.
12d. The gas will ignite only when the hero has just gotten free of the car, and is running away.
13. Heroes can outrun an explosive blast
14. Bullets don't fly straight for bad guys.
Optional Cartoon Physics Module:
1. You won't fall off a cliff until you realize there is no solid ground beneath you.
1a. Attempts to run back to solid ground will be successfully unless you look down
1b. Bonus points if you are the one to point out to your adversary that he has no ground beneath him.
2. Getting crushed by massive objects results not in death or serious injury, but an overall bodily compression with a look strikingly similar to an accordion.
2a. Bonus points will be awarded if victim puts up a tiny umbrella shortly before impact.
3. Accidental exposure to high explosives will result in no injury except for a blackening of face, mussing of hair, and tattering of clothes.
Well, do it like in the real world. If the bad guys headquarter gets blown up before some story mission, relocate him to a different building. Its not like reality stops working just because some building gets blown up, people work around it, construction workers repair it, police mean jail the person who did it and so on, a video game can do much of the same, especially when it is an open world game to begin with. Its also a simple matter of economy, blowing up big stuff requires lots of explosives, simply don't give the player a way to obtain them or just rebuild stuff on the right side of the map, while the player is blowing stuff up on the left. A single player can't level a whole world.
A lot of stuff like that is pretty simple to describe in a few sentences, but pretty hard to do in actual practice. At the moment, highly destructible environments will remain in the domain of a few specialized titles, because the entire game has to be *completely* designed and built around this concept - not to mention the technology.
Current game dev pipelines are set up around the concept of creating and importing geometric meshes, and applying textures and shaders to those to simulate a real-world material. These art pipelines are long, deep, and pretty complex. Given the fact that not every type of game will really benefit from the massive restructuring of both the game engine, tools, and the additional art and game development time, this is going to remain a bit niche for a few years.
As we approach the photo-realistic threshold (we're pretty close already), we game developers will start focusing on dynamic, rule-based interaction rather that the visuals, I believe. Instead of simply modeling/animating/texturing a tree, we'll teach the the computer to understand the materials, composition, and natural reaction that defines a tree, all in addition to the look. It will grow (or the designers can set an age), change with the seasons, and players will be able to take an axe and chop it down and turn it into lumber, or turn it into firewood, or furniture. Game engines will define a generic set of physics and material-based set of rules, and any sort of objects can just plug right into the system. Large libraries will be developed (including, ultimately, creatures and humans), and games will be developed using these advanced building blocks.
Oddly enough, this jump in technology will, may actually start allowing games development budgets to begin leveling off. At the moment, it's really not feasible to re-use art assets from game to game, except in the case of some limited episodic releases, or similar titles on the same generation of consoles. The technology is still advancing too fast, and each generation of games looks much better than before. But at a certain point, we'll be freed up to re-use more of our past game world 'components' instead of recreating them for each new game, because we'll reach a threshold where it simply doesn't make sense to throw away perfectly good art assets.
Interestingly, we've already seen this sort of transition with code, at least to some degree. It use to be that game engines were re-written from scratch practically for each new game. Nowadays, companies are developing and maintaining their code base for much longer periods of time, only re-factoring or rewriting specific components as required. Or, they are licensing an engine, which has undoubtedly gone through a similar iterative development cycle. As such, we can do more in a shorter period of time, because we don't have to start from scratch each time.
You know... all they have to do is wait 10 years and they can just pick up a few Playstation 5's or Xbox 4's from Wal-Mart to do the job. In case they didn't realize, all those nifty bullet-points are highly desirable things for computers in both the consumer and commercial markets as well:
* Highly efficient energy usage
* New systems and programming models to develop for massively concurrent processing
* Highly fault-tolerant
Advanced computer technology is something that the market is pushing ahead at a phenomenal rate anyhow, and specifically, computer gaming is driving it even faster. I don't think the defense department really has to push development of this to advance the state of the art - it will happen with or without their incentives.
Programmers are a dime a dozen. That ain't nothing but ten-cent coding.
I feel a bit silly responding to obvious flamebait, but it's been modded insightful for some bizarre reason. As a professional game programmer, I feel the need to respond. A *professional* game developer understands and appreciates the values of his co-workers in ALL disciplines. There's no room for some stupid 'us' vs. 'them' mentality. I'm fortunate to work with some brilliant artists and designers. We programmers produce not only the game code, but also internal tools that are essentially "force multipliers" for them. In return, they use our code and tools and produce cool and amazing things we would never have thought of.
They are the ones who shape and craft the game, much like I.M. Pei designs masterful works of architecture. The programmers are just the construction workers who make the design a reality. Both are skilled and necessary, but construction workers without an architect aren't going to build anything of great value.
This is Slashdot. You need a car analogy.
You're claiming the steering wheel (designer) is the most important part of the car, because without it, we couldn't control the car (direct the game development). But there are so many vital systems to the car - removing any one of these components makes the car useless, so it's silly to argue which one is 'most important'. What good is the car without wheels? Without an engine? Or brakes, or a body? Even the more minor roles (headlights and tail lights) are critical for specific circumstances.
Yes, coding is necessary, and this book has plenty of code. But if you are serious about creating a game, it's the design that matters, the implementation can be farmed off to any body shop.
I wish you well with that approach. Unless you take ALL aspects of game development seriously, you're doomed to failure.
Perfect!
Unfortunately both types of failures are standard stapples of capitalism, so don't expect them to go away any time soon.
Fortunately, capitalism also has self-correcting mechanisms, in the form of consumer choice. Most of these products, not surprisingly, ended in failure, forcing companies to improve their designs and re-think their methods.
In the case of Microsoft, do you think they would have focused as much on performance issues for Windows 7 without the bloated mess MS made of Vista? And HP's printer ink business will ultimately be self-defeating if they aren't providing consumers with enough value for the money.
You do realize that this:
Xbox 360: Horribly unreliable hardware, even after the jasper redesign.
was caused, in large part, by this:
The next generation of consoles can not come fast enough.
I find more often than not that lawyers, especially older male lawyers, believe they are of superior intelligence and if someone needs to explain something to them, it is somehow insulting or demeaning. Perhaps this is not limited to lawyers, but I have to say, all of the male lawyers I have known seem to reflect this pattern of not being open to new information.
Generalization is *always* a bad thing. Being an older gentleman of considerable life experience, I think you should trust my judgment on this. And no, don't try telling me otherwise - you're just being contrary!
Ahem. You just gave me the hiccups by laughing so hard, and (re: your sig), I demand an apology!!!! :)
So sorry, Thing 1! ;-)
Just do me a favor and don't accept the apology graciously, or you'll prove my pithy little sig wrong and I'll have to invent a new one, ok?
Having to design for input peripherals with two different levels of capability would discourage incorporating a core game mechanics designed entirely around the new device without severely degrading the experience. They risk watering down what they *could* do with the new device, as well as the risk of people without the new peripheral passing on the game for fear they won't get the best possible play experience.
Let's give a simple example: When the Wii and it's controller were announced, people immediately thought a Star Wars game in which you could wield and swing a lightsaber directly would be the killer game for the Wii. As it turns out, it wasn't very practical to do that with the standard Wii hardware. With Wii Motion plus, you actually *could*. Here's the kicker - the entire game would likely be based around the premise that you could swing a lightsaber and the game would track it with 1:1 accuracy. How exactly would you gracefully fall back to using standard Wii hardware? Would it be anywhere near the same experience?
There's a reason many games using peripherals come bundled with them (or are first-party). That way, they can design the game around the use of that peripheral knowing the customer will always experience the full benefit of that device.
Hybris
I actually had to look up hybris to make sure it wasn't a simple misspelling of 'hubris'. Turns out it's a legit variation (although seemingly rarely used). I had already come up with a good joke definition for it too:
Hybris - noun. Excessive arrogance or pride in more than one field of knowledge.
Ah well...
Ogg Vorbis is also used in video games because it has some other advantages: it supports 6-channel audio, and has support for bit-accurate decoding, allowing seamless looping of audio, and it sounds better at lower bitrates. I know MP3s can be kludged to do some of these, but it's easier just to use Vorbis in these cases.
Our upcoming game will actually be shipping with both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis audio. The MP3 decoder we're using is significantly more efficient than the reference Vorbis libraries, and allows us to play more simultaneously decoded channels. However, if a piece of audio needs to loop, to use multi-channel, or if we're encoding a LOT of it (music, voice-overs, etc), we use Ogg Vorbis.
Honestly, the cost of the license isn't really an issue at all. It's all about what does the job best for us, and MP3 and Vorbis each have strengths and weaknesses.
Of course most players within a class will experience a similar story. Every true branch in plotline dramatically increases the cost of production for the rest of the story arc. Unless they expect players to choose the same class multiple times, it's really not worth branching off in too many different directions. The cost of development would be astronomical.
Essentially, the first "true" branches are when the player chooses a class, from what it sounds like. From there, it's all about the *illusion* of choice, while providing just a few minor branches that typically intertwine back with others a little ways on. At that point, the "choice" you made can be reflected in small choices of dialogue, whether or not a particular character is alive or not, etc...
So, yeah, I'd guess the actual divergence of the plot between characters of the same class will be sort of minor. But so what? I'm not complaining about this - just pointing out the reality of it. It's simply too expensive and time-consuming to allow a player total freedom - that is, unless you don't care about telling a cinematic story. Even the "sandbox" games out there, such as Fallout 3, end up reverting back to a scripted storyline which every branch in the game ends up meeting back up with.
I think the Jedi question is a pretty fundamental problem in any Star Wars MMO. I don't think arbitrarily limiting how many people can play a class would fly, though.
I suppose they could require you to reach max level in another class first, then begin training as a level one Jedi. Or, they could make Jedi a much tougher grind than other classes (they get 1/2 XP that other classes do). Or even combine these two ideas - only the dedicated go the Jedi route.
Of course, they'll probably won't do something like that. I think the way they'll likely do this is to try to figure out ways of making other classes as appealing - give them things to do that Jedi can't do (or wouldn't do). And of course, people won't care, and half the population of the game will be Jedi anyhow.
It's not that people abhor options, but you do have to look pragmatically at both the pros and cons of add-on peripherals in the console marketplace.
From a simple numbers perspective, it means you've split your consumer-base. An add-on peripheral is never going to be as widely supported as original hardware. It also means that developers will be much less likely to *design* an entire game around the functionality of that new add-on, because they also have to think about how to make the game functional and fun for original Wii hardware.
Unless it comes with EVERY Wii, new hardware simply won't be taken advantage of to same degree, and with the substantial improvements of Wii Motion plus, it just seems a shame it wasn't working like that to begin with.
The right to bear arms in the US, for example, is an explicit right that was granted to US citizens.
This was pointed out in another place, but it bears repeating. The US Constitution does not grant us rights. It limits the power of government by specifically *enumerating* our rights and telling the government what it can and cannot do. The premise is that all people are "endowed by our Creator" (or consider it natural law if you don't wish to involve a deity), and those inherent rights must be preserved.
It may seem like semantic nit-picking, but it's a crucial difference. If rights were granted by the government, it would also mean they could be taken away by the government. By declaring these inalienable human rights, derived from natural law, we draw from an authority higher than that of the government - something of a safety measure against an oppressive government that claims to have the authority to suspend our rights at will.
I'll be honest - the fact that you're referencing tentacle-rape manga by name concerns me a hell of a lot more than your Disney-obsessed relatives.
You don't need homebrew to break into the game development industry. A PC game will do just fine for that. Don't forget about Microsoft's XNA for Xbox 360 as well. You just need something that demonstrates you understand the fundamentals of programming, have a good working knowledge of C or C++ for instance, and that you can actually finish a game project. In most game development houses - or at least the ones I've worked at over the past decade, it's expected that there will be some degree of on-the-job training with regards to specific projects, platforms, technologies, APIs, etc...
If someone hasn't gotten the hang of the 'using' keyword, then they probably shouldn't be writing more than 7 lines of code a day.
It wouldn't have happened in the US either? Exactly how many counter-examples do you need? Plenty of game developers have created successful games and gone on to start successful companies. Many of those developers would now be classified as "rich" by most standards.
As an employee, you risk less and gain less. The company is paying your wages, and therefore, the company reaps the rewards. In order to strike it big, you must first be willing to risk your *own* capital to finance the chance of such achievement.
Seems reasonably fair to me.