They should import women from Russia. Since half of Russian women are single, they are in dire need of men. Sounds like a win-win situation for both countries. Women have been one of Russia's main exports lately.
> And you're going to get a team of thirty people > and their families to do that with you?
Why not? If you hate your job, surely you'd try to do something to improve the situation. Besides, there are advantages to living in a small town. The cost of living is lower, the air is cleaner, the people are friendlier, the criminals are fewer, the schools are better, etc. I wouldn't want to live in a crowded area without a good reason, and chances are there are quite a few people who feel the same way.
> it's not because all of the people buying or making them are dumber than you.
Then why? Yes, it seems to be a billion dollar industry, but if you actually want to get in there and write your own game, shouldn't you have some idea why people would want it?
> But the game play, and complexity of the objects > points system, is inferior to Castle Of the Winds,
Oh yes, I love that game!
It does, however, make a point about developer-made graphics. While I personally didn't care, there is little excuse these days for 16-color pictures that look like a ten year old child drew them (like the dreaded "gelatin blob":). You see the same sort of bad art in Lincity and freeciv (both of which have the additional problem of really bad gameplay experience).
I would like to emphasize that while movie-quality graphics are worthless, putting at least some artistic effort into your game is a good idea. Castle of The Winds graphics are something one should be ashamed to put on the game box. Really; if you can't draw a good picture, find someone who can. There are plenty of unemployed graphic artists out there. In fact, chances are that there are more of them then there are programmers.
> Do you have enough money to spend a few years > without pay and can you find a large group of > people willing to do same thing.
You are talking about Open Source software, right? After all, nobody would ever want to spend years developing something and not get paid for it... Surely, this OSS thing doesn't really exist, does it?
> Half of them are bad enough that almost nobody will buy them.
Now this really is apples and oranges. I consider most games made today bad enough to not buy them. I was making an assumption that you can make a good game (which is a different criteria from "a game with great graphics"). If you start a company and make a bad game, then you'll fail. Bad games don't do much good for big companies either. It's just a fact of life.
> I thingk I'm being generous with the odds of having a good game.
Making a good game is not a random process. You don't have "odds" for it. You either make it or you don't, it's up to you. Yes, it takes talent, and the fate of talentless people is beyond the scope of this argument.
> Why should I care about your favorite games?
Because I could be your customer. If you write a game I like, I'll buy it. So yes, I think you should give at least a passing thought to what my favorite games are.
> Shouldn't I care about how many copies different kinds of games are selling?
In choosing your genre, perhaps. But you would realize that your budget may limit your choices. You would then realize that ALL types games sell some copies, and that if you write a good game, you'll inevitably have customers regardless of the genre.
> It's hard to sell a game if the advertising looks lousy.
There is a big difference between "lousy" and "not expensive". Look at Fallout, for instance (yes, it is one of my favorite games), where all the graphics are well within range of a small independent company. In fact you might do better. And yet, they look very good to me, even though they are not some ray-traced 3D fancy-shmancy million dollar productions. They don't detract from the gameplay and contribute to the atmosphere.
> It's hard to sell a game with great word-of-mouth > if retailers won't stock it because of how it looks.
How game packaging looks has nothing to do with how the game looks. As you should know, if you bought any of those expensive titles.
> Where do you live that you have property taxes of 1k/year?
I have a four bedroom house in Norfolk VA and I pay $840/year in taxes.
> Own the house you live in... so youre minimum 55?
I'm 28 and paid it off three years ago. Not everyone is as bad at money management as you are. But you're in luck; I'm an expert at living on next to nothing, (since I've put all my money into the mortgage) so read on!
> With your reasoning, people at the poverty level should be living comfortably.
Damn right they should. Even if they only quit drinking they'd save thousands every year.
> you are not including a car
If you are living in a small town, which is what I had in mind, you don't need one. Walk. Ride a bike. It's good for you. I've been able to buy pretty much anything I wanted by walking from every place I ever lived, including Seattle. It may sound strange to you, but walking six miles is not all that bad, and food can always be found closer than that. I walked to the store every weekend.
> You are not including insurance of any sort
That's right. I don't have any. You didn't think that insurance actually saves you any money, did you? Whenever you get reimbursement for disaster, they raise their rates and make it up later. Don't burn your house, and you won't need to insure it. Teach your kids not to play with matches. Until you're 40 or so you don't need health insurance; just don't do anything dangerous. It's not hard; you probably aren't doing anything dangerous now. Car insurance? No car, no insurance. Anything else?
> internet access
Buy a limited calling plan for $10 (did you know the phone company has cheap calling plans?) and a cheap dialup for $9. That's another $228/year. Negligible, but yes, I should have included it.
> retirement savings
While you are in this situation you won't have any. Your work is your retirement savings. When you sell the game, you can, and should, put some away into savings and investments.
> I guess your kid doesn't need clothes
I guess you've never been to a thrift shop where you can buy her an entire wardrobe for $30. Learn to sew so you can make alterations as she grows. A sewing machine will cost you $50 in a thrift shop. In fact, your mother probably has one already, so borrow it.
> or to play any sports
You don't need any money to play sports. You need money only if you want to buy fancy uniforms and such, in which case see the previous paragraph. A decent baseball bat can be made from a 2x4. A basketball costs $5. A hoop can be made from scrap metal from your basement (every old house has lots of junk in the basement) and a couple of 2x4s. Etc, etc, etc.
> do anything else a kid does (like have toys).
(begin old man voice) You know, when I was a kid, we didn't have no toys. (end old man voice) The right answer is that you teach your kids to make their own toys. Yes, it will mean that they will have to constantly look at all those "other kids whose daddies always buy stuff". It also means they will turn to more wholesome entertainments like reading books (which is one of the great reasons, IMHO, to not have a TV), playing outside and learning about nature (you know, that green stuff you learned about in high school), playing board games (I still have a Monopoly that I made all by myself at the age of eight), playing sports with their friends, and generally having a great time in spite of not having the latest Barbie.
> Good luck selling your wife on this lifestyle.
If your wife is a high society spoiled child, then probably not. For everyone else, it should work. You have to keep in mind that the lifestyle I'm describing is temporary. When you sell the game, you'll be rich again. You might also consider having your wife work while you write the game. Even a minimum wage job will have you living well if you don't expect to live like a lord.
> if you're in that industry, you almost certainly don't live in a low cost area
So move! There are many nice places to live outside of Silicon Valley. If you are self-employed, you don't have to worry about having no jobs in the area, so pretty much any place is game.
> A game as put out by a solo effort
I said nothing about the game being developed just by one person. You can easily apply the same financial arguments to thirty people; programmers, artists, whatever, and have them collaborate over the net. The difference is that you would all be self-employed, and be working not for a paycheck but for a share of future profits.
> is like telling a guy who isn't happy working as an architect > building houses that he should give it up and build doghouses
Why is that everyone is so brainwashed today that they think you need a movie-quality flashy 3D game to be sellable? Of all my favorite games, not a SINGLE ONE fits that profile. As I keep saying: flashy expensive graphics don't matter. The game matters. It matters what the story is about. It matters if gameplay is exciting. It matters if you can play the game more than once. None of these things depend on expensive presentation. Hell, people still play nethack, which has no graphics at all!
So if something looks expensive, consider whether the game actually needs it. Chances are it does not. What a good artist can design on his own free time is perfectly adequate, if not better than the expensive design team EA would hire. Look at the fan-made Sims objects: you can actually play the game that pretty much everything you see on the screen is not made by EA, and looking better than the stuff that is. When you are thinking of bad graphics, what you are really thinking about is atrocious stuff like freeciv graphics, which are truly horrid. Or Lincity; yuck! Both of these, IMO were made by the developers, who never learned to draw or match colors.
> it's not the same kind of product as a professional console game is these days.
And that's another thing: why would anyone want to play console games? You have this great high-resolution monitor, and you would rather use a grainy old TV?!? Are you people crazy? Then there are those flimsy controllers; how can you possibly play, say Civilization, with only a joystick and a few buttons?
Why would you want to develop console games? When you do, you have to have a publisher to manufacture them. You need to get shelf placements in some store. You'd have actual manufacturing costs eating your profits. With a PC game all you need is a website from which the game could be bought and downloaded. No fuss, no bother.
> There is always going to be the demand for the > polish and depth of the professional version
I wasn't saying that there should be no big game companies. Who do you take me for, a deluded GPL fanatic? Of course there will be large game companies. The point is that people will still buy a good game even if it doesn't look like a billion dollar movie. Hell, I never even consider buying any of those; they are boring and they are all alike.
> but it's not the same kind of product. It's just not.
Damn right. It's the kind of product smart people want to play.
> You need 4-5 million USD to start a game development studio
You are thinking in terms of capital, which obviously makes it sound expensive. You have to realize that this figure is how much you'd need to hire all the people who'll write your game, lease office space, purchase computers and video equipment, hire lawyers to write the EULA, and furnish a pretty CEO office.
The picture changes dramatically if all you are trying to do is write the game. You already have the computer; you already have the programming skills. Your effort is valuable, but you are not required to pay yourself more than you need to survive, which is far below the minimum wage. You would not need to pay any artists you hire if you pay them with the share of your profits. You don't need to lease office space - work at home. You can distribute the game over the net and not need a publisher at all.
Most importantly, you do not, and should not be making a "movie game" with stunning visual effects, raytraced animations, and what-have-you. All game players turn those things off after fifteen minutes of gameplay. I usually turn them off immediately. If all you are selling is flashy graphics, your game SUCKS! The story, the gameplay, replayability, all matter FAR more than fancy graphics. Just make them usable and unobtrusive. Don't do 3D, it's hard and adds little to any game except for all those unimaginative, worthless FPS that the market is flooded with.
> you'll find they love being able to feed their wives and children more
Well, let's see how much a married couple with a kid really needs. I'll assume you are living in a cheap area, where you have your own house. You'd need about $2000/year for food (all meals made at home, no eating out), $1000 for the property taxes on the house (which you should own by now; we're not talking about a kid fresh out of college), $1000 on the electric bill (with heating), $600 for water and garbage. You should be able to do without buying anything else. From personal experience, I know that this is possible; you just need to abandon the idea of a luxury lifestyle for a while.
This comes to $4600/year, a pathetically low existence price. Now consider how long it would take to write the game. Aim for simplicity, good plot, and great gameplay; discard flashy cutscenes, 3D engines, and costly animations. Look at Fallout to see what I'm talking about. You should be able to finish the game in 2-3 years; so you'll need savings of somewhere in $9200-13800. An experienced programmer making $60K/year needs less than a year to accumulate this sum. Just stop spending money on all those things you don't really need (that's pretty much all of them), and you'll have that amount in no time at all. There's your financial support.
I'm also making an unwarranted assumption that your spouse is not working. You may also be eligible for welfare and/or unemployment support. You might take a part-time job. The point is that this is a temporary situation, and the result is well worth any inconveniences you may experience.
> If you can do it, likely you'll be beholden to a game publisher
Lesson number ONE in being poor: AVOID ALL DEBT! Repeat after me: avoid all debt, avoid all debt, avoid all debt! NEVER borrow money for ANY reason. Go to a charity soup kitchen if you are starving, but AVOID ALL DEBT! That's how you stay your own man. As long as you owe people, you'll always be a slave, no matter what you are doing. So don't talk to the publisher until you have the game finished. This way you keep the advantage on your side.
These days it is also possible to release the game entirely over the internet, removing any need for a publisher in the early stages. If the game is successful, the publisher will beg and grovel to let him publish it. You know you want that.
Unions are formed to bludgeon your employer into doing business the way you want him to do business. It is incomprehensible to me why people consider this a good thing. If you don't like how your company is treating you, leave and form your own. Talk to your coworkers and you'll find that if your employer is so evil they will love the idea. So get together and write a game. You all already know how to do it; it's the same thing you are doing now! Except that instead of paying slavedriver managers and the CEO, you get to keep all that money for yourselves. And nobody will be forcing you to work 200 hours a week either.
No, I'm trying convey my perspicuous indignation at the tenacity of human ignorance. The ignominy of its apostles inspires enmity and distaste in any reasonable man. Alas, the conundrum of their persistence is unexplainable.
For the same reason you can't use words like "abstruse" in any modern text. People just don't want to learn their language before insisting on using it.
If your laptop suffers hardware failures on such a regular basis, perhaps it's time to get a new laptop? Perhaps even from a different manufacturer. The prices are so low these days, it might even cost you less than a PCMCIA drive.
Back in the days of DOS, everyone had qbasic on the machine. These days qbasic is no longer included with Windows, although there used to be some dostools (?) package you could get with all the old stuff. So where would kids get any programming tool on their computer? No basic, and, hell, even no 'debug'! (remember that?:) Looks like the next generation is not expected to program anything. Perhaps we could petition Microsoft to start shipping some type of compiler/interpreter with Windows?
I would argue against fractals. Although the code is reasonably simple, it is very mathematical, and that is not something modern children can understand. In fact, for the fifth grade, games are pretty much the only option, since when a kid thinks of computers it's either games or homework. And you definitely don't want them to associate computer science with homework; you'll ruin their surprize when they go work for EA.
> it's due to people having their editors set to different-sized tabs
Now this is exactly the attitude I don't understand. Every project must have a standard coding style. It's the job of whoever is in charge to provide one and to ensure it is followed by everyone touching the code. It is done during code reviews (which should also be mandatory, preferably for everyone, but at the very least for the new people), when conformance to the coding style must be a prerequisite to a checkin.
Everyone here seems to think that there is nothing to be done about the situation; that each team member should be allowed to do whatever he damn pleases, with no oversight. How are any of these people still in business?
If I were your project leader, I'd tell you exactly, in a comprehensive written policy, how you should format your code, whether you should use exceptions or returns, which documetation parser to target, and what sort of comments to write. Standards must exist, and they must be enforced. There is no room for opinions and preferences after the standard has been decided upon, because a standard, even a bad one, is better than a hodgepodge mixture of styles that results otherwise. You follow the standard or you're fired. Period.
This goes for open source projects as well. Whenever I'm running one, you don't contribute unless it's in the proper style. I might rewrite your patch if I think it's worth the effort, but usually the answer would be "no". Specify a standard and make sure all patches are reviewed by you or someone you trust for compliance with that standard.
Yes, I am angry; all this multiculturalism bullshit really pisses me off. Programming is not a "politically correct" occupation where you have to take into consideration people's feelings. If I'm on your team, I'll follow your standard, even if I dislike it, and make everyone else do the same. The code is either good or it isn't. If it isn't, you fix it, or get off my team.
I don't explain "why" in the code itself unless it is really something unexpected, like a weird piece of code reloading a variable that might get suddenly changed by a signal handler. All the normal "why" explanations go to the class documentation, which gives details on how the class works. For nearly everything I've written, that has been sufficient and has kept me from creating hacky implementations of obvious code.
> Indentation can (and where I work, quite often does) get messed up.
How can it possibly get messed up? Nearly every editor has autoindenting mode, so if you want to mess up indentation you really have to try hard. Then, if it gets messed up, you should fix it. It's just like the comments vs. code: comments don't make the code good, they just make bad code better.
> how often do you come across a stand-alone, > unconditional, embedded pair of braces
Not often, but it is sometimes useful to create an explicit scope as a precursor to pulling out a function. Its rarity is what makes standalone braces so jarring to my eye. Thankfully, I have indent, which takes care of that problem very nicely.
> The braces being by themselves on a line gives a visual break
That's because you look at the braces. I look at the indentation to provide visual breaks. A brace on its own line is confusing when you are used to the cuddled kind because it creates an extra block. My brain automatically sees the if as a one-liner followed by an unrelated block. In other words, I would interpret it thus:
> builds the frame of his project and then fills in the code.
Yup, I do it all the time. But then I go through and delete all the comments, because when I'm finished, the final code explains what's going on much more eloquently than any comment I could write about it. If it doesn't, then I'm not finished, and the comments stay, all bearing Doxygen tags like \todo or \bug to allow me to find them later.
> dealing with function pointers named StupidSuckingGlobalCallbackFunction
When you have functions named like that, don't write documentation for them. Rename them. It takes a lot less effort to write code so its meaning is obvious then to write documentation explaining why you didn't do that.
Slashdot Mirror
They should import women from Russia. Since half of Russian women are single, they are in dire need of men. Sounds like a win-win situation for both countries. Women have been one of Russia's main exports lately.
> And you're going to get a team of thirty people
> and their families to do that with you?
Why not? If you hate your job, surely you'd try to do something to improve the situation. Besides, there are advantages to living in a small town. The cost of living is lower, the air is cleaner, the people are friendlier, the criminals are fewer, the schools are better, etc. I wouldn't want to live in a crowded area without a good reason, and chances are there are quite a few people who feel the same way.
> it's not because all of the people buying or making them are dumber than you.
Then why? Yes, it seems to be a billion dollar industry, but if you actually want to get in there and write your own game, shouldn't you have some idea why people would want it?
> But the game play, and complexity of the objects
:). You see the same sort of bad art in Lincity and freeciv (both of which have the additional problem of really bad gameplay experience).
> points system, is inferior to Castle Of the Winds,
Oh yes, I love that game!
It does, however, make a point about developer-made graphics. While I personally didn't care, there is little excuse these days for 16-color pictures that look like a ten year old child drew them (like the dreaded "gelatin blob"
I would like to emphasize that while movie-quality graphics are worthless, putting at least some artistic effort into your game is a good idea. Castle of The Winds graphics are something one should be ashamed to put on the game box. Really; if you can't draw a good picture, find someone who can. There are plenty of unemployed graphic artists out there. In fact, chances are that there are more of them then there are programmers.
> Do you have enough money to spend a few years
> without pay and can you find a large group of
> people willing to do same thing.
You are talking about Open Source software, right? After all, nobody would ever want to spend years developing something and not get paid for it... Surely, this OSS thing doesn't really exist, does it?
> Half of them are bad enough that almost nobody will buy them.
Now this really is apples and oranges. I consider most games made today bad enough to not buy them. I was making an assumption that you can make a good game (which is a different criteria from "a game with great graphics"). If you start a company and make a bad game, then you'll fail. Bad games don't do much good for big companies either. It's just a fact of life.
> I thingk I'm being generous with the odds of having a good game.
Making a good game is not a random process. You don't have "odds" for it. You either make it or you don't, it's up to you. Yes, it takes talent, and the fate of talentless people is beyond the scope of this argument.
> Why should I care about your favorite games?
Because I could be your customer. If you write a game I like, I'll buy it. So yes, I think you should give at least a passing thought to what my favorite games are.
> Shouldn't I care about how many copies different kinds of games are selling?
In choosing your genre, perhaps. But you would realize that your budget may limit your choices. You would then realize that ALL types games sell some copies, and that if you write a good game, you'll inevitably have customers regardless of the genre.
> It's hard to sell a game if the advertising looks lousy.
There is a big difference between "lousy" and "not expensive". Look at Fallout, for instance (yes, it is one of my favorite games), where all the graphics are well within range of a small independent company. In fact you might do better. And yet, they look very good to me, even though they are not some ray-traced 3D fancy-shmancy million dollar productions. They don't detract from the gameplay and contribute to the atmosphere.
> It's hard to sell a game with great word-of-mouth
> if retailers won't stock it because of how it looks.
How game packaging looks has nothing to do with how the game looks. As you should know, if you bought any of those expensive titles.
> Where do you live that you have property taxes of 1k/year?
I have a four bedroom house in Norfolk VA and I pay $840/year in taxes.
> Own the house you live in... so youre minimum 55?
I'm 28 and paid it off three years ago. Not everyone is as bad at money management as you are. But you're in luck; I'm an expert at living on next to nothing, (since I've put all my money into the mortgage) so read on!
> With your reasoning, people at the poverty level should be living comfortably.
Damn right they should. Even if they only quit drinking they'd save thousands every year.
> you are not including a car
If you are living in a small town, which is what I had in mind, you don't need one. Walk. Ride a bike. It's good for you. I've been able to buy pretty much anything I wanted by walking from every place I ever lived, including Seattle. It may sound strange to you, but walking six miles is not all that bad, and food can always be found closer than that. I walked to the store every weekend.
> You are not including insurance of any sort
That's right. I don't have any. You didn't think that insurance actually saves you any money, did you? Whenever you get reimbursement for disaster, they raise their rates and make it up later. Don't burn your house, and you won't need to insure it. Teach your kids not to play with matches. Until you're 40 or so you don't need health insurance; just don't do anything dangerous. It's not hard; you probably aren't doing anything dangerous now. Car insurance? No car, no insurance. Anything else?
> internet access
Buy a limited calling plan for $10 (did you know the phone company has cheap calling plans?) and a cheap dialup for $9. That's another $228/year. Negligible, but yes, I should have included it.
> retirement savings
While you are in this situation you won't have any. Your work is your retirement savings. When you sell the game, you can, and should, put some away into savings and investments.
> I guess your kid doesn't need clothes
I guess you've never been to a thrift shop where you can buy her an entire wardrobe for $30. Learn to sew so you can make alterations as she grows. A sewing machine will cost you $50 in a thrift shop. In fact, your mother probably has one already, so borrow it.
> or to play any sports
You don't need any money to play sports. You need money only if you want to buy fancy uniforms and such, in which case see the previous paragraph. A decent baseball bat can be made from a 2x4. A basketball costs $5. A hoop can be made from scrap metal from your basement (every old house has lots of junk in the basement) and a couple of 2x4s. Etc, etc, etc.
> do anything else a kid does (like have toys).
(begin old man voice) You know, when I was a kid, we didn't have no toys. (end old man voice) The right answer is that you teach your kids to make their own toys. Yes, it will mean that they will have to constantly look at all those "other kids whose daddies always buy stuff". It also means they will turn to more wholesome entertainments like reading books (which is one of the great reasons, IMHO, to not have a TV), playing outside and learning about nature (you know, that green stuff you learned about in high school), playing board games (I still have a Monopoly that I made all by myself at the age of eight), playing sports with their friends, and generally having a great time in spite of not having the latest Barbie.
> Good luck selling your wife on this lifestyle.
If your wife is a high society spoiled child, then probably not. For everyone else, it should work. You have to keep in mind that the lifestyle I'm describing is temporary. When you sell the game, you'll be rich again. You might also consider having your wife work while you write the game. Even a minimum wage job will have you living well if you don't expect to live like a lord.
> Publishers exist for a reason
> if you're in that industry, you almost certainly don't live in a low cost area
So move! There are many nice places to live outside of Silicon Valley. If you are self-employed, you don't have to worry about having no jobs in the area, so pretty much any place is game.
> A game as put out by a solo effort
I said nothing about the game being developed just by one person. You can easily apply the same financial arguments to thirty people; programmers, artists, whatever, and have them collaborate over the net. The difference is that you would all be self-employed, and be working not for a paycheck but for a share of future profits.
> is like telling a guy who isn't happy working as an architect
> building houses that he should give it up and build doghouses
Why is that everyone is so brainwashed today that they think you need a movie-quality flashy 3D game to be sellable? Of all my favorite games, not a SINGLE ONE fits that profile. As I keep saying: flashy expensive graphics don't matter. The game matters. It matters what the story is about. It matters if gameplay is exciting. It matters if you can play the game more than once. None of these things depend on expensive presentation. Hell, people still play nethack, which has no graphics at all!
So if something looks expensive, consider whether the game actually needs it. Chances are it does not. What a good artist can design on his own free time is perfectly adequate, if not better than the expensive design team EA would hire. Look at the fan-made Sims objects: you can actually play the game that pretty much everything you see on the screen is not made by EA, and looking better than the stuff that is. When you are thinking of bad graphics, what you are really thinking about is atrocious stuff like freeciv graphics, which are truly horrid. Or Lincity; yuck! Both of these, IMO were made by the developers, who never learned to draw or match colors.
> it's not the same kind of product as a professional console game is these days.
And that's another thing: why would anyone want to play console games? You have this great high-resolution monitor, and you would rather use a grainy old TV?!? Are you people crazy? Then there are those flimsy controllers; how can you possibly play, say Civilization, with only a joystick and a few buttons?
Why would you want to develop console games? When you do, you have to have a publisher to manufacture them. You need to get shelf placements in some store. You'd have actual manufacturing costs eating your profits. With a PC game all you need is a website from which the game could be bought and downloaded. No fuss, no bother.
> There is always going to be the demand for the
> polish and depth of the professional version
I wasn't saying that there should be no big game companies. Who do you take me for, a deluded GPL fanatic? Of course there will be large game companies. The point is that people will still buy a good game even if it doesn't look like a billion dollar movie. Hell, I never even consider buying any of those; they are boring and they are all alike.
> but it's not the same kind of product. It's just not.
Damn right. It's the kind of product smart people want to play.
> You need 4-5 million USD to start a game development studio
You are thinking in terms of capital, which obviously makes it sound expensive. You have to realize that this figure is how much you'd need to hire all the people who'll write your game, lease office space, purchase computers and video equipment, hire lawyers to write the EULA, and furnish a pretty CEO office.
The picture changes dramatically if all you are trying to do is write the game. You already have the computer; you already have the programming skills. Your effort is valuable, but you are not required to pay yourself more than you need to survive, which is far below the minimum wage. You would not need to pay any artists you hire if you pay them with the share of your profits. You don't need to lease office space - work at home. You can distribute the game over the net and not need a publisher at all.
Most importantly, you do not, and should not be making a "movie game" with stunning visual effects, raytraced animations, and what-have-you. All game players turn those things off after fifteen minutes of gameplay. I usually turn them off immediately. If all you are selling is flashy graphics, your game SUCKS! The story, the gameplay, replayability, all matter FAR more than fancy graphics. Just make them usable and unobtrusive. Don't do 3D, it's hard and adds little to any game except for all those unimaginative, worthless FPS that the market is flooded with.
> you'll find they love being able to feed their wives and children more
Well, let's see how much a married couple with a kid really needs. I'll assume you are living in a cheap area, where you have your own house. You'd need about $2000/year for food (all meals made at home, no eating out), $1000 for the property taxes on the house (which you should own by now; we're not talking about a kid fresh out of college), $1000 on the electric bill (with heating), $600 for water and garbage. You should be able to do without buying anything else. From personal experience, I know that this is possible; you just need to abandon the idea of a luxury lifestyle for a while.
This comes to $4600/year, a pathetically low existence price. Now consider how long it would take to write the game. Aim for simplicity, good plot, and great gameplay; discard flashy cutscenes, 3D engines, and costly animations. Look at Fallout to see what I'm talking about. You should be able to finish the game in 2-3 years; so you'll need savings of somewhere in $9200-13800. An experienced programmer making $60K/year needs less than a year to accumulate this sum. Just stop spending money on all those things you don't really need (that's pretty much all of them), and you'll have that amount in no time at all. There's your financial support.
I'm also making an unwarranted assumption that your spouse is not working. You may also be eligible for welfare and/or unemployment support. You might take a part-time job. The point is that this is a temporary situation, and the result is well worth any inconveniences you may experience.
> If you can do it, likely you'll be beholden to a game publisher
Lesson number ONE in being poor: AVOID ALL DEBT! Repeat after me: avoid all debt, avoid all debt, avoid all debt! NEVER borrow money for ANY reason. Go to a charity soup kitchen if you are starving, but AVOID ALL DEBT! That's how you stay your own man. As long as you owe people, you'll always be a slave, no matter what you are doing. So don't talk to the publisher until you have the game finished. This way you keep the advantage on your side.
These days it is also possible to release the game entirely over the internet, removing any need for a publisher in the early stages. If the game is successful, the publisher will beg and grovel to let him publish it. You know you want that.
Unions are formed to bludgeon your employer into doing business the way you want him to do business. It is incomprehensible to me why people consider this a good thing. If you don't like how your company is treating you, leave and form your own. Talk to your coworkers and you'll find that if your employer is so evil they will love the idea. So get together and write a game. You all already know how to do it; it's the same thing you are doing now! Except that instead of paying slavedriver managers and the CEO, you get to keep all that money for yourselves. And nobody will be forcing you to work 200 hours a week either.
> You're just trying to be abstruse
No, I'm trying convey my perspicuous indignation at the tenacity of human ignorance. The ignominy of its apostles inspires enmity and distaste in any reasonable man. Alas, the conundrum of their persistence is unexplainable.
> a simple ternary logic operator confusing?
For the same reason you can't use words like "abstruse" in any modern text. People just don't want to learn their language before insisting on using it.
> I remember seeing shows on maggots used to eat
> dead skin off wounds since the late 80s early 90s.
You have such good memory to remember the "gay nineties". I can't seem to remember much of anything before the Great War myself...
If your laptop suffers hardware failures on such a regular basis, perhaps it's time to get a new laptop? Perhaps even from a different manufacturer. The prices are so low these days, it might even cost you less than a PCMCIA drive.
Back in the days of DOS, everyone had qbasic on the machine. These days qbasic is no longer included with Windows, although there used to be some dostools (?) package you could get with all the old stuff. So where would kids get any programming tool on their computer? No basic, and, hell, even no 'debug'! (remember that? :) Looks like the next generation is not expected to program anything. Perhaps we could petition Microsoft to start shipping some type of compiler/interpreter with Windows?
I would argue against fractals. Although the code is reasonably simple, it is very mathematical, and that is not something modern children can understand. In fact, for the fifth grade, games are pretty much the only option, since when a kid thinks of computers it's either games or homework. And you definitely don't want them to associate computer science with homework; you'll ruin their surprize when they go work for EA.
> it's due to people having their editors set to different-sized tabs
Now this is exactly the attitude I don't understand. Every project must have a standard coding style. It's the job of whoever is in charge to provide one and to ensure it is followed by everyone touching the code. It is done during code reviews (which should also be mandatory, preferably for everyone, but at the very least for the new people), when conformance to the coding style must be a prerequisite to a checkin.
Everyone here seems to think that there is nothing to be done about the situation; that each team member should be allowed to do whatever he damn pleases, with no oversight. How are any of these people still in business?
If I were your project leader, I'd tell you exactly, in a comprehensive written policy, how you should format your code, whether you should use exceptions or returns, which documetation parser to target, and what sort of comments to write. Standards must exist, and they must be enforced. There is no room for opinions and preferences after the standard has been decided upon, because a standard, even a bad one, is better than a hodgepodge mixture of styles that results otherwise. You follow the standard or you're fired. Period.
This goes for open source projects as well. Whenever I'm running one, you don't contribute unless it's in the proper style. I might rewrite your patch if I think it's worth the effort, but usually the answer would be "no". Specify a standard and make sure all patches are reviewed by you or someone you trust for compliance with that standard.
Yes, I am angry; all this multiculturalism bullshit really pisses me off. Programming is not a "politically correct" occupation where you have to take into consideration people's feelings. If I'm on your team, I'll follow your standard, even if I dislike it, and make everyone else do the same. The code is either good or it isn't. If it isn't, you fix it, or get off my team.
> But does it explain *why* ?
I don't explain "why" in the code itself unless it is really something unexpected, like a weird piece of code reloading a variable that might get suddenly changed by a signal handler. All the normal "why" explanations go to the class documentation, which gives details on how the class works. For nearly everything I've written, that has been sufficient and has kept me from creating hacky implementations of obvious code.
> Indentation can (and where I work, quite often does) get messed up.
How can it possibly get messed up? Nearly every editor has autoindenting mode, so if you want to mess up indentation you really have to try hard. Then, if it gets messed up, you should fix it. It's just like the comments vs. code: comments don't make the code good, they just make bad code better.
> how often do you come across a stand-alone,
> unconditional, embedded pair of braces
Not often, but it is sometimes useful to create an explicit scope as a precursor to pulling out a function. Its rarity is what makes standalone braces so jarring to my eye. Thankfully, I have indent, which takes care of that problem very nicely.
> cause scientists are pretty sure that this is the
> last generation in which we'll have morons
No, we are not sure, we are just optimists.
That's because you look at the braces. I look at the indentation to provide visual breaks. A brace on its own line is confusing when you are used to the cuddled kind because it creates an extra block. My brain automatically sees the if as a one-liner followed by an unrelated block. In other words, I would interpret it thus:
> (I know I'm dating myself here!)
Don't worry, we all do.
> builds the frame of his project and then fills in the code.
Yup, I do it all the time. But then I go through and delete all the comments, because when I'm finished, the final code explains what's going on much more eloquently than any comment I could write about it. If it doesn't, then I'm not finished, and the comments stay, all bearing Doxygen tags like \todo or \bug to allow me to find them later.
> dealing with function pointers named StupidSuckingGlobalCallbackFunction
When you have functions named like that, don't write documentation for them. Rename them. It takes a lot less effort to write code so its meaning is obvious then to write documentation explaining why you didn't do that.