[gameprogrammer] Re: My game
- From: Bob Pendleton <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 15:32:20 -0500
On Sun, 2005-09-25 at 15:23 -0500, Bob Pendleton wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-09-24 at 23:13 -0400, Mike Gillissie wrote:
> > I've been fascinated by AI especially over the past year, and have been
> > preparing to do a lot of AI work (at a newbie level) in my own game -
> > nothing physics-oriented, and nothing that will break my brain too badly,
> > but adding some "thinks" to my game is what I'm looking forward to the
> > most...
> >
> > I think what a lot of people don't understand is how little writing games
> > is
> > like playing games... ;)
>
> No truer words were ever spoken. I teac
erhm... I meant to hit the delete button, not the send button...
But, since this was sent, I guess I will finish it.
No truer words were ever spoken. I teach game programming. I have had a
a couple of students who were clearly unsure of the concept. But, that
is rare. Most people who take a class in game programming are aware of
how hard it is.
The people I really have had trouble with are school administrators and
parents who think the writing games is just an excuse to play games. I
have run into a few people who just could not get heir heads around the
idea that writing games is one of the most technically challenging
fields left in programming today. School administrators have changed
their opinions radically over the last few years, at least here in
Austin where games are a big big business and they have big companies
coming to them asking for classes.
Parents, on the other hand, still don't understand that writing games is
hard core, leading edge, technology work.
Bob Pendleton
>
> >
> > Thanks for sharing, sir! :)
> > -Mike
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Kevin Jenkins" <gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > To: <gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2005 8:57 PM
> > Subject: [gameprogrammer] Re: My game
> >
> >
> > > Evan Stone wrote:
> > >>>I'd love to hear more about your AI - what sorts of things you had to
> > >>>work
> > >>>on...
> > >
> > > Getting Up is the largest game I've worked on. It's about 20 million
> > > lines of code with about 50 people working on it.
> > >
> > > As a result, most of what I did was read code and fix bugs written by my
> > > predecessor or in other systems. This is unavoidable when you have that
> > > much code and that many people. Nobody understands an entire system and
> > > not a single person who wrote any of the original systems still works at
> > > the company, which is not unusual in large companies.
> > >
> > > Getting Up has a lot of what we call "Special Navigation" in it, such as
> > > climbing ladders, going across balance beams, climbing walls. A lot of
> > > my
> > > time was spent working out how to get through these things, which can be
> > > very complicated in some cases. For example, we support jumping from a
> > > ladder to a pipe to a balance beam to balancing up to a wall climb. Every
> > > one of these situations needs custom code.
> > >
> > > Special navigation relies on physics for correctly detecting the
> > > navigation, level design for correctly implementing the meshes and
> > > pathnodes, and script for correctly interpreting AI commands. Because of
> > > the high degree of interdependency I had to know all of those systems
> > > well
> > > enough to debug any of them.
> > >
> > > I think when most people think of AI they think of the visible parts of
> > > what you see in the game, such as which attacks enemies throw and when
> > > they block. But actually that is mostly script. The AI programmer
> > > provides the framework and it's up to others to provide the details that
> > > the player sees.
> > >
> > > The AI programmer is very important because he deals with many systems
> > > and
> > > is the go-to man when people have problems. But the job isn't all that
> > > exciting, or at least not for me. Mostly I just fix bugs and tell level
> > > designers or scripters what they did wrong when something doesn't work.
> > >
> > >
> > > ---------------------
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> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------
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> >
> >
--
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