[gameprogrammer] Re: My game
- From: Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 13:46:17 -0700
I always wondered why they didn't teach it more in schools - if you can
write a decent game you can deffinately write business apps (from a coding
POV), heck you can probably be a decent database programmer, OS programmer
or just about anything else.
game programmers have to be able to do so many things and efficiently too
it's just amazing what you can do once you know how.
never considered that administrators and parents had no clue but it makes
alot of sense :P (my day job right now is creating web based
budget/warehouse/AP etc software for school districts so i know how such
people think and work)
On 9/25/05, Bob Pendleton <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> 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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> + email: Bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx +
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