RE: need a real programmer!

When I said folks I did mean houses, so that included folks like Bungee, sorry 
about spelling, and for example the bioware guys on
bioshock, and so on, not folks == individuals, but sorry for the ambiguity 
there.

 

As for coding from a single independent developer, that?s actually where I was 
going for more of the drag and drop, of course
assuming one is sighted and can use this interface, kind of development.

 

You actually left off tons of details from your game development spiel, but did 
nothing to convince me, since I am already agreeing
with you it?s a complicated, or at least, intricate process, if not 
complicated. Some, but hardly most, games have Hollywood budgets
these days in the tens of millions of dollars, and the development effort often 
reflects this, as well as the production value at
the end of the day, assuming of course they don?t screw the pooch in the 
middle, which is what often happens with folks who do game
design, and other aspects being ignored by upper management, if you hear 
vetrrins tell it.

 

I also noticed you simply iterated through one game to make your sentence 
appear longer, which is fine, and thanks for all the
prolific examples of the same house doing the same thing, but it really doesn?t 
contribute new information. I already absolutely
agree that folks design their own physics engines or actually mainly, their own 
graphics ones, but what I?m saying is that a
majority of games in the market do not do this. That you can find information 
on probably from some conferences in game design, or
even some industry publications.

 

I actually have several friends in the games industry at various shops in 
various positions, all the way from lowly pee-on tester,
the guys who do the real hard work if you?ll permit me to say so, to game 
designers, backend coders, and I knew two gentleman who
did the low level assembly, back in the day, to eak out every piece of 
performance back when such things are common. These days,
that?s been transformed to cuda or OpenCL routines that can be procedurally 
generated based on preexisting snippets; for example, I
know how to pick up weapons so I can reuse this code to accelerate a 
multithreaded animation of one thousand dudes doing the same
thing. Stuff like that.

 

So, yes, some of the most successful games have done this, but for the most 
part, a lot of your regular average games are using
engines from other folks.

 

Now, you and I could go back and forth and each be half right and get upset, 
but A. I don?t want to do that, and B. I didn?t provide
any sources, so I feel it?s perfectly fine that you didn?t either, but we both 
are guilty of simply saying this, that, and the other
thing without actually providing any credible references; thus, we can either 
stop the argument here, or actually bother to cite
some of our claims.

 

But, please accept my apologies for not providing details in my last email, and 
for being abrupt. I am sorry for that.

 

Here are some details on what I?m referring to:

 

Sony?s fire engine, alone, is responsible for the following 30 games, and this 
is a partial list only:

 

Oh, and it?s completely free to use by the way.

 

Game Developer Studio               Title       Release Date        

Alvion   Malicious            October 27, 2010 (Japan)                 

Big Ant Studios Rugby League Live          August 27, 2010 (New Zealand)

September 2, 2010 (Australia) / November 5, 2010 (Europe)          

Boolat Games    Topatoi                July 2, 2009 (Europe)

October 15, 2009 (North America)               

Capybara Games              Critter Crunch[9][10]      October 8, 2009 (North 
America)

November 19, 2009 (Europe)         

Codemasters     Colin McRae: Dirt             September 11, 2007 (North America)

September 14, 2007 (Europe)        

Codemasters     Race Driver: Grid              May 30, 2008 (Europe)

June 3, 2008 (North America)        

Compile Heart, Idea Factory, Gust Corporation,

Nippon Ichi Software, Sega         Hyperdimension Neptunia         July 29, 
2010 (Japan)

February 15, 2011 (North America) / March 4, 2011 (Europe)          

Doublesix Games            Burn Zombie Burn!         March 26, 2009 (North 
America, Europe)                  

FluffyLogic          Savage Moon     December 24, 2008 (Europe)

January 29, 2009 (North America)                

From Software  Another Century's Episode: R    August 19, 2010 (Japan)          
         

From Software  Demon's Souls  February 5, 2009 (Japan)

October 6, 2009 (North America) / June 25, 2010 (Europe)               

Game Republic Catan    December 18, 2008 (Japan)

May 12, 2010 (Europe) / June 15, 2010 (North America)     

Gust Corporation             Atelier Rorona: Alchemist of Arland[11]            
   June 25, 2009 (Japan)

September 28, 2010 (North America) / October 22, 2010 (Europe)               

Gust Corporation             Ar tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel[11]     January 
28, 2010 (Japan)

March 15, 2011 (North America)                   

Gust Corporation             Atelier Totori: Alchemist of Arland 2[11]          
    June 24, 2010 (Japan)        

Gust Corporation             Atelier Meruru: Alchemist of Arland 3[11]          
 June, 2011 (Japan)              

HandCircus         Okabu   Summer, 2011      

Irem      PachiPara DL Hyper Sea Story In Karibu July 2, 2008 (Japan)           
 

Irem      Zettai Zetsumei Toshi 4: Summer Memories       February 24, 2011 
(Japan)               

Nippon Ichi Software, Idea Factory         Trinity Universe               
October 1, 2009 (Japan)

June 25, 2010 (Europe) / June 29, 2010 (North America)    

Nippon Ichi Software     Last Rebellion   January 28, 2010 (Japan)

February 23, 2010 (North America) / March 26, 2010 (Europe)        

Nippon Ichi Software     Disgaea 4             February 24, 2011 (Japan)

September 6, 2011 (North America)           

Sony Computer Entertainment Gravity Daze      Japan, 2011            

Seed Studios     Under Siege[11]               April 2011               

Sidhe Interactive             GripShift              January 4, 2007 (North 
America)

March 23, 2007 (Europe)                  

Sidhe Interactive             Shatter[12][13] July 23, 2009          

thatgamecompany          flOw      February 22, 2007 (North America)

March 23, 2007 (Europe) / May 11, 2007 (Japan)    

thatgamecompany[2]    Flower  February 12, 2009               

thatgamecompany          Journey                2011       

 

that was from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhyreEngine

 

the Source game engine is responsible for the Garry?s mod physics sandbox, but 
also for these rather notable games:

 

Counter-Strike: Source 

Half-Life 2

Day of Defeat: Source

Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead 2

Team Fortress 2

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

Dino D-Day

Portal

Portal 2

beat-em-up Zeno Clash

Vindictus

 

got that from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_engine

 

speaking of that Unreal engine, there are over three hundred (300) games, just 
in the private industry, not even counting
education/manufacturing/military that use it.

 

found that here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games

 

as for completely free, and open source to boot, engines, please see this list:

 

Aleph One

Allegro library

Ardor3D

Axiom Engine

Blender

Build engine

BRGameEngine

Cafu Engine

ClanLib

Cocos2d

Corona SDK

Crystal Space

Cube

Cube 2

Delta3d

DGD

DXFramework

Env3D

Exult

Flexible Isometric Free Engine

Flixel

Genesis3D

id Tech 1

id Tech 2

id Tech 3

ioquake3

Jake2

JGame

jMonkeyEngine

Jogre

Lightweight Java Game Library

LÖVE2d

Nebula Device

OpenSceneGraph

ORX

Panda3D

PixelLight

PLIB

Quake engine

Retribution Engine

Second Life

Sge2d

Sphere

Spring

Storymoto

Stratagus

 

Got that from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines

 

as for completely free, but no source included, engines, see this list:

 

Adventure Game Studio ? Mostly used to develop third-person pre-rendered 
adventure games, this engine is one of the most popular for
developing amateur adventure games.

dim3 ? Freeware 3D javascript engine for the Mac (although finished games are 
cross platform).

DX Studio ? A freeware 3D game engine with complete tools for 3D video game 
development. Upgrading to paid licenses would unlock
extra features.

Unity ? An open-ended 3D game/interactive software engine for web, Windows, and 
Mac OS X. Upgrading to paid licenses can
additionally enable support for the iPhone, Android, Nintendo Wii, Playstation 
3, and the Xbox 360.

Unreal Engine ? Considered one of the most popular game engines in the top 
market. The free edition, called UDK (a binary release of
the engine), allows you to use the engine for commercial purposes under 
specific terms[4].

World Builder ? A classic Mac OS game engine.

Wintermute Engine ? A runtime and development tools for creating 2D and 2.5D 
point'n'click adventure games (Windows) . A "lite"
Version is also available, but without the 3D Actor function (Windows, MAC, 
Linux)[5][6]

RGSS ? An engine made by enterbrain to create RPG's using RPG Maker XP. RGSS2 
was used for RPG Maker VX.

 

Got that from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines

 

and the various lists go on and on.

 

a lot of folks create a lot of games! A mere fraction of a fraction of those 
folks create the engines. That?s all I was saying.

 

Take care,

Sina

 

From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christopher Coale
Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2011 4:08 PM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: need a real programmer!

 

Sina, that is not true at all. Game programming (graphics/engine development) 
is my niche and my main programming focus. In fact, I
am working on an "up-to-date (shader model 5.0)" 2.5D game engine at the moment 
as well as a game to showcase it. When you say "very
few bother coding", you are way off. Game development involves quite a lot of 
coding, whether you use an engine or not.

That aside, game development isn't simply "drag this here and drop that there." 
You are sadly mistaken. Yes, you can use things like
3D Game Maker or Unity3D but there are a reason why the big sellers never do. 
Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo Wars, Halo: ODST, Halo
Reach, and Halo 4 all use their own custom engine and Havok physics (yes, you 
are right about the physics part) and have made
billions. Most Xbox and Xbox 360 titles use their own engine. Why? Because they 
want the most control and premade engines do not
offer that (and definitely not these drag-and-drop engines).

Aside from that you need to understand the marketing aspect of using someone 
else's game engine. There are publishing royalties as
well as licensing requirements to use some of the great engines. Unreal Engine, 
for example, runs upwards of $350,000 for a single
license on top of royalty fees. For the limited feature UDK, you can expect to 
pay $2,500 per seat (i.e. per programmer) and then
25% on all revenue beyond $10,000. And to speak bluntly, all of the free 3D 
game engines are rather shitty and outdated. If you want
a good engine, you'll be paying quite a bit of potential revenue for it.

Aside from the business aspect of game engines, you really need to understand 
the amount of work that goes into making a game,
because I don't think you understand it. So let me structure it for you:

You have your artists: texture artists, model artists, concept artists, level 
and map artists/designers, etc. (this here is
expensive)
You have your musicians: sound effects planners and designers, music planners 
and designer, etc.
You have your English majors: story development, planning, dialogue, etc.
You have your programmers: asset programmers, engine programmers, physics 
programmers, audio programmers, effects (shader)
programmers, etc.

This is why high-end games spend millions in production. It is not simply a 
"drag and drop" job.

For the independent developer like myself, you are stuck doing all of these 
tasks on your own, and it is a headache. Now, I have to
ask -- have you ever even done game development?


On 8/3/2011 7:59 AM, Sina Bahram wrote: 

Tyler, that?s exactly what folks do, and they make even more money than that. 
Putting that cluelessness aside, I do see now that you
said 1000/fps instead of 1000FPS, which is completely different, so sorry about 
the question, but the comment still stands.

 

Oh, and lots of those engines are actually not terribly expensive at all, and 
are completely free for students, by the way.

 

Take care,

Sina

 

 

 

 

 

 

From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Littlefield, Tyler
Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2011 10:42 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: need a real programmer!

 

You clearly didn't read my message. I said 1000 ms in a second, and 60 fps. not 
1000 fps.
Second, there are game engines, have you seen the price of unreal? I've also 
spoken to folks who use it, and they say it's rather
messy.
You won't code the physics by hand; you'll use a lib like bullet, but you'll 
still have to set it up to do what it needs. If game
programming were "drag and drop game-maker style, throw in a script or two here 
or there and voila, everyone would have the next
halo and Bunji wouldn't be making upwards of 250 million.
On 8/3/2011 7:30 AM, Sina Bahram wrote: 

One question and one comment: 

  

Why on earth 1,000 FPS? This is strictly based on hardware, but still. I?m not 
sure I know any game on the market that runs that
high. Most games are perfectly glossy at 60fp/s, and technically 30 to 40 is 
all you really need for smooth operations. 

  

The comment is, actually all of the stuff you mentioned is now handled by game 
engines themselves; for example, Unity3D, the unreal
engine, etc. etc. thus, all the game designer has to really do is come up with 
the story and some of the objects in the scene. Drag
and drop some of those objects, write some really high level code to stitch 
things together; for example, collision triggers for
when your character collides with the gun or med pack, and then call it a day, 
after of course all the media such as sound and
images are done. 

  

Very few folks in the industry bother coding the physics, and by very few, I 
really do think you could count them on your hands. The
reason is that the physics just don?t change. They get better, sure, but it?s 
not like you?re going to need different physics, just
different values, and those values are flexible and changeable within the 
engine. 

  

Take care, 

Sina 

  

  

  

  

  

From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Littlefield, Tyler
Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2011 10:11 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: need a real programmer! 

  

It's not to bad to think up a design, Jim. What gets dificult is when you get 
to implement the game. If you're doing real-time 2d or
3d, you've got a lot to think about.
First, it's realtime, so you'll have to set up the fps so that you'll have a 
way to manage the distance and you can use that with
physics. If you have graphics, you'll have thousands of vertacies to manage per 
object for things like colision detection and
rendering the graphic. You've also got to insure that your game can fit in all 
it's rendering and update operations in:
(1000/FPS), where 1000 is the number of milliseconds in a second, and FPS is 
the frames-per-second, usually around 60, which leaves
you about 16 ms to do everything in.
Thinking up all sorts of ideas isn't all that difficult. It's the 
implementation process and getting those ideas into real working
usable code that is fun.
On 8/3/2011 6:58 AM, Homme, James wrote: 

Hay Elf, 

How do you hold all that game planning stuff in your head. 

  

Jim 

  

From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Littlefield, Tyler
Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2011 9:46 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: need a real programmer! 

  

It does not require flash to pull off something of quality. There are a few 
games written in c#, they can use directx. c++ is still
my prefered choice, and the language I"m creating my current game in.
On 8/3/2011 2:07 AM, RicksPlace wrote: 

        Hi Inthane: I'm not sure if I am the Rick you mentioned but I remember 
your original post a little. 

I am a VB.net / Sql CE or Sql Server guy for the most part. I am experienced in 
Business Apps. Now, Game production is quite
diferent. 

I don't know how well suited CSharp or any of the MS languages are for the 
purpose of game creation. I am thinking of the 2 main
technicals of a game that is logic flow and the UI element processing. 

When it comes to the logic flow that might be doable easily enough but I'm not 
at all sure about handling audio / video technicals.
I would guess it would require Flash or Silverlight to pull off something of 
real quality for sighted people and I'm not sure about
what else could be used in their place for quality Audio control. 

I would think that those 2 technicals would be the foundation of at least the 
UI components of a game like you describe. 

I haven't worked in Flash and I am still in VB.net 2008 since WindowEyes won't 
work well with UIA and not at all with WPF which is
what Silverlight is all about. 

My guess you were talking to the other Rick I have seen on list from time to 
time but if it was me, and I will help you with your
app if I can, I don't have the tools to develop a really killer game like I 
would imagine you would want to do to compete with other
companies out there. 

Also, if you are going to go cross-platform you should keep that in mind from 
the very start of the project and select tools and
skill sets accordingly. 

Finally, if you are going to develop action games with any quality visuals you 
will, of course, need a sighted person, best a
Programmer type, to design, test and coordinate visuals with logic flow, timing 
and audio and all that jazz. 

How you might use the graphics and perhaps the digitized images of real 
characters wwould be beyond what I have done and I wouldn't
know how to learn to do that without having some vision. 

So, if me, I'll have to back out since I don't have the skill set necessary for 
the UI portion of the gaming arena and might not be
up to speed with the logic flow which might be some form of AI in advanced 
senarios. 

Now, if you need a program to track your income, handle some accounting or any 
inventory control  from those apps, well I could do
that. 

Keep posting up about your progress though since it would be pretty cool to be 
able to use those types of advanced tools to create
interactive Science Fiction. 

Later Inthane: 

Rick USA 

  

----- Original Message ----- 

From: inthane <mailto:inthaneelf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>  

To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2011 10:54 PM 

Subject: Re: need a real programmer! 

  

hello again folks, 

  

there is a lot of things going on in my life so at times my responses 
are going to be a bit slow to show up! 

  

ok, I've had responses on my original query from Roger, Q, Ramit, Mesut, 
and a helpful hand offered from      rick 

  

first, Q, as I said in a personal reply to you for most of my needs, I 
need a partner, I don't have the capital to afford to have you build 
them and need to then sell them. though I may ask you about a private 
program I need  in a few days(since its a personal application, its not 
going to make money so I'm going to probably have to pay someone to 
build it) 

  

roger and rick, I have one application that's more of a database 
application that needs to be able to swiftly bring up a selected number 
of information entries , and make run functions on said data and display 
the results back to me quickly simply and rapidly . I'll contact you 
about it off list OK? 

  

now for everyone else (that would be Ramit, Mesut, and roger if he is 
still interested in game programming)
you guys  asked some questions so here are my answers to the best of my 
ability: 

  

Question 1. for which platform do you envisage to have these games?:
answer: what I am aiming for, are (at first) windows based screen reader 
friendly games that are playable by both sighted and VI folks, that will 
go to levels that such games have been, and beyond! 

  

language is fairly open though I would like to keep it out of the 
esoterics or the les flexible languages like lisp and/or working in 
flash 

  

c++, C#, those would be my preferences myself, but not a requirement 

  

these games run the gambit from fairly simple shooter games (I have one 
fashioned after an old arcade game that I believe folks would have a 
blast with, I know of many a worn out arcade machine that ran it) all 
the way up to puzzle games, semi role playing games like shades of doom 
and lone wolf, and beyond these into full on RPG and multi player game 
scenarios 

  

I used to work for a game company, games for the blind, but the owner, 
I'll just say he had some issues that caused the company to close up 
titer than a goblins backside, and then it disappeared from the web 
totally after a minor try at a come back. 

  

I was already long gone when that happened, but I have game designs in 
my head, that I was going to suggest to that former boss, along with 
experience in game writing (in the pencil and paper role playing game 
genre's  that can produce some fun, exciting and complex games. 

  

I also was known for, if not finding "the way" to do things, leading the 
programmers to look at things so they could figure out how to do them, 
as well as a knack for spotting and adding the "nice details" that were 
missing from the games produced. 

  

question 2. What would be the potential of earnings can you foresee from 
these games?:
answer: hmmm, GMA games is still running so they must be making enough, 
they have in fact added a game to there line that sounds very similar to 
one of my concepts blast it! but anyway, I also remember my old 
boss/partner saying that he had just received a check for 10,000 dollars 
from the company he used for his online site's game purchasing payment, 
a smaller company that was in competition with PayPal in it's early 
days. 

  

so I see good potential for a profitable partnership here. 

  

question 3. Can you provide more info regarding games you have in mind?
as stated above, I have things from one or two person arcade style 
games, to multi player games (one computer or many) all the way up to 
multi person RPG games similar to doom, Diablo, and masters of Orion 

  

I work just as well in science fiction, and fantasy, along with cross 
Genre creations of current times/science fiction, current time/fantasy, 
some with war games, so on and so forth. 

  

now my #4. what I am looking for is/are a partner or partners who want 
to work together with me to create some fun games and see if we can earn 
ourselves some elevated living capital! but without hanging ourselves 
out to dry with our current existence!
I would be willing to go into a simple 50/50 agreement for the first 
simple game, and then we... would invest the income from that back into 
the enterprise to make it legal, safe for us (I'm thinking an LLD here) 
and then formalize the company for fun and profit. 

  

so, now that you have details, what do you folks think?
inthaneelf
inthaneelf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 

  

 

--     
     
Take care,    
Ty    
my website:    
http://tds-solutions.net    
my blog:    
http://tds-solutions.net/blog    
skype: st8amnd127    
My programs don't have bugs; they're randomly added features!    


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--   
   
Take care,  
Ty  
my website:  
http://tds-solutions.net  
my blog:  
http://tds-solutions.net/blog  
skype: st8amnd127  
My programs don't have bugs; they're randomly added features!  







-- 
 
Take care,
Ty
my website:
http://tds-solutions.net
my blog:
http://tds-solutions.net/blog
skype: st8amnd127
My programs don't have bugs; they're randomly added features!

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