FrankK

No doubt it's a nice chunk of code. Procedural texturing is fairly common these days, but nothign to this extent. It's more of a proof of concept, but nice to see people taking on these challenges. I wonder if they are looking for work...=)

My major influences on the current project are whatever Chris A. tells me to do. It's the only sure way to avoid the beatings. For general influences, it's pretty hard. Every game contributes to your arsenal (for better or for worse) of knowledge. Whenever I play a game I am usually drawn to or put-off by some aspect of the design (be it interface, character development, combat, story, etc). But since I don't want to be too vague: Diablo 2, Fallout, Planescape, BG 1/2, Half-Life, Halo. Just about any game that makes me disappointed that it's over is a good game--any game that I am playing 'just to beat it' would only influence me to the extent that I want to know why I am not reveling in the experience. Fallout made me want to do this for a living.

Hmpph. Still wouldn't fit in the memory of my Apple II+...maybe if these guys optimized for size.

Freedom Fighters (though a tad short) is a good game. 720p as well on the xbox =)

I've always wanted to do a text-based FPS. I think something like System Shock would be a blast to make, or a squad-based FPS (ala Rainbow 6, Republic Commando, etc).

Time to invest in a Car Pool Dummy. BTW, I heard that for a while, people were hanging out at offramps offering to get in cars and ride with people for cash so they could get in the car pool lane. Probably an urban legend...or career opportunity waiting in the wings--except I get car sick when in the passenger seat.

#include "monologue.h" Several publishers are already doing this...at least one major publisher I can think of is doing 95% of it's development in low-overhead countries. The cost of development really can't be narrowed down to 'cost per unit', because the cost per unit is based on overall sales. PC games are also free from the 10 dollar PER UNIT licensing cost of consoles. Some games will break even sooner than others. I won't display all the numbers, but a man-month is recouped in about 1000 units sold. A team of 25 full time developers over 2 years will need to move about 450K-500k units to break even. After that, however, profit accrues VERY RAPIDLY. This is one reason for 'sequel-itis' in that teams using the same engine as a previous title can jam it out in about 12 - 18 months of development time. If you pay the people half as much, you only need to ship about 300k units. While it seems attractive, the management headaches, cultural road-blocks and many other issues eventually begin to erode at your profit potential. The risk versus reward increases with the scope of the overseas project. Making games isn't like making accounting systems, sewing clothes or assembling cars. Companies will experiment with offshoring, but i suspect that while it seems scary, it won't work in the long term. There's a reason Baldur's Gate sold millions in North America and Sacred/Divine Divinity are selling a couple hundred thousand. The Japanese have been developing with much higher budgets than US companies for years and making profits. Cutting costs is noble, but only when you are eliminating waste. There's more to gain from using US/Canadian/British developers when targeting those markets than saving an extra million in development. Then again, I'm just a programmer, wasting too much of his last 10 minutes on this board =) As for IPLY--that's a discussion for a later date. There's plenty of reasons I worked those hours.

Hours vary depending upon schedule, management, company, etc. Poorly managed projects tend to be death marches. Some companies hire people with the 'work em til they drop' mentality to maximize their dollars. Every company I've worked for has been milestone oriented--other programmers aren't so lucky. That's not to say I haven't worked a death march. DA2 was 3 months without a day off for me, and 12 hour weekdays. I've heard worse.

Technically, I played it once. I was a typically prissy LS jedi (zero dark side points). However, since I used Mission and stealthed through the opening of the Leviathen, I hit the nasty bug that causes the game to reach an unplayable state. The only save I had that was 'safe' was from the first planet I'd gone to...so I played Manaan, Tatooine and Kashyk twice =) And I remembered to unstealth Mission before freeing the rest of the party on the Lev.

That first book is pretty expensive...I'm sure you can go to a local book superstore and find something better for less. The second book is on the use of the Standard Library (STL) which is a more advanced topic and no games i've ever worked on use the STL (though they borrow heavily from the concepts in the STL). I'd stick to learning basic C++ for now and don't put the cart ahead of the horse. Both DirectX and OpenGL are free (OpenGL is theoretically more portable across OSes but less so across GPUs). I would strongly advise sitting in a LARGE bookstore and browsing books that will teach you BOTH Visual Studio .net AND C++ in one fell swoop (as that's the most common IDE in game programming). Once you are comfortable, assuming you are using a PC with Windows, some basic books on game programming would be recommended (ones that teach D3D AND game logic are the bestest). I would also take linear algebra and calc courses. If you can survive those, then the concepts of 3D programming should come simpler.

This is a pretty valid point. Not having to start an engine from scratch is actually a huge asset (and cuts 6 months to a year out of the dev cycle). Having an engine with a toolset like this one is even better. Having an existing engine and a quality toolset cuts at least a year out of the development cycle. It also lets engineering focus on 'fun' stuff like gameplay and new graphical effects. Those are the things that will be visibile to the player. The dev cycle on this game is probably longer than most BIS internally developed releases (I know it's an eternity compared to the title I worked on).

so then...questions anyone? =)

This is a fairly difficult question to answer as every day brings it's own challenges and rewards. Overall, the greatest reward is making a game and doing it with other people who feel as giddy about video games as you do. When my college friends spill their beer I can't tell them they failed their Reflex save versus drunk, so you certainly develop a bond with your fellow workers. The greatest challenge is usually whatever is blocking the game from matching what is in the current iteration of the design document. Sometimes it's technical, sometimes it's not (ie, the idea for +50 Longswords SOUNDED cool, but now the entire game balance is out of whack, what SHOULD we do?) It's an abstract answer to an abstract question, I guess =)

Most of this will be covered in the upcoming "Artists of Obsidian" Calendar. I understand they will be down at the beach in Dana Point this weekend shooting some of the steamier spreads.

Agreed. The 4 year degree offered by Digipen is pretty impressive if you plan to make a career in games. It's not a soft-core CS degree. I believe they have something like a 75% drop-out rate (you'd think they were trying to be Navy SEALS or something). However, the candidate we interviewed was extremely well prepared for an entry-level position in the gaming industry and is a candidate we have little doubt will fit the needs of an entry-level programmer. I got my CS degree from Marquette--not really a noted CS university. There are several schools in SoCal now that offer gaming courses (UCI, USC to name at least two) for CS majors. However, if you don't get a 'game programming' degree like Digipen offers, then I highly recommend taking a year or two to creatively mod games (HL, Quake 3, etc) or make that your part-time 'job' while in school. Writing a demo is also a great way to break in. When I was modding Quake 3 it was literally a 2nd job, 6pm to 2am 5 nights a week for a year with a very understanding fiancee playing Diablo 2 on her machine to keep me company. =) Show that you want to be in games, I guess, and show that you can program. Surviving a 4 year degree in game programming is one way, but so is devoting your spare time to creating games. In that respect, unless you go to Digipen, I would go with a university you feel comfortable with, but definately devote yourself to programming in your spare time and get active in demos and mods while you do it. Showing devotion will open up doors more than flashing a degree from MIT will. Your college of choice may help you land your first or second job, but experience will matter more in the long run.

This is one of the things the GAMES have done right. I think Bioware did an exceptional job of showing what being a Sith is truly about--in a sick sort of way I found myself going, "You know, I can almost see how what they believe could work...". They actually presented the philosophy of the Sith in easily digestable terms.

I'm not familiar with that 'KOTOR' game. Is it an acronym for something? As far as RPGs go, I try to play as many as I can (both PC and Console). I also think it is important to play plenty of non-RPGs. So have you played Arx Fatalis ? I have Arx Fatalis, but I haven't truly played it yet. I spent about 5 minutes trying to get past the interface which ended with me grunting 'Frank Smash' at the keyboard and mouse. It looks to have promise, interface problems aside, so I'm sure I'll get back to it.

I'm not familiar with that 'KOTOR' game. Is it an acronym for something? As far as RPGs go, I try to play as many as I can (both PC and Console). I also think it is important to play plenty of non-RPGs.

The entire orc/merchant scenario is something that can be done regardless of the world size. You could even throw goblins into the scenario as being more aggressive once the orc population decreases--with different results (they may be more prone to pillaging settlements than attacking caravans, for instance). I could probably script a basic form of this in half a day (set up the merchant/orc cause-effect thing) with time left for corn flakes. What I am talking about is not necessarily a direct 'do-this and that happens' type of thing. Killing too many orcs may result in a surpluss of more aggressive humanoids (towns may fall under seige) etc, or it may have no affect on things--some degree of randomness is needed. Changing encounters or behaviors based on a few variables is simple. A variable that only affects one result is very boring. A variable that can affect half a dozen things...now that is interesting. Size, in this case, really doesn't matter when it comes to the game world.

How would you rate this "un-named" game on a scale from 1 to 10? I would rate it a WOW! It's competition is in trouble.

Publishers are a business that invests in developers, so you will need to show why you are a better investment than the other developers. You will need to show the publisher why your project is not a risk. You will also need to provide a schedule indicating how many people will be required and what positions they will be filling. You will need to budget the project. You will need to show the target market and why you think the game will be profitable. You will also need to provide a roster of employees for the project or principle players in your company that helps the publisher understand how well you know game development. Having these things done AND having a demo to show puts you much higher in the list and shows you are serious and 'ready to roll'. If you just show up with a cool demo, they will ask the above questions and unless you have answers, they will probably fail to be sold on your business saavy, no matter how well your demo looks.

See: End of Episode 1. I'd say any jedi can get acclimated to another jedi's saber pretty quickly.

I think as long as you aren't forcing people to explore too much just to advance the plot of the game, you are OK. If exploration is there as an option, it works much better. The nicest aspect of Morrowind was the fact you didn't HAVE to go to every dungeon, or each ruin. You could explore them as you came across them or just stick to the ones you needed.

So if you didn't use the force, but still persuaded people to corruption, hate and murder, why would that be any different than using the force? Your actions, whether you use the force or not, determine your path. As an example, if Anakin had used a blaster instead of his lightsaber to slaughter the sandpeople in EpII, would the act have had less of an impact on his slide toward the dark side?