@\NightandtheShape/@

Now I don't usually do things like this, and usually I wouldn't think it warrented a mention really, accept I was wondering what people would think, especially those who have experience in developing software... Now I can't really go into much depth, but lets just say that over the last 7 months give or take a few days... weeks... I was tasked with a lead programmer role developing a game engine & a game. That's from scratch, in a language I didn't know(C#) and using a new API(XNA). In the early weeks of development it was simply myself and another programmer working upon the project, mostly conceptually researching the game after two weeks we deemed the game significantly more complicated than other projects that had been pitched. Management told us to go off and develop the game more, so we did so, and after a few weeks I had the data structures in place to show the game world as envisioned by the designer, at this point, the game's design needed updating the concept was simple, and there was little else we could really develop at that stage, I either didn't have permission to develop the required technology or we didn't have the assets. Thusly, begins the nightmare. The programmer I was working with was being exceptionally difficult at the time, and even more difficult to work with and communicate with than usual, he'd taken to arguing and asking me upon every next step what he should do, literally down to the level of variable names... He was also not providing any results in regards to player movement. He'd actually begun bitching and begging other programmers to swop tasks with him, this was partly because he wasn't the best gameplay programmer around and partcially because the task itself was very challenging. So to save stress I took the task from him added it to my huge list of tasks, and tasked him with developing the front end menu system something i knew he was very good at. I also began asking my manager to increase my team, at which point I briefly got another programmer to work with me on developing shaders to aid the games look. Shader development was something somewhat new to everyone in the studio. Especially myself so I was glad for the help I gave him a list of shaders I required and got back to working on the engine. May i also state that the Designers ambitions were increasing dramatically on a daily basis... Eventually I ended up being tasked with a huge amount of work, which basically meant I had to develop a scripting language, a world builder, change the entire renderer, restructure the level data, add in player interaction, and after a couple of shaders I lost my only other programmer to another project so I had to develop those aswell. I'd been working single handed on this game for quite some time, when it was decided to make the other project the studio was undertaking a priority, everyone was to work on that apart ffrom myself and the guy I had developing the menu, the design team was quite large so we had alot of assets under development, I began again asking the management for help, at first I was just told that there wasn't anyone as the other project had a 2nd of july deadline, and despite it being significantly less complex it was a studio priority. So I kept asking for help, and eventually got another coder, this meant we could begin developing some really cool stuff, I could concentrate on getting the engine working and work with him on getting some of the ideas the designers wanted incluiding into the game, mostly concerning particles and particle physics, but I also had the guy develop the HUD, he actually prooved himself very capible and very easy to work with. I'd been crawling through developing a skinned model animation engine and driving that in the game(not a nice experience as I had to use an undocumented file format, and not one of my own design or choosing), we'd managed to finally get a character in the game and working quite well, but the implementation wasn't complete, we'd not managed to get much of the gameplay into the game, but we'd really started to see some light at the end of the tunnel and the game was slowly coming togeather it actually looked pretty cool, and with the bouncing particles and gravity and such it was looking very promising. we were all happy. We had all been working 12 to 16 hour days for about a month at this point and we really needed to take a bit of a break and slow down for a while. Okay now we're coming to the topic of the post if you've stayed with me this far, and I hope folks like Meta, Kaften... etc... have done... A week and a half ago the guy who runs the studio (he's not actually there very often he tends to pop in for 10 minutes and leave and this isn't even daily), comes into the studio and demands the game finished for the 2nd of july, we'd told him 3 months previous and repeated it to him up until this point that this wasn't possible. So he demands that we scale back our ambitions and brings in an experienced designer to help the designers, the result of which throws everything into disarray, most of what i developed was seen as usless for hitting the deadline so our best artist got put onto developing bloody sky sphere's, we scaled back alot of the artwork. We lost a texture artist, and a 3D modeller from the design team, the designers and artists basically had to put up with being told their work was s**t. It wasn't. I was given two weeks to develop 1/3 or the gameplay mechanic (a huge task) and integrate the entire menu system into the engine and get everything running smoothly, and as bug free as possible, as for any other tasks they've given me two programmers who both have no knowledge of the engine. So to be brief, I've had to pretty much single handedly make an entire game engine and game over a 7 month development cycle, I've been given a deadline I didn't know I had... The result of all this is that it looks very unlikely that we'll hit this deadline, even if I work overtime. Now I've tired to be brief and I've tried not to go on, or into too much depth, but can it really be done can a single programmer develop a sophisticated game engine and game in 7 months pretty much single handedly? Or is it me?

Depends... I would say only if those people eventually get togeather in real life. Sure! Got to break up the daily coding humdrum with something... Kaften, Mkreku, and Metadigital. Volo, Hades, and Gromnir.

Stupid is an understatement... I will certainly do my best to get my hands on MANHUNT 2, even if it is banned I really enjoied Manhunt, and I'll be damned if I'll not play it at some point!

I've always thought of the problem with games is general as being that good and bad games have merit, the good point out how things can be implemented well, providing a nice starting point for potential improvement, where bad games point out how not to implement something. That's just how I look at problems from a disection point of view before I code, if something feels clunky I try and figure out why it's clunky, thus hoping to never make the same mistake myself.

Perhaps he oversteped his place...

It's quick nasty does the job... I'm a programmer, Anything past notepad scares me, but I know a bit and I've seen some fairly good result in game from using the plugin. I don't believe it is awesome, but I imagine it's much quicker than than using z-brush... That's all I am saying.

I used that plugin to create the normalmap on this model, but it doesnt "bump" enough for the engine to actually show it. But mostly, Id use Zbrush because Im a perfectionist and it would look infinitly much better with properly sculpted hair. And XSI is teh shiznitz That must be the settings on the tools surely... I've certainly created some very deep bump maps using a depth of 128... But then again I think i used 9 samples aswell, regardless... Z-Brush always looks better . I would like to see the result of your work with that time and effort... In a game naturally...

Just the learning curve eh... I'm sure you're good at your job you seem to take it seriously enough.

True enough, some tools are quicker and provide fairly good results if the artist has the talents in the first place...

I just saw this tutorial on sculpting a female character in Zbrush3 and if I was going to spend time with a hair model, thats probably the way Id do it. But that would take a bit more work than Im willing to do right now. WHat I should be doing is learning Softimage|XSI instead of fooling around You can get some pretty good results quickly in photoshop using the nvidia plugin, result won't be as good as with Z-Brush, but it should be good enough. Dunno about you but I can't see softimage|XSI being that different it's usually a matter of where and what the tools are called... But I dunno, Max gives me the wilies :D

You should be able to fix most of those problems in about an hour max... Surely it's worth the effort.

Considering you're plans on becoming a games designer. It's perfectly natural to mod the hell out of something when you don't like it, it also shows that you understand and comprehend the process of getting from A - B, something that designers really should understand. Come to think of it Designer is such a non-descript position, it's probably due to the area being such a vast one. Eventually what will happen is that you'll most likely be working on a game, with a team, tweaking such things and loosing sleep over them... I don't believe you'll end up excessively modding a game, if anything it's just good practice. edit: I leave modding to designers, I prefer to give designers the right tools to make they game they wish, and as much power as possible to configure it... Which is all a game engine is (a tool), tho' I am fond of taking text files and converting them to binary just to allow for a good bitch slapping of a designer when they screw up a script :D. Just one of many amusement I create for myself. Designer:- "Why's it not compiling? Your compiler sucks!". Programmer:- "Because you screwed up and probably missed a semi-colon, welcome to my world :D".

.Net Framework is often used for some games... Java can go though it's a pile of crap.

...says the graphics engine programmer. I must say that's a very biased advice. Most developer teams will not have the expertise to develop a state-of-the-art engine. If you have time and money, license a better engine. A new one must be built only if it is more expensive to maintain any licensed technology. Well if the team isn't of a level of expertise to make an engine then the company has made some bad decisions, but it does happen and when that is the case, then an engine is usually a better option infact it's probably a better option to sack these people and higher people who are able to do the job. Perhaps my advice is biased slightly, but if you really do have alot of time and money engine development is a sensible investment. The company will produce better games as a result... I will always do better in my own engine opposed to someone elses engine.

uh huh... That it is, and ironically from what I have seen there is alot of shooting.

He's a bit more than pretty good... Carmack is one of the best programmers the computer games industry has seen to date. Carmack and Sweeny are the two names that spring to mind when I think of 3D engines and the top of the game...

The question is simple my answer isn't going to change, there is no point in using the Q3 engine for anything except perhaps a mod. It's a dated engine that's not worth upgrading. Now if it's just a small project for the sake of research then yes it's certainly worth using.

Saying that just using another company's engine makes it lowcost and fast seems relatively uninformed. Even using a licensed engine takes time and money. And these engines that "push the limit" are made for the purposes of selling an engine or using an engine that you can use for multiple products of your own more than for making a single game. They're not about pushing any limits and that's not where the profits come in. It's about appealing to the needs of other developers and their customers and selling it off to them or cutting costs in a long term plan. What shocks me is how uninformed you appear to be on this subject. The reason to use another companies engine is ALWAYS down to cost, if I was say making a game that revolves around shooting and I want some cool physics and I'm pretty much not going to go to any new places in a technology sense, it makes sense to use an already existing engine, such as source or unreal for this task. While you make valid points in the arguement for using an engine, and why companies develop engines, this is not the sole reason for engine development, sometimes it simply makes sense to develop and engine for a specific task, much as one uses a spanner over a multi-tool. Different games have different requirements, and depending upon many factors a company is then driven into thinking about solutions. Obsidian just for example are developing a specific engine for the aliens game, this I would assume is down to a variety of factors, of which I couldn't be certain about, but I could certainly make viable suggestions as to what they are. I would most likely point the finger towards the simple fact that basically put, the money is there at the time to develop the engine, it allows obsidian to have their own technology and build upon that technology and specify that towards their desired design arc... Or simple put, we can't think about doing this because modification of the said engine would cause x and y, a bit like that overhaul of the graphics engine in NWN 2, lots of problems.... Not only that but it allows a company to also produce better products so long as the engine is of a certain quality. TORN was cancelled due to issues with the engine it used, I believe it was the lithtech engine(not certain on this being the actual engine). There is more freedom to design and innovate when creating a game engine for a specific game or style of game. There isn't much difference really between IWD and Baldurs Gate 2, not when you take it appart from a technology point of view and that is down to technology. There isn't much difference between Rainbow Six and Gears of War, not when you look at what the game is doing... Vampire & Half-Life 2... The list goes on...

All of which revolve around very similair game mechanics, don't get me wrong it's always good to have a powerful engine to work with, but any engine is usually suited to certain tasks better than others, thus developing a purpose built engine can be a benefit.

If you have the time and the money, IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO DEVELOP YOUR OWN ENGINE! Using an existing engine is usually a mixed bag, games actually suffer from engine limitations, as the engine was never intended for the said job.

I believe the Q3 engine was released under the GNU licence... Basically put you can do what you want with it, but whatever you do should be released as open source. Diamond, I disagree... Always write an engine from scratch IF you have the oppertunity, and time. Using other peoples engines is a cop out, and can cause major problems in and of itself.

LMFAO...

Except Myth didn't have good graphics, it has good gore and interesting physics tho, and is a good game, but it sure wasn't pretty.

YOU NEED MORE REDBULL!

So so true... It's one of the most horrible engines I have actually seen in a popular commercial game. It's a side effect of it's user friendliness I believe.