You'll Know When Your Game Is Ready...

... it'll start to take on a life of it's own.

it'll start to look like something you'd buy yourself...
the look... the flow... all will come together to develop a momentum of their own...

... and you'll wonder where it all came from...
surely, you couldn't have done this.

it is at this epiphanetic point that you'll realize that you've really got something here...

... if you never get this feeling, then you haven't arrived there yet, and your game aint ready.


--Mike

The Tao of Red.

hahahaha...

ahhh, yes... you have attained enlightenment grasshopper...

... now return to Gotham... don the cape and cowl...
and let the naysayers and evildoers share your dread.


--Mike

How did you see through my disguise?! The whole game developer thing is my secret identity; I'm actually a vigilante crime fighter who stalks the city streets.

Red: how do you know this, have you reached this point before. Btw, it's true, you look at the thing you made in many small increments and the whole looks amazing and you think "wow I actually made this!" it's cool, but even cooler to see it out there and people writing good reviews and buying it etc.

i've just reached that point... last night, at about 1 o'clock in the AM...

the Sub Sim... the 3DRAD version of it, while not the best looking of the versions i've been toiling on, has suddenly taken on that magical glow...

... and this morning, it still looks as good as it did last night... so this must be it.

this'll most likely be the one that gets released first... i've gotten so tired and frustrated chasing the DOOM3 look, plus the fact that circumstances make it a priority for me to try and make some money real quick... so i've bitten the bullet, and decided to go with the existing code i did in RAD...

i've redone the graphics so that they look a lil better than what the original efforts looked like, and i am currently in the process of revamping and streamlining the game itself... taking out some of the more boring aspects that added more to the development workload than the gameplay...


while i'm on this divergence, lemme explain a few things about why i 'm going with the 3DRAD version, in spite of the fact that i've gotten far better looking graphic results in both Blitz3D and DarkBASIC Pro...

primarily, the ability to code in an object oriented manner was the final deciding factor... the logic flow of the sim, while not overly complicated, is quite involved... and the relationships between the player, his character on screen, the sub he is on... the sub itself, and its relation to the controls that each player can manipulate and thus determine what it does... all of this gets quite overwhelming at times, and can easily wind up becoming circular logic paths that lead to nowhere...

i had to have something close to an object oriented coding environment, so that i could modularize and reuse a set of behaviors, and easily locate and debug em...

in short, i needed something that would make it as simple as possible for me to work with... and since i think objects, well...

... this factor alone made straight, linear procedural coding, something that was out of the question... and seeing that both Blitz as well as DB, is, by default, a procedural coding dialect... they came in second and third in the final decision...

3DRad allows encapsulation of code so that each object can be built with it's own particular behaviorisms, and then related to the other objects in the game... this overides the less than optimal graphics that the other two dev platforms afforded, and believe me, i almost wound up using DB over Blitz for this (more on this in another thread ) seeing as i'm about 70% through the basis of writing a usable OOP like framework for both...

anyway... to get back on topic... it was great to actually have the game look back at you and give you the impression that it's achieved it's own identity...

it's also great not be be wondering around looking for that perfect game engine any more... i've come to the realization (fianlly) that that doesn't exist... if you wanna get something out, you gotta go with the one that gives the least amount of compromises... and there will always be some...

so... that's it... the game is now leading me around... i have no more say in anything that matters about it... i feel secure now, not only in the current focus, but in the fact that BlitzMax 3D will be out (should be out) by the time i finish this release, and the next version could be coded in that...

... and if it aint, then i still have the option of DB, Blitz3D (depending on where i'm at with my psuedo OOP stuff)... or using 3DRAD again (not the preferable option, but still a viable one, depending on how well release one is accepted).

they say that to achieve enlightenment is to truly be free... at least i feel a lil better now...


--Mike

Is it ready when you take out all the triple full stops?

... you sound like one who needs enlightenment... go find Mr. Miaggi...

... and wax my car :P

you know the drill... wax on... wax off...

--Mike

Oh I see, so you finally sat down long enough in one programming language to finishish something and now you're the professional around here? ;]

This is cool I've had those feelings ;)

@ Toby... yeah, i'm da expert... you got a problem with dat...

nah... you don't see at all...


@ Jeremy... yeah... it's really neat... now all i gotta do is run with it... and finish it :)

--Mike

Red...Red...Whine... ine... ... ...

;) Drink it up.

(no, that's not a typo)

Red has a point though. I got that feeling while working on Drop Fighter. After weeks of working on making the movement of the player's fighter feel right, and getting the landscape in, I added enemies. And then there was a long process of tuning their AI.

And then, finally, they began attacking me pretty well. In one game, I decided to see hw well they chased me, so I hit the engines and flew away from my command cruiser.

I looked behind me, and, to my surprise, they made only a token effort to chase me before turning around and starting to blast my command cruiser.

I hadn't expected that, although it was a perfectly normal side-effect of the way the AI was written.

At that point, I realised the game was COMING TO LIFE!

Great feeling. Wish I had time to finished the damn thing. And overhaul all the horrible code I wrote when I first started it.

> Oh I see, so you finally sat down long
> enough in one programming language to finishish
> something and now you're the professional around here? ;]

Red likes to continously engine hop and each week, tell us all about it, but I think he's too old and past it to actually write a game anymore in anything.
Go play with your subs Red! Heheh :)

Glenn knows what it's all about... and i trust most developers who have seriously worked on a game have arrived at that point of elation at one time or another...

and for those who haven't... well... no biggee... it will happen sooner or later... just remember to stop and savour the moment when it does...

there won't be any horns, applause, or fanfare... but for a brief second, you'll think that there was...




why you lil cheeze smellin' son of a goat herder :) who you callin' old... youngern!!!

:)

--Mike

Yup yup.. it's usually the AI that gives you these wow moments when it has matured enough. Just recently I had an experience where the [censored] did something they were not "trained / coded" to do at all, infact what they did should have been impossible. Was it pure luck? Or bug? Or had they developed some kind of self-consiousness? Dunno, but it was scary and happy feelings combined. :)

>I had an experience where the [censored] did something they were not "trained / coded" to do at all,

LEt me guess, they waved at you and said "hello world!" and this was ofcourse not coded behaviour since it's so simple but impossible for AI to come up on it's own!

wow :P

I know exactly what you mean. I agree that AI is one of the main things that causes this, since it's usually unpredictable, and it's fun to watch your game's characters "take on a life of they're own". :) I've have this "feeling" mostly when my major projects near completion (like with BattleTanks II).

It doesn't even have to be all that mature, although yeah, I get this moment the most due to AI. Most recently, I separately developed the random movements, the flaming breath, and the speech balloons for characters in Flamewar! When I brought the elements together and saw them all together for the first time, it was definitely a startling experience. The characters weren't even reacting to the player yet; it was amazing just to watch them randomly milling about, shouting and breathing flames.

Other than AI behaviors, nothing is ever surprising because you slaved over it every step of the way. As cool as it may be to somebody seeing it for the first time, your main character (say) has gotten pretty tiresome by the time you're finished modeling, texturing, and animating him.

i agree that you can get tired of a particular element that you spent days... weeks working on... but, and seeing ai elements come to life is certainly a part of what i am talking about... i've gotta disagree with you jH as far as nothing else ever being surprising...


ok... what i mean, and what prompted me to start this topic in the first place, was the point i arrived at when i ran the latest (and last) dev effort of the sub game...

i am in the process of putting together the interior, after redoing a lot of the models, and for the first time, i actually felt like i was really aboard a sub...

for me this is a biggee... the whole idea of recreating virtual worlds and giving the player the feeling of immersion in that world is a major part to what i'm trying to do...

in spite of the pain of messing around with 3DRAD for the past couple of days trying to get the materials and the lightmapping to the point where it would be acceptable, i did a test run, and there it was...

that feeling of being aboard the confined interior of a submarine...

even without the textures and animations and other stuff, the thing has started to 'come to life'...

--Mike

It depends on the game I guess. Every game has its tipping point, and I suppose what that point is depends on what the game is all about, and what's been done before.

what's been done before... that seems to be a factor, for sure...

... but not only what's been done by other people in games you've bought and played... but also what you done for the first time... and how well it comes out...

... expectedly, or unexpectedly.

--Mike

Isn't it awful doing the same thing over and over? Ugh.

Incidentally, the experience you describe is every time I learn anything. Sorry to take the discussion to left field, but I never understand why so many people are resistant to learning, when doing something new and being amazed by the result is like the most wonderful thing ever.

that's true... i agree... learning is enlightenment...

... and the discussion has run full circle :)

--Mike

'it's usually the AI that gives you these wow moments when it has matured enough.'

Yeah - I get buzzed by the AI in Tank Universal from time to time. Was playing level 4 last night. Was battling 2 tanks up on a hillside, when 2 more enemy tanks turned up. So I turned tail and went down on the plain, but I was now taking fire from 4 red tanks up on a hillside. They had me triangulated from a distance. Was about to die when my blue teammate tanks came to the rescue and drove them off. That was fun.

The flipside is that I noticed a couple of intermittant problems that I thought I'd fixed some time ago and will likely take some time consuming bug hunting. Sigh.

i shouldn't be showing this, it's really not ready... but what the heck... here's a real short clip (750k)...

the textures aren't complete, the sound is a temp sound, the actual instruments aren't in place, and the character anims aren't done...

...but this is the point at which i was babbling about... this is where i finally got that immersiveness i was looking for.

please be kind... it's still got a ways to go...



http://home.att.net/~subbase1/ControlRoom.wmv



--Mike

I like the fact it's got crewmembers present. For years subsims gave the impression that you were alone on an empty boat...

if everything goes according to plan... they'll be moving around a bit... turning the wheels, reaching for switches, looking around... some will walk around the cabin depending on what they're doing...

you are in the control room of a WWII fleet sub... and the whole thing is moving across the gamespace, some 90 scaled feet beneath the waves...

so far RAD is hangin in there... i just wish the graphics were a bit better... you should see what thelightmapping looks like in Blitz and DBPro... even with the placeholder textures...

... oh well... BlitzMax will be out by the time i start version 2 :)

--Mike

That sounds like it's going to be fun :D. Good luck!

...running for the escape hatch too on occasion ?

One of the gripes I had with SH3 was if your sub 'died' up popped a bland message saying you'd 'died' - not very dramatic. At the very least you could have seen your sub dropping into the depths, leaking oil, imploding or just plain settling on the bottom.

Look good man! Keep on going I'd really like to see you complete this bad boy ;)