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Chambers wrote:
> It makes sense when your primary source of revenue comes from service
> contracts.
Actually, it makes a lot more sense when your primary source of revenue
isn't software at all. Sun gives away Java because they make their money
selling hardware.
> Give away the thing you're servicing / supporting, and
> suddenly you've a lot more potential customers.
That really only works well if the software sucks to start with. If it's
well documented and easy to use and just plain works, you won't get too
much business from service contracts. If it's all that and yet too
complex for the customer to easily set up (think SAP), it's probably too
complex to be cheap enough to maintain that you can afford to give it
away in the first place.
If you're giving away the source, other contractors will just eat your
lunch because they don't have your overhead.
It's a good thought that really doesn't work out as well as you might think.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Ever notice how people in a zombie movie never already know how to
kill zombies? Ask 100 random people in America how to kill someone
who has reanimated from the dead in a secret viral weapons lab,
and how many do you think already know you need a head-shot?
Post a reply to this message
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St. wrote:
> that is. Some of these young guys can produce professional maps in like - a
> couple of months or less!)
There's one thing I wondered about game creation. (Hey, Warp! :-)
How does the planning and design go? I mean, take a game like Thief or
Halo or Half Life or something, where there's all kinds of complex 3D
stuff going on. It's not like you can whiteboard such a thing very easily.
I'm thinking maybe a group of people get together, think about the
story, describe stuff that should be in the level,maybe draw a map or
two, and then hand it to one person to put the whole level together,
laying it out and all? Then they go to the talent to produce the sounds
and voices and all that?
Basically, how do you get from "next in the story, we have the secret
lab level" to "here's the 3D mesh for the level"?
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Ever notice how people in a zombie movie never already know how to
kill zombies? Ask 100 random people in America how to kill someone
who has reanimated from the dead in a secret viral weapons lab,
and how many do you think already know you need a head-shot?
Post a reply to this message
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>> It makes sense when your primary source of revenue comes from service
>> contracts.
>
> Actually, it makes a lot more sense when your primary source of revenue
> isn't software at all. Sun gives away Java because they make their money
> selling hardware.
And yet Apple doesn't do the same. ;-)
(Mind you, Apple's software is what *makes* people buy their hardware...)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Darren New wrote:
> There's one thing I wondered about game creation. (Hey, Warp! :-)
>
> How does the planning and design go? I mean, take a game like Thief or
> Halo or Half Life or something, where there's all kinds of complex 3D
> stuff going on. It's not like you can whiteboard such a thing very easily.
Actually, I think I recal seeing some black and white pen drawings for
the storyboarding for Halflife somewhere... Don't remember where though.
What *I* wonder about game design is how the hell you model 3D objects.
Every 3D modeller I've ever used has been excruciatingly difficult to
operate...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Chambers wrote:
> my (imo) valid criticisms of the editor, plus seeing several threads
That's one of the things that killed me about the thief editor. I didn't
work with it much, but it certainly seemed like they should have been
able to (for example) tell you when a hole was big enough to move
through without getting stuck, or a gap small enough to jump over.
Otherwise, it was all trial and error.
I mean, at a minimum, have the stuff you stick to the walls and floors
be able to "snap" to the surface/grid/whatever. The levels are full of
lights that float an inch from the wall, book shelves facing the wall,
fire in the fireplace not touching the floor, etc. As well as them
having issued a patch or two that just made it possible to take routes
where they'd made the window too small to climb through by 3 pixels or so.
There's even a garish default texture so you can walk around and find
the surfaces you forgot to texture. Rather than, you know, a function in
the editor that points the camera at any untextured surfaces.
How could it *not* save time to automate such stuff?
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Ever notice how people in a zombie movie never already know how to
kill zombies? Ask 100 random people in America how to kill someone
who has reanimated from the dead in a secret viral weapons lab,
and how many do you think already know you need a head-shot?
Post a reply to this message
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Invisible wrote:
>>> It makes sense when your primary source of revenue comes from service
>>> contracts.
>>
>> Actually, it makes a lot more sense when your primary source of
>> revenue isn't software at all. Sun gives away Java because they make
>> their money selling hardware.
>
> And yet Apple doesn't do the same. ;-)
Sure they do, in some ways. They certainly used to.
Try buying a third-party DVD drive, plugging it into an apple, and using
iDVD to burn a video to it.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Ever notice how people in a zombie movie never already know how to
kill zombies? Ask 100 random people in America how to kill someone
who has reanimated from the dead in a secret viral weapons lab,
and how many do you think already know you need a head-shot?
Post a reply to this message
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Invisible wrote:
> What *I* wonder about game design is how the hell you model 3D objects.
> Every 3D modeller I've ever used has been excruciatingly difficult to
> operate...
Ibid. I think it takes a certain talent, probably not unlike writing
sequential code. I suspect the $300K modelers are easier to use for
professionals in the same way that Photoshop blows away GIMP if that's
what you do for a living.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Ever notice how people in a zombie movie never already know how to
kill zombies? Ask 100 random people in America how to kill someone
who has reanimated from the dead in a secret viral weapons lab,
and how many do you think already know you need a head-shot?
Post a reply to this message
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"Darren New" <dne### [at] san rrcom> wrote in message
news:489b10f2$1@news.povray.org...
> St. wrote:
>> that is. Some of these young guys can produce professional maps in like -
>> a
>> couple of months or less!)
>
> There's one thing I wondered about game creation. (Hey, Warp! :-)
>
> How does the planning and design go? I mean, take a game like Thief or
> Halo or Half Life or something, where there's all kinds of complex 3D
> stuff going on. It's not like you can whiteboard such a thing very
> easily.
True, but it can be done. I mean, I'm pretty sure that Crytek do this,
and of course some of the mod teams do this too. I didn't with my map, but I
now know that's a path I could take if I wanted to make a new map. I just
built my map as I went along, and there is no storyline as such, but you do
get ten objectives to accomplish, which all work, and some of the map is
linear, but it really doesn't have to be as you can go over most land to
complete an objective in a different way.
>
> I'm thinking maybe a group of people get together, think about the
> story, describe stuff that should be in the level,maybe draw a map or
> two, and then hand it to one person to put the whole level together,
> laying it out and all? Then they go to the talent to produce the sounds
> and voices and all that?
Well, the way that it's been working in the mod teams at Crymod.com is
that a group of people will get together that each have their own
'speciality' if you like. One guy will be really good with flowgraphs, (I'm
crap lol), and then another guy will be good at modelling, and another guy
will be good with texturing, and another will be good at storyline/game
balance, etc. And if they're *really* lucky, they might just have a guy
that's good at programming either C, or Lua, or both.
>
> Basically, how do you get from "next in the story, we have the secret
> lab level" to "here's the 3D mesh for the level"?
If you're not making a mod, (where you introduce new elements, models,
whatever), then it's basically all there for you in the editor, so it's then
just a normal bog standard map and not a mod. So really, it's as I explained
above. But, I don't think there's anything stopping me adding a new model to
my map, and still call it a map other than a mod.
See the attached top_down image. The big blue bounding boxes are called
AINavigationModifiers, and as far as I know, they don't interfere with
anything other than the white paths that you can see in the middle of them.
You use these paths to give your helicopters and boats a path to follow.
(There's a wedge shaped box to the right for my only boat). You can put both
a heli and a boat in one AINavMod if you want and as many as you want. The
red lines are 'ForbiddenAreas' - an AI won't go in that, you use it to stop
them climbing over objects, and the yellow lines are 'ForbiddenBoundaries' -
the AI won't walk out of it. The light blue lines are land vehicle paths. I
don't know how you programming guys do this, but to me, I've got more than
enough respect for those that do.
There are *many* other things that this image just doesn't show, but
the attached screen2_pub shows just how beautiful Crysis can be, (and this
is crap compared to what some of the youngsters can do! Lol!) :)
The only problem with my map at the moment is that I've got a nuke
going off right at the start of the game, and I don't know how to fix that
yet. It's really the ending of the map! (But it still works at the end too).
I'd love somebody from here to test my map, but I don't think anyone here
plays Crysis. :o/
~Steve~
>
> --
> Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
> Ever notice how people in a zombie movie never already know how to
> kill zombies? Ask 100 random people in America how to kill someone
> who has reanimated from the dead in a secret viral weapons lab,
> and how many do you think already know you need a head-shot?
Post a reply to this message
Attachments:
Download 'top_down.jpg' (228 KB)
Download 'screen2_pub.jpg' (276 KB)
Preview of image 'top_down.jpg'
Preview of image 'screen2_pub.jpg'
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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:489b11b4$1@news.povray.org...
> Darren New wrote:
>
>> There's one thing I wondered about game creation. (Hey, Warp! :-)
>>
>> How does the planning and design go? I mean, take a game like Thief or
>> Halo or Half Life or something, where there's all kinds of complex 3D
>> stuff going on. It's not like you can whiteboard such a thing very
>> easily.
>
> Actually, I think I recal seeing some black and white pen drawings for the
> storyboarding for Halflife somewhere... Don't remember where though.
>
> What *I* wonder about game design is how the hell you model 3D objects.
> Every 3D modeller I've ever used has been excruciatingly difficult to
> operate...
What? Even Wings3D? As far as I know, it's 'the' most easily used
modeller out there. And very powerful.
~Steve~
>
> --
> http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
> http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:03:25 +0100, St. wrote:
> What? Even Wings3D? As far as I know, it's 'the' most easily used
> modeller out there. And very powerful.
Well, even Wings3D has a slight learning curve. Blender is easy to
operate as well, once you have learned the interface - but for some, that
takes years to master.
Today's society is full of people who don't want to take the time to
*learn*, they just expect to be able to understand everything instantly,
and get frustrated when they don't "get it" within the first 30 seconds
of using a new tool.
Jim
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