A few points here:
First off : Game Design... its a tricky one - if you are designing a game to be played by mainstream audience, eye-candy is a must. I'm sorry, but it is. Its not that people WON'T enjoy your game, but you'll turn a lot of people away if it don't look pretty.
Similarly, if you are attractive and have a rubbish personality, you'll still attract a lot more people than someone who is ugly and has a great personality. It's not fair but go figure... If you are vaguely attrative and have a great personality - you are a winner. If you are damn-hot and have a great personality, you'll er... shift a lot of units.
Moral of the story : Spend some time getting your graphics looking good.
The question I tend to ask myself tho is... "Why am I making this game?" And often it's not because i want anyone to play it, its just to be able to say to myself, "Yes, I did that and I'm proud of it". I often have 5 or 6 different projects going at the same time, and as i get bored of one, or stuck - i move over to another one for a while. Sometimes these projects come together (yeah OOP) into one whole thing that works which is cool.
For example at the moment, I'm porting a DX8 GUI system into C# and MDX9, building a model viewer for X2:TT, and writing a particle engine in C# / MDX9. Once I've finished them all, I could probably plug them all in together and have a model viewer with its own internal GUI and particles that come out the engines of the models. Super cool!
People will never understand how much work is involved with programming something, because often there is a much easier way to fling something up on the screen which is 'WHAT THEY SEE'.
In RL you could make a box from inter-galactic dark-matter (well, probably not actually) and someone would walk up and go "ooo, a box - I can make one of them", because 'WHAT THEY SEE' is a box. Just a box.
So if your out to impress people, write some amazing graphics demo, if your out to impress other programmers write an AI simulation.
Other people will never understand, which is why so many of us come here to talk about programming, discuss problems and be with people who DO understand.
People expect more from hobby game programmers (me) than they should
Oh yeah, been there, just the other side.
Worst thing are the people wo THINK they know all about game dev.
Once I got caught in a fps-game-forum arguing over AI with "pwnd"-kiddies and "I read a magazine article"-scolars.
Trying to tell people they do not have the slightest idea is about futile task there is.
So I just avoid telling people that I am in the game dev. Not that they would really believe me that is.
edit
Listen to Synex people.
But remember one thing, graphics are a curse and a blessing.
In order to sell your game to a publisher they have to be top at the time you sell them. But the longer you take to finish the project the more outdated they become.
Kinda dumb but thats the way it is.
Worst thing are the people wo THINK they know all about game dev.
Once I got caught in a fps-game-forum arguing over AI with "pwnd"-kiddies and "I read a magazine article"-scolars.
Trying to tell people they do not have the slightest idea is about futile task there is.
So I just avoid telling people that I am in the game dev. Not that they would really believe me that is.
edit
Listen to Synex people.
But remember one thing, graphics are a curse and a blessing.
In order to sell your game to a publisher they have to be top at the time you sell them. But the longer you take to finish the project the more outdated they become.
Kinda dumb but thats the way it is.
Yeah when I first started programming I would try to show of what I did to anyone around but most non programs just didnt get how hard it actually is. My parents would feign interest obviously (because there my parents).
The only person id probably show anything to now (apart from in passing) is my cousin who apprciated how much work goes into programming something.
Id say show all the work youve done to the others, show all the code and that or maybe challenge the guy who made the website to do what youve done, so they understand how much work it is.
The only person id probably show anything to now (apart from in passing) is my cousin who apprciated how much work goes into programming something.
Id say show all the work youve done to the others, show all the code and that or maybe challenge the guy who made the website to do what youve done, so they understand how much work it is.
Author
Quote:Original post by grekster
Id say show all the work youve done to the others, show all the code and that or maybe challenge the guy who made the website to do what youve done, so they understand how much work it is.
That's exactly what I did.. I wrote him (he's on vacation, he'll read it in an internet cafe I guess) how many loc i had, how many words, and how many characters, and how many that likely would be at the end. Still awaiting his reaction :)
There's plenty of development management that don't know what goes into game development. For example, I was working on a 'Lord of the Rings' game and we'd decided to use a voxel height map for the map of Middle Earth. It originally took 64Mb to store the map data, which, at the time, around 1996, was way too much, but the management liked it. So we worked on reducing the memory footprint. After a few months of hard work, we got the size down to around 6Mb without losing any speed and adding extra functionality, like a tooltip-like place name pop-up. When the management looked at the new version, all they said was 'It doesn't look any different'. Aarrrggghhhhhh.
Skizz
Skizz
Quote:Original post by C-Junkie
I solve this problem by never telling anyone what I can do with computers.
Gets rid of those anooying "OH CAN YOU FIX MY" people too.
when i was attending a cpp lesson, a friend of mine sits next to me does not really interest in at all and almost never attend the lesson.. I wrote 30 lines code of pass-by-reference....He teases me that sth like "you sucker,
why don't j00 pick up a software and type out the content instead of writing the code"
and to those who always requests fixing pc for them....argh...i hate it....i used to pretend to be busy or sick...or just ignore their msg...duh....it's really an advantage to save your time not to be kindnesss...(but sometimes you really have to if "she" is really gorgeous)
I think anyone has run into this. The best thing you can do is relate it something they WILL understand. For example, pick out something mainstream and immediate, and correlate it to what you're doing. Like,
Artist: "I've drawn all this stuff and you have nothing to show for it really."
Programmer: "Hey, it's harder than it looks."
Artist: "Yeah, whatever."
Programmer: "You know, air planes are pretty simple, don't you think?"
Artist: "Eh, well..."
Programmer: "I bet you could probably build an airplane and it would fly perfectly, I mean, it couldn't be so hard. Couple wings, one of those upright tail thinggys. Easy stuff."
Artist: "uh..."
Programmer: "I mean imagine all the little behind the scenes physical dynamics that go into making it fly smoothly and not tumbling out of the sky in a ball of fire. Guess you gotta think about gravity, flight resistance, weight ratios.. oh materials you're using, altitude and changing air resistance, and..."
Artist: "What is the point of all this?"
Programmer: "The point is, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. k thanks."
Or something to that effect! Bring up the mono lisa, ask em how easy it is to make something so simple. If he's an artist, ask him to draw a photo quality portrait, because you've seen some artists who could, and so why cant HE?
Anyway, not to be a dick or anything, but you have to relate things to people in a way they'll understand to get the point acrossed.
I show my wife the tile editor I create, and she says that's nice, sort of interested, but it really doesn't mean anything to her. If you think about it on it's surface level, what's so hard about clicking on the button, and then making it place whatever graphic it's supposed to. I mean, they think two clicks and ta-da, it works.
Programmers wonder about the iterators, pointers, input polling, etc. Just different levels of understanding, so bring the complexity to their level of understanding.
Is it me, or does every computer guy have a following of these people? If something has to do with a computer, people will ask me about it, like I invented it or something.
Them: "How do you think a positronic matrix like in star trek, works?"
Me: "uhh.. hm.."
Them: "Dude, I thought you were some kind of smart computer guy, whatever."
Artist: "I've drawn all this stuff and you have nothing to show for it really."
Programmer: "Hey, it's harder than it looks."
Artist: "Yeah, whatever."
Programmer: "You know, air planes are pretty simple, don't you think?"
Artist: "Eh, well..."
Programmer: "I bet you could probably build an airplane and it would fly perfectly, I mean, it couldn't be so hard. Couple wings, one of those upright tail thinggys. Easy stuff."
Artist: "uh..."
Programmer: "I mean imagine all the little behind the scenes physical dynamics that go into making it fly smoothly and not tumbling out of the sky in a ball of fire. Guess you gotta think about gravity, flight resistance, weight ratios.. oh materials you're using, altitude and changing air resistance, and..."
Artist: "What is the point of all this?"
Programmer: "The point is, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. k thanks."
Or something to that effect! Bring up the mono lisa, ask em how easy it is to make something so simple. If he's an artist, ask him to draw a photo quality portrait, because you've seen some artists who could, and so why cant HE?
Anyway, not to be a dick or anything, but you have to relate things to people in a way they'll understand to get the point acrossed.
I show my wife the tile editor I create, and she says that's nice, sort of interested, but it really doesn't mean anything to her. If you think about it on it's surface level, what's so hard about clicking on the button, and then making it place whatever graphic it's supposed to. I mean, they think two clicks and ta-da, it works.
Programmers wonder about the iterators, pointers, input polling, etc. Just different levels of understanding, so bring the complexity to their level of understanding.
Quote:Gets rid of those anooying "OH CAN YOU FIX MY" people too.
Is it me, or does every computer guy have a following of these people? If something has to do with a computer, people will ask me about it, like I invented it or something.
Them: "How do you think a positronic matrix like in star trek, works?"
Me: "uhh.. hm.."
Them: "Dude, I thought you were some kind of smart computer guy, whatever."
Quote:Original post by FireNet
Blah blah blah blah *long monologue*
*Slowly backs away*
I had to be said [wink]
Ha ha I was playing StarCraft once and someone asked me if I made it. I just said, "Yes."
Quote:Gets rid of those anooying "OH CAN YOU FIX MY" people too.
When people try that with me I say
ME : "You drive a car right?"
THEM : "yeah..."
ME : "Cool, the engine timing on my car has been slightly off since i fitted that second turbo charger, and it's causing the NOS to kick in at the wrong time. While I'm round fixing your PC, you can fix my car"
THEM : "uh buh..."
Works wonders :)
The other thing, if you REALLY don't like them, is to tell them the last person you fixed a PC for had to pay Microsoft $800 because "It had a really bad virus, like one of those you heard on the news"
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