Quote:Original post by Pipo DeClown Yeah, I've given up. If I make games now, they're mostly 2D.
the same situation in my case. I'm just developing simple things, just mostly a hobby. I don't see myself making any 3D although I know the basic 3D stuff.
Look at what the major studios are churning out though. How many of the new games are truly unique or interesting? Maybe I'm a sucker for the old-school Japanese developers, but off the top of my head the only novel games coming out are from Nintendo developers.
Everything else is just re-hashes of the same old genres with little extras or features added on to pad the bottom line. As popular as WoW is...it's just a Diku-MUD with some extra features and a MASSIVE art team for the GUI, which is all Everquest ever was. WoW = just more art and a few improvements over the same old model.
Where is the industry going? Straight along that path, following the bottom line and the almighty dollar. UNTIL. Until someone like you or me or someone over in Japan comes up with a truly novel game, in which case you've got either a cult smash or a new genre that the major studios will start copy-catting. But by then you've already made your bucks and will be recognized as the first to do it.
So never give up. Keep at it. Keep getting better. Keep dreaming and thinking and programming!
You need to remember, too, that those products like Unreal that look so F'ing amazing look that way because they have dozens of people working 8+ hours a day on them. You're only ONE person, they are an entire team of professionals who have been doing that stuff for years and who typically have only one or two responsibilities. Think about it. That one finished, rendered vehicle that looks so awesome...it had a design team, a concept artist, possibly multiple 3d modelers, possibly multiple texture artists, a lighting/material shader guy, a particle system guy, a level designer, and on and on and on. Not only that but you have the 3D engine technology behind it that allows it to look so good. From start to finish probably 40+ man hours went into that ONE model. If you spent 40 hours on each model your game would be done sometime around 2025.
Quote:Original post by gilamran Hi guys, About a year ago I started to get into the 3D world.. My dream was to be a game developer...
So I started writing a terrain editor, particle engine, I got into the HLSL, I read books and so on...
Then one day I saw the Epic Unreal 3 engine demo, it broke my hart! It looked SOOOO good that I thought that I'll never get there by myself... And probably I'll never will...
One day I decided to learn how to build houses. Then I saw the Taj Mahal and realized that I could never make something that elaborate. So I gave up.
(my byline from the Gamedev Collection series, which I co-edited) John Hattan has been working steadily in the casual game-space since the TRS-80 days and professionally since 1990. After seeing his small-format games turned down for what turned out to be Tandy's last PC release, he took them independent, eventually releasing them as several discount game-packs through a couple of publishers. The packs are actually still available on store-shelves, although you'll need a keen eye to find them nowadays. He continues to work in the casual game-space as an independent developer, largely working on games in Flash for his website, The Code Zone (www.thecodezone.com). His current scheme is to distribute his games virally on various web-portals and widget platforms. In addition, John writes weekly product reviews and blogs (over ten years old) for www.gamedev.net from his home office where he lives with his wife and daughter in their home in the woods near Lake Grapevine in Texas.
Finally, some complaint as opposed to the typical "I love being a game dev; it's challenging and I learn a lot everyday"
In terms of 3D, I always find good cartoon/artistic shading better than photo-realism, as they make me nostalgic for the classic titles and can be more artistic. ( Read my thoughts the artistic aspect of 8bit games here: http://jerhua.allhyper.com/JH/nintendo ) Perhaps you can prepare yourself in that?
Check out the recent 'picture of the day' feature; from there you can find that one manned development is alive and are cranking out amazing graphics.
The magic of these nicely rendered pictures (and your temporary intimidation) can be dispelled once one understands the relevant academic papers.
Quote:Original post by johnhattan One day I decided to learn how to build houses. Then I saw the Taj Mahal and realized that I could never make something that elaborate. So I gave up.
Eloquent and reassuring! Thank you.
my siteGenius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration
I'm just developing simple things, just mostly a hobby. I don't see myself making any 3D although I know the basic 3D stuff.
I don't think I'll ever understand this attitude. Programming in 3d isn't really inherently more difficult than programming in 2d, although there's a bit more math involved. Hell, usually the best way to design a 2d game is to use a 3d library like Direct3D anyway.
Anyway, I guess it really doesn't matter. 3d is severely over-used in my opinion. For the most part, 3d is only appropriate when you either want the 3d 'look' or you're designing a game that actually requires it for gameplay reasons. In a lot of ways, though, 3d games can be easier for small teams since texture artists and modellers seem more common than any other type of game artist.
Not making a game because you can't be as good as the latest Unreal engine is like not taking part in any sport because you'll never play in a world-level tournament. But anyway, it is possible still to create amazing graphics with just one person - check out "Gang Wars" in the IOTD forum. If you join a hobbyist team you can get even more done - and remember writing an amazing 3D engine takes ID years.
Personally, that's a rather ironic view for a programmer. Technology advances and it makes you more productive. If all you are going to do is what you were doing before then it makes your job less challenging. That's your choice. You became capable of doing more and choose not to. A game engine is no differant than the STL, DirectX, Windows and countless other API's/libraries.
Keys to success: Ability, ambition and opportunity.
I don't know how on-topic this is, but this might be a good time to bring up procedural content creation.
Check out Spore by Will Wright (The Sims guy). Almost everything in Spore is procedurally generated. I'm not really much into Sim games or even The Sims, but this is going to be a very big deal. Since everything is created as you see it, essentially the player is made into the graphics artist.
With all of the money that goes into hand-crafted content with this level of graphics, it will soon be much cheaper to invest in a "content-creation-engine" more general than what's in Spore.
When this happens on a large scale, we'll either see much better games because artists are freed from the trappings of tedium, or we'll see much worse games because any chump can just dial up a scenario with full physics and high-range dynamic lighting and pretend it's as good as any other game.
XBox 360 gamertag: templewulf feel free to add me!
I am making my game, sure having pretty graphics is nice (and I will try to make them as good as possible). The whole reason for making a game (at least mine) is to make something that you would want to play... and maybe someone else will like it.
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