Some thoughts on games
Benjamin Kuo
game code to the public? Any developers who are way-past royalties
interested in such a thing? If you think about all of the thousands of
games which have come and gone because the lack of updates for machines,
and think of updated versions, immediately the game titles available
for your mac are doubled.
I doubt the likelihood of such a thing, but I sure wish all those great
adventures and simulations I had with my 128K had been expanded. It seems,
nowadays the lifetime of a game is about 3 months, then it is forever
lost from the commercial arena. The rare exceptions, like Dark Castle,
seem to be the only consistent players.
Benjamin (Still playing The Quest and Airborne) Kuo
And no one even really carries games anymore--just check out the mail
order ads...
Tng Tai Hou
thoughts I have on games which I would like to share:
1. I programmed in the Apple II era and owned one of my favorite
books - "Apple Arcade Games Design". I love the old games
such as Zaxxon and Defender and Sky Blazer and Alien Typhoon.
Even today I am still amazed by the animation and sound that
can be coaxed out of a 1Mhz 6502 with NOTHING ELSE!!!
2. On the previous note, I have posted an earlier msg on Video Pages.
Sadly, the number of video pages for page-flipped animation,
otherwise known as double-buffering, is not an Apple standard.
Video cards with 3meg of video ram have only 1 page no matter the mode.
3. Standard techniques in programming means relying on faster hardware
to make your Mac program run faster. This tranlates to more buck
for the bang.
4. Why can't some Mac game company put some of their defunct (?)
products in the public domain (such as Neon, a programming language
which became Yerk, a public domain version now maintained and upgraded
freely)? The game Mazewar would be a great candidate. Whatever happened
to it?
5. Lastly, I have the b&w Colony for two years. I have seen screen shots
of a color version in MacWorld (1988). Can anyone please shed some
light on this? I understood that the gaming system used to create it
was shown in one of the MacWorld conference in 1989. What happened?
On the PC, Amiga, and Atari ST world, there is a very good 3DCK - or
3D Construction Kit which was used to create 4 top best selling games
before the authors decided to sell their game creation system.
Flame me.
Tng TaiHou
Tantalus
>And no one even really carries games anymore--just check out the mail
>order ads...
Heck, no one WRITES games for the Mac anymore. For about the last two years,
the market has been dead.
Unknown
>
> The pace of releases for the Macintosh has slowed considerably. I have to admit
> that their have been quite a few ports put out lately, (see Guy Kawasaki for
> a good definition of what a 'port' is :-) but the number of ground-breaking
> games that have been designed to take advantage of the Macintosh's strong
> points has nose-dived noticably since I got my first Mac.
>
> The simple fact here is that the number of new, unique, Mac first released,
> programs like Dark Castle, Crystal Quest, The Ancient Art of War, and The Colony
> have declined steadily every year since the Sculley-Gassee putsch at Apple.
> The Mac does not have the Market share in the home-computer arena to support
> more than a few new games every year. Any software author can make considerably
> more money by having 15% of the Windows market vs a 90% share of the Mac market.
If my memory serves me correctly, there are 4-5 milion or so copies of windows out
there which puts that market at roughly the same size as the Mac, albeit less
mature. Having developed for both platforms I can say that programing for windows
is roughly as annoying (for games) to program as the mac. Most of these companies
roll their own portable GUI (in some cases pseudo-GUI) with which they can move to
any number of platforms. As you alluded to below, these GUIs tend to be
the least common denominator of DOS, Amiga, Apple II, and Mac. Hence on the Mac
we get those ports that we have all come to know and love. (sorry, there are a
few decent ports out there.) There are people who have portable APIs (Application
Programmer Interfaces) for Mac, Windows, and Unix GUIs, but I don't think we will
see any Mac/Windows/UNIX GUI based games until the GUI market as a whole
is much larger.
> Nearly every Software Publisher is moving toward a cross-platform,
> lowest common denominator strategy designed to maximize sales per unit
> of innovation. (See IBM, DEC, Apple, Sun, Microsoft, Adobe, Lotus, Aldus,
> Claris, Symantec, Novell, Farallon, CE Software, and Electronic Arts
> for specific examples.)
>
>
Cheers
Chris Warren
#include <standard disclamer.h> // these babblings are my own opinions, only my opinions,
// and nothing but my opinions :-)
J. Taggart Gorman
I didn't want to get invloved, but injustices have been done...
<flame on>
In article <1991Sep4.1...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> sjhg...@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Tantalus) writes:
>bk...@aludra.usc.edu (Benjamin Kuo) writes:
>
>>And no one even really carries games anymore--just check out the mail
>>order ads...
You ever heard of Mac's Place? They _always_ have the new games, months
before Mac Connection or any of the others do.
>Heck, no one WRITES games for the Mac anymore. For about the last two years,
>the market has been dead.
In the last two years : OIDS, Armor Alley, Spaceward Ho, Spectre, Three in 3,
Railroad Tychoon, Harpoon, SimEarth, RoboSport. Just to name a few of my
favorites...
Sure, some are ports, but them some are at first Mac only, but good enuf to
get ported elsewhere (Sim series, and I bet SpHo will get ported..).
Come one dude, now that color is becoming standard, the games are getting
better by the month.
Sheesh!
<flame off>
|--------------------------------| "Pretend that we blew up all the schools.
| J. Taggart Gorman Jr. | Now that you're dead, what are you going
| jtgo...@caslon.cs.arizona.edu | to do with the rest of your life?"
|--------------------------------| - Christian Slater, in _Heathers_
James Hague
>
> Come one dude, now that color is becoming standard, the games are getting
>better by the month.
> Sheesh!
But aren't more Mac Classics being sold than all other Macs combined?
(Especially now that you can get one for $799). There's still a
tremendous market for games with B&W support...
--
James Hague
exu...@exu.ericsson.se
Tantalus
that their have been quite a few ports put out lately, (see Guy Kawasaki for
a good definition of what a 'port' is :-) but the number of ground-breaking
games that have been designed to take advantage of the Macintosh's strong
points has nose-dived noticably since I got my first Mac.
The simple fact here is that the number of new, unique, Mac first released,
programs like Dark Castle, Crystal Quest, The Ancient Art of War, and The Colony
have declined steadily every year since the Sculley-Gassee putsch at Apple.
The Mac does not have the Market share in the home-computer arena to support
more than a few new games every year. Any software author can make considerably
more money by having 15% of the Windows market vs a 90% share of the Mac market.
Nearly every Software Publisher is moving toward a cross-platform,
Steve Dakin
> Any software author can make considerably more money by
> having 15% of the Windows market vs a 90% share of the Mac
> market.
So often when reading these Mac games posts I hear people
bantering about money, and how little one might make for
writing Mac games. Does money have to be such a driving
force. I certainly feel for the guy supporting his wife
and kids by hacking away on killer games. But it just
doesn't seem like the financial rewards should be such an
important issue for the most part. I am currently writing
an adventure game in my free time (outside of my job), and
although progress is slow, I am still optimistic for a
completion date of early next year. So far response from
my testers has been very encouraging. I am writing this
because it beats watching wheel of fortune and other
forms of time-wasting. I don't expect to get rich off it,
and I don't make the monetary gains a primary motivation
for my development. If I can release a game that people
will enjoy, then I will consider it a success. So let's try
to appeal to the spirit of creating Mac games and praise
the software authors who write Mac games for the love of
writing Mac games. It's how all great works are achieved -
look at Mozart and Poe to name a couple (NO, I am not
considering myself in that category, but high
aspirations can be healthy). Let's try to leave all this
money talk behind.
There, I've said it. I put myself on the stake - flame away...
Steve
--
Steve Dakin sdd%oce...@uunet.uu.net
Oceania Health Care Systems (NeXT mail)
Palo Alto, CA
Juri Munkki
>So often when reading these Mac games posts I hear people
>bantering about money, and how little one might make for
>writing Mac games. Does money have to be such a driving
>force.
I started writing STORM about three years ago. I first worked on it for
a few weeks (maybe three weeks) and then dropped the whole project
because I got a programming job that took all my time. I resumed
writing STORM only about a year ago. If someone had paid me for doing
it, I would have completed it in six months.
Would you rather have me writing two games per year or one game in three years?
Games are quite easy to write once you understand how to optimize low level
graphics routines. The rest is just hard work (it took me an average of
4-5 hours to edit one sound effect for STORM and it takes the same amount
of time to edit a bitmap of a spaceship or the vector shape of a monster).
I like to write code for the graphics routines, but I lack time to edit
the sounds and graphics to my satisfaction.
____________________________________________________________________________
/ Juri Munkki / Helsinki University of Technology / Wind / Project /
/ jmu...@hut.fi / Computing Center Macintosh Support / Surf / STORM /
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ed johnson
>In article <1991Sep6.1...@oceania.UUCP> sdd%oce...@uunet.uu.net writes:
>>So often when reading these Mac games posts I hear people
>>bantering about money, and how little one might make for
>>writing Mac games. Does money have to be such a driving
>>force.
>I started writing STORM about three years ago. I first worked on it for
>a few weeks (maybe three weeks) and then dropped the whole project
>because I got a programming job that took all my time. I resumed
>writing STORM only about a year ago. If someone had paid me for doing
>it, I would have completed it in six months.
...
>Games are quite easy to write once you understand how to optimize low level
>graphics routines. The rest is just hard work (it took me an average of
>4-5 hours to edit one sound effect for STORM and it takes the same amount
>of time to edit a bitmap of a spaceship or the vector shape of a monster).
...
Would you be willing to write up your experiences/a tutorial on this?
That is something I would readily pay a ShareWare fee for (as opposed
to a game which I like, but don't really have time to play). How
about it? Maybe you can even link up with Ben Haller and publish a book! :)
> ____________________________________________________________________________
> / Juri Munkki / Helsinki University of Technology / Wind / Project /
> / jmu...@hut.fi / Computing Center Macintosh Support / Surf / STORM /
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ed Johnson
James Hague
>
>Games are quite easy to write once you understand how to optimize low level
>graphics routines. The rest is just hard work (it took me an average of
>4-5 hours to edit one sound effect for STORM and it takes the same amount
>of time to edit a bitmap of a spaceship or the vector shape of a monster).
IMO, the hard part is the game DESIGN. It's very difficult to develop
a completely new game concept from scratch, even if you never actually
program it. This explains all the clone games on the market. Of
course, the programming, art, and sound/music are no piece of cake
either...
--
James Hague
exu...@exu.ericsson.se
James Hague
>bantering about money, and how little one might make for
>writing Mac games. Does money have to be such a driving
>force. I certainly feel for the guy supporting his wife
>and kids by hacking away on killer games. But it just
>doesn't seem like the financial rewards should be such an
>important issue for the most part.
Amen. If you look at the dedicated home video game market (Genesis,
etc.) you can see what happens when video games become Big Business.
The sole concern seems to be with making money--quality isn't
important. When you get involved in the money making fray you run into
all sorts of problems. You have to write a game which is fairly "safe"
and fits into a neatly defined category. You have to have a gimmick or
a movie tie-in to grab attention. You have to work under the pressure
of unrealistic schedules, etc.
The little guy can keep his artistic integrity (if you'll pardon the
phrase), and can actually spend time designing a really fun & original
game, whereas the big software producers keep pumping out King Leisure
Suit Larry's Space Quest sequels and flight simulators and Ultima
clones and lame graphics adventures. The biggest mistake the
small-time game designer can make is to try to imitate the big guys.
Anyhow, I agree--if you are only writing games for the money, then you
shouldn't be writing games.
--
James Hague
exu...@exu.ericsson.se
Chris Waters
frequently in this and the mac programming forum, what is it?
Asbestos Bob
Nicely approached by a group of Finnish programmers who didn't
have the motivation to completely 'Finnish' it.
(Hey, get it, Finnish it? Heheheheh. OK, I'll shut up now. :-)
Todd Green
>A Tempest clone.
>Nicely approached by a group of Finnish programmers who didn't
>have the motivation to completely 'Finnish' it.
Har, har, har :)
Actually the game is just the icing on the cake. If my understanding
is correct, it is a set of (shareware) routines that provide graphics
and sound support to developers.
I'd know more if I got some mail from Jurri. Oh, Jurri...my mbox is
getting lonely ;) ;) ;) (Seriously, how's the beta testing going?)
Just an impatient person trying to find one more way to avoid
homework,
Todd
--
Internet: tag...@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu
NeXTMail: tag...@anasazi.ucs.indiana.edu
BitNet: tag...@iubacs.bitnet
Carl Baltrunas & Cherie Marinelli 1.5
In article <1991Sep6.2...@exu.ericsson.se>, exu...@exu.ericsson.se (James Hague) writes:
> Juri Munkki writes:
> >
> >Games are quite easy to write once you understand how to optimize low level
> >graphics routines. The rest is just hard work (it took me an average of
> >4-5 hours to edit one sound effect for STORM and it takes the same amount
> >of time to edit a bitmap of a spaceship or the vector shape of a monster).
>
> IMO, the hard part is the game DESIGN. It's very difficult to develop
> a completely new game concept from scratch, even if you never actually
> program it. This explains all the clone games on the market. Of
> course, the programming, art, and sound/music are no piece of cake
> either...
>
Yep, in an earlier post by me I described a game I had designed that took
the adventure concept another step [which, I HAVE NOT seen anyone else do YET]
(although there are multi-player, modem/network based games, they appear to
all be the SAME game with various scenerios...).
Although, most NEW games that catch on, most people say: I could have thought
of that... why didn't I?
The reason is that it is HARD WORK to think of something in a different way
and make a game of it. Me, I try to find humour and something to pass the
time in eveything, and so I find it difficult to decide what OTHER people
might like in a game and the things I think are great, apparently no one else
is working on... games that evolve!
Anyone interested on working on these kinds of games, feel free to contact
me.
-Carl
Carl A Baltrunas - Catalyst Art
Cherie Marinelli - Bijoux
Internet: {carl or cherie}@udwarf.tymnet.com
{carl or cherie}%udw...@tardis.tymnet.com
UUCP:uunet!oliveb!tymix!udwarf!{carl or cherie}
Derek LeLash
have come out lately, but I was too busy playing Vette and PGA Golf and
Robosport. Sorry. :-)
Derek
--
Derek LeLash, WOFM (tm LL) | "The reason I'm still [making records] is
| because I love it. Also, they haven't told
de...@netcom.com 408-739-5526 | me where the studio door is."
| -- Stevie Wonder
Steve Baumgarten
Amen. If you look at the dedicated home video game market (Genesis,
etc.) you can see what happens when video games become Big Business.
The sole concern seems to be with making money--quality isn't
important. When you get involved in the money making fray you run into
all sorts of problems. You have to write a game which is fairly "safe"
and fits into a neatly defined category. You have to have a gimmick or
a movie tie-in to grab attention. You have to work under the pressure
of unrealistic schedules, etc.
I wouldn't mind having Sonic the Hedgehog for my Mac. Or Klax.
There are some fairly decent home video games out there, though of
course there are a lot of really bad ones, too. But consider: huge
market, no worries about loss of sales due to pirating, uniform
hardware base. Which market would you rather develop games for?
--
Steve Baumgarten | "New York... when civilization falls apart,
Davis Polk & Wardwell | remember, we were way ahead of you."
baum...@esquire.dpw.com |
cmcl2!esquire!baumgart | - David Letterman
James Preston
}So often when reading these Mac games posts I hear people
}bantering about money, and how little one might make for
}writing Mac games. Does money have to be such a driving
}force. . .
}So let's try
}to appeal to the spirit of creating Mac games and praise
}the software authors who write Mac games for the love of
}writing Mac games. It's how all great works are achieved -
}look at Mozart and Poe to name a couple (NO, I am not
}considering myself in that category, but high
}aspirations can be healthy). Let's try to leave all this
}money talk behind.
This is a wonderful ideal, but unfortunately we live in the real world.
Game players want more and more sophistication and originality in their
games. Now it's true that the two don't necessarily go hand in hand, so
let's look at each:
To make a really sophisticated game like, say, Falcon, takes a _lot_ of work.
Most amateur game programmers just don't have the time or energy to do that.
If it's your job and you're getting paid up front, that's another matter.
Sure there are exceptions to this like Solarian, but they are far between
and, I think, require an exceptionally dedicated amateur programmer.
Original game concepts do not necessarily require lots of sophisticated
programming to implement, but they are also very hard to come up with.
Again, most amateurs just don't have the time (or, dare I say it, the
expertise) to come up with something really new. Again, there are exceptions
extant.
Another aspect that I can speak to from personal experience is that there
needs to be _some_ kind of a reward beyond the personal satisfaction of
having written a game. The reward doesn't have to be monetary, it can be
"merely" the knowledge that you have written something that many others
have derived enjoyment from. But how can the author get that knowledge?
As I see it, there are really only two ways: Feedback on a forum such as
this, or the shareware fees.
I wrote a game a few months ago called Chello. I sent it out as shareware
asking all of $5 for it. It certainly was nothing original, I wholly ripped
off the concept from Ataxx, but I wrote it in the spirit you suggest above:
not for money, but just because I thought I could do a good job of translating
that game onto the Mac. So far, there have been no comments whatsoever on
this newsgroup about it, and I have received a total of three shareware
payments. The only conclusion that I can draw from this is that no one
really cared much about the game. If I had received 20 or even 10 payments,
I'd be _much_ happier and would be much more likely to start work on another
game. The $100 or $50 amounts to almost nothing, but knowing that 10 or
20 people liked the game enough to take the time to send off the check
would give me the reward that that I spoke of above.
So maybe Chello really wasn't interesting to anyone, and I should stick
to writing calculator tools (18 people have paid for that). I hope the
above didn't sound like whining, my point was only to illustrate that maybe
the reason you don't see more labors of love is that the rewards -- monetary
or otherwise -- aren't there. I'm agreeing with what you wrote when you said,
"let's . . . praise the software authors who write Mac games..."
--James Preston
Steve Dakin
Preston) writes:
> sdd%oce...@uunet.uu.net (Steve Dakin) writes:
>>
>> [comments about importance of money deleted].
>>
> To make a really sophisticated game like, say, Falcon, takes a _lot_ of work.
> Most amateur game programmers just don't have the time or energy to do that.
Very good point, indeed. I think you hit upon an area I completely missed in
my previous post. There are some projects that no matter how much "love of
programming" one threw in, just could not be done by a single person. Vette!
is a good example.
> [poor response to shareware program comments deleted]
I am very sorry to hear yet another lack of success story with shareware.
> ... my point was only to illustrate that maybe
> the reason you don't see more labors of love is that the rewards -- monetary
> or otherwise -- aren't there. I'm agreeing with what you wrote when you said,
> "let's . . . praise the software authors who write Mac games..."
>
> --James Preston
Two key points come to mind after reading James Preston's comments:
Writing games for the Mac takes more hard work than most programmers are
willing to put forth. Granted there is a reason since rewards, for the most
part, are not proportional to effort. This is where the "labor of love" factor
comes into play. It may be an ideal, but that factor is needed to balance the
work/reward ratio.
In order to increase rewards, demand must rise. I read so many posts in this
group, that I am often mislead that the Mac games market is bigger than it is.
One must keep in mind the importance of supporting Mac games authors of all
shapes and sizes, knowing that down the road bigger and better games will
follow.
Steve
--
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Steve Dakin | |
| sdd%oce...@uunet.uu.net | "You removed my hippocampus? When?" |
| (NeXT mail) | |
James Hague
>
>I wouldn't mind having Sonic the Hedgehog for my Mac. Or Klax.
>
>There are some fairly decent home video games out there, though of
>course there are a lot of really bad ones, too. But consider: huge
>market, no worries about loss of sales due to pirating, uniform
>hardware base. Which market would you rather develop games for?
Yes, there are some fairly good home video games kicking around
(definitely agree with Klax). And all three points that you mentioned
are valid. But getting into the market is expensive--you have to lay
down a good amount of cash to get involved. So naturally your number
one goal will be to make good money, and if you can do that by writing
a mediocre game and slapping the name Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on
the box, then so be it. You can't afford to be innovative, etc., until
you really get yourself established (as Nintendo has done). Personal
computers give hobbyist programmers a crack at game design without
bending to market pressures. 'Course they'll never get rich...
This is getting way off the subject of Macs so I'll go back into
my corner...
--
James Hague
exu...@exu.ericsson.se
Ingemar Ragnemalm
>sdd%oce...@uunet.uu.net (Steve Dakin) writes:
>}So let's try
>}to appeal to the spirit of creating Mac games and praise
>}the software authors who write Mac games for the love of
>}writing Mac games.
>Another aspect that I can speak to from personal experience is that there
>needs to be _some_ kind of a reward beyond the personal satisfaction of
>having written a game. The reward doesn't have to be monetary, it can be
>"merely" the knowledge that you have written something that many others
>have derived enjoyment from. But how can the author get that knowledge?
>As I see it, there are really only two ways: Feedback on a forum such as
>this, or the shareware fees.
>I wrote a game a few months ago called Chello. I sent it out as shareware
>asking all of $5 for it. It certainly was nothing original, I wholly ripped
>off the concept from Ataxx, but I wrote it in the spirit you suggest above:
>not for money, but just because I thought I could do a good job of translating
>that game onto the Mac. So far, there have been no comments whatsoever on
>this newsgroup about it, and I have received a total of three shareware
>payments.
There isn't much discussion about *any* of the mid-range pd/shareware stuff,
probably because there isn't much to say. I downloaded Chello, played it a
few times, and thought it was nice. What more is there to say? I would
probably mention it if I made a list of worthwhile shareware games.
My only released game so far is "Bikaka", my hexagonal tetris. (Hextris the
way I believe it should have been done.) That one hasn't been mentioned here
either (other than in the Tetris review I wrote myself). Why should it, as
long as we don't discuss Tetris again?
Just to make sure I would get some feedback, I released it as freeware/
postcardware (with a side note for the real addicts). I got a few E-mail
responses, not lots of them, but enough to make a new version. (Real hexes
this time. :-)
I believe it is easier to send some comments to the creator of a *free* game
than to the creator of a shareware game, since you don't have to make any
excuses about why you didn't pay. Thus, if I release a quick hack I don't
ask for cash. If I ever make something as good as Glider, then I might ask
for money.
>The only conclusion that I can draw from this is that no one
>really cared much about the game. If I had received 20 or even 10 payments,
>I'd be _much_ happier and would be much more likely to start work on another
>game. The $100 or $50 amounts to almost nothing, but knowing that 10 or
>20 people liked the game enough to take the time to send off the check
>would give me the reward that that I spoke of above.
I liked your game, but not enough to go through the trouble of figuring out
how to send money to someone overseas.
>"let's . . . praise the software authors who write Mac games..."
Oh, one more thing. Our favourite game for the Mac, at home, is the old
card game Hearts 0.8 by Fractal Software. Why? Not because it has fancy
graphics or because it is very original, but because it is such a challenge
to beat it. Praise and glory to the programmer of Hearts 0.8!
--
Ingemar Ragnemalm
Dept. of Electrical Engineering ...!uunet!mcvax!enea!rainier!ingemar
..
University of Linkoping, Sweden ing...@isy.liu.se
Stan Shebs
the subject is specialized, or because players are casual and move on to
the next thing after a while, even if they are temporarily obsessed with
the game (true even for board games - there are many more occasional chess
players than USCF members).
The right thing to do, then, is to simplify the process of building games
and especially move the focus to implementing game rules and artwork,
rather than spending one's time in Macsbug. Right now the situation is
as if you didn't have MacDraw and had to produce a drawing by writing and
debugging a C program that generated it (seems ludicrous, but people actually
worked this way a few years ago). You can be more profitable even with
a small market, if you don't have to charge for all the programming time,
which costs big bucks, even if you're doing nothing more than mindlessly
re-creating saved game reading and writing for the umpteenth time.
Part of my current research interest includes ways to make this happen.
Used to be it had to be cast in terms of "serious" applications, but with
the new emphasis on consumers, it's once again become OK to talk about
games and how to support game developers better. Stay tuned...
(Of course, this is just my personal take on the situation and doesn't
constitute any sort of official statement!)
Stan Shebs
Apple ATG System Software
sh...@apple.com
Steve Dakin
> The right thing to do, then, is to simplify the process of building games
> and especially move the focus to implementing game rules and artwork,
> rather than spending one's time in Macsbug.
Amen. I almost mistakingly called my girlfriend TMON due to numerous hours
spent with said debugger during the wee hours of the morning - OK, so I'm
kidding, but it gets my point across.
I'd also like to add that, although programming the Mac can decrease one's life
expectancy, it does get much, much easier with time. During the course of
writing a game for the Mac, I have learned new ways to implement various parts
of the game that, had I known they existed, would have saved me many hours
early on. Perseverance seems to be a key here.
> Part of my current research interest includes ways to make this happen.
How did you get so lucky?
> Used to be it had to be cast in terms of "serious" applications, but with
> the new emphasis on consumers, it's once again become OK to talk about
> games and how to support game developers better. Stay tuned...
I will!
Steve
--
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Steve Dakin | Oceania Health Care Systems |
| sdd%oce...@uunet.uu.net | Palo Alto, CA |
| (NeXT mail) | "You removed my hippocampus? When?" |
Blair M. Burtan
saying: "Mathemeticians stand on each other's shoulders, Computer
Scientists stand on each other's toes." Basically, everyone is out to
make a buck. Nothing wrong with that, but there are ways to combine
making a buck and help out your fellow developers. There are authors
out there who have written some impressive code, OIDSs, Lunatic Fringe,
and Solarian come to mind. Wouldn't it make sense for these authors to
try selling libraries of this code so that others could build on what
they've done rather than re-inventing the wheel all the time? I'd spend
$200 for hot-shot animation library routines. Just my opinion.
- Bear
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+---------------------------------------------+
+ "Software is like entropy. +
+ It weighs nothing and always increases." +
+ +
+ Blair M. Burtan: be...@bucsf.bu.edu +
+---------------------------------------------+
Steve Dakin
> Well, all this discussion on game production can be summed up by the old
> saying: "Mathemeticians stand on each other's shoulders, Computer
> Scientists stand on each other's toes." Basically, everyone is out to
> make a buck.
> I'd spend $200 for hot-shot animation library routines. Just my opinion.
>
> - Bear
But then the author would be "out to make a buck" (in addition to helping
others), now wouldn't he? Sorry, had to ask...
Anyhow, I am writing a game, and I am not out to make a buck - so you can't say
"everyone" when making such accusations. It may sound like I am totally
against Bear's comments. This is not the case. I agree that too many people
only care about money, and may not feel inclined to help what they might
perceive as "the competition". I would love to see some kind of code sharing
or access to library routines. There are lots of stuff that others have done
that could benefit my pursuits, and I might have something that someone else
could benefit from. I don't know how to go about setting up such a system, but
the current one of simply posting questions here and in c.s.m.programmer seems
to be a start, albeit a somewhat limited one.
Happy Mac hacking, may we see many new and exciting Mac games!
Ben Haller
>saying: "Mathemeticians stand on each other's shoulders, Computer
>Scientists stand on each other's toes." Basically, everyone is out to
>make a buck. Nothing wrong with that, but there are ways to combine
>making a buck and help out your fellow developers. There are authors
>out there who have written some impressive code, OIDSs, Lunatic Fringe,
>and Solarian come to mind. Wouldn't it make sense for these authors to
>try selling libraries of this code so that others could build on what
>they've done rather than re-inventing the wheel all the time? I'd spend
>$200 for hot-shot animation library routines. Just my opinion.
Ah, but I'd charge you much more for the source to Solarian, if in fact I
was willing to sell it at all. You see, the problem is that the animation
routines are the core of a game. They are "the hard bit". Writing Lunatic
Fringe, around half of my time went to importing and exporting tools for
the graphics, and making the actual graphics. Almost all the rest went to
writing the animation routines. The time it took to build "logic" over the
animation routines, to make things fire and turn and take damage, was
really inconsequential. A few days work. I think this was less true of
Solarian II, since its game play is so much more complex than LFs, and
since its animation routines are so much more primitive, but I would still
say those routines were the hardest part. The logic is just a big state
machine, and as such is child's play to write.
Now, the more optimistic say "Oh, that's great! That means that if you
sold the source to your animation routines, there would be a huge explosion
of high-quality color games all of a sudden!" This may well be true, but
this is exactly the problem. I depend on the quality of my code to make a
living. The money I get to pay my rent is derived almost exclusively from
the fact that nobody else (or few others, to be less categorical) have
exactly the same knowledge and experience that I have. If I give all that
away, I will be unemployed and will receive no more shareware checks for
Solarian. So I would have to sell my knowledge at a very high price. You
say you'd be willing to pay $200 for my source. Casady & Greene, last I
checked, are willing to sell the source to the sound code of Crystal Quest
for $1000 (I hope I'm not misrepresenting them, Mr. Greene as I recall said
this to me at the SF MacWorld over a year ago). Would you be willing to
pay $5000 or $10000 for source to animation routines? This is not greed;
this is compensation to me for the fact that a game you write with my
code would cost me at least this much in profits. And I am not a rich man.
Another, more technical reason is that different games require completely
different animation routines. Solarian II's animation routines are utterly
different from LFs, and if I were to write another game, those routines
would be different again. To the user, the effect is always "things moving
around", but there are a huge variety of ways to implement this in practice,
and the exact design of the game dictates which method makes the most sense.
This is not nitpicking; this is reality. *General* animation routines?
Use QuickDraw. That's the long and short of it.
-Ben Haller (dea...@garnet.berkeley.edu)