i've basically stopped game programming

I have been feeling bored with 3D game programming...I got so damn far on my own in just high school, more than most college students, but the intensity of it all just broke me down after a while...but then I started watching some interviews with John Carmack, and he was starting to talk about all of this technical stuff about optimizing stencil shadow volumes and re building binary space partition trees without regenerating vertices, and a 'general triangle re-optimizer', and I didn't realize how far I had come until I watched that interview and knew exactly what he was talking about. I wish game programming had ANY appeal left, because I basically just hate it now, but yet I've got SO DAMN FAR ON MY OWN. Nowadays you basically have to write a Doom3 renderer with all of the intense graphics stuff in order to have written something worthwhile (and, yes, I know of 3 people that are doing just that with much success) and it's just lost all of the fun, because now when I add something I don't think "wow, hey, that's neat" instead I think "wow, that sucks, I should've written something better, heck I didn't even INVENT this because somebody has already programmed this before...i suck"

Hey man games are not just about graphics. Lots of modern games have great graphics but just plain suck. So do your best on the graphics but if your game is fun and addicting then haven't you accomplished your mission??

No one cares if it uses the newest algos or the fastest. They only care if its stable, fun, and addicting.

Take heart, bud, and get back into it. We need ya.

:)

don't get discouraged man. I think your falling into all the hype about gaming. Check this out. Hopefully you feel better after.


By the way: This quote

Quote:

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and just to show off, here's some of my ray tracing code for colliding particles against brushes in a binary space partitioned world!

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is classic. I wanna use it for my signature or something. it shows just how much ou know, and the code you poseted was pretty nice too.:D

i like that article, its inspiring realy :)

Excellent article and having grown up with those games I agree wholeheartedly. Games today lack a lot of gameplay. There is more gameplay in some of the old games that barely took up 128KB of ram than there are in some of the gigantic 250MB behemoths that rule your hard drive today.

Great graphics, sounds, algorithms, AI, pathfinding, visual effects, cutscenes, etc.,etc. do NOT make a good game.

Live by it or die by it. Many companies have chosen the latter.

IMHO it seems that limited budgets and resources often lead to higher quality, intuitive, ingenious, well-thought out entertainment products - this includes movies as well. When you give a director everything he wants, we find out that everything he wants is not necessarily everything that makes a good movie, game, song, or whatever it is.

Try to code a fun, addictive game in less than 128 KB. If you can do it then I believe you have prob mastered the art of making games and have earned the right to use all the modern resources available to you.

Case in point: I loved Nintendo's RC Pro Am so much that I went out and bought a used Nintendo system, used controllers, and a used RC Pro Am game just so I could once again play it. Isn't that what it's all about?

nice article. hey Silvercord, stick with it man. i'm a senior cs major and taking my first graphics course this semester and it sounds like you probably know more than 90% of the students in my class (and actually half of em are grad students). just keep setting your goals higher and higher (geezz i probably sound like your parent but seriously your like ahead of most people so don't throw that away). anyway, i'm new to this board (my first post); like i mentioned previously i'm taking my first comp graphics class and will be probably seeking a lot of help here in the near future ;)

Quote:

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because now when I add something I don't think "wow, hey, that's neat" instead I think "wow, that sucks, I should've written something better, heck I didn't even INVENT this because somebody has already programmed this before...i suck"

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Yeah, that's been happening to me a lot lately as well. It's discouraging. What helps, for me at least, is developing projects in a unique manner and adding more abstraction, so even though stuff you've done produces results similar to other people's, you know that your design is probably completely different, and can usually be much better. I've found that the way to enjoy game programming (or any complex app) is to embrace the design over everything else.
One example that I've done this year for our project is n-dimensional systems. I've started doing all calculations and data storage modular through templating by dimension and type. So, I can do n-dimensional binary space partitioning (2D, 3D, 9D, etc), and have completely n-dimensional collisions, all optimized at compile time through metaprogramming.
Sure, other people can make games, and other people have done binary space partitioning, so completing it is gratifying yet still lacks some, but by taking the concept and adding a twist to it to take it to a higher level, you get much more gratification from the fact that your design is unique and modular.
The same logic goes for any type of programming, not just games. I strongly feel that when you program, you have to think of your code design as an art and treat it as such, otherwise it can seem like a creative but mundane task that has already been done before by other people. If you look at it as an art, you know that you can produce something similar to someone else, but in a completely different style. When you think about it like that, it makes your projects seem much more interesting, at least it does for me.
Unfortunately, only programmers get to see the artistic side of coding, which again can be discouraging. It's just something you have to get comfortable with.


also, I remember that exact thread from your signature!!! Gotta credit Leeman_s :p

http://cboard.cprogramming.com/showt...g&pagenumber=4

First off you guys are all awesome, very supportive and very cool.

About what poly said, I always have an extremely difficult time making a great design. I don't actually use too many hacks, but the way I code is usually very simple. I cannot seem to come up with a very flexible and object oriented system, I wish I could, but I can't.
I can effectively use polymorphism and inheritance to an extent. For example, every object that has a Position and a collision hull in my engine is a WorldObject, such as ammo boxes and enemies, and they all have to override some pure virtual functions such as a TouchFunc (what happens when you touch it, i.e a door opens when you touch it), FrustumTest (how to determine if this object is visible, i.e with a bounding box or a sphere, or not rendered at all), and a simple Update function (for example, moving objects such as sliding doors update the amount of time they have been moving). I've got a very modular design in this case which makes it easy to add new entities, and subsequently I've a very interactive engine, but I can't make larger templated systems. I think if you read my code (which I can post a link to if you want) you will find it's dangerously messy (i.e i use extern way too much, but it works).

EDIT:
Oh, also, I remember the last thing I worked on : skeletal animation. my mind basically exploded when I tried to tie simple artificial intelligence together with the animations! I've programmed a matrix class, and it is functional enough that I can do all transformations in software if i need to, but I ran into so many problems with it.

Quote:

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also, I remember that exact thread from your signature!!! Gotta credit Leeman_s

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Yeah, the ray casting thread. I actually went to that thread to get a picture of BSP that you posted, because I have to make a presentation in Information Systems Technology about something, and I'm doing a project about building a 3D world, and I am enjoying explaining this stuff to people that are actually amazed at simple things (i.e how complicated a rotation matrix looks to a newbie)...that has been helping me get a more generalized feeling about this programming stuff, along with the support from you d00ds

I'm in the same boat as you Silvercoord. I cannot make complex polymorphic objects/systems. I will get so far and then I'm like wouldn't it just be easier to drop this inheritance/protection crapola? Often for me it seems the C++ more gets in the way than it helps but perhaps it is the way I'm using it. Time and time again I find that games do lend themselves to C++ but I'm leaning more and more towards a mixture of C and C++. For instance in my 2D scroller engine I ran into siginificant problems concerning DirectInput and the mouse. The mouse IMO should be a global object. If not you gotta pass the object to every stinking thing that needs to use the mouse which is a pain. Plus the mouse only uses one interface object from DirectInput so to derive the mouse from a DirectInput class would be a waste. So what I did was transform the DirectInput class into a struct and then placed a pointer to that struct in the mouse class. Not the best design probably, but it works for me and as long as it works for the user - who cares how I accomplished it?

C++ gets very confusing after a couple of inheritances and because of this I rarely get very deep with it. Plus C++ does not lend itself very well to be used in assembly language which I use quite a bit where I need speed. And I've heard time and time again that you needn't use assembly to gain speed only better algos but I'm telling you its not true. Profile after profile has proven that the correct use of assembly at the correct place can make a ton of difference - even on today's super fast systems.
Also from an assembly point of view it seems to me that C++ would use quite a few redundant calls not to mention calls that need not be used at all. Every time you call you lose speed because of the stack frame overhead, etc. Look at some virtual functions in C++ and trace how many calls you are doing. It is quite scary. As to how this fleshes out in the actual assembly code is rather hard to trace but there are more calls in C++ based on my limited disassemblies.

My theory is use what works. If an array works, then use it rather than a vector. If a BST works best then use it, but not all structure problems lend themselves well to BST's. Do you care how the nails got driven into the wood that your house is made of? No. Just the same, no user or gamer is ever going to care how you did it, just that they like the end result.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Silvercord
Yeah, the ray casting thread. I actually went to that thread to get a picture of BSP that you posted, because I have to make a presentation in Information Systems Technology about something, and I'm doing a project about building a 3D world, and I am enjoying explaining this stuff to people that are actually amazed at simple things (i.e how complicated a rotation matrix looks to a newbie)...that has been helping me get a more generalized feeling about this programming stuff, along with the support from you d00ds

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Ha, cool! I did a presentation like that for my high school senior year english class (we were allowed to choose any topic, but had to give an oral presentation for 40 minutes, so I did it on game development). It's awesome explaining programming and math stuff to people when they know nothing about it.

Bubba, I have run into similar problems, but I actually mimic the quake2 engine in terms of sharing resources...I've got a 'GameExport' class which links together all of the main objects that ever need to be used, and I just extern to it in every single file that needs to reference to it

Code:

---

class GameExport
{
public:
        FPS_t        mFPS;
        BSP                *mpBSP;
        Player        *mpPlayer;
        Frustum        mFrustum;
        GameExport();

               
                void                HandleCommands();        //Goes through saved commands and acts on them
                                                                        //Need some way to store parameters to commands, probably with
                                                                        //a simple templated class
       
                void                (*pGameCycle)(void);
               
                void                (*pRenderScene)(void);

                int                        CheckKeyBoard();
               
                void                CheckMessages();
                void                AddMessage(int);
                void                RequestMapChange(char*);
                void                ChangeRenderFunc(int); //changes pRenderScene to the memory address given
                void                ChangeGameCycleFunc(int); //changes pGameCycle to the memory address given
               
                void                ParseEntities(std::vector<VWorldObject*>*);
               
                void                SetEntityTeaming();
                void                ShutDown();
                void                KillEntities();
                void                KillBSP();
                int                        MapChange(char        *newmap); //Do anything to prevent re-loading the current?
                int                        StartUp(char        *mapname);

                std::vector<VWorldObject*>        mvWorldObjects;
                std::vector<int>                        mEngineCommands;
                char        *pCurrentMap;
                char        *pNewMap;
                int                IsStateTrue(int);
                inline        void        SetState(int);
                inline        void        DisableState(int);
                GlobalVars        mVars;
                unsigned        int        mGameStates;
                HDC                        hDC;
                HWND                hWnd;
                trigtable        mTrigTable;        //This builds sine and cosine tables upon startup -*
};

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that's another thing, i am bad with globals, I don't even use private in my classes. However, C++ is great if you use it properly, and technically yes there's some overhead, but it's a tool, and the cost is reasonable.


Poly, how's digipen treating you? I'm going into Engineering next year, I didn't even end up applying to digipen.

EDIT:
poly, do you want to see the presentation when I'm finished so you can see where I used your picture? It's a very dumbed down project so "normal" people can understand it :)

here's the presentation

http://www.thedevelopersalliance.com...orldLatest.zip

Just to lend my 2 cents, I have no real idea about what you are talking about yet (although I'm learning, its time consuming), but for the complicated object systems, an excellent idea is to use a singleton, this way all you don't actually need globals at all, and so much can be managed between anything.

In case you didn't know, a singleton is a special type of class that has its default constructor set to private, so you can only create a new one via a pointer. THe constructor in return, creates one new instance of the clas the first time its called, then returns that instance every other time. It's remarkbly efficent, and works quite well, I've seen it used a few times, and I highly reccomend it, it could solve a lot of problems :).

Except that the only time I see to use one....you'd could do just as well w/o a singleton.

It seems they are used just to keep the app in the C++ realm and nothing more. The same can be accomplished via the structures already provided with C.

thunder a singleton is one of those things that is pretty neat but doesn't ever seem to be absolutely necessary. In my engine, I just have a gameexport class, and I only make one instance of it. Works fine.

The point of a singleton is that, whenever you make you try to make a new instance of it, you get the first created instance(unless no previous one has been created). SO if you're singleton has say a variable for Time since program started(just a random example), so then it can be accessed everytime by simply creating a pointer of the singleton.

SingletonTime *Time = new SingletonTime();
Time.SetTime(GetTickCount());

thats in your main or winmain function, now all your other functions, objects etc. can go

Code:

---

void submain() {
SingletonTime *Time = new SingletonTime()l
cout << Time.getTime();
}

---

and it will print out your time you set in the main function, it works really well, and does allow really complicated systems.

I know how singletons work. And like I said, they're neat, but they're never absolutely necessary. Also, I don't know if you realize this or not, but your code isn't valid, because in a singleton class the constructor is made to be private...otherwise it isn't a singleton (you're allocating a new singleton in main, which is illegal to do because you cannot access the constructor, which is called when you invoke new). The actual object is a class data member, and subsequently resides only in the .h file of the class definition (you have to include that .h file in order to get the actual object).

All of that is, in my opinion, a pain in the ass :)

EDIT:
has anyone actually downloaded my presentation? It's pretty basic and not totally interesting if you already have a good bearing in 3D

I'm fully aware my code would not actually work that way, I do know the constructors are private(I think I said it in my previous post as well), I was just being lazy :D. I was also just trying to be helpful, I know some people who found it to be very much so, I wasn't trying to be mean or anything :(

Quote:

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All of that is, in my opinion, a pain in the ass

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Agreed.

Quote:

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I wasn't trying to be mean or anything

---

We know you weren't and no one said you were. It's just that as of late a great many of us have been talking about the more we get into C++ the more we dislike it because of certain major design problems it presents. IMHO Microsoft's COM and COM +, ActiveX, and/or now .NET is a much better object oriented approach than C++. Not to say that C++ does not have a lot of power or anything or is useless, but it is not easy to code large complex systems because you run into 'now this class needs to know about this class, but I don't wanna derive from this
class..so.......' All that does is confuse the crapola outta ya.

I actually tried to make a complete game in C++ and lemme tell ya by the time I actually got down to creating the game elements, there were so many inheritance issues and data protection issues that it was even confusing just trying to create a sprite object. Because a sprite is a bitmap either moving or stationary, and a sprite is a bitmap, and the bitmap should be able to draw itself which means it needs access to video, which is another class, blah, blah, blah. It was hideous.

class VideoSystem {};
class Bitmap:public VideoSystem {};
class BaseSprite:public VideoSystem, public Bitmap {};
class MovingSprite:public BaseSprite {};
class NonMovingSprite:public BaseSprite {};
class AnimatedSprite:public BaseSprite {};
class MovingAnimatedSprite:public AnimatedSprite {};
class NonMovingAnimatedSprite:public AnimatedSprite {};
class TileMap:public VideoSystem, public Bitmap {};
.....
...


You get the idea. A huge mess.

I do have a question - how do I project my vertices to screen space via a projection matrix? Currently all my rotations, scaling, translations, and transformations are done via matrices but my projection is done separately. I would like to do it via a matrix.


I know the projection matrix is this:

1 0 0 0
0 1 0 0
0 0 1 0
0 0 1/D 0

But can I use this concatenate function with it and if I can then where are the screen coords at in the final matrix??

Code:

---

void MatMult(double m1[4][4],double m2[4][4],double r[4][4])
}
  for (int i=0;i<4;i++)
  {
    for (int j=0;j<4;j++)
    {
      for (int k=0;k<4;k++)   
      {
        r[i][j]+=m1[i][k]*m2[k][j];
      }
    }
  }
}

---

I know I can unroll the inner loop but I didn't cuz the huge line of code would not fit well in this window.

And here is my Viewtransform code:

Code:

---

//Transforms world vertexes to view vertexes
void ViewTransform(vertex *vtxs,int numvtxs)
{
  for (int i=0;i<numvtxs;i++)
  {
    double x=vtxs[i].world.x;
    double y=vtxs[i].world.y;
    double z=vtxs[i].world.z;
   
    double vx=x*matrix[0][0]+y*matrix[0][1]+z*matrix[0][2]+matrix[0][3];
    double vy=y*matrix[1][0]+y*matrix[1][1]+z*matrix[1][2]+matrix[1][3];
    double vz=z*matrix[2][0]+y*matrix[2][1]+z*matrix[2][2]+matrix[2][3];
   
    vtxs[i].view.x=vx;
    vtxs[i].view.y=vy;
    vtxs[i].view.z=vz;
  }
}

---

Then my project function:

Code:

---

void Project(vertex *vtxs, int numvtxs,double vdist,int cx,int cy)
{
  for (int i=0;i<numvtxs;i++)
  {
    double vx=vtxs[i].view.x;
    double vy=vtxs[i].view.y;
    double vz=vtxs[i].view.z;
 
    double sx=vx*vdist/vz+cx;
    double sy=vy*vdist/vz+cy;
   
    vtxs[i].screen.x=sx;
    vtxs[i].screen.y=sy;
  }
}

---

But I want to project via the projection matrix using my concatenate or MatMult() function if possible. Note, I know DirectX and OpenGL do this for you but I want to know whats going on underneath it all - this is from my small DOS 3D engine written in DJGPP or 32-bit C.

Quote:

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I wasn't trying to be mean or anything

---

its cool buddy, I wasn't being defensive. To be honest, I was just being honest :)

Bubba, I know how to project vertices against the viewing plane, but I don't know what the equivalent matrix looks like to be honest, sorry. Just for your info, I've never written a software rasterizer like you have, subsequently I'm a bad resource for things like that (chances are if OpenGL takes care of it, I haven't worried about it too much)

EDIT:
hmm, I posted that without actually reading your project function. I don't know if you *can* directly turn those equations into a matrix by hand. I believe this because you aren't summing any terms, and matrices always sum terms even for simple things such as polar coordinates. I tried posting something else, but realized it wasn't useful. You'd have to do jumping jacks just to find an equivalent equation. I'd msdn for it, but otherwise I dunno :confused:

i just completed a project for my class that pretty much did what you are doing. given 3d points of objects in world reference coordinates; camera coordinates and orientation; and various transformations to be applied to the objects, my program is to render in image in screen coordinates. don't know if this info will help but given all the info i stated, i constructed matrices to peform the standard transformations (shear, rotate, translate, etc...), matrix for view coordinates, matrix for projection & normalized device coordinates, and finally device/screen coordinates. i basically put em all into a single composite matrix; then took all the given 3d points as homogenous coordinates; multiplied it with the composite matrix; homogenized the result (which should be a 4x1 matrix) and the screen coordinates are in (0,0) and (0,1) of the resultant 4x1 matrix. so i don't know if that answers your question to where the screen coordinates are; for my project they were simply in the "x" and "y" elements of the resultant 4x1 matrix (vector). and Yes, you should be able to concatenate all your matrices, from one end of the 3d pipeline to the other. i used a stack. before pushing down each matrix, i multiplied it with the top (this way i can pop down the stack to get to each stage of the 3d pipeline). i just used some general matrices given in a book, if you want them i can post em for you. as for how the projection matrix and normalized device coord matrices are derived, i can't really help you because i'm still trying to understand the mathematics behind it. hope it helps and good luck on the proj!

okay, you didn't answer his question. His concise question was 'what *matrix* can you use to project vertices through the screen'. He's already got a method for doing this without a matrix, as do i, but he specifically asked for a matrix.

The matrix is this:


1 0 0 0
0 1 0 0
0 0 1 0
0 0 1/D 0

where 1/d is distance from screen or:


screen.x=view.x*Distance/view.z+screencenter.x;
screen.y=view.y*Distance/view.z+screencenter.y;


But I want to concatenate the view matrix above into my concatenation pipeline using my 4x4 matrix multiply. However, I do not know where the resultant screen coords would be unless it would be 0,0 and 1,1....which would make sense.

I've used .NET and a few others (c#, asp.net, bunches of others), its not really any better, for the most part is worse. True there are some problems in C++, but I've never had any problem creting a large object systems, I thought it was fairly simple, however the nature of object orientated programming is that you will have bunches of objects that all somehow relate to a bunch of other objects, and in turn to more, it gets confusing at times. I always try to get my objects to relate to each other as much as possible, either through inheritance, or how they use each other, and it usually works fine.

However I do agree that there have been some good advances, that I do hope to see implemented more often in newer languages, and more advances made.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Silvercord
has anyone actually downloaded my presentation? It's pretty basic and not totally interesting if you already have a good bearing in 3D [/B]

---

Yes ive just dloaded it :)

its cool, im a complete n00b even to basic c++ so this is way over my head. you guys are amazing! :D

i really wanna be able to understand this stuff, but ill just stick with the basics for now! keep up the good work! :cool:

BTW, is it possible to dload and play the games you have made?

Hmm, I don't actually have any playable games, I've just basically written a huge 3D engine. I am building a cathedral, and I might add support for alpha blending for glass. I'm working on adding sky, and I'm adding support for various other entities. i can show you that when i'm done with it (I'm building the map as well as updating the rendering engine and some physics and entity parsing, etc).

yeah thatd be cool to see, although ud have to explain to me how to make it run etc.. (unless its just a simple .exe) as im a complete n00b to this...

here's a screen

Nice sky Silvercord! Is that implemented using a skydome? also, what is with the bit of shearing above the door archway?

EDIT: What is the list of current features of your engine?

Presentation didnt work on my system.

Nice 3D view you got there Silver. Are you going to bumpmap any of those textures? Also above your doorway is the main triangle shape sticking out a bit from the blocked portion or is that a graphical glitch?

I haven't implemented any advanced rendering techniques such as fragment shaders or stencil shadows, so no I'm not going to do any bump mapping. In a way im not really happy with it because I haven't done any of the advanced rendering stuff, and at this point I don't really have the motivation to do so because it doesn't really seem cool to me anymore.

The skybox is just a box

The triangle thing is just the way the door is built, it's not a glitch.

EDIT:

Quote:

---

What is the list of current features of your engine?

---

Umm, not really anything new. I have been thinking about implementing quake3 shaders, but at the same time it seems like *everybody* has implemented quake3 shaders, and again I don't know if I'd really be motivated to go through with doing it.

At this point I don't know if there's really anything I can do that would make my engine seem cool. Maybe you guys have some ideas? I was thinking about actually building up a game with the current technology I've got programmed. If I did, it would be similar to quake2 graphics and gameplay. I think I would actually seriously consider doing that, and I would only have to add alpha blending and dynamic lightmaps to be right on par with quake2 graphics.

very nice screenie :D

Don't worry about not doing anything new yet. Just like writing music, you have to play a lot of music that other people have written before you can even think about writing it. Just keep making engines and demos, and eventually you'll come up with a new idea. Most companies are not looking for people with fresh ideas, they are looking for people that can get a job done (which is why there is little innovation in gaming these days :rolleyes:). I don't plan on getting into the industry, but I will always code games.

same here, in fact I'm going into engineering, not computer science next year, so I'm not even goign to be with the group of people that would appreciate the programming effort

Quote:

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so I'm not even goign to be with the group of people that would appreciate the programming effort

---

I... wouldnt say that...

Basically, you can apply quite a bit of what you have learned in programming games to your career choice. You will be working alot on physics, and what a better way to present a new design to the big wig suits than a graphics/physics demo of your design.

I dunno, I haven't done anything really in the past few months, I've just kind of lost the overall motivation...I don't know if it's working too hard on it or what, but sometimes it just seems that no matter how hard you work the results won't ever quite be as cool as they could be.

I honestly believe that if I had continued pushing myself the past few months I could've written a doom3 renderer AND a quake3 shader system, but the motivation just seems to be exponentially decreasing. Another thing is that all of the doom3 and quake3 stuff that I have seen done by amateur projects don't ultimately get all that much notoriety beyond people honoring them on chat boards (quake fusion and all of the doom3 side projects have all but passed by with nobody noticing them). It seems the only way you can do anything worthwhile is to be working at valve programming the latest physics and rendering systems, and everything else is crap.

And I'm totally honest about the doom3 and quake shader system thing, I've got more than enough resources for those and when I get motivated I work harder than anybody I know.

EDIT:
I like it when I first started out because I got excited over accomplishing small and trivial things, i.e getting the camera to work, getting stuff in the math library to work, getting BSP rendering and collision detection to work. Those things don't interest me anymore and I don't get excited as easily...someone tell me how to get excited over this stuff again seriously...maybe someone should work on a project with me, make some maps, give me some ideas for stuff to put into the project...would anybody want to do that with/for me?

I started feeling just like you about 7 weeks ago. Since I started working on code for our robot for our robotics team, I started to miss OpenGL. Just take a break from it for a while and do another type of programming. Maybe start some networking apps; maybe you could make a server of some sort.

Game programming is like anything else. If you do just game programming and nothing else for a while, you get burned out. I'm starting to work on a new 3D engine now, and I love OpenGL again.

Another tip: it is much funner to make games in a team. I started Bludstayne Software, and I'm having a heck of a lot more fun. It's just me and an artist, but it's a lot funner to sit and plan and develop with somebody else. I prefer to see another face than look at a cold computer screen.

Wow, that's exactly what I'm interested in. I'm going into Electrical or Computer Engineering next year (I haven't claimed which one yet, and I don't need to for a semester) so I would be very interested to gain some knowledge about what goes into robotics building/programming. Ideally I'd like to have a job that involves fabricating machinery (whether it be bulldozers or factory machines or airplanes at lockheed martin).

I would love to have a team but it never seems to work out! The other people are either too unmotivated, or I'm not satisfied with their skill level, or both :(

i dunno how old you are, but (if you're at college) consider forming a very specific club at school for game programming. probably you can reserve a computer lab and have some interesting things, like weekly meetings and such. bounce ideas around. personally i've learned more from hearing/reading about implementation than actually viewing code or the end product. if you're really interested in game physics PM me and i can dig up a great link at school tommorow. it's this 4 part physics engine tutorial (written several years ago :/ ). it covers all the basics and all the way up to the kinds of things they are doing in the hl2 engine, if i had a better grasp of opengl and the matrix stacks (god those confuse me) i'd love to implement some of the things from the article into an engine.

Again...graphics and engines is not what gaming is all about. Over 70% of the 3D engines out there suck. Look at the one for Battlefield 1942 - it's great but only at very short distances. The rest is fogged out because the engine just cant take it. Look at the Sims. Terrible engine, even for 2D - choppy and slower than crap scrolling even on fast machines. I could write a better scrolling engine than that. But the game has made oodles and oodles of cash. It's not only about the engine...its about the design too.

I've been gaming hard since 1981 and some of my favs have the worst graphics but are a blast to play. Some of my all time favs are XCOM UFO defense, Crusader: No Regret, Crusader: No Remorse, and Dynamix's WW2 dogfighting sims - Aces over the Pacific and Aces over Europe. All time favorite driving sim is definitely the old Indy 500 sim from Papyrus games. Solid shaded polies but a heck of a lot of fun.

You guys are missing the point of games. Don't let the commercialized aspects of it ruin the genre for you. There will always be indie developers and some of the recent ones have put out some sleeper hits. Heck the Sims almost never made it to the shelves because they thought it wouldn't work. But man did it. But then look at Daikatanna - all hype but all crap. A game is so much more than the graphics, physics, etc. Making a game more life-like does not necessarily mean it will be more fun - rather I find the opposite is true. Sit down with the old asteroids or space invaders or pac-man. Addictive, simple, but a helluva lot of fun.

I agree with Bubba and his points. For me, the greatest aspect about a game is the storyline (but i'm an RPG addict). One thing I absolutely hate is people who judge a game SOLELY by its graphics, and if the gfx are bad, they won't even play it. Just like Bubba and thousands of other people say, some of the greatest games were made years ago and are still idol'ed (spelling) today.

Notice how nowadays, every game that comes out basically has a shelf-life of maybe a year, 2 if the game is lucky? I bet if you were to put some of the classics from the 80's back up on the shelves, you'd have people rushing to buy them, and people still do! I agree that nowadays, games try and put way too much of an emphasis on art, and all games are just turning in to movies that you can interact with.

the thing is its the engine that is the difficult work. I don't care about people who think they can design a game because any old joe can design a game that is fun, but very few people have the dedication and mathematical and programming knowledge to implement realistic physics and fast rendering algorithms, and actually understand everything they've utlized at a very intuitive level. That's what impresses me the most, but I'm just not getting those same vibes anymore.

EDIT:
I don't know what engine battlefield 1942 uses, but there's no rendering engine that actually can render outdoor scenes like that and run at a high fps, no matter what form of spatial partitioning it uses. It runs fast enough, they did something risky by trying to do fast first person shooter in outdoor environments, and it's a brutally popular game. Likewise with the silverback engine written by s2games and used to build the game Savage, everything is rendered outdoors and it runs no higher than 40fps, but it's getting more and more popular since its release. Jverkoey and I actually met one of their programmers in california, it was sweet (remember that Jeff?) [/brag]

EDIT1: i guess the point I'm trying to make is that I don't really care about the actual game content that much because programming the engine is harder. the most *amount* of work goes into making the game content, so the quantity of work goes into that, but the quality of the work that goes into writing a robust game engine is more difficult.

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I don't care about people who think they can design a game because any old joe can design a game that is fun, but very few people have the dedication and mathematical and programming knowledge to implement realistic physics and fast rendering algorithms,

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not true... Think honestly about how many games that have come out in the past few years can even approach the enjoyability of old games like Fallout, Wing Commander,etc. .... there aren't much at all. Design is an important skill, and a very very hard one at that. If anything, it is the opposite, there is an overflow of highly skilled engine developers, and very few game designers worth anything at all.

I have taken interest in researching a bit about embedded systems development, and it seems very interesting, you would probably really enjoy it, but get ready to fully learn assembly(unless you are using some sort of *nix based embedded system, in which case C can be used).

just because you didn't enjoy them doesn't mean others didn't. The reason that there are fewer people that can actually program game engines is because people like you can't stick with it when it gets really difficult. I have yet to see you follow through with a very large project. I have, and it's a pain in the ass. Anybody can design a game and come up with a fantastic game idea that could be enjoyable to potentially thousands of people. Implementing it is a $$$$$.

EDIT:
defense and the helicopter game on this site are extremely addicting games (I enjoyed them) but didn't relatively require a ton of technical knowledge to implement (to cover my own ass I'm not saying that those programmers don't know how to do more complex things, i'm just saying those particular games didn't). A lot more people can make those types of games than full blown 3D renderers. There's nothing wrong with it but it's just not what I'm into, I'd prefer to be a bit more specialized, which is what I did.

EDIT1:
and yes, there are a lot of people that can make full blown 3D renderers, but as the level of complexity increases the number of people able to understand and implement it decreases. And there *is* a large market for people that are amazed by awesome graphics, realistic physics, and all of that cool technical $$$$.

Games are like cars. Do you know every thing that went into the design of your car? Heavens no. You just know that when you hit the gas it goes, and when you hit the brake it stops. To enjoy something you do not have to know how it all works.

Games are not about who can program the best engine. If that is all you are into then go into movie graphics and silicon graphics rendering because a movie's scene is all about the graphics....yet if the graphics don't portray the story they are useless as well.

Computer games are all about passion. There are some very good engines out there - an overabundance of em with a game laid over the top of them that just plain sucks. Am I gonna oogle and oogle at the engine quality and buy it cuz of that?? No. If it ain't fun it doesn't sit on my shelf, I don't care if there are real world physics, superman-type AI, awesome pathfinding algorithms, advanced particle effects, blah blah. You can add all the razzle and dazzle to a sucky game design and it will still just plain suck.

A game is the sum total of its parts. If one part sucks really bad then the whole game usually sucks. You should perhaps program simulations with your code - sims do not require a lot of content just oodles and oodles of physics, particles, explosions, and tons of cutting edge graphics and models.

well, I can tell you what I'm working on right now.

the game i've decided is going to be called bertmatch. the idea i have is you just go in and find elaborate ways of killing bert, and yes he shoots back. no story, just action. i plan on making it fun by doing per polygon collision detection so when you shoot him the polygons deform and look like he's actually breaking into pieces, kind of like in soldier of fortune. im also going to try adding torque so that he will react semi realistically to forces being applied on him. actually programming this will be very easy and it wont' have many special effects, just what i've got right now for an engine. i might add opengl vertex lighting but that's it for 'special effects'. ill probably work on it two weeks or so, maybe more.

EDIT:
i was thinking about trying to make some 2d games, because I've never done ANY 2d work.

EDIT1:

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Games are not about who can program the best engine

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that's true to an extent. look at counter strike. it was the most popular online game for quite sometime, and that's the original glquake gaming engine.

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The reason that there are fewer people that can actually program game engines is because people like you can't stick with it when it gets really difficult. I have yet to see you follow through with a very large project.

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hold on now... I am still working on that tile tactical strategy game that I came up with 3 months ago. I am currently however mainly in the design stage of the games plot, and also implementing as I learn all of the mathematics libraries I will need. Not only that, I am having to relearn most of what I originally learned concerning C++ as most of it was wrong, and put a serious hamper on the development of my project(for example, I had to spend a couple days re-learning pointers and the various usages of them cause I was approaching them from the wrong angle). Next time you go out to ridicule someone for supposedly dropping projects, why dont you actually ask about how it is going once in awhile(you and I havent directly talked through PMs or email for months).

Maybe I was wrong, but it came across like you were one of those people that just talked about making stuff, but never actually got around to doing it, and for some reason that grates on my nerves. When you wrote that math library I thought you had an excellent start, it was clean and had a lot of useful stuff in it, but then what happened to that? Are you even using it? It seems like you just made that and then stopped. If you're making something nice, I'll tell you it's nice. If it seems like you're not doing anything, I'll tell you I don't think you're doing anything. Fact of the matter is programming can sometimes be very difficult, and the reality is only a very few people can be excellent designers ("designers" == "people like you" statement) and excellent mathematically minded programmers at the same time. I'm the math person, and I still think it's the more difficult of the two, which is why i chose to do it in the first place (although I used to design and build worlds with worldcraft for the half life engine)

Quote:

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When you wrote that math library I thought you had an excellent start, it was clean and had a lot of useful stuff in it, but then what happened to that?

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Well, it died with my hard-drive(why I now am backing up everything weekly). I have been attempting to reconstruct it in linux, but GNU C++ is making it a pain in the ass(have it all coded up pretty much the same, but it wont compile, saying I have functions undefined when there they are in the .cpp file).

that really really blows. I had it on my computer for a while, but guess what, I just formatted yesterday dude :(

didn't you have it posted on THIS site?

EDIT:
ur in luck
http://cboard.cprogramming.com/showt...threadid=49000

Holy crap, forgot about that, thanks man...

EDIT: I really mean it, thanks alot, this saves me quite a bit of time of typing.

EDIT: it is going to be fun porting to linux this program, should not take too long, just got to take out all the dll exports and win main among other things

good luck

I might need your help with something, what is the fastest way to find the inverse of a matrix, using the method which uses the determinant of the matrix, or just the standard elementary row operations(speaking of which, I probably want to comment my inverse function code, as I was first going "WTF" when I saw it again ).

there's no easy way to do it. I read how to do it once with any matrix, and it wasn't worth my time.

Just remember that if the matrix is already orthogonal, the transpose *is* the inverse, i.e with a rotation matrix. Also keep in mind that the 'inverse' is a kind of arbitrary idea...i.e to undoe a rotation you can either:

A) Multiply the vertex by the transpose rotation matrix
or
B) Leave the matrix the same, and simply rotate the vertex by the same matrix just with the negated angle.

Finding the inverse of any matrix is not simple. I explored that in great detail for a couple of weeks. I was trying to go from the 2D screen coords back to the 3D and some other stuff which required that. However, I, like Silvercoord found that it was really not worth my time nor was could it be implemented in real-time w/o some serious framerate issues.

I'm still working on my 2D tile engine. I've got a lot of the core done and I simply need bitmaps. It can also do parallax scrolling - basically 3 or 4 tile maps overlaid on top of one another moving at different rates -> rate is same as 3D graphics - speed is according to depth of layer - speed/zdepth. If you place the player in a certain layer then you could have portions of the top layers covering him which really give the illusion of depth - see some of the Nintendo 64 games for an example of this. They used it a lot.

If you guys would like to help with any of it...then PM me - and I know we could finish all of it because there is nothing hard about 2D - we know absolutely enough to get it all done, polished, and finished. The sound code is also done although not tested yet as well as the input code - the mouse input does work correctly as well as the keyboard. Since most of this is done - you could create some ultra cool special effects Silvercoord - there are ways to tell Direct3D to render, but don't transform. Basically you render on screen as is with no transformation but you gain the super fast rendering of D3D. The only catch is you would have to somehow blend the 3D rendered effects with the 2D world. Probably just a simple translation or transformation would do the trick.

I don't know, I want to work with somebody on something. I'd consider helping out possibly, but at the same time I want to be doing my own project with other people too. I have yet toactually chat with you on msn, i got your name a while ago. What times to you go on, and where cdo you live? I live in eastern standard time for the united states what about you? we can schedule to chat or i can even get a calling card and talk with you or something.

hey bubba, i've made my own 2D tile engines (and plenty of them) one of my games, JetPack Jack, uses parallaxing effects with the background to give illusion of depth. If you ever need help with anything i could sanction some time to help you out!

dammit Jeff I want you to work on MY project :)

Well I'm in central US time zone and I also have teamspeak. We can talk online together via my server. You need speakers and a microphone and the client found at www.teamspeak.org.

Since I don't have a static IP, it will constantly change so giving you the server IP won't help.

PM me and I'll give you my MSN e-mail and we can set it all up via messenger.


I've also been looking at some raycasting and non-orthogonal raycasting techniques for rendering - just more stuff to explore.
Basically each world is defined by lines instead of a grid and you simply find the intersection point of the ray to your wall or line. Using sectors you could come up with a very fast - pseduo 3D render and/or combine 3D elements with it.

The problem with true 3D for me is I cannot for the life of me draw anything in 3D w/o it looking like crap. I'm not a good 3D modeler.

hey, i'll work on your project any day Charles :) we should talk about that later tonight or call or something.....i *should* be home all night tonight, so i dunno. I'll also be on from about 1:45-2:20 central time, cuz that's when programming class is

<Sivlercord's AIM SN> (1:32:05 PM): well im going to have 6 math classes under my belt by the time i graduate along with chemistry, physics, biology, a computer game released, and that trip to california, most people i've talked to (even from digipen) say there would be no reason to refuse me.

I was reading some of our AIM conversations trying to find out when you went from being a n00b and turned into a good programmer and I saw this. Now I am wondering what happened to the confidence.

Oddly enough a few days before that you told me: "<Sivlercord's AIM SN> (7:23:19 PM): i want to make a spaghetti and meatball salad out of your testicles".

Aren't AIM logs great. :)

I do have all of those except for a computer game released. Those were good meatballs.

EDIT:
10 mins later:

LMFAO...wow that's so funny. haha

Could someone give me a "HOWTO about INCLUDING OUR PHOTO INTO QUAKE game" ?

regards,
karthik bala guru

WHY did you post this here?

And WHY did you post in "CAPITALS and BOLD ITALICS"?

And WHY didn't you die a horrible death already, and WHY did you bump a post from a couple months back?