Thread: i've basically stopped game programming

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.

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.

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)

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?

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).

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