What do game programmers program?

Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question, but I have to get this cleared up.

What do video game programmers program? I'm just starting to learn to C/C++ in hopes to become a game programmer in the future, but what is it that programmers program in a game? I always thought they made the game engine and all of that, but I see some people and books talking about programming 3D graphics etc. What does a programmer do? Do they make all of the 3D objects? I always thought they had other people to do that.

simply put: everything

:)

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Originally posted by jverkoey
simply put: everything

:)

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All right, that's where you lost me. What exactly do they program? Do most game companies have separate programmers to work on different things or do they only have a couple programmers to work on everything? How would programmers be able to handle programming all of that stuff? Do they have to render 3D objects?

I need you to explain a little more, I'm lost!.:confused:

ok, well, i meant everything as most programmers can program anything they want....within the limit of their knowledge and the speed of the puter.

but mostly, programmers each have their own area of expertise, like engine design, graphix engines, AI (artificial intelligence), GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces), User friendliness :), etc....

and about the objects and things, if you mean models, USUALLY other people do that, because most programmers (not all) aren't exactly referred to as the "best" artists in the world :) hehe, that's why we have artists....

"programmers each have their own area of expertise"

By this, do you mean each programmer has an expertise in one certain area and not others? This probably sounds dumb, but I don't understand this exactly.

"like engine design, graphix engines, AI (artificial intelligence), GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces), User friendliness , etc...."

About these two:

1) What do they do to make the graphics engine? If they don't make any models or objects (or do they make the 3D objects?), what can they make?

2) GUI: does this have something to do with actually making the 3D graphics?


"and about the objects and things, if you mean models, USUALLY other people do that, because most programmers (not all) aren't exactly referred to as the "best" artists in the world hehe, that's why we have artists...."

Yeah, that's what I meant. I could've sworn game companies had other people do the models and all that.

I'm really new to programming, so I don't understand a lot yet.

well, usually the gfx engine just involves making the code to actually draw the stuff, like DirectX and OpenGL were made by programmers, and both of them allow artists and pretty much everyone else to make graphix with them.

and guis are not really that hard to do, all you need are some pictures, and then the programmer has to be able to put it all together to make it look nice. Artists may be able to come up with the ideas, but they *usually* can't do anything with it without the aid of a programmer

Do you know anywhere that I can learn more about that? I don't fully understand what the programmer does in those areas.

gamedev.nethas some nice articles on gamedev stuff

Thanks, I just have one more little question. Do I have to be a good artist or a really good programmer to do all of this, or is it kind of what most programmers do?

well, that depends, which do you do better? unless you are going independant (developing your own games) I'd try to choose either one or the other, and then find someone else who can do the other parts, that's what teams were invented for :)

-good luck!

I'm a bad artist. I would definitely like to have someone else program all that stuff, but I would also like to be a good programmer and learning how to do that would probably be good for me. I'm planning on programming for a game company to get the hang of it, then start my own game company. If I wanted to do that, would I require experience in programming all of the 3D landscapes and models etc.?

I thought by programming I'd be able to avoid that stuff :p

Game programmers usually have artists do 3D Modeling and etc, however programmers usually make temporary models to fill in the game to allow furthur programming, while the artist models the real graphics.

Game programmers program the controls, and the AI, and how everything is displayed on the screen, and things like that.

Artists draw the pictures that the programmer's program displays on the screen.

Programmers, and specifically game programmers, don't get nearly the amount of respect and credit they deserve for their work, carmack being the exception to the rule....that guy has a ferrari! (i think).

Most programers use API's so when they're rendering or drawing 3D shapes/objs they are using something like DirectX or OpenGL to do that stuff for them...

1) so their first job is to use the API to reliably draw and put things on the screen to build the basic structure of the game engine which handles putting things on the screen.
2) An API however will not really help you cycle through the character animations to have the character walk/run/talk etc.
So they must create a "character engine" to handle the animations
3) Also, the API's won't help you that much with effects like explosions/rain/particles/smoke those require a bit of math and insight.
4)Movement and physics are also key in making a believable game and API's are not much help there - you can buy a 3rd party Physics system but not many small orgs do that.
5)and the AI - that is something that won't be made by a pre-existing API.
6) Finally - there is the UI or controls and buttons and interfaces that make up the game.

I really want to add something here because 3d game programming is my thing. But I think if you read everyone else's posts you'll have a good idea of what game programmers program. The most important thing that you should understand is that a game engine should be written so that you can setup various entities in the world and then they will automatically behave the way they are supposed to behave as defined by the game engine. For example you can create a 'bot' by defining all of its attributes in a script file (how fast it moves, how accurate and fast it shoots) and then give it a 3d model to be displayed in the game, and then you place that file in a directory that the game engine looks for to load bot information and it will correctly display your bot in game.

What I'm trying to say is the programmers should generate a game engine that allows for 'plugins'...little should be hard coded and you should be able to modify the crap out of it...I'm going to go play counter strike now (which is a modification of the half life engine, which is a modification of the quake2 engine)

Yeah, Silvercord is right, Pretty much, you want to allow openness in your coding, so its not just stuck in a certain way. Thats why when i Program different entities, even the player entity, i use a Base class i have , that has a Camera object, a 3d model object (im still working on learning this, im thinking MD2s would be pretty good for a beginning game), and all the differential stuff one would need. Generally, in a team environment, there will be a couple programmer working with eachother on the main graphics engine, and a few programmers working on all the in game programming (i.e. setting up the rule system, quests, and weapon table matrices if it were an RPG), then there are the Sound artists, the model artists, the 2d/texture/etc. artists.

Of course not forgetting the map makers, and even more importantly the designers (who were often programmers at some point)!

This is a multi-BILLION dollar industry, yet many people don't take it very seriously.

Openness is very important. I used to not think so, but it is great to develop your engine, and not have to worry too much about the engine thereafter. Just script and map in a bunch of crap, and boom! you got a game.

You mentioned Artificial Intelligence above. What exactly is the difference between AI applications and ordinary programming? I thought that all programming was a form of artificial intelligence.

contexts. When you are dealing with controlling the movement of an entity controlled by the computer in a game then people call it artificial intelligence. When you are dealing with a system that controls data in a data base you just call it an application, but you are technically right it is all artificial intelligence.

... think of what a game is... ignore all of the colorfull graphics sounds and sprites and what do u get?? a program that during each cycle detects vector collisions and acts upon them allows user input, renders images etc etc thats all most game programmers do just make this program then the artists make the nice drawings to be put into the image files that accompany the program, i myself when creating games inititialy make the engine, make a scripting language such that the game can be completed without the need of modifying the exe (also allows for updates etc) and during testing and debuging i use solid rectangles to check visual collisions comply with the system checked collisions etc, most programers cant draw the windows logo (as if u would want to anyway ^^) if u went into game programming relax u wont have to do any drawing unless u wanted to of course ^^