"Tara"
by abc · 01/25/2006 (9:14 pm) · 2 comments
So, I've been taking this game design class. It's been a great class; the lecture this particular day included a student demo of Guitar Hero, an overview of rules and how they relate to emergence vs. progression(we're generally following the outline of Jesper Juul's half-real), and turning in non-video design projects. I also got 100% on my analysis of M.U.L.E., though 100% wasn't an uncommon score.
After the class I got to talk with this one guy on his long-term dream game project, and I think I might stick with him, since I don't have a dream game at the moment. It's ridiculously ambitious but he's already spent two years on it, and he's amenable both to spending literally decades of time on it and to pare things down and make compromises at regular intervals so that a sellable product might be made; he's taking a very rational, level-headed approach to it, and because of this I can actually see some reasonable business plan made out of it.
The gist of it is that he wants to, by the end, do one of those "do-anything" kitchen-sink games, in a sci-fi setting, making it massively multiplayer and moddable. That's not really the part I care about, since it's too pie-in-the-sky to be made anytime soon. What he already has *done* is very interesting and different from what most of the industry does. He's a physicist, so he's made his own rigid-body simulations, Newtonian dynamics, etc., and to make the content-creation process of planets and starships managable he's created and integrated a large variety of classes for terrain creation - heightmaps, rooms, poly-soup meshes, etc., and is in the process of building toolsets for them. He's avoided implementing graphical features beyond some texturing and lighting with OpenGL, and his main focus right now is to finish a human figure simulation.
Given the evidence he's shown me, he has indeed done the work he's claimed to, and is talented enough to continue leading the coding work. And he feels that he spends too much time doing art assets right now. Previously in this blog I noted how I was at a sort of crossroads in what skills I could pick up, and I was thinking to start leaning towards artwork. That it would let me fit into a needed role on this project would be a happy coincidence.
At the very least, it'll be good practice. I might start putting up some images here in the near future.
After the class I got to talk with this one guy on his long-term dream game project, and I think I might stick with him, since I don't have a dream game at the moment. It's ridiculously ambitious but he's already spent two years on it, and he's amenable both to spending literally decades of time on it and to pare things down and make compromises at regular intervals so that a sellable product might be made; he's taking a very rational, level-headed approach to it, and because of this I can actually see some reasonable business plan made out of it.
The gist of it is that he wants to, by the end, do one of those "do-anything" kitchen-sink games, in a sci-fi setting, making it massively multiplayer and moddable. That's not really the part I care about, since it's too pie-in-the-sky to be made anytime soon. What he already has *done* is very interesting and different from what most of the industry does. He's a physicist, so he's made his own rigid-body simulations, Newtonian dynamics, etc., and to make the content-creation process of planets and starships managable he's created and integrated a large variety of classes for terrain creation - heightmaps, rooms, poly-soup meshes, etc., and is in the process of building toolsets for them. He's avoided implementing graphical features beyond some texturing and lighting with OpenGL, and his main focus right now is to finish a human figure simulation.
Given the evidence he's shown me, he has indeed done the work he's claimed to, and is talented enough to continue leading the coding work. And he feels that he spends too much time doing art assets right now. Previously in this blog I noted how I was at a sort of crossroads in what skills I could pick up, and I was thinking to start leaning towards artwork. That it would let me fit into a needed role on this project would be a happy coincidence.
At the very least, it'll be good practice. I might start putting up some images here in the near future.
About the author
#2
Please though, if you end up doing some design work on your friend's game, be brutal. Physics and content creation toolchains are no use without a game design context. I'm sure you'd have no trouble turning out a good game.
01/26/2006 (1:46 am)
Explore art, but beware. Make sure it's something that you enjoy, and not just a happy coincidence. While you appear to be at a crossroads, I would've picked you as a bona fide designer. You have a quick grip on game design and systems, and can deal with both abstract mechanics and concepts, as well as hard maths and science.Please though, if you end up doing some design work on your friend's game, be brutal. Physics and content creation toolchains are no use without a game design context. I'm sure you'd have no trouble turning out a good game.
Torque Owner Joe Bird
With the current generation of engines there is an insane amount of art content that needs to be created just for one character or object. More than a few meshes, hi-res for normal mapping, base mesh, plus LODs. And then the texture maps, normal and/or bump, diffuse, specularity, and sometimes lightmaps. Then the animations, which I have read in an MMO like Matrix online there are over 16,000.