RenWerX To Create Complete Game!
by Steve Ford · in General Discussion · 04/06/2005 (11:50 am) · 36 replies
RenWerX To Create Complete Game!
RenWerX has announced they will not be working with the Legends team to produce a game (reasons) instead, they will be producing a complete game themselves. RenWerX does plan to make both a Base game and their Renegades mod for it, but needs everyone's help:
We want both Base and Renegades to be formed by the Tribes community, and to do so have put together a custom living design plan for both. If you are interested in making sure the next tribes-like game or Ren mod plays like you want it to, please see our design introduction page.
In addition we plan to keep the Renegades name for our Mod, however need a name for the Base/ the game overall. We have put together a voting / suggestion process on our forums in [url="http://www.renwerx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=735"]this thread[/url], and would appreciate anyone interested in contributing doing so.
We still plan to release this game for free, but also we will now be able to release all of our scripts, models, maps etc. for other mods to use too. With our divergence from legends we plan to work with many mods to make sure anything they would like to see in the game engine is in there so they can bring their mods to new levels. If you are interested in more information for modders please see our modding page.
Finally, our team is rounding out nicely, we are at 46 people right now with some amazing talent. We do still have jobs open however, so please see our job listing page if you think you can help. As always for those who want to make a monetary donation we have a donations page and that page also explains how we use donations.
RenWerX has announced they will not be working with the Legends team to produce a game (reasons) instead, they will be producing a complete game themselves. RenWerX does plan to make both a Base game and their Renegades mod for it, but needs everyone's help:
We want both Base and Renegades to be formed by the Tribes community, and to do so have put together a custom living design plan for both. If you are interested in making sure the next tribes-like game or Ren mod plays like you want it to, please see our design introduction page.
In addition we plan to keep the Renegades name for our Mod, however need a name for the Base/ the game overall. We have put together a voting / suggestion process on our forums in [url="http://www.renwerx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=735"]this thread[/url], and would appreciate anyone interested in contributing doing so.
We still plan to release this game for free, but also we will now be able to release all of our scripts, models, maps etc. for other mods to use too. With our divergence from legends we plan to work with many mods to make sure anything they would like to see in the game engine is in there so they can bring their mods to new levels. If you are interested in more information for modders please see our modding page.
Finally, our team is rounding out nicely, we are at 46 people right now with some amazing talent. We do still have jobs open however, so please see our job listing page if you think you can help. As always for those who want to make a monetary donation we have a donations page and that page also explains how we use donations.
#2
04/06/2005 (12:14 pm)
We understand it is a lot of work, and part of the time Legends was a bit dormant, we have a larger team and some really great guys so hopefully we will be able to come up with something great.
#5
04/09/2005 (7:47 am)
Wow, 45 people working on it.
#6
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~marcus/ren_stimpy/
Sorry couldn't resist :D
04/11/2005 (9:29 pm)
Ok so if RenWerx does this mean Stimpy got a job too?http://www.lysator.liu.se/~marcus/ren_stimpy/
Sorry couldn't resist :D
#7
Although I personally feel that you are making a big mistake it is your decision to make and I will wish you guys the best of luck in the long run towards completing your project. Please keep us informed and up to date with what is going on.
Logan
04/12/2005 (8:31 am)
Irregardless of how many people you guys have and how experianced they may be, you are going to be at least a year out if not two by not working with the Legends guys and their code. The foundation and head start that this would have given you would IMHO allow you to prototype and develop faster and more reliably. This is also the same mistake that another former Tribes Vengeance mod has made with their development and its going to cost them a lot in the end and to be honest no one wants to see this happen to anyone since we are all here to succeed. Although I personally feel that you are making a big mistake it is your decision to make and I will wish you guys the best of luck in the long run towards completing your project. Please keep us informed and up to date with what is going on.
Logan
#8
With that set aside we don't believe it will be two years in development. We have a much larger development team with a very huge talent base and would allow for much more rapid development. I am not sure what TV Mod you reference so unfortunately I cannot comment on that.
I guess the best I can say is wait and see.
04/12/2005 (8:52 am)
Thanks for your concern Logan, we stopped working with legends because we had to, we agree that working with legends would have helped both teams. With that set aside we don't believe it will be two years in development. We have a much larger development team with a very huge talent base and would allow for much more rapid development. I am not sure what TV Mod you reference so unfortunately I cannot comment on that.
I guess the best I can say is wait and see.
#9
Can you say "Huh"? How far gone do you have to be to compare a hand built baby to an evolutionary process of nature? If babies were built by hand then you would indeed get one baby in one month from nine women. According to your logic nobody needs more than one coder on their team. Or more than one artist. Heck, more than one of anything is foolish according to your quoted wisdom. And in fact, according to you, combining two teams would produce no more work than having one team with one member.
ROTFL. No offense but have you written anything in TGE yet? How would you go about writing this function? I'm just curious.
04/13/2005 (4:54 am)
Quote:2. A woman can have a baby in nine months after conception. Having nine women does not mean you can have a baby in one month (this is not meant as a sexist remark by any means, it is a common saying in software engineering so I apologize if anyone is offended).
Can you say "Huh"? How far gone do you have to be to compare a hand built baby to an evolutionary process of nature? If babies were built by hand then you would indeed get one baby in one month from nine women. According to your logic nobody needs more than one coder on their team. Or more than one artist. Heck, more than one of anything is foolish according to your quoted wisdom. And in fact, according to you, combining two teams would produce no more work than having one team with one member.
Quote:Very important... don't put return statements in the middle of a method. You would be surprised at how many issues can be avoided if the code is written such that it has a single return at the end of a method.
ROTFL. No offense but have you written anything in TGE yet? How would you go about writing this function? I'm just curious.
function Game::teamSet(%game, %client)
{
if($Server::MatchMode $= "True")
{
if(strstr($GTC_Pref_[%client, BaseName], $Match::TeamTagTeam1) != -1)
{
return Team1;
}
else if(strstr($GTC_Pref_[%client, BaseName], $Match::TeamTagTeam2) != -1)
{
return Team2;
}
else
{
%client.isObserver = "True";
return Observers;
}
}
else
{
if($Server::CountTeam1 > $Server::CountTeam2)
{
return Team2;
}
else if($Server::CountTeam1 < $Server::CountTeam2)
{
return Team1;
}
else
{
if($Server::CountTeam1 $= "0" && $Server::CountTeam1 $= "0" || $Pref::Server::NoWait $= "True")
{
return Team1;
}
else
{
%client.isObserver = "True";
return Observers;
}
}
}
}
#10
04/13/2005 (5:31 am)
Gonzo, you totally missed the point. You can't make a baby in a month, but with nine women, you can make nine babies in nine months. Follow? Having more people won't mean individual tasks will get done faster, just you get more done concurrently.
#11
It goes over the ideas Nick is mentioning in more detail - and these ideas are very well accepted and widely held in software engineering.
04/13/2005 (7:29 am)
Gonzo, there's a book called 'The Mythical Man Month' you might want to read. It's actually listed in the resources on this site!It goes over the ideas Nick is mentioning in more detail - and these ideas are very well accepted and widely held in software engineering.
#12
04/13/2005 (9:02 am)
I think we all know that the more people you have doen't necessarily mean the faster you get work done. "The Law of Diminishing Returns". From what I have seen, the team is not a bunch of kids who have no idea of the scope of this project.
#13
As with other areas like skinning/mapping/modeling the rate things can produced is much better and at a rate similar to the number of people working on these things as they are exceptionally easy to break up.
I am not expecting any miracles, I have lead many projects and know what type of limitations exist. All I can ask is that you wait a while until we can show everyone what we can produce.
04/13/2005 (9:04 am)
Matt, I agree that having 5 people instead of one person won't mean the game will get produced 5 times as fast, however it will get produced a lot faster than one person I feel. Also most likely 90% of your concern is around coding issues. Many of the coding tasks can be broken up between people and just as you have 10 people build your house instead of 1 to make things go faster we have multiple coders to make coding this go faster. We have tapped some real talent from the GG community so far (along with some other places). As with many talented people they specialized in a certain area like projectiles or something else. Not to mention the many different sections of the engine that can be worked on at once.As with other areas like skinning/mapping/modeling the rate things can produced is much better and at a rate similar to the number of people working on these things as they are exceptionally easy to break up.
I am not expecting any miracles, I have lead many projects and know what type of limitations exist. All I can ask is that you wait a while until we can show everyone what we can produce.
#14
04/13/2005 (9:46 am)
Good luck!
#15
Which would explain the massive number of bad coders out there. Just because it's in a book doesn't mean it has any basis in fact or any business being a standard. Anyone that would compare two completely different and unrelated processes and show them as proof of anything is not grasping any of it very well.
See for yourself how little sense this makes...
2. A woman can have a baby in nine months after conception. Having nine women does not mean you can have a baby in one month
Lets change "baby" to "car" and "have" to "build"...
2. A woman can build a car in nine months after conception. Having nine women does not mean you can build a car in one month
Sure, having nine women does not GUARANTEE you can build a car in one month, but if the limiting factor was time or labor and not parts availability then you most certainly can and would build a car in one month with 9 women. If we had to GROW our cars from seeds or sperm then things would be different.
04/14/2005 (6:15 am)
Quote:and these ideas are very well accepted and widely held in software engineering.
Which would explain the massive number of bad coders out there. Just because it's in a book doesn't mean it has any basis in fact or any business being a standard. Anyone that would compare two completely different and unrelated processes and show them as proof of anything is not grasping any of it very well.
See for yourself how little sense this makes...
2. A woman can have a baby in nine months after conception. Having nine women does not mean you can have a baby in one month
Lets change "baby" to "car" and "have" to "build"...
2. A woman can build a car in nine months after conception. Having nine women does not mean you can build a car in one month
Sure, having nine women does not GUARANTEE you can build a car in one month, but if the limiting factor was time or labor and not parts availability then you most certainly can and would build a car in one month with 9 women. If we had to GROW our cars from seeds or sperm then things would be different.
#16
Software engineers don't just make stuff up, you know. We have a lot of very qualified people who conduct studies that demonstrate these kinds of things.
What you're fundamentally failing to acknowledge is the overhead involved in team coordination. Every additional person you add to a project reduces the effectiveness of the other members of the project, because now they have to engage in additional procedures and communications.
Consider your example of a car - A single worker does whatever tasks he likes, in whatever order is most efficient. He works at 100% capacity.
/Two/ workers have to coordinate their efforts to make sure they don't work on the same thing at the same time. Perhaps they're working at 90% capacity, because of overhead. Two workers would have a capacity of 180% of a single worker - not 200%.
Take the analogy to the extreme, and imagine 1000 workers trying to work on a single car. They'd have to line up and wait turns to get elbow room to use their tools!
This point of diminishing returns kicks in fairly quickly in software development. I'm not going to sit here and quote figures at you - they're freely available. If you don't like the book I mentioned, feel free to take a look in any of the peer reviewed journals dealing with software engineering.
04/14/2005 (6:52 am)
Quote:Which would explain the massive number of bad coders out there. Just because it's in a book doesn't mean it has any basis in fact or any business being a standard.
Software engineers don't just make stuff up, you know. We have a lot of very qualified people who conduct studies that demonstrate these kinds of things.
What you're fundamentally failing to acknowledge is the overhead involved in team coordination. Every additional person you add to a project reduces the effectiveness of the other members of the project, because now they have to engage in additional procedures and communications.
Consider your example of a car - A single worker does whatever tasks he likes, in whatever order is most efficient. He works at 100% capacity.
/Two/ workers have to coordinate their efforts to make sure they don't work on the same thing at the same time. Perhaps they're working at 90% capacity, because of overhead. Two workers would have a capacity of 180% of a single worker - not 200%.
Take the analogy to the extreme, and imagine 1000 workers trying to work on a single car. They'd have to line up and wait turns to get elbow room to use their tools!
This point of diminishing returns kicks in fairly quickly in software development. I'm not going to sit here and quote figures at you - they're freely available. If you don't like the book I mentioned, feel free to take a look in any of the peer reviewed journals dealing with software engineering.
#17
04/14/2005 (6:55 am)
Alrighty so before we get flames over here lets end this. No we won't put the game out twice as fast if we have twice as many coders. Yes we will put the game out faster with more coders. 
#18
If you go take a Computer Science degree, you will be taught to
Only have one exit point for each function you might not agree but academia does.
As for Renegade best of luck, 46 people is a lot of unpaid people to maintain.
04/14/2005 (7:03 am)
@Gonzo:If you go take a Computer Science degree, you will be taught to
Only have one exit point for each function you might not agree but academia does.
As for Renegade best of luck, 46 people is a lot of unpaid people to maintain.
#19
At one time academia thought the world was flat. At one time long ago academia thought "E=mc
04/14/2005 (7:08 am)
Quote:If you go take a Computer Science degree, you will be taught to
Only have one exit point for each function you might not agree but academia does.
At one time academia thought the world was flat. At one time long ago academia thought "E=mc
#20
04/14/2005 (7:12 am)
Pompous 
jesusphreak