Jeff Vogel blogs

[shihonage]

So, if Unity+plugins does "almost everything" for you, why is it that the engine has been out for 5 years, and the only games made with it appear to be "quirky indie game" stereotypes ?

If "does almost everything" applies to RPG, we should be seeing a shitload of Ages of Decadences by now. After all, all Vault Dweller had was a premade renderer, so he's like, waay behind anyone using Unity, man.

 

[Davaris]

I think if you asked VD a while back, he'd probably say he wished he used another engine. Many people regret buying Torque, because the support/documentation is poor and the code base is a mess. I wouldn't know, I've seen those kinds of comments everywhere over the years, so I gave it a miss.

As for Codex devs not using Unity, I have no idea. The prices were pretty high for most engines until late last year. Then Unity and Unreal offered free versions, which has changed *everything*. Things have changed so much, that I predict in the near future, people when going for game job interviews, will say they are experts on this or that game engine, before they say they are 3D C/C++ programmers.

The only other reason some people may not use Unity, is the renderer is not cutting edge. I on the other hand, care more about its speedy work flow (best I've seen so far) and that it will run on any old machine. Unreal in that regard, is probably just as good.

As they say, money talks bullshit walks. So I'll make an RPG engine + demo with it to show it can be done. I don't know how long it will take, because I'm an unmotivated slob. If I was motivated like the old days, I don't think it would take long at all. Watch my sig for news.

BTW
That RPG video I linked to above, looks close to release. Tons of indies use it to make a living and a couple of big budget massively multiplayer games, have been made with it and more are on the way. Can you say the same about Torque or Ogre?

 

[shihonage]

That RPG video I linked to above, looks close to release.

It looks like partial implementation of (single-player?) WoW. Calling it an RPG at this point is a big stretch.

As they say, money talks bullshit walks. So I'll make an RPG engine + demo with it to show it can be done. I don't know how long it will take, because I'm an unmotivated slob. If I was motivated like the old days, I don't think it would take long at all. Watch my sig for news.

Of course, in order to make your point and inspire others, this RPG demo will have to implement actual RPG features, such as combat, inventory, looting, dialogue trees, quests. A guy running around and equipping/de-equipping his cloak does not count as an RPG demo.

You see, Vogel made an engine a long time ago, before all this fancy new stuff became available. He keeps building on top of it, and there's way too much effort spent and inertia to go and make one from scratch.

His recommendations come from his actual experience with his work. They may be considered out of date, but they worked for him.

Same goes for my engine, which has been seriously in the works for a long ass time, and just because Unity came out a year ago, I'm not going to dump all the work already done in favor of learning the amusing quirks of a series of plug-ins written by a committee while giving up low-level control of CPU time and memory management. I have 1400 people walking around a 3000x3000 map in realtime, and before Unity became free, I already had this level of gameplay mechanics.

I plan to reuse and upgrade this engine a lot.

The other people who have been doing this with great success are Valve software. All their products are built off the Quake engine license, and they've been growing their engine on top of it since 1996. By now there's probably 10 lines left from the original engine code, the rest is all theirs. Left 4 Dead series, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2 - all from the same in-house engine.

 

[Davaris]

Of course, in order to make your point and inspire others, this RPG demo will have to implement actual RPG features, such as combat, inventory, looting, dialogue trees, quests. A guy running around and equipping/de-equipping his cloak does not count as an RPG demo.

It will have all those things except for the cape. It won't be pretty, because I cant afford much in the way of art. So expect standard Unity assests and cubes and spheres for items.

You see, Vogel made an engine a long time ago, before all this fancy new stuff became available. He keeps building on top of it, and there's way too much effort spent and inertia to go and make one from scratch.

His recommendations come from his actual experience with his work. They may be considered out of date, but they worked for him.

The issue I take with his advice, is it is so generic as to be practically useless to anyone starting out. I understand your comments about yours and his engine though. It works for him, but for a noob starting out today, it is madness not to leverage the efforts of those who are better organized and smarter.

Interestingly, the other people who have been doing this with great success are Valve software. All their products are built off the Quake engine license, and they've been growing their engine on top of it since 1996. By now there's probably 10 lines left from the original engine code, the rest is all theirs. Left 4 Dead series, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2 - all from the same in-house engine.

Don't forget the Valve engine programmers are some of the best in the world at what they do. Also as I said above, times are changing when it comes to the way pro games are made. When I started programming, the cheapest pro 3D game engines with no tools were $50,000. Now they are far better and they are giving them away. :shock:

Correction:
Above I shouldn't have said tons of indies are making a living. However tons are making money with Unity made games.

 

[shihonage]

Don't forget the Valve engine programmers are some of the best in the world at what they do.

Valve engine has been lagging behind the times ever since Half-Life 2. Their matchmaking in Left 4 Dead is crap, the game's controls feel flat, a lot like Wolfenstein 3D (compare that to the feel of Quake Wars) and networking code (with inevitable zombie warping) could use quite a bit of improvement.

This has nothing to do with "how good" Valve is at programming, but how smart-n-savvy was their decision to grow and re-use their own engine for several different titles.

 

[Flatlander]

As far as I can tell, the attitude of many programmers is, make your own engine so you understand it. These days that would be like a 3D artist, creating their own personal Photoshop or 3D Studio Max.

Well, I don't see anyone here saying that. I think most people these days agree that building your own engine completely (unless you have very specific needs or you are doing something relatively simple like a basic 2d renderer. Note that the phrase "from the scratch" can mean anything from using an D3D/OpenGL/XNA to writing your own bootloader & rendered. As such it is pretty meaningless these days) from the scratch is insane if your real goal is making a game.

Unity is great for what it is and does, the component system and ide works brilliantly for most tasks and the content pipeline is very smooth. For a wide category games it should be ideal.

Problem is that RPGs have very specific needs that are hard to satisfy even if you skip the presentation and have full control over the system. Unity doesn't really bring anything new to the table with regarding RPG development, it just add a few new restrictions. And the size of the developer and user community doesn't really matter when the whole thing is heavily geared toward casual/arcadey gaming.

So the reason why I'm a bit wary of Unity is that it can easily lure unexperienced developers/wannabes in to thinking they can build an RPG by just throwing some basic components around in the designer, only to find out later that they are stuck in a dead end. Building an RPG in Unity can get messy and for sure it will still require an talented programmer.

 

[Pee Pee McBlib Blob]

Blobliblob

 

[DaveGilbert]

Hi everyone! I've been lurking on this forum for awhile and finally found a nice thread I can jump into.

My wife and I have been talking about making an RPG for a long time (she's a programmer who dabbles in design, and I'm a designer who dabbles in programming. It works out well). We looked at RPGmaker, which we discounted quickly because it's hard to make a game that stands out and it's only really suited for japanese style RPGs, which isn't our thing. But aside from that, there's very little out there that is geared towards making the western style RPGs that are popular on this forum. And believe me, we looked. There's no equivilent to RPGmaker or AGS (adventure game studio) out there. So when one says that Unity doesn't suit the "specific needs of an RPG", the sad fact is that nothing else does either.

So, we realized that the only way we were going to do this was to take a general game engine and modify the heck out of it in order to make the game we needed. After looking for ages, we decided that Unity was the best option. It's cheap (the indie version is free, but even the pro license is paltry compared to most systems out there), it has great documentation, has a supportive user community, and can run on many different systems. From what we've seen, it looks really powerful.

Unity definitely seems like the best bet for us. Of course we both have about 2 projects to get off our plates before we can even begin doing this, but it's our eventual goal. From searching their forums, nobody has really attempted this yet, but we do believe it's possible. Davaris, if you do get around to making that RPG framework in Unity, give us a shout.

-Dave

 

[Big Nose George]

I am looking forward to your RPG, Dave.

- Big Nose George

 

[GarfunkeL]

As am I. Good luck and don't be afraid of discussing design issues here - the RPG Design subforum is a perfect place for that!

 

[DaveGilbert]

I am looking forward to your RPG, Dave.

- Big Nose George

So am I!

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Blobliblob

who the hell are you and why are you ruining my style

 

[PorkaMorka]

Do we even know Vogel is going to make his next game 3d?

I don't think we can assume it will be if he didn't already state it will be.

(fuck 3d)