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Jeff Vogel blogs

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... and gives <a href="http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2010/02/three-tips-for-getting-started-in-indie.html">some hints how to get started</a> in the Indie Gaming Business.

<p style="margin-left:50px;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;border-top-color:#ffffff;padding:5px;border-right-color:#bbbbbb;border-left-color:#ffffff;border-bottom-color:#bbbbbb;">How do I make a living doing what I do? I write huge, involved RPGs with funky enemies and intricate storylines. Is it a huge amount of finicky and irritating work to make games like that? Yes. Am I ever tempted to write less involved casual-type puzzle games? Hell yes. But I make something that is relatively rare and you can't easily obtain on Kongregate for free. Thus, not only are people interested in my work, but I can charge a good price for it. Selling something scarce has its points.
</p>

He makes some good points.
 

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Program for an hour when you're half-awake, and I guarantee you'll make a mistake which will cost you two hours of debugging.

That is so incredibly true. And so many people in the business, be it indie or not, just don't get it...

It really is interesting to see people slowly turning into zombies during the course of only half a year. And it is very reassuring to know that those numbnuts will most likely commit suicide due to burnout when they are 30, and you won't, simply because you sleep well.
 

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thesheeep said:
Program for an hour when you're half-awake, and I guarantee you'll make a mistake which will cost you two hours of debugging.

That is so incredibly true. And so many people in the business, be it indie or not, just don't get it...

Ditto. I've done this a number of times. "Wha ? This comment is nonsense ! I'm going to optimize EVERYTHING just by changing this line !"

(a week later)

"I still can't find the glitch ! WAAAAAAAGH !!"
 
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This is the first time in awhile I've seen a Jeff Vogel statement mentioned that wasn't eye roll worthy.


Quick, keep him on that medication! As long as it doesn't effect his games, of course.
 
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The part about getting rest and decent tools is the only advice I'd consider useful.

Game creation has advanced so rapidly, that it would be foolish to write your own game engine using Visual Express. An engine like Unity 3D does almost everything for you, works on older Apple and PC and you only need to write scripts, or use visual programming with the Behave plugin - no error prone C/C++.

These days, a complete game engine is as essential to the game programmer, as Adobe Photoshop and 3DStudio Max is to the digital artist.

As for his comments on writing "complicated games", a few book recommendations on RPG quest and character design, would help people who are starting out. I'd like to see a book on balancing RPGs as well.
 

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Davaris said:
Game creation has advanced so rapidly, that it would be foolish to write your own game engine using Visual Express. An engine like Unity 3D does almost everything for you, works on older Apple and PC and you only need to write scripts, or use visual programming with the Behave plugin - no error prone C/C++.

Correction: the likes of Unity can do "almost everything" for you when it comes to making games drawing from the standard well of expected gameplay mechanics. Complex RPGs do not fall into this category.
 
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The movie linked only shows a very basic "RPG", kind of a fantasy Tomb Raider-style game with an inventory.
But then I don't know anything about Unity 3D, could it be programmed as to allow complex interactions such as factions or C&C?
 
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Yes. Look up AngryAnts Behavior tree section.

http://www.angryant.com/

Also have alook at this:
http://aigamedev.com/open/articles/bt-overview/

AIGameDev also has 3 behavior tree videos somewhere (20mins each), which explain the concept in detail. You can use them for controlling dialogue, plots/quests and creature behavior - almost anything you can think of.


Search the Unity forums for mentions of the Behave plugin. I was able to get it working on PC and explain the steps.

Here are those videos

http://aigamedev.com/open/articles/beha ... ees-part1/
http://aigamedev.com/open/articles/beha ... ees-part2/
http://aigamedev.com/open/articles/beha ... ees-part3/

Third link is down, another copy is here:
http://aigamedev.com.sharedcopy.com/vid ... a0e2b.html
 

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Davaris said:
The part about getting rest and decent tools is the only advice I'd consider useful.

Game creation has advanced so rapidly, that it would be foolish to write your own game engine using Visual Express. An engine like Unity 3D does almost everything for you, works on older Apple and PC and you only need to write scripts, or use visual programming with the Behave plugin - no error prone C/C++.
The trouble is a beginner needs all that programming to learn stuff. You'd make things easy for him, and he would learn nothing. (Some people in the industry have university titles, but are unable to create new stuff and are lacking some experience.)

A game creating kit would crete similar experience for any game, and when a game developer learns some stuff, it would cause problems. In addition when a good looking game would be easy to do by some external tools any idiot would be able make a game. Look at PS2 games. Majority of them would be ignored when they would be made for PC. Some of them are QUITE low end quality.

I would consider more important a public domain or MIT licence library for making character model, and for automatic generation of animals. Programming is half year effort, animation and modeling takes more.

As for his comments on writing "complicated games", a few book recommendations on RPG quest and character design, would help people who are starting out. I'd like to see a book on balancing RPGs as well.

Balancing? Are you making a fighting game? Balancing are two curves that intersects or Monte Carlo. RPGs are games that are unbalanced (more or less).

Games are digital media, which means if there are not freely available articles and resources on the Internet, you are screwed.
 

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I studied Unity a bit when they released the indie version as free and while it is much more powerful than I initially suspected it really isn't best choice for complex games like RPGs or strategies. Sure, you _can_ make one with it, but there is very little support for it out of the box and you would end up coding at least as much as with the traditional approach (ie. using some higher level language and a ready made 3d engine*)

Just tossing some pathfinding and decision tree plugins in it is not nearly enough.


* If you really need 3d, that is.
 
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Raghar said:
The trouble is a beginner needs all that programming to learn stuff. You'd make things easy for him, and he would learn nothing. (Some people in the industry have university titles, but are unable to create new stuff and are lacking some experience.)

If you want to make game engines, then making a game engine from scratch is a worth while exercise. If you want to make games, then stop wasting time making game engines and make your games.

The problem is there are lots of technical people who can program, but they aren't very creative and make boring games. Then there are people that can design great games, but aren't wizard programmers. So engines like Unity3D make it possible for almost anyone to make games, as it should be.

Raghar said:
A game creating kit would crete similar experience for any game, and when a game developer learns some stuff, it would cause problems. In addition when a good looking game would be easy to do by some external tools any idiot would be able make a game. Look at PS2 games. Majority of them would be ignored when they would be made for PC. Some of them are QUITE low end quality.

Unity3D isn't a game creation kit like FPSCreator. Unity is a 3D engine with 3 scripting languages available C#, Java Script and Boo and if you go Pro you can drop in C++ Dlls. So you can create any game you want with it. What it does is do all the hard work for you. For instance, the work flow for artists is a dream and the fact that it will run on any Apple or PC made in the last 10 years is fantastic.


Raghar said:
I would consider more important a public domain or MIT licence library for making character model, and for automatic generation of animals. Programming is half year effort, animation and modeling takes more.

This is true. Game art is a PITA to get, as most artists have a 'no cash up front, no work' mentality. However there are cheap quality sources of 3D game art, that are starting to open up. www.dexsoft-games.com is one that is pretty good for sci-fi, medieval and present day buildings.

Raghar said:
Balancing? Are you making a fighting game? Balancing are two curves that intersects or Monte Carlo. RPGs are games that are unbalanced (more or less).

Turn based RPGs can be quite difficult to balance. Ask VaultDweller. :)

Raghar said:
Games are digital media, which means if there are not freely available articles and resources on the Internet, you are screwed.
[/quote]

Thats why Unity3D is so good. They have many users, so there are tons of free articles and code. Hang out at their forums and check out the Unify Community Wiki. There are also excellent paid plugins as well, that will speed up development time.

I sound like I am just pushing Unity3D. The Free Unreal engine is pretty good as well and has something called Kismet (I don't know if Kismet is free). I haven't looked into Unreal, as the licensing conditions on Unreal "Free" are pretty steep. I think they want 25% of all sales over $5000. Unity3D Free on the other hand is completely free, however there are no real time shadows, but you can bake static ones in. If you want decent shadows, you need to buy the pro version at $1500, and from what I have seen of the work flow in other engines, it is worth it in terms of time it will save you.
 
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Flatlander said:
I studied Unity a bit when they released the indie version as free and while it is much more powerful than I initially suspected it really isn't best choice for complex games like RPGs or strategies. Sure, you _can_ make one with it, but there is very little support for it out of the box and you would end up coding at least as much as with the traditional approach (ie. using some higher level language and a ready made 3d engine*)

Just tossing some pathfinding and decision tree plugins in it is not nearly enough.


* If you really need 3d, that is.

It is and I am pretty sure you could make a 2D game with Unity3D. I'm not sure why you'd bother with 2D though, because people will ask why your game isn't 3D and 2D games can be more work than 3D.

Also one of the pathfinding plugins has gone open source now and they have OpenSteer for it.

Honestly I don't understand the resistance from some of you. Can you guys not program in C#? If so, then what is the problem? Is it because you have so much invested in your own game engines? Or are you putting off actually making a game, by building your own engine? Spending years making an engine is a great way to procrastinate. ;)

BTW a behavior tree is not a decision tree. Check out the videos and see what they can do.

EDIT:
The only thing I'd really like, is to get the source for the Behave pluginin, because I have thought of some ways to make it far better in terms of making RPGs - I will continue to nag the author. :)
 

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Davaris said:
Honestly I don't understand the resistance from some of you. Can you guys not program in C#? If so, then what is the problem? Is it because you have so much invested in your own game engines? Or are you putting off actually making a game, by building your own engine? Spending years making an engine is a great way to procrastinate. ;)
To me it just looks like building an RPG on top of Unity would require at least as much work as using more low level way.

For example, the Unity ide/designer can't really be directly used with something like rpg. If I'm correct it has fairly simplistic assumptions about the game flow; game is divided in to scenes, player enters scene, scene is initialized, player exits, scene resets. For first I would need to build my own serialization and scene management code, pretty low level task I believe, which would render the ide useless. So I would need to extended the ide with my own editor etc. etc.

In the end the only thing I would benefit from using Unity is the 3d engine. So I might as well use something I already know.
 
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If I'm correct it has fairly simplistic assumptions about the game flow; game is divided in to scenes, player enters scene, scene is initialized, player exits, scene resets.

For first I would need to build my own serialization and scene management code, pretty low level task I believe

Yes this is true. You'll have to save and load your data. The RPG game engine I wrote years ago, did something similar, in that I saved everything before exiting a map and reloaded it, when the next map loaded. BTW I have seen a commercial plugin for Unity that allows you to click on variables and they will be saved and loaded, but I haven't tested it yet.

As for extending the editor, I don't think you'll have to do that. I'll be using the Behavior tree editor to find and control all of the game entities and placement will be done using the standard Unity Editor or Behavior tree (if I use instantiation).

In case you don't know, you can change script variables in the Editor at any time while playing your game. All you have to do is set them to be 'public' and they appear in the inspector.

In the end the only thing I would benefit from using Unity is the 3d engine. So I might as well use something I already know.

I have scripted a game the traditional way and it was a horrible experience and turned me off game making for a long time. So at the very least, look into Behavior trees and if you like them, try and create your own for your engine. You will make better games, in less time, with less bugs.
 
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What would be the easiest/cheapest way to make a 2D Wasteland (movement, graphics)-Fallout (dialogue trees)-style cRPG on Linux?
 
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Sorry I don't know much about Linux. The only things I know of for it is C/C++ and SDL.

Sorry to harp on about Behavior trees, but if you can get an editor working for your game, you'll be able to do most things with it - dialogue, plot, quests, interface control - you won't need scripts.

Other than that, all you need is a good path finder and path follower. Open Steer is a path follower and is open source. I don't know of any open source path finders though, so Google it and see what you can dig up.
 

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Awor Szurkrarz said:
What would be the easiest/cheapest way to make a 2D Wasteland (movement, graphics)-Fallout (dialogue trees)-style cRPG on Linux?
SDL and/or OpenGL. It should be usable from ~every language available for the platform. I wouldn't suggest going with C or C++ unless you are already familiar with it.

If you don't know what language to pick, choose Python (it's good for what it is).

Of course Java and Flash (with Flex SDK or Haxe) also more or less work, if you are so inclined.

Davaris said:
Sorry to harp on about Behavior trees, but if you can get an editor working for your game, you'll be able to do most things with it - dialogue, plot, quests, interface control - you won't need scripts.

Other than that, all you need is a good path finder and path follower. Open Steer is a path follower and is open source. I don't know of any open source path finders though, so Google it and see what you can dig up.
I'll have to check those. I've been thinking a lot about scripting systems lately...
 
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Flatlander said:
If you don't know what language to pick, choose Python (it's good for what it is).

I forgot about Python. It's slow but is really nice to work with and I love what you can do with lists. Of course there is a 2D game engine called PyGame. I don't know if it works on Linux though.

Flatlander said:
I'll have to check those. I've been thinking a lot about scripting systems lately...

The videos I linked are long and dull, but worth it. When you are done, install Unity and get its Behave editor working and then try to create a skeleton of a quest and its sub tree components. Only then will you understand the beauty of Behavior Trees. ;)
 

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For indie developers, I'd always suggest using an existing engine, if there is one out there that does what the game needs. At least more or less, adjustments have to be made. Always.

For big companies, not so much.
Yeah, an engine can already display all that stuff, play the sounds, etc. But you still need to get comfortable with it, something that comes on its own if your guys are developing their own stuff. With every engine, you need someone who knows it and can help you around.

That's basically why I'd always suggest Ogre 3D. It may not be perfect (it only comes close ;)), but ask any question on the forums and you will have your answer in less than some hours.
Of course, if you want to have scripting, sound and all other non-graphics stuff already in your engine, you will either have to use some plugins for Ogre or simply do it yourself.

Unfortunately, I don't know any good 2D engine, and have no idea how far you can get with XNA.
 

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Davaris said:
Honestly I don't understand the resistance from some of you. Can you guys not program in C#? If so, then what is the problem? Is it because you have so much invested in your own game engines? Or are you putting off actually making a game, by building your own engine? Spending years making an engine is a great way to procrastinate. ;)

Unity does not appear to do "almost everything for you" as you claimed, when it comes to making something that does not fall into several neat preconceptions about what a "game" is... as Flatlander pointed out above.

Too many people mistake the concept of "renderer" for that of an "engine". The renderer is by far the easiest part, and, in case of an RPG, the rest isn't easily filled out with a few plug-ins.
 
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So what can you not do with Unity? I'll warn you before you answer, that Unity is very popular among casual game makers and they can be very creative when it comes to what a game is.

And yes there is a difference between a renderer and a game engine. For instance Ogre is a renderer, Unity is an engine.

BTW I just did a search of '2D games' on their forum and turned up a sprite manager. So I still don't see the problem, unless you want to make games using 8 bit graphics (it wouldn't surprise me if you could do that with pro).

Edit:
And here is a seamless world thread:
http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php? ... ight=games

Unity Pro allows for streaming assets, a terrain is nothing more than an asset just like everything else in the game, and the player never need know that you are loading maps, it is entirely possible in unity while using streaming assets to achieve an endless / seamless world. Just remember memory limits though, your game itself needs to remain < 2 gig of used memory to be actually functional. Some older machines will blow up and run out of memory otherwise.

I have also seen people discuss making MMOs, 2D and 3D with it.

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php? ... ght=mmorpg

As noted above Unity, along with a proper back-end tech, is plenty capable of developing just about whatever game type you like, including full-on MMOs whether in the browser or on the desktop.

FusionFall is one example, ArtPlant/Funcom are soon to join the fray with a second MMO done in Unity and I know of one or two other large scale MMO/virtual world projects underway in addition to that (under NDA, can't say what/who just yet).

The other question you have to ask youself, can you make a better engine + documentation + tools than all of these people? On top of that they have a massive user base with talented members that write plugins.

company-banner-2009.jpg


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.


Theres a thread at the Unity forums that discuss this topic:

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php? ... ight=games

jashan wrote:

Probably because they believe they have to develop their own game engine to be "real men (tm)".

ahahaha, I nearly pooped my pants laughing when I read that lol.
It's EXACTLY what some of the guys over at the other forum are doing. When I show off some pictures of games I make with Unity, they always come and start picking on me because I use Unity and not my own game engine, that I should write my own engine etc.
That's exactly what they're doing, they're making their own game engines in c++ to make a game. They keep calling Unity "shit", but when I ask what is so "shitty" about it, and to give me at least one example, then they stop until next time I show something off lol.
 
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I wish I was that smart... Actually no, I'd rather be making decent games. ;)
 

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