Plan for Brett Fattori
by Brett Fattori · 07/02/2005 (8:32 am) · 12 comments
Pat asked the question of "what gives?" in the arena of TGE development. Comparatively, T2D is overflowing with projects. Now, having participated in a GID with T2D, I can say that turning out a simple game in T2D is much simpler that in TGE. What's the difference? Well, I think that the difference of an extra dimension is huge, as is the environment within which you develop your games.
As many of you know (or may be new, and didn't see my early flurry of .plans about it) dRacer is my current project. I've spent over a year now working with Joe, Clark, and Mark (formerly of Bravetree) on a racing game. To date, it is still graphically at the level of what was shown during IGC'04. Sure we have a couple of new car shapes, but they are mainly tests. We're still working on the foundation of the game.
I think that if we were just churning out a simple FPS, we could have done so much sooner since the engine is, at its core, an FPS engine. But since we're making a game that is so fundamentally different from what TGE is written for, it has taken much more time.
Some people may say "but TGE comes with vehicles and a racing demo in it!!" To which I will respond: "If you like racing games where the top speed feels like 25 mph and the controls feel like an elephant on ice skates, then yes we could be done with it." But we didn't like that feeling. We wanted something tight and something that will provide a racing enthusiast (Joe is one of those
) with a good experience.
To that end, we decided to use Clark's component system as our foundation. Thank god that we did, because without it we'd be up a certain creek without a paddle. But this still didn't just immediately solve our problems... There were, and still are, many different issues that must be tackled to make the engine into a racing engine.
Clark has rewritten the entire way that the engine works and it has made a huge difference. A racecar is a collection of components that each perform a small task, representative of the whole. Together they are a racecar, but separately they could be anything. This meant a whole new way of thinking, and stuff to learn.
Speaking of learning, I've been going to school to finish up my degree and get that piece of paper for my future employers. That has taken up a huge chunk of my time -- as does my real job, and this new job that I'll be starting on the 5th. Indies have real lives with real issues and real obligations. These usually distract us from our game development, and make timelines longer.
Up until just a short time ago Clark, Joe, Mark, Matt, and John were all doing a mix of contract and company work. Company work being game dev, and contract being everything else. Again, more distractions from what indies really want to do -- make games. So, to answer Pat's question as to why game dev on TGE takes so long, let me sum it up:
3D games require a lot of time to make the foundation to create a fully functional and entertaining game. The artwork and the look and feel don't take nearly as much time (according to Joe) as the coding does. In other words, code always lags behind art. I can agree with this...
2D games, while some can be very involved -- most aren't, take a lot less time in coding. Especially when working with an existing toolset such as T2D. You see, T2D wasn't designed to be a TPS (third person shooter) engine, it was designed to make 2D games. TGE was designed (and is still maintained) as an FPS engine, so many changes must take place before TGE is ready to make your game.
I know I'm gonna take some guff over this. People will say it takes just as much time to come up with and program a 2D game as it does a 3D game, but I'll argue that it takes far less time. As I said T2D is a 2D engine... that's it. It's designed to make 2D games easier to create. Nothing is set in stone... It doesn't come as a Pac-man clone that you can use as a base to make 2D games. TGE is an FPS that you then must modify to make games.
I'm gonna end here, I have a paper to write for class. I'll get back to dRacer after that -- oh wait, I have to mow the lawn too. Ok, after that... shoot, nope, I have my dad's birthday to go to. Well, that should only go to about 11pm... etc.
- Brett
As many of you know (or may be new, and didn't see my early flurry of .plans about it) dRacer is my current project. I've spent over a year now working with Joe, Clark, and Mark (formerly of Bravetree) on a racing game. To date, it is still graphically at the level of what was shown during IGC'04. Sure we have a couple of new car shapes, but they are mainly tests. We're still working on the foundation of the game.
I think that if we were just churning out a simple FPS, we could have done so much sooner since the engine is, at its core, an FPS engine. But since we're making a game that is so fundamentally different from what TGE is written for, it has taken much more time.
Some people may say "but TGE comes with vehicles and a racing demo in it!!" To which I will respond: "If you like racing games where the top speed feels like 25 mph and the controls feel like an elephant on ice skates, then yes we could be done with it." But we didn't like that feeling. We wanted something tight and something that will provide a racing enthusiast (Joe is one of those
) with a good experience.To that end, we decided to use Clark's component system as our foundation. Thank god that we did, because without it we'd be up a certain creek without a paddle. But this still didn't just immediately solve our problems... There were, and still are, many different issues that must be tackled to make the engine into a racing engine.
Clark has rewritten the entire way that the engine works and it has made a huge difference. A racecar is a collection of components that each perform a small task, representative of the whole. Together they are a racecar, but separately they could be anything. This meant a whole new way of thinking, and stuff to learn.
Speaking of learning, I've been going to school to finish up my degree and get that piece of paper for my future employers. That has taken up a huge chunk of my time -- as does my real job, and this new job that I'll be starting on the 5th. Indies have real lives with real issues and real obligations. These usually distract us from our game development, and make timelines longer.
Up until just a short time ago Clark, Joe, Mark, Matt, and John were all doing a mix of contract and company work. Company work being game dev, and contract being everything else. Again, more distractions from what indies really want to do -- make games. So, to answer Pat's question as to why game dev on TGE takes so long, let me sum it up:
3D games require a lot of time to make the foundation to create a fully functional and entertaining game. The artwork and the look and feel don't take nearly as much time (according to Joe) as the coding does. In other words, code always lags behind art. I can agree with this...
2D games, while some can be very involved -- most aren't, take a lot less time in coding. Especially when working with an existing toolset such as T2D. You see, T2D wasn't designed to be a TPS (third person shooter) engine, it was designed to make 2D games. TGE was designed (and is still maintained) as an FPS engine, so many changes must take place before TGE is ready to make your game.
I know I'm gonna take some guff over this. People will say it takes just as much time to come up with and program a 2D game as it does a 3D game, but I'll argue that it takes far less time. As I said T2D is a 2D engine... that's it. It's designed to make 2D games easier to create. Nothing is set in stone... It doesn't come as a Pac-man clone that you can use as a base to make 2D games. TGE is an FPS that you then must modify to make games.
I'm gonna end here, I have a paper to write for class. I'll get back to dRacer after that -- oh wait, I have to mow the lawn too. Ok, after that... shoot, nope, I have my dad's birthday to go to. Well, that should only go to about 11pm... etc.
- Brett
About the author
Recent Blogs
• A small hello• Recent Stuph
• So long and so out of touch...
• Plan for Brett Fattori
• Plan for Brett Fattori
#2
I know that we found this with Lore Invasion. We thought that it would initially be a quick game to make because we all felt that we had a ton of experiance doing our individual tasks as well as experiance with Torque... what ended up happening was that we found that we weren't even on a foothill with our knowledge and we needed to climb over a few mountains to get to the tallest peak that was "final game". At various times in the process GG would tell us that the game was six months away from being ready and we in our ignorance basicly just scoffed and said "no way this game is cool and we just have a few little items left to do". Well six months later we were still at it working away at those few little items.
So what's the moral of the story here? Making games is incredibly hard work and everyone should start with an incredibly small game (like 3D pacman) and work up from there to just a basic FPS game. Why? Well the answer is simple, as much as you think you know, it more than likely amounts to less than 1% of what is needed to make an actual product. We are all new here and we are learning so much each day, what we have to learn to do is curb our enthusiasm off the get go to make the next Doom and understand how to just make a game and then find out the "fun factor" as Joe Maruschake puts it in order to understand what makes a good game.
07/02/2005 (10:05 am)
Well said Brett. I think we all forget or seem to go stupid in our brains when we try to take our game ideas from paper and put it to reality. What we forget is that we unfortunately cannot live, eat and breathe this stuff day in and day out like others can, we have to pay our bills and try to eek out a living while we do it and squeeze in those extra few hours a week towards our implementation. We also forget that what we know is just a tiny little minute detail in regards to what is required to complete the big picture that we call our game.I know that we found this with Lore Invasion. We thought that it would initially be a quick game to make because we all felt that we had a ton of experiance doing our individual tasks as well as experiance with Torque... what ended up happening was that we found that we weren't even on a foothill with our knowledge and we needed to climb over a few mountains to get to the tallest peak that was "final game". At various times in the process GG would tell us that the game was six months away from being ready and we in our ignorance basicly just scoffed and said "no way this game is cool and we just have a few little items left to do". Well six months later we were still at it working away at those few little items.
So what's the moral of the story here? Making games is incredibly hard work and everyone should start with an incredibly small game (like 3D pacman) and work up from there to just a basic FPS game. Why? Well the answer is simple, as much as you think you know, it more than likely amounts to less than 1% of what is needed to make an actual product. We are all new here and we are learning so much each day, what we have to learn to do is curb our enthusiasm off the get go to make the next Doom and understand how to just make a game and then find out the "fun factor" as Joe Maruschake puts it in order to understand what makes a good game.
#3
You are absolutely correct when you say that a game with TGE takes much longer to create, but you've had much more time to create it than people making 'simple' games with T2D.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I believe that is what Pat was getting at. 6 years versus under a year, I think that's more than enough time to make up for the extra 'hoops' you have to jump through to make a 3D game with TGE.
Just my .2c
-justin`
07/02/2005 (11:17 am)
Correct me if I'm mistaken though, but I believe that what Pat was eluding to was the fact that TGE has been around for so long and there is still much less to show for it than T2D. You are absolutely correct when you say that a game with TGE takes much longer to create, but you've had much more time to create it than people making 'simple' games with T2D.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I believe that is what Pat was getting at. 6 years versus under a year, I think that's more than enough time to make up for the extra 'hoops' you have to jump through to make a 3D game with TGE.
Just my .2c
-justin`
#4
If the FPS thing were entirely true (and I think there's some real truth to that), it doesn't explain why there's not more RTS stuff out there now with the RTS starter pack.
In my opinion, there are 3 major things that need to be done (and I already mentioned them in the response to Pat's blog):
#1 - Easier single-player programming... some way to abstract out the multiplayer elements if you are doing a single-player game. Torque makes multiplayer programming MUCH easier than it usually is, but it's still colossally more difficult than single-player game development, and single-player games have to jump through all the same multiplayer hoops.
#2 - The engine needs to have a simplified middle-layer for developers: Something in-between the easy-but-limited TorqueScript and the nuts-and-bolts must-know-way-too-much-to-get-started C++ engine code.
#3 - More, better-organized tutorials on GG's site that cover more specialized, non-beginner topics.
07/02/2005 (12:28 pm)
Quote:Perhaps I'm wrong, but I believe that is what Pat was getting at. 6 years versus under a year, I think that's more than enough time to make up for the extra 'hoops' you have to jump through to make a 3D game with TGE.Not entirely. I doubt the first three years of Torque's introduction had NEARLY the sort of visibility (and "market penetration) that Torque (and T2D) has now.
If the FPS thing were entirely true (and I think there's some real truth to that), it doesn't explain why there's not more RTS stuff out there now with the RTS starter pack.
In my opinion, there are 3 major things that need to be done (and I already mentioned them in the response to Pat's blog):
#1 - Easier single-player programming... some way to abstract out the multiplayer elements if you are doing a single-player game. Torque makes multiplayer programming MUCH easier than it usually is, but it's still colossally more difficult than single-player game development, and single-player games have to jump through all the same multiplayer hoops.
#2 - The engine needs to have a simplified middle-layer for developers: Something in-between the easy-but-limited TorqueScript and the nuts-and-bolts must-know-way-too-much-to-get-started C++ engine code.
#3 - More, better-organized tutorials on GG's site that cover more specialized, non-beginner topics.
#5
The game I did in T2D, however, was much simpler and I could see getting it done in relatively little time. So, when comparing the two engines, remember that TGE started as an FPS engine. T2D started as an engine (note the absense of a type of engine). That is the biggest hurdle. If TGE were an engine like T2D, ie: not aimed at any one particular genre, then I bet games would come from it much quicker. But... but, but... But the thing to consider is, would people be as drawn to TGE if it were just a 3D engine?
So, Pat... what games have you released lately with TGE (besides MBXbox - which rocks BTW)?
- Brett
07/02/2005 (2:33 pm)
I guess my point was that T2D is generic... You can create anything from it. TGE, on the other hand, is an FPS engine. Yeah, it's been around 6 years but something like dRacer has only been around for about a year (well, 1.5 years now). I started with ChopperSim and put my heart and soul into it. But even after 5 months of hard work I realized it was too big a project for 1 person.The game I did in T2D, however, was much simpler and I could see getting it done in relatively little time. So, when comparing the two engines, remember that TGE started as an FPS engine. T2D started as an engine (note the absense of a type of engine). That is the biggest hurdle. If TGE were an engine like T2D, ie: not aimed at any one particular genre, then I bet games would come from it much quicker. But... but, but... But the thing to consider is, would people be as drawn to TGE if it were just a 3D engine?
So, Pat... what games have you released lately with TGE (besides MBXbox - which rocks BTW)?
- Brett
#7
The components that make it up are:
1) Mover - Moves along a surface in 3D
2) Collider - Collides with objects and the world
3) Camera - Provides player view into the world
4) Shape - The actual shape of the object
5) AI - The artificial intelligence (should that apply)
6) Input - Interface to the player's joystick or keyboard
7) FX - Special effects (sparks, skids, etc)
8) Recorder - Playback recorder
9) Data - Player information
An astute person would see this and say "Hey, that could be anything." And they'd be right. You see, we could change the shape from a car to a plane, change the mover to be flight physics, and you'd have an airplane. It simplifies much of the process of building objects within the game.
My addition to the engine is a racetrack object. Fully collidable, texturable, and user definable track system. Draw a line, it becomes the track...
- Brett
07/04/2005 (9:52 am)
Clark's component system is like taking COM and applying it to gaming. Assuming that you can identify the atomic parts of a whole entity, you can appreciate the component system. Let's take a racer from dRacer, for example:The components that make it up are:
1) Mover - Moves along a surface in 3D
2) Collider - Collides with objects and the world
3) Camera - Provides player view into the world
4) Shape - The actual shape of the object
5) AI - The artificial intelligence (should that apply)
6) Input - Interface to the player's joystick or keyboard
7) FX - Special effects (sparks, skids, etc)
8) Recorder - Playback recorder
9) Data - Player information
An astute person would see this and say "Hey, that could be anything." And they'd be right. You see, we could change the shape from a car to a plane, change the mover to be flight physics, and you'd have an airplane. It simplifies much of the process of building objects within the game.
My addition to the engine is a racetrack object. Fully collidable, texturable, and user definable track system. Draw a line, it becomes the track...
- Brett
#8
this is so true. I'm amazed every day at how much more knowledge it takes than I originally thought it would.
07/04/2005 (12:47 pm)
Quote:Well the answer is simple, as much as you think you know, it more than likely amounts to less than 1% of what is needed to make an actual product. We are all new here and we are learning so much each day, what we have to learn to do is curb our enthusiasm off the get go to make the next Doom and understand how to just make a game and then find out the "fun factor" as Joe Maruschake puts it in order to understand what makes a good game.
this is so true. I'm amazed every day at how much more knowledge it takes than I originally thought it would.
#10
- Brett
07/05/2005 (7:46 am)
The component system is something that will show up (I believe) eventually in TGE/TSE. As for the racetrack system -- that's still proprietary, but there's the possibility it will show up.- Brett
Torque Owner Anton Bursch