Cipher Game Engine changes hands
by Bradley Newton Haug · in General Discussion · 06/03/2003 (5:46 pm) · 80 replies
http://www.cipherengine.com/index.php
either GG has a look and feel lawsuit, or have been spending money in odd places.
-brad
either GG has a look and feel lawsuit, or have been spending money in odd places.
-brad
About the author
#62
Not sure you read my post as my audience were not concerned with what engine I used to create a game or how much it cost me. They were only interested in what they would get or not get at the end of the day.
As an indie developer my customers are what motivate me and they are saying they want snazzy graphics if I'm going to try to sell them a fps but want good action rpgs with maybe not so snazzy graphics.
Bob I didn't restrict the number of players on the survey for my marketing. I only asked what fps and fps/rpg players wanted to see in a shareware title from me. I gave various options such as "when purchasing a fps game which features motivate you" put in order of importance from 1 - 5
Length of game
number of levels
multiplayer
graphics
number of weapons
and similar for rpg games, price vs content etc.
hope this helps
07/26/2003 (8:46 pm)
Hi DaleNot sure you read my post as my audience were not concerned with what engine I used to create a game or how much it cost me. They were only interested in what they would get or not get at the end of the day.
As an indie developer my customers are what motivate me and they are saying they want snazzy graphics if I'm going to try to sell them a fps but want good action rpgs with maybe not so snazzy graphics.
Bob I didn't restrict the number of players on the survey for my marketing. I only asked what fps and fps/rpg players wanted to see in a shareware title from me. I gave various options such as "when purchasing a fps game which features motivate you" put in order of importance from 1 - 5
Length of game
number of levels
multiplayer
graphics
number of weapons
and similar for rpg games, price vs content etc.
hope this helps
#63
I have dug out the marketing files and can tell you some more figures I managed to get from the data. From the data I can conclude that (of my sample):-
*FPS players seem to be getting bored of the whole scene.
*Games like America's Army where you have to think are getting more popular (squad games I called them in the survey)
*Graphics must be good was very important to them! (Hence I don't get Jeff Tunnells attitude towards shaders and detailed normal map support etc?!?)
*On the third person front Splinter Cell was rated highly (again many mentioned it's graphics! then it's gameplay!)
*Roleplaying now seems to be action roleplaying those that like the genre mentioned ultima but most mentioned stuff like zelda and few knew any other rpg type game titles except dragon quest and golden sun. Basically rpg games are still looking for their doom equivalent.
I would strongly suggest that everyone here who is thinking of getting up in arms about my views on torque and cipher and lately quest3d (though with the latter at 700 dollars it's beyond my indie budget) should do their own market research with their intended audience and then tell me their audience didn't want to see some juicy graphics or mention doom3/halflife 2 as the current benchmarks for fps games.
If you're not making a fps game then you may be in luck but if you are and the majority of you seem to be for some strange reason...Wait could it be that torque only supports fps type games out of the box (with no community mod'ing) and those that complain are not engine coders so can't modify the engine themselves?!...Sorry that's a bit sarcy isn't it. Still it does kind of emphasis my original point doesn't it.
Anyway to anyone who is still listening. I'm not trying to annoy you just stating what concerns me given what my market is saying to me. Torque simply isn't cutting it for graphics now. Cipher currently is and can be easily modified using shaders. Torque therefore needs shaders and quite frankly a cleanup of the code base. This is long overdue and if Jeff Tunnell and crew don't think this is the case then let them sit and watch their customers go to someplace that does provide this stuff.
I also don't too much like the idea of being tied to publishing through GG. I may publish through them if they start to prove their sales but I don't as an indie with precious few sales as it is, wish to limit these sales even further still, by not being able to distribute through as many sales points as possible not just as many as GG thinks are relevant!! (Yea I re-read the licence and boy does it seem restrictive now that other engines are in the indie market offering zero restrictions on what you do with your finished product).
Competition is healthy so I welcome Cipher and quest3d to the indie scene. Perhaps they will shake GG into updating their engine features once in a while. I love the torque engine, but I love my indie games programming more and frankly I'll go where my audience tell me I need to go. If they say better graphics I don't want to spend 6 months updating an engine to support them, when I could be spending 6 months improving my games feature set and quality levels. The engine updating and finished product marketing is what I thought GG would be doing!!
07/26/2003 (9:27 pm)
Hi again DaleI have dug out the marketing files and can tell you some more figures I managed to get from the data. From the data I can conclude that (of my sample):-
*FPS players seem to be getting bored of the whole scene.
*Games like America's Army where you have to think are getting more popular (squad games I called them in the survey)
*Graphics must be good was very important to them! (Hence I don't get Jeff Tunnells attitude towards shaders and detailed normal map support etc?!?)
*On the third person front Splinter Cell was rated highly (again many mentioned it's graphics! then it's gameplay!)
*Roleplaying now seems to be action roleplaying those that like the genre mentioned ultima but most mentioned stuff like zelda and few knew any other rpg type game titles except dragon quest and golden sun. Basically rpg games are still looking for their doom equivalent.
I would strongly suggest that everyone here who is thinking of getting up in arms about my views on torque and cipher and lately quest3d (though with the latter at 700 dollars it's beyond my indie budget) should do their own market research with their intended audience and then tell me their audience didn't want to see some juicy graphics or mention doom3/halflife 2 as the current benchmarks for fps games.
If you're not making a fps game then you may be in luck but if you are and the majority of you seem to be for some strange reason...Wait could it be that torque only supports fps type games out of the box (with no community mod'ing) and those that complain are not engine coders so can't modify the engine themselves?!...Sorry that's a bit sarcy isn't it. Still it does kind of emphasis my original point doesn't it.
Anyway to anyone who is still listening. I'm not trying to annoy you just stating what concerns me given what my market is saying to me. Torque simply isn't cutting it for graphics now. Cipher currently is and can be easily modified using shaders. Torque therefore needs shaders and quite frankly a cleanup of the code base. This is long overdue and if Jeff Tunnell and crew don't think this is the case then let them sit and watch their customers go to someplace that does provide this stuff.
I also don't too much like the idea of being tied to publishing through GG. I may publish through them if they start to prove their sales but I don't as an indie with precious few sales as it is, wish to limit these sales even further still, by not being able to distribute through as many sales points as possible not just as many as GG thinks are relevant!! (Yea I re-read the licence and boy does it seem restrictive now that other engines are in the indie market offering zero restrictions on what you do with your finished product).
Competition is healthy so I welcome Cipher and quest3d to the indie scene. Perhaps they will shake GG into updating their engine features once in a while. I love the torque engine, but I love my indie games programming more and frankly I'll go where my audience tell me I need to go. If they say better graphics I don't want to spend 6 months updating an engine to support them, when I could be spending 6 months improving my games feature set and quality levels. The engine updating and finished product marketing is what I thought GG would be doing!!
#64
I see nothing about this so called "restrictive" license. I think it's pretty well done and no you do NOT have to publish with GG, you can go else where. If that other publisher makes more than $500,000 then you must pay a $10,000 commericial license upfront. By the way cipher actually has pretty much the same license as Torque does except it says nothing about publishing therefore I guess you could assume it's less restrictive than GarageGames' Torque license.
And the whole thing about if the game doesn't have great perfect highly advanced graphics is just plain bullshit as usual. It's like the old saying back in 2000 where these "experts" were saying that Linux was just a waste and would never go anywhere. Now look at day, Linux is nearly everywhere, including inside your favorite TV show recording hardware called TiVo. The concept could still easily apply to games. It doesn't really need to have all these cool light effects and graphics rendering that just takes these huge system requirements! As long as the game doesn't look or play like crap then I believe it'll work out.
It's also about the game. Is it a new idea that is so cool and now popular or the ever so never ending boring usual crap where everybody copies eachother and having these shoot 'em up games that are all apparently the same with now featuring more explosions than ever before!
07/26/2003 (9:42 pm)
Torque is always being worked on. If not GarageGames then it's the community that is working hard to make Torque the best as they can.I see nothing about this so called "restrictive" license. I think it's pretty well done and no you do NOT have to publish with GG, you can go else where. If that other publisher makes more than $500,000 then you must pay a $10,000 commericial license upfront. By the way cipher actually has pretty much the same license as Torque does except it says nothing about publishing therefore I guess you could assume it's less restrictive than GarageGames' Torque license.
And the whole thing about if the game doesn't have great perfect highly advanced graphics is just plain bullshit as usual. It's like the old saying back in 2000 where these "experts" were saying that Linux was just a waste and would never go anywhere. Now look at day, Linux is nearly everywhere, including inside your favorite TV show recording hardware called TiVo. The concept could still easily apply to games. It doesn't really need to have all these cool light effects and graphics rendering that just takes these huge system requirements! As long as the game doesn't look or play like crap then I believe it'll work out.
It's also about the game. Is it a new idea that is so cool and now popular or the ever so never ending boring usual crap where everybody copies eachother and having these shoot 'em up games that are all apparently the same with now featuring more explosions than ever before!
#65
Example: Take Socom- the graphics in Socom are comparable to Torque and its one of the top selling games and game of the year.
Torques graphics will be pumped up some day and maybe by a motivated and experienced programer like yourself and then I dont see any limitations with it. And besides whatever engine you use there will be draw backs.
But whatever to each his own.
EDIT:And if you cant afford an engine over 100 bucks and your expecting graphics and gameplay like halflife2 or doom3 well then I think your head is in the clouds and its time to get back to reality.
07/26/2003 (9:44 pm)
Ok Quote:"when purchasing a fps game which features motivate you" put in order of importance from 1 - 5
Length of game
number of levels
multiplayer
"graphics"<----
number of weapons
Quote:they are saying they want snazzy graphicsWell apparently thats not they're most important feature they want. And again I dont see where Torque will have a problem with that list.
Example: Take Socom- the graphics in Socom are comparable to Torque and its one of the top selling games and game of the year.
Torques graphics will be pumped up some day and maybe by a motivated and experienced programer like yourself and then I dont see any limitations with it. And besides whatever engine you use there will be draw backs.
But whatever to each his own.
EDIT:And if you cant afford an engine over 100 bucks and your expecting graphics and gameplay like halflife2 or doom3 well then I think your head is in the clouds and its time to get back to reality.
#66
As usual you don't read posts you simply respond to points in them taken out of context. First off my audience i.e. as an indie, these are the people that concern me i.e. the gamer in the street I hope to sell to! Is saying that graphics matter. The questions on the sheet I gave them to fill in diliberately do not place graphics as the top choice and they simply numbered them as THEY saw fit. Graphics was always marked as the no.1 or no.2 priority more often no.1 with multiplayer and weapons as a close second.
Socom is a squad game so again you didn't read my post as I said that my findings were that players seem to be bored with fps and wanted squad games or were waiting to see what doom 3/halflife 2 would give them.
You obviously don't do any market research but try this simple test. Ask yourself (and be honest!) what do you look for in a fps game and what would make you buy yet another one?
I've been using torque since june 2001 so I know this engine pretty well now and feel qualified to make observations about it's current suitability for my next indie game. I also made sure that I asked my intended audience as best I could with a 1000 person market survey and another planned for next month.
As I have said do your own market research based on what game YOU are using torque for and tell me what your audience quote to you as their greatest requirements for buying your game. Then see if you can modify torque to meet those requirements in a reasonable time frame. If you can't do these things then you're not qualified to comment on what I or anyone else who has done these things says.
sorry to be blunt but thems the facts!
07/26/2003 (10:06 pm)
DaleAs usual you don't read posts you simply respond to points in them taken out of context. First off my audience i.e. as an indie, these are the people that concern me i.e. the gamer in the street I hope to sell to! Is saying that graphics matter. The questions on the sheet I gave them to fill in diliberately do not place graphics as the top choice and they simply numbered them as THEY saw fit. Graphics was always marked as the no.1 or no.2 priority more often no.1 with multiplayer and weapons as a close second.
Socom is a squad game so again you didn't read my post as I said that my findings were that players seem to be bored with fps and wanted squad games or were waiting to see what doom 3/halflife 2 would give them.
You obviously don't do any market research but try this simple test. Ask yourself (and be honest!) what do you look for in a fps game and what would make you buy yet another one?
I've been using torque since june 2001 so I know this engine pretty well now and feel qualified to make observations about it's current suitability for my next indie game. I also made sure that I asked my intended audience as best I could with a 1000 person market survey and another planned for next month.
As I have said do your own market research based on what game YOU are using torque for and tell me what your audience quote to you as their greatest requirements for buying your game. Then see if you can modify torque to meet those requirements in a reasonable time frame. If you can't do these things then you're not qualified to comment on what I or anyone else who has done these things says.
sorry to be blunt but thems the facts!
#67
In 3 weeks we also made Marble Blast look like this. Shaders are not hard to put into Torque.
The GarageGames attitude twords shaders is not that they aren't important. Far from it. The attitude is that you don't NEED them. There is a big difference between saying, "omg I need shaders 2 make supar awsum mmorpg/fps/rts," and saying, "I can't do this effect without shaders." The first being the ignorant attempts by a newbie to hit every buzzword he can, thinking that as the number of graphics hot-topics increases, so does the game quality.
As Jeff has said before, GarageGames is a technology company, and the Torque technology will improve. That's beside the point though, GarageGames provides technology so you don't have to worry about technology and can make GAMES. If you want to do technology go work for RenderWare or something. We are here to make games. Technology is almost a necessassary evil. Don't get caught up in it. Find the engine you like to WORK WITH, not the engine with the prettiest screenshots. I assure you, with the right art, you can make screenshots in any engine that make people say 'Wow'.
Games, people...games.
07/26/2003 (10:37 pm)
Peter, I'm not sure exactly how much pain you went through putting shaders in Torque, but I did it in 40 minutes, and that includes writing the shaders to create the effect I wanted.In 3 weeks we also made Marble Blast look like this. Shaders are not hard to put into Torque.
The GarageGames attitude twords shaders is not that they aren't important. Far from it. The attitude is that you don't NEED them. There is a big difference between saying, "omg I need shaders 2 make supar awsum mmorpg/fps/rts," and saying, "I can't do this effect without shaders." The first being the ignorant attempts by a newbie to hit every buzzword he can, thinking that as the number of graphics hot-topics increases, so does the game quality.
As Jeff has said before, GarageGames is a technology company, and the Torque technology will improve. That's beside the point though, GarageGames provides technology so you don't have to worry about technology and can make GAMES. If you want to do technology go work for RenderWare or something. We are here to make games. Technology is almost a necessassary evil. Don't get caught up in it. Find the engine you like to WORK WITH, not the engine with the prettiest screenshots. I assure you, with the right art, you can make screenshots in any engine that make people say 'Wow'.
Games, people...games.
#68
I added shape specific shaders simply enough but this meant that the shaders were built into the shape file not as a genuine part of the material process so this idea was scrapped (a one game solution!).
Not sure how you added shaders in 40 minutes and made them reusable in other games you write. Given the need to add the opengl extentions for vertex and fragment programs, then testing the cards supports them, then allocating all of the functions if it did or defaulting back to normal if it didn't.
I tried this and although the shape mod (i.e putting the shader in the shape itself not in the materials) was quick it didn't work if the shaders were not present (whole thing crashed out) due to null pointers. Solution 1 was to to flag stuff and have shapes with both shader and non shader render code etc. All of which takes more than 40 minutes of work.
Games are the thing indeed but, this is only valid if you have a team behind you that already knows the technology. No-one who buys torque will know it in less than 6 months because of poor docs etc.
As for graphics the customer (the person you and I are ultimately trying to sell to) thinks that pretty pictures do a sale make and enhance the overall quality of the game. Marble blast with bump mapping. Why add it if it didn't make a difference? I suspect because this is what people wanted to see. This is exactly the situation I am in and I have simply run out of time with all the modifications I need to make to the engine.
If people like you would simply post the code for such effects instead of telling the community about them but strangely keeping them to yourselves I wouldn't even be writing this!
So far while implementing shaders I read over a dozen .plan files all saying something along the lines of "We have implemented shaders" but strangely the dozens of users asking how went unanswered. I guess I finally got to the point where I had to consider my game and intended audience (and existing loyal fans) over wethere or not I could modify torque or fix the shader bugs I now have. I'm still in recess but I'm pretty fed up with it all at the mo.
07/26/2003 (11:08 pm)
Hi PatI added shape specific shaders simply enough but this meant that the shaders were built into the shape file not as a genuine part of the material process so this idea was scrapped (a one game solution!).
Not sure how you added shaders in 40 minutes and made them reusable in other games you write. Given the need to add the opengl extentions for vertex and fragment programs, then testing the cards supports them, then allocating all of the functions if it did or defaulting back to normal if it didn't.
I tried this and although the shape mod (i.e putting the shader in the shape itself not in the materials) was quick it didn't work if the shaders were not present (whole thing crashed out) due to null pointers. Solution 1 was to to flag stuff and have shapes with both shader and non shader render code etc. All of which takes more than 40 minutes of work.
Games are the thing indeed but, this is only valid if you have a team behind you that already knows the technology. No-one who buys torque will know it in less than 6 months because of poor docs etc.
As for graphics the customer (the person you and I are ultimately trying to sell to) thinks that pretty pictures do a sale make and enhance the overall quality of the game. Marble blast with bump mapping. Why add it if it didn't make a difference? I suspect because this is what people wanted to see. This is exactly the situation I am in and I have simply run out of time with all the modifications I need to make to the engine.
If people like you would simply post the code for such effects instead of telling the community about them but strangely keeping them to yourselves I wouldn't even be writing this!
So far while implementing shaders I read over a dozen .plan files all saying something along the lines of "We have implemented shaders" but strangely the dozens of users asking how went unanswered. I guess I finally got to the point where I had to consider my game and intended audience (and existing loyal fans) over wethere or not I could modify torque or fix the shader bugs I now have. I'm still in recess but I'm pretty fed up with it all at the mo.
#69
For MarbleBlastFX we ported the whole damn thing to DirectX 9.0. As for that code, it will not be released because it is, uh, well the source to Marble Blast. It's also, for the most part, a hack...like I said, 3 weeks. I think the reason that people do not release their shader code is for a few reasons, firstly, like I said with GL, it is hard to ever get it working 100% well. In fact we probably won't see a good, solid GL shader implementation until GL2. The Cg runtime is great, but it's not all there yet. It needs better ATI support, by far.
OpenGL is just not set up to have a programable rendering pipeline. Look at DirectX with the vertex type information. When you throw polys at DX it knows how big the vertex will be and what it will contain. OpenGL has this plague known as "immediate mode" and the thing with GL and the ARB is they want backwards compatability out the wazoo. Well, I'd imagine it's tough to do shaders with immediate mode rendering. You have no idea what you are going to be rendering, how much information each vertex will have, 1 texture coordinate? 2? 3? color? etc.
I'm rambling and ranting at the same time now...if you take anything away from this, let this be it: OpenGL is not ready for shaders. Throw the propaganda asside, ask anyone if they want to do shaders in GL and they will say, "Sweet brother of Jesus, NO!" I'm not saying Torque is cutting edge graphics, but graphics are not all that matters. I will definatly stand behind the statement, "Torque is a damn good game engine," because as a GAME engine, it is awesome. Graphics are a small part, actually I'd go so far as to say they are a VERY VERY small part of what a game engine is. Everyone and their sister has written a 3d engine, a game engine...that's something totally different.
As for why I haven't released my code on shaders, I can assure you that I am not a non-contributing member of the GarageGames community. I do not intend to stop contributing my time and code to GarageGames, but I also do not feel obligated to contribute every line of code, nor every feature I work into my own game. Putting something like shader Torque out to the community would be much different than implementing it in ones own game because all the sudden people other than you are messing with it, breaking it, then demanding that you help them. There are two things which I don't want to explain, more than anything else, to a random GarageGames newbie. The first thing is matricies, the second is OpenGL shaders.
07/26/2003 (11:36 pm)
Your frusturation is not with Torque but with OpenGL. Bottom line is GL shaders SUCK. There are no less than 4 sets of GL extentions for pixel/vertex shaders (NV30, NV20, ARB, EXT) and none of them work on all cards. ARB is the closest, but it's still not in ideal form at all. For MarbleBlastFX we ported the whole damn thing to DirectX 9.0. As for that code, it will not be released because it is, uh, well the source to Marble Blast. It's also, for the most part, a hack...like I said, 3 weeks. I think the reason that people do not release their shader code is for a few reasons, firstly, like I said with GL, it is hard to ever get it working 100% well. In fact we probably won't see a good, solid GL shader implementation until GL2. The Cg runtime is great, but it's not all there yet. It needs better ATI support, by far.
OpenGL is just not set up to have a programable rendering pipeline. Look at DirectX with the vertex type information. When you throw polys at DX it knows how big the vertex will be and what it will contain. OpenGL has this plague known as "immediate mode" and the thing with GL and the ARB is they want backwards compatability out the wazoo. Well, I'd imagine it's tough to do shaders with immediate mode rendering. You have no idea what you are going to be rendering, how much information each vertex will have, 1 texture coordinate? 2? 3? color? etc.
I'm rambling and ranting at the same time now...if you take anything away from this, let this be it: OpenGL is not ready for shaders. Throw the propaganda asside, ask anyone if they want to do shaders in GL and they will say, "Sweet brother of Jesus, NO!" I'm not saying Torque is cutting edge graphics, but graphics are not all that matters. I will definatly stand behind the statement, "Torque is a damn good game engine," because as a GAME engine, it is awesome. Graphics are a small part, actually I'd go so far as to say they are a VERY VERY small part of what a game engine is. Everyone and their sister has written a 3d engine, a game engine...that's something totally different.
As for why I haven't released my code on shaders, I can assure you that I am not a non-contributing member of the GarageGames community. I do not intend to stop contributing my time and code to GarageGames, but I also do not feel obligated to contribute every line of code, nor every feature I work into my own game. Putting something like shader Torque out to the community would be much different than implementing it in ones own game because all the sudden people other than you are messing with it, breaking it, then demanding that you help them. There are two things which I don't want to explain, more than anything else, to a random GarageGames newbie. The first thing is matricies, the second is OpenGL shaders.
#70
And as far as my response to your research
But I will agree with you that I wish the community would submit the features that they implemented e.g. shaders,bump,etc. But I dont get upset over it because I understand they want to have an EDGE over the rest. But I am confident this stuff will come out sooner or later. And which I have not been waiting as long as you have so I to can also understand your frustration.
07/26/2003 (11:38 pm)
I simple mentioned socom becuase of the the graphics level not the type of game and I can mention a dozon more games in any genre you want that got published and didnt have AMAZING grachics.And as far as my response to your research
Quote:"when purchasing a fps game which features motivate you" put in order of importance from 1 - 5I was simply stating that your research showed graphics wasnt the most important.
Length of game
number of levels
multiplayer
"graphics"<----
number of weapons
Quote: Graphics was always marked as the no.1 or no.2 priority more often no.1 with multiplayer and weapons as a close second.So which is it the most important or not. Its seems you dont read your own post and maybe that graphics is the most important thing to YOU. Which is fine.
But I will agree with you that I wish the community would submit the features that they implemented e.g. shaders,bump,etc. But I dont get upset over it because I understand they want to have an EDGE over the rest. But I am confident this stuff will come out sooner or later. And which I have not been waiting as long as you have so I to can also understand your frustration.
#71
Level design. Romero was almost right, except he missed an adjective (umm, the part about "design is king" and not him making us all his bitches). After the UT2003 experience (which I bought based on UT), which made me gun shy about Unreal2 (which I ended up not buying based on reviews), I suspect that top-end graphics hurt level design (because of the VASTLY increased workload 'per square foot' of level, that contributes LITTLE to gameplay). Level design drives an FPS (more so in SP than OLMP, but you'd better have good offline these days because the online market is so fragmented). In fact, I'm also going to wait for a good body of reasonable review opinion to form before going anywhere near D3 or HL2.
What you found from your scratch survey is that the existing FPS audience has become jaded in a supersaturated market with severely limited subject matter. I think it's improbable Cipher will give an indie any better chance of succeeding than Torque in the FPS market (and I think the chances are already slim -- you'd technically have a better chance modding an existing engine and trying to convert that into a commercial game, and the chances of that are slim). Especially if you intend to enter the graphics arms race (which may almost be over if you believe Rubin, but HL2 or D3 could touch off another round, or merely confirm the end of the war).
Scott Miller (3DRealms) elsewhere on these forums:
Every day I read mod & indie projects which are clearly designed to improve on existing commercial games (some even read "It's like, but . . ."). The hard question you'll have to ask yourself Peter is why anyone will buy your FPS over D3, UT2003/4, HL2 etc.
I don't think I started using Torque until May 2003, and this being the end of July, am pretty comfortable with the software. Then again I'm spending 12+ hours each weekday coding (some weekends too), but that's what real coders generally do: lots of coding.
It's funny that I found the value of Torque was stuff like not having to code player input on three different platforms. How much more freaking boring can coding get than messing with keyboard and mouse events and unifying their handling on three separate platforms. The reason we can sit here and even talk about shaders is that we don't have to worry about the different input event architectures and event data structures on Windows, Linux and Mac. How thrilling would these forums be if we were always after GarageGames to add mouse handling to Linux? And indies get more attention and sales in underserved markets like Mac and Linux.
07/27/2003 (12:17 am)
Quote:
Ask yourself (and be honest!) what do you look for in a fps game and what would make you buy yet another one?
Level design. Romero was almost right, except he missed an adjective (umm, the part about "design is king" and not him making us all his bitches). After the UT2003 experience (which I bought based on UT), which made me gun shy about Unreal2 (which I ended up not buying based on reviews), I suspect that top-end graphics hurt level design (because of the VASTLY increased workload 'per square foot' of level, that contributes LITTLE to gameplay). Level design drives an FPS (more so in SP than OLMP, but you'd better have good offline these days because the online market is so fragmented). In fact, I'm also going to wait for a good body of reasonable review opinion to form before going anywhere near D3 or HL2.
What you found from your scratch survey is that the existing FPS audience has become jaded in a supersaturated market with severely limited subject matter. I think it's improbable Cipher will give an indie any better chance of succeeding than Torque in the FPS market (and I think the chances are already slim -- you'd technically have a better chance modding an existing engine and trying to convert that into a commercial game, and the chances of that are slim). Especially if you intend to enter the graphics arms race (which may almost be over if you believe Rubin, but HL2 or D3 could touch off another round, or merely confirm the end of the war).
Scott Miller (3DRealms) elsewhere on these forums:
Quote:
When I use the term niche market, I mean any market that is not dominated by a retail publisher/developer already. Practically all the main genres are filled by strong retail publishers/developers.
I HIGHLY recommend people read the book Marketing Warfare, by Al Ries and Jack Trout. This book explains clearly that to enter a market you must not bother trying to take on established leaders, but instead find a new market, even if you have to invent your own new category. For example, Coke and Pepsi are the two clear and unbeatable cola leaders. it's pointless to take these two on in a cola war. But, if you invent a new soda, say 7-Up or Dr. Pepper, then you have a chance. You must zag where others zig, forge something new that can stand on its own.
Duke Nukem and Max Payne are both case studies of zagging to avoid the market leaders, DOOM and Tomb Raider respectively. You cannot be a leader following in another leader's footsteps, you must cut another path. Niche doesn't necessarily mean "small," it simply means under explored, or not overrun with competition. Niche markets can be made into their own major categories with the right game--inventing a new genre.
Every day I read mod & indie projects which are clearly designed to improve on existing commercial games (some even read "It's like
Quote:
No-one who buys torque will know it in less than 6 months because of poor docs etc.
I don't think I started using Torque until May 2003, and this being the end of July, am pretty comfortable with the software. Then again I'm spending 12+ hours each weekday coding (some weekends too), but that's what real coders generally do: lots of coding.
It's funny that I found the value of Torque was stuff like not having to code player input on three different platforms. How much more freaking boring can coding get than messing with keyboard and mouse events and unifying their handling on three separate platforms. The reason we can sit here and even talk about shaders is that we don't have to worry about the different input event architectures and event data structures on Windows, Linux and Mac. How thrilling would these forums be if we were always after GarageGames to add mouse handling to Linux? And indies get more attention and sales in underserved markets like Mac and Linux.
#72
Dale the order of the choices is from the actual survey form not what the players chose. They simply numbered the form entries from 1 to 5. I didn't use polymer screens with touch screen functionality that allowed users to move the list items.
I also pointed out that I am not making a fps game but that I intend to market my game to people who traditionally buy fps and rpg games!!
Pat I don't expect you to contribute your code. I thought you had used torque not proprietary tech for marble blast fx. Hence my incredible astonishment at your 40 hour remark. I implemented shaders in GL and yep they work kind of but not enough stability to use in a commercial game shareware or otherwise. Switching torque to DX mode simply causes a crash and fragments don't map to DX HLSL stuff in any way shape or form.
Brad much of torque i.e. the scripting and the general readyness for fps games is very good. the problem comes when a fps isn't what you want to do. I had torque for a few days when I had a nice demo of an indiana jones character running about shooting bots. Sadly this thrill didn't last when I got down to the job of games coding. Suddenly I hit the where are the docs blues followed by those debug trace doldrums.
I persevered and things gradually got better but the more others added (Thanks go out to Melv who is still in my eyes The Man) the more I realised the stuff that was lacking in the first place.
Try adding a door to a building to see what I mean. Doors were around since wolfenstein (version 1) so why can I not get them working correctly in torque!?! I can add them, I can animate them but sometimes they simply stop working or open with the wrong keys and no bug is to be found!!
I'm an indie developer to make games not to code engine enhancements. That was my original point and still is! I need to be better than the commercial games just to compete (better gameplay not necessarily graphics or sound). To me an indie game is "Better by design". This means better gameplay because there is only one chef cooking the design spec. Better by quality because we take pride in our work. A patch is a sign of a bad or poor design (even if it isn't always the case like graphics card issues but, thats how we should be thinking!)
The message I get here is settle for mediocre or three year old graphics and just create a great game. The reality is that Fred Bloggs next door will see the graphics and hear the sound long before he plays far enough into a complex game and simply dismiss it as badly designed. I don't want to make simple puzzle games (yes I know there is money to be made there but if I did this for the money I'd die of starvation) I want to make the next morrowind or doom 3. I want to create graphics that make Activision or EA say "s$%t we have to do better just look at that shareware game!!"
One last word for Pat. Yea I spent six months re-building the materials of torque to use the GL extentions and believe me (well you've seen the torque shape and materials code so you already know) it wasn't even complex it was virtually psychotic. So yea I'm pissed at GG (not torque) for not addressing these issues sooner. A lot of indies out there will suffer because the code base needs a good clean (heck there is still commented out code blocks hanging around).
07/27/2003 (1:04 am)
Ahhhhhhh does no-one (not including you Pat) read my posts before replying!! I took some extracts from my survey to illustrate my point about graphics being one of the few things that will make a consumer of commercialware buy shareware.Dale the order of the choices is from the actual survey form not what the players chose. They simply numbered the form entries from 1 to 5. I didn't use polymer screens with touch screen functionality that allowed users to move the list items.
I also pointed out that I am not making a fps game but that I intend to market my game to people who traditionally buy fps and rpg games!!
Pat I don't expect you to contribute your code. I thought you had used torque not proprietary tech for marble blast fx. Hence my incredible astonishment at your 40 hour remark. I implemented shaders in GL and yep they work kind of but not enough stability to use in a commercial game shareware or otherwise. Switching torque to DX mode simply causes a crash and fragments don't map to DX HLSL stuff in any way shape or form.
Brad much of torque i.e. the scripting and the general readyness for fps games is very good. the problem comes when a fps isn't what you want to do. I had torque for a few days when I had a nice demo of an indiana jones character running about shooting bots. Sadly this thrill didn't last when I got down to the job of games coding. Suddenly I hit the where are the docs blues followed by those debug trace doldrums.
I persevered and things gradually got better but the more others added (Thanks go out to Melv who is still in my eyes The Man) the more I realised the stuff that was lacking in the first place.
Try adding a door to a building to see what I mean. Doors were around since wolfenstein (version 1) so why can I not get them working correctly in torque!?! I can add them, I can animate them but sometimes they simply stop working or open with the wrong keys and no bug is to be found!!
I'm an indie developer to make games not to code engine enhancements. That was my original point and still is! I need to be better than the commercial games just to compete (better gameplay not necessarily graphics or sound). To me an indie game is "Better by design". This means better gameplay because there is only one chef cooking the design spec. Better by quality because we take pride in our work. A patch is a sign of a bad or poor design (even if it isn't always the case like graphics card issues but, thats how we should be thinking!)
The message I get here is settle for mediocre or three year old graphics and just create a great game. The reality is that Fred Bloggs next door will see the graphics and hear the sound long before he plays far enough into a complex game and simply dismiss it as badly designed. I don't want to make simple puzzle games (yes I know there is money to be made there but if I did this for the money I'd die of starvation) I want to make the next morrowind or doom 3. I want to create graphics that make Activision or EA say "s$%t we have to do better just look at that shareware game!!"
One last word for Pat. Yea I spent six months re-building the materials of torque to use the GL extentions and believe me (well you've seen the torque shape and materials code so you already know) it wasn't even complex it was virtually psychotic. So yea I'm pissed at GG (not torque) for not addressing these issues sooner. A lot of indies out there will suffer because the code base needs a good clean (heck there is still commented out code blocks hanging around).
#74
07/27/2003 (8:13 am)
Sorry I missunderstood the 1-5. I retract that statement.
#75
Sorry, but you will fail.
07/27/2003 (11:02 am)
Quote:I thought you had used torque not proprietary tech for marble blast fx.We did use Torque for FX. We converted the whole engine to DX9. That was 3 weeks, not 40 hours.
Quote:That's not going to happen. Doom III doesn't work as a buisness model for no-names. It never will. Doom III is like paid engine research. In fact, I'd go so far to say that Doom III is to subsidize the development time until someone licences the engine. Games like UT200N are advertisements for the engine more than they are games.
I want to make the next morrowind or doom 3. I want to create graphics that make Activision or EA say "s$%t we have to do better just look at that shareware game!!"
Sorry, but you will fail.
#76
I think it's cool that you are taking a marketing approach to the game. It's the type of thing we at BraveTree considered but felt was outside our expertise, so we simply made the game. Certainly something we'd like to re-visit at some point, though. Would you be willing to share your survey results with the community?
Re: the item about graphics being important. I have no doubt that they are, but I'm not sure you can go from that questionaire item to the conclusion that shader support is going to improve the sales of your game (I know that's a vast simplification of what you are saying, so forgive me for being lazy and taking on a straw man -- I think my point will still be clear). Many things contribute to graphic quality, not just hardware effects. More important to that, in my view, is art direction and the talent of the art team. By focusing on that, I think you can both support more people (lower end machines) and deliver the high quality graphics people are looking for. I think we did that on ThinkTanks, and the feedback from our community only bolsters that view. In my opinion, you can have high quality art and low tech and look good, but you can't have high tech and low quality art and look good.
It's also worth looking at the AAA titles that have sold really well over the last few years. All of Blizzards titles and The Sims have done better than anything, and they are both low-tech but good art (actually, never looked closely at the Sims, but it might not even have good art).
Anyway, I'm re-hashing arguments that have been made over and over in the forums, and you may feel they don't really apply to your view. So I'm not going to argue the points with you, just wanted to present them to you.
What I'm most interested in, though, is your data. :) If you are willing to share it with us, please do!
07/27/2003 (11:42 am)
@Peter -I think it's cool that you are taking a marketing approach to the game. It's the type of thing we at BraveTree considered but felt was outside our expertise, so we simply made the game. Certainly something we'd like to re-visit at some point, though. Would you be willing to share your survey results with the community?
Re: the item about graphics being important. I have no doubt that they are, but I'm not sure you can go from that questionaire item to the conclusion that shader support is going to improve the sales of your game (I know that's a vast simplification of what you are saying, so forgive me for being lazy and taking on a straw man -- I think my point will still be clear). Many things contribute to graphic quality, not just hardware effects. More important to that, in my view, is art direction and the talent of the art team. By focusing on that, I think you can both support more people (lower end machines) and deliver the high quality graphics people are looking for. I think we did that on ThinkTanks, and the feedback from our community only bolsters that view. In my opinion, you can have high quality art and low tech and look good, but you can't have high tech and low quality art and look good.
It's also worth looking at the AAA titles that have sold really well over the last few years. All of Blizzards titles and The Sims have done better than anything, and they are both low-tech but good art (actually, never looked closely at the Sims, but it might not even have good art).
Anyway, I'm re-hashing arguments that have been made over and over in the forums, and you may feel they don't really apply to your view. So I'm not going to argue the points with you, just wanted to present them to you.
What I'm most interested in, though, is your data. :) If you are willing to share it with us, please do!
#77
07/27/2003 (2:24 pm)
Sims have pretty good art... the engine it runs on, graphics wise, is on par with Diablo II's... maybe even a bit below. Different rendering techniques, of course, but visually speaking... 
#78
Amen!
Honestly, I would suspect that a large majority of the people who chose "graphics" as their first choice on the survey were actually talking about high quality art. Art with a lot of style, character, and polish.
Your typical gamer (even fps gamer) wouldn't know a shader if it bit them in the ass.
I have shown videos of Doom3 and of HL2 to a lot of your average fps players (read counter-strike addicts) and they were all far more impressed by the high quality art in HL2 than by the high quality shadows in Doom3.
Don't get me wrong, HL2 has some pretty impressive tech (displacement maps, superb physics systems, a fantastic facial animation system, and the best material system I've seen to date) but a *lot* of the graphics tech can (and will be) dumbed down for the "average" fps player and HL2 will still stand on its high quality artwork and on its high quality gameplay. Most players probably won't even notice that the shadows in HL2 are mostly precomputed =)
Besides, your average fps gamer doesn't even have the hardware to run most of those fancy shaders you want: valve.speakeasy.net
07/28/2003 (7:48 am)
Quote:
In my opinion, you can have high quality art and low tech and look good
Amen!
Honestly, I would suspect that a large majority of the people who chose "graphics" as their first choice on the survey were actually talking about high quality art. Art with a lot of style, character, and polish.
Your typical gamer (even fps gamer) wouldn't know a shader if it bit them in the ass.
I have shown videos of Doom3 and of HL2 to a lot of your average fps players (read counter-strike addicts) and they were all far more impressed by the high quality art in HL2 than by the high quality shadows in Doom3.
Don't get me wrong, HL2 has some pretty impressive tech (displacement maps, superb physics systems, a fantastic facial animation system, and the best material system I've seen to date) but a *lot* of the graphics tech can (and will be) dumbed down for the "average" fps player and HL2 will still stand on its high quality artwork and on its high quality gameplay. Most players probably won't even notice that the shadows in HL2 are mostly precomputed =)
Besides, your average fps gamer doesn't even have the hardware to run most of those fancy shaders you want: valve.speakeasy.net
#79
Also see Cipher credits. Brian Hook's talk is here (video, and I couldn't find a transcript, but I'll probably make time to watch it later in the week). But in essence, Cipher sounds like it is employing a four year old hardware-agnostic technique (or I'd imagine any hardware features from 1999 are ubiquitous now). I do wonder what they mean by "DX and OGL shaders are for programmers only" (nyah, ya hear that, you grubby artist types!)?
Side note, this is the company started by Brian Hook after he left id.
07/28/2003 (9:35 am)
It should be noted that Cipher does not employ hardware shaders (at least if the FAQ is accurate).Quote:
What is special about Cipher's shader graphics?
Cipher's shader graphics system should not be confused with the shader systems now exposed by DirectX and OpenGL. Cipher uses a high level script to describe surface materials that is based on the system used in Quake 3 and presented at the Game Developer Conference (GDC) in 1999 by Brian Hook of id software (Brian no longer works at id). The idea behinds Cipher's shader system is to provide something that artists can use (DX and OGL shaders are for programmers only).
Also see Cipher credits. Brian Hook's talk is here (video, and I couldn't find a transcript, but I'll probably make time to watch it later in the week). But in essence, Cipher sounds like it is employing a four year old hardware-agnostic technique (or I'd imagine any hardware features from 1999 are ubiquitous now). I do wonder what they mean by "DX and OGL shaders are for programmers only" (nyah, ya hear that, you grubby artist types!)?
Side note, this is the company started by Brian Hook after he left id.
#80
however some work is being done in changing the cipher renderer backend to support ARB vertex and fragment programs....
on the hardware dependent front..someone is writing a Cg backend for Cipher shaders.
08/06/2003 (11:07 am)
@Brad... youa re correct in assuming that Cipher Engine does not employ hardware shaders....Shaders in Cipher are at a much higher level and thus are hardware independent...they are more like Quake 3 shaders which are programmatic textures... mor egeared towards the artist.however some work is being done in changing the cipher renderer backend to support ARB vertex and fragment programs....
on the hardware dependent front..someone is writing a Cg backend for Cipher shaders.
Torque Owner Dale Cannon