What is the point of so much scripting?

#21 Yeah, once you get over that first hump, it's all fun and games. ;)

#22 Well, some artist/programmers do exist folks! I'm a master coder and a very capable illustrator and graphic artist. And, heck, I know how to compose music pretty well too! But to be fair, I have over 35 years of experience as a visual artist, over 25 years of experience as a programmer, and 16 years of experience as a musician, so probably I'm something of a rarity. But always, always, always, my attitude is that I am a mere beginner.

My advice to artists who want to exploit their talents in the world of computers - whether video games, Flash animation, or whatever: Partner up with a programmer and see where it goes. Or, get a job as an illustrator or modeler with a game company. Partnering up with a capable programmer will allow you to explore ideas more freely, while the programmer reins them in. Getting a games job will put you through the wringer and give you some idea whether this is the realm for you.

I applaud any artist who - having taken an interest in a new medium - goes through the steps necessary to acquire the requisite technical skills. Especially those for whom the new medium is uncomfortable or daunting. I am always a little annoyed when a person comes to a new medium with an innate resistance, because frankly one's attitude is the main driving force that determines results. Come to it with optimism - even a foolish, blind, oblivious optimism - and you'll always get better results. If you pigeonhole yourself then you have only yourself to blame for remaining stuck.

#23 I know many very capable artists that can script competently. If you tell yourself you can't script then you won't *shrug*, you'd be surprised what you can accomplish when you really try :)

#24

Quote: it IS a gift. it's NOT because you are such a hard worker. you are lucky.

I'd have to disagree with you Anton, I know multiple people who at one point thought they could only program or do art and when required to learn more and spend time in the inverse skill they become quite adept. Personally I've found if you spend a lot of time at anything you begin to get better, people grow at different speeds in different areas, but they grow nonetheless.

#25 This is basically an argument of aptitude versus technique or skill. Anyone can learn technique and hone it to a rather accomplished state, but that doesn't mean that they have a natural flare or aptitude or gift or that "it thing" that would set them apart from the crowd. An Maya artist can make their life exponentially easier using MEL scripting. They don't have to be world-class programmers to do it. They don't even necessarily have to be good programmers. They simply have to jump through a few learning hoops.

Whether they want to learn, have time to learn, etc is another issue completely.

Programmers and artists are not diametrically opposed entities. Some might like to portray it that way and it makes for nice corporate paperwork, but it's not so much of a reality.

#26 @Matthew: I have to disagree with you disagreeing with Anton :P

Sure, at an amature level, and even professional level, *some* people can (and do) do all parts of the game design/develop/program/art themselves... but the vast majority of people should/can not perform such tasks.

I know that the indie community is one of the most gung-ho in the "you can do it all yourself!" additude... and yes, you *can* do it all yourself, but people would be much, much better off working in teams on their projects.

Sure, that requires compromizing your dreams away untill it feels "like work"... and for hobbiests maybe they cant take it to that level, but anyone serious about making their dreams of a professional level game needs teammates to make it happen.

And I'll be the first person to admit I dont work well with others. I have MY ideas, and I want to do it MY way... thus my decision to go pay people.. that's the only way I'll get to be the tirant of my dreams :P

and I kid a bit about being a tirant... i tried working with others, but generally they end up being slackers.. and I cant team up with you guys, cuz I'm a c# guy, imnsho torquescript sucks :P

#27 Just wanted to clarify that I didn't say I think people should do everything by themself, in fact I really beleive the opposite. I think learning to work with others is one of the best skills someone needs to learn to get a game done; however, I do beleive that almost everyone can learn to get good at certain skills if they try. They don't need to become masters, or create masterpeices, but given enough effort they can perform things even to the point of being good at something they may have thought they could never do.

Your only limiting factor (in most cases) is yourself.

Another invaluable skill is the skill to learn. A lot of people fail to develop this since they don't even see it as a skill, nonetheless it is a skill that can help in exponential ways.

Often I see people limiting things because they have far too much of an ego. Thats one of the first rules I learned that GG uses, no ego. Ego just gets in the way of working together.

Just about everything worth doing is done with others so we all need to learn with others if we want to do any substantial project, game or otherwise.

#28 The skill to learn... yes! Every programming job I've ever had has required me to learn some completely new language or technology. And that's the part I relish - the process of learning a whole new set of skills, re-adapting prior knowledge and habits to a new milieu. Also, I'm reminded of a thought I recently had regarding the process of evolution. Namely, that the process of evolution itself must evolve. And perhaps that has a lot to do with the way that humans are able to learn and adapt so well as a species. Or, maybe it has more to do with the alien breeding program....

And you are quite right about working with others. Ego is a blockage to healthy interpersonal collaboration. And more deeply, I see it as a blockage to our innate being, which in a receptive state can learn and absorb anything. (You might say, ego blocks collaboration among our myriad "selves.") Self-definition - which places limits on our potential and stifles interpersonal connection - is an imposition that comes from the outside, foisted on us by culture and education... the media environment.

Ha ha, now of course this will end with Kev getting his refund and getting as far away from this group of weirdos as he can! ;-)

#29 I was just trying to say that people who are either artists or coders who don't want to master the other are not lazy or unwilling to apply themselves. I just think that they know that it has taken them forever to get as good as they are at what they do and that they don't want to split their focus doing something else if it's not neccessary.

I was also just saying that those who have mastered both art and code are very unussual and shouldn't be considered to be a norm. I think that those who would rather master one thing shouldn't be looked down upon. I think that it's better to excel than struggle for lack of focus. I think that artists who are frustrated with having to learn to script are not being lazy and shouldn't be treated like they are. I just wanted everyone to remember how hard it is to get really good at anything. I think that it is smart to choose to work with your strengths.

I agree that it only helps to be open to learn new things, but, remember, how much there is of both code and art to learn. You only live once. It's your choice what you want to spend your time doing. Funny enough, I love to learn everything. I am one of those Jack of all Trades, and I love it. I am the first to try to help someone learn to do something that they are scared to learn. But most people aren't like me. And while I am really good at what I do, I am not a master like those who have focused on fewer things. I except that.

One last thing. The biggest frustration that I hear from coders around here is how hard it is to get an artist to work with them. Well... when you tell all the artists that they don't need coders if they learn to code or that they should stop whining about not wanting to learn to code... and the artists either learn to code or get offended and leave the community... the coders are shooting themselves in their own foot. I personally would be nice to them and try to help them... it does come back around.

just my opinion.

Quote:it is better to be kind and good... then to... not

-Steve Martin in Sgt. Bilko

@Matt

thanks for disagreeing with me. i love it when we have actual discussions here. it's cool. i think it makes us that better community because we actually are free to say what we think.

#30 No one is talking about mastering anything, but just getting your hands a bit dirty doing some retardedly easy scripting is worth a try. Simply saying "I'm and artist and can't code" is moot, if you won't even give it a try. And if you can't get anything going at all, start making your 2D art and post on the forums asking for a scripter to help you make your game.

Kev: If you're still around and want to make a T2D game, toss me an email and I'll see if I can help. That said, I am really busy ATM trying to get my TGE game to Beta. But I'm wanting to make a T2D game very soon in the future, so maybe we can help eachother out(I need to get up-to-speed with T2D development).

#31 I have to admit, it was great reading through this thread and see it evolve into a professional and interesting debate!

Far too often threads that start off this way evolve into being deleted due to being a flame-fest. Thanks to all for keeping it on a contributing level!

My personal thoughts:

--previous posters are correct: no tool no matter how good is going to supplement any individual's skill in their area of expertise with equivalent expertise. There is no magic "script my game logic" product, and there is no magic "make my artwork" product. Tools mentioned above (including TGB) can help to supplement areas in which artists may not be particularly strong, but none of them are going to be a replacement coder.

--artists that also take the time to become at least conversant in whatever type of scripting/logic programming their selected game tools use are worth their weight in gold..no, platinum. In parallel, coders that can at least use "programmer art" to help visualize their problems/solutions/prototypes are worth the same!

--Joe Marushak gave me a phrase related to this issue called "getting the art over the wall"--the wall being the breakdown in communication and general expertise between artists and programmers. It is an outstanding insight into the problems of game development by a team, and in my personal opinion would be a great topic for a book...but the point is that the wall will always exist, and anything both sides can do to help make it lower is well worth it in the long run to both the team, and the individuals.

#32 @Josh

Let me tell you how I got into coding.

I was a graphic artist and student and I was working at a newspaper for a summer as the guy who does the final edit of the newspaper before it goes to print. I was the guy who looked thru the whole thing for any errors and then printed the blue print things that the actual printing machines use to print the newpaper.

That was about half of what I really did though. The other half was a bunch of misc tasks such as composing the classified and other little tasks to justify my entire shift. One thing I had to do was recieve all of the Associated Press images and adjust and correct them in Adobe Photoshop for use in the paper. You wouldn't believe how crappy many of the images are. Oh wait. If you read newspapers, you've seen how bad they get, well, image that they are 10 times worse when the paper gets them. :P

Anyway, it was a kind of repetative task since most of what I did to correct or adjust the images was the same. So, I made Actions for them. If you use Abode Photoshop, then you are probably familiar with Actions. Actions are automations in photoshop that you create by "recording" what you are doing. You "record" it and then you can run the Action on any other image you want. In fact, you can run it as a batch automation on an entire folder of images if you want. Well, this made the job a little less repetative and bought me some time to screw around talking on the phone to my new girlfriend, who became my wife. :P

I really liked useing Actions, but I couldn't help but wish that I could somehow tell the action to do certain things in certain conditions, so, I didn't have to manually choose which action to use for each image if the images needed different actions. I started browsing the internet to find out if something like that was possible. At the same time period, I happened to be in a book store and I spotted a big huge C programming book that I'd seen my older brother Andre', who has a B.S. in Computer Science, looking at months before. I was bored and kinda curious about what black magic was in those books, so, I picked it up to take a look...

... 8 hours later I am at a computer at home running my first C program... and from there, the rest is history. I made a switch to Computer Science form Film School that fall and I got a job as a web programmer in that first Semester and do you know what my first real achievement coding was? I wrote a program to automate adobe photoshop so it would run different Actions on images depending on certain conditions.

So, the meaning of the story is? yes. I do personally agree that artists should at least try to learn to script. You were right. I was wrong. I was rediculously wrong considering how I started as a coder. I admit it.