Does anybody know of any really big hit speccy games that were just programmed by some unknown amateur programmer and sent unsolicited to software houses to become big successes?
I think 3d Ant Attack was one. Were there many others?
I remember reading that Peter Harrap (Monty Mole) was another teenage prodigy. So was Dominic Robinson (he sent a demo to Hewson and he was flown down). The author of "One man and his droid" was another guy who was recruited on the basis of the one game he sent.
I'm sure there are a whole lot of Speccy programmers who got into the industry this way. Those were the days of garage programming and innovative free thinking. Now, you would be hard pushed to find a quality game written at home by a programmer all on his own (not saying there aren't any, just that there aren't many).
I'm sure there are a whole lot of Speccy programmers who got into the industry this way. Those were the days of garage programming and innovative free thinking. Now, you would be hard pushed to find a quality game written at home by a programmer all on his own (not saying there aren't any, just that there aren't many).
According to the latest issue of GamesTM it costs a games company about ?100,000 just to get a vaguely presentable work-in-progress done nowadays, so it's not that surprising that there aren't many bedroom programmers anymore!
According to the latest issue of GamesTM it costs a games company about ?100,000 just to get a vaguely presentable work-in-progress done nowadays, so it's not that surprising that there aren't many bedroom programmers anymore!
Working in the games industry myself, a typical modern team can be easily 30-40 people working over a period of 2 years so you would be talking easily over 2 million in salaries alone - not even considering the fact that a single Sony development kit costs 20K Euros, other equipment, development software and studio overheads... no wonder games cost so much these days!
There is a lot of pressure on building reusable technology these days, develop a slightly more generic 3D engine / AI engine and physics engine, knock out your first game and make a loss, then hopefully knock out games 2 & 3 using the same engine and hopefully make a profit on those.
Very few modern games do little more than break even...
Buzzin, I myself have joined the gaming industry just recently, moving in from the journalism field. I've joined as a writer for a company that is trying to make its first 3D FPS based on the Lithtech engine. No one has any experience in this field either and we are all just driven by a dream and are willing to learn.
Would you be aware of good resources that a indie game development company like us could tap into? As a writer, I would be interested in knowing of Game Design related material (since part of my job is to design content for the game too). I regularly check on Gamasutra and Gamedev for reference. Books on gaming are fairly limited in India, but we are planning to buy some from overseas if we felt justified in doing so. Any ideas BR?
Arjun, good for you! I've been in the games industry now for around 11 years - started way back at Psygnosis as a trainee programmer! :)
Gamasutra is one of my favourite sources of info, all the white papers can be interesting, but also remember it's sometimes just a way for people to blow their own trumpets.
Lithtech is an excellent engine, we looked at it a few of years ago when we were first starting our studio. The NOLF games and I think Tron2 where done using this and they are excellent games. Certainly it is veyr well documented.
As for AI - I don't recall if lithtech already has an Ai subsystem, but there is an excellent book with useful AI routines / approaches (from a programming perspective), can't remember what it's called off the top of my head, but it's in my bookcase at work I'll dig it out later. Also consider looking at predictive event driven AI systems rather than traditional frame drive AI.
Design is something you can either do or you can't. We have an excellent designer here and his brilliance comes from the fact that he KNOWS games, he knows them all, when he wants to look at some aspect of a game he'll get every competitive game and anaylse what worked and what didn't to help him focus his thinking, he also has a unique ability to be able to take suggestion and criticism from the rest of the team (a rare skill indeed!) I will ask him if he can think of any interesting stuff...
One think you might want to do is to try and get hold of the CD's that are produced each year at GDC (game developers conference in the US). They have transcripts of all the presentations and talks given by the industries best, and in some cases have videos of the presentations too - and consider trying to get yourself to the next one too if funds can permit.
Hope that helps you a bit, design isn't really my field I'm afraid, I only act as a wall that our designer bounces ideas off to see if they are sound.
Cheers Buzzin! I know I can write, but designing a whole game from the ground up is something I hadn't considered until the proposal was placed before me. I understand that Game Design is also a formal process that tries to link everything together (including story, art, gameplay, communication, management, etc). The reference material I've come across do explain bits of each in some detail but I was wondering if there was a single cohesive comprehensive resource (like a book) that treated the subject in a more detailed manner.
Do let me know if your designer can point me towards something useful in that sense.
BTW, I've heard a couple of horror stories regarding the gaming industry? Underpayed, overworked, no job security, etc are some of the things I hear. Is all of it true? How have you coped?
The most important thing when designing a game is to sumarise very simply what it is you want to achieve, and then question every idea put forward to see if it fits that criteria and if it doesn't then DONT use it! It may be an excellent idea that you can put to one side for later use in another game, but keep everything 100% consistant otherwise you'll end up with a game that doesn't "gel"
The AI programming book I mention is AI Game Programming Wisdom by Steve Rabin, published by Charles River Media. I'll chat with Anthony our designer later and see if he can suggest others.
Yes, we are very underpaid and very overworked! :( I could be better paid in commercial IT, but I do enjoy what I do :)
Thanks for the great tip Buzzin. Have noted it down in my "guidelines to design" book! ;)
Just checked with out Lead programmer, and he says Lithtech (rather the Jupiter engine) has it's own AI engine, and it's supposed to be pretty decent.
Anyway, will keep an eye out for the AI book - may come handy if we need to play with the AI engine for our game. :)
And I'm glad the work is enjoyable. That's the reason I quit my fairly well paying job in journalism and took up this one, which despite paying me half of what I was earning earlier, should be a lot more enjoyable I hope! :)
On 2003-09-18 07:07, Arjun wrote:
Buzzin, I myself have joined the gaming industry just recently, moving in from the journalism field.
Nice one Arjun!
I take it there will the a Spectrum Version of the game you're working on, right?
And of course all us WoSers will get a complimentary copy wont we?
Thanks Shar. Speccy version of the game? har har har... I suppose we could do that. Lets see...drop the 3D FPS view. Change perspective to side-on... all levels in 7 colours, no attribute clash...side scroller...AY sound... yeah, I guess we can do it - it won't be the same game though! ;)
Complimentary copies for 1200 odd members of WoS...hmm.. might as well fold up right now. :)
On 2003-09-18 10:00, Arjun wrote:
BTW, I've heard a couple of horror stories regarding the gaming industry? Underpayed, overworked, no job security, etc are some of the things I hear. Is all of it true? How have you coped?
A mate of mine involved in games programming is having serious trouble chasing up his last (very overdue) wage packet. Meanwhile, another one (in business software, not games) works far too many hours a week, has a bastard boss who rewites all his code so that it doesn't work, and is paid not very much.
Too right. We get one life on this earth (although if you're TKRAP you can have several identities within the one life) - why waste it by working at some shitty unfulfilling job, just for the money, when you don't even get time to appreciate the rewards?
Do What Thou Wilt... (Aleister Crowley)
[ This Message was edited by: chaosmongers on 2003-09-20 21:52 ]
Comments
At the time, he was only 15 (I think)...
I'm sure there are a whole lot of Speccy programmers who got into the industry this way. Those were the days of garage programming and innovative free thinking. Now, you would be hard pushed to find a quality game written at home by a programmer all on his own (not saying there aren't any, just that there aren't many).
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
According to the latest issue of GamesTM it costs a games company about ?100,000 just to get a vaguely presentable work-in-progress done nowadays, so it's not that surprising that there aren't many bedroom programmers anymore!
Working in the games industry myself, a typical modern team can be easily 30-40 people working over a period of 2 years so you would be talking easily over 2 million in salaries alone - not even considering the fact that a single Sony development kit costs 20K Euros, other equipment, development software and studio overheads... no wonder games cost so much these days!
There is a lot of pressure on building reusable technology these days, develop a slightly more generic 3D engine / AI engine and physics engine, knock out your first game and make a loss, then hopefully knock out games 2 & 3 using the same engine and hopefully make a profit on those.
Very few modern games do little more than break even...
Would you be aware of good resources that a indie game development company like us could tap into? As a writer, I would be interested in knowing of Game Design related material (since part of my job is to design content for the game too). I regularly check on Gamasutra and Gamedev for reference. Books on gaming are fairly limited in India, but we are planning to buy some from overseas if we felt justified in doing so. Any ideas BR?
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
Gamasutra is one of my favourite sources of info, all the white papers can be interesting, but also remember it's sometimes just a way for people to blow their own trumpets.
Lithtech is an excellent engine, we looked at it a few of years ago when we were first starting our studio. The NOLF games and I think Tron2 where done using this and they are excellent games. Certainly it is veyr well documented.
As for AI - I don't recall if lithtech already has an Ai subsystem, but there is an excellent book with useful AI routines / approaches (from a programming perspective), can't remember what it's called off the top of my head, but it's in my bookcase at work I'll dig it out later. Also consider looking at predictive event driven AI systems rather than traditional frame drive AI.
Design is something you can either do or you can't. We have an excellent designer here and his brilliance comes from the fact that he KNOWS games, he knows them all, when he wants to look at some aspect of a game he'll get every competitive game and anaylse what worked and what didn't to help him focus his thinking, he also has a unique ability to be able to take suggestion and criticism from the rest of the team (a rare skill indeed!) I will ask him if he can think of any interesting stuff...
One think you might want to do is to try and get hold of the CD's that are produced each year at GDC (game developers conference in the US). They have transcripts of all the presentations and talks given by the industries best, and in some cases have videos of the presentations too - and consider trying to get yourself to the next one too if funds can permit.
Hope that helps you a bit, design isn't really my field I'm afraid, I only act as a wall that our designer bounces ideas off to see if they are sound.
Do let me know if your designer can point me towards something useful in that sense.
BTW, I've heard a couple of horror stories regarding the gaming industry? Underpayed, overworked, no job security, etc are some of the things I hear. Is all of it true? How have you coped?
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
The AI programming book I mention is AI Game Programming Wisdom by Steve Rabin, published by Charles River Media. I'll chat with Anthony our designer later and see if he can suggest others.
Yes, we are very underpaid and very overworked! :( I could be better paid in commercial IT, but I do enjoy what I do :)
Just checked with out Lead programmer, and he says Lithtech (rather the Jupiter engine) has it's own AI engine, and it's supposed to be pretty decent.
Anyway, will keep an eye out for the AI book - may come handy if we need to play with the AI engine for our game. :)
And I'm glad the work is enjoyable. That's the reason I quit my fairly well paying job in journalism and took up this one, which despite paying me half of what I was earning earlier, should be a lot more enjoyable I hope! :)
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
I take it there will the a Spectrum Version of the game you're working on, right?
And of course all us WoSers will get a complimentary copy wont we?
Complimentary copies for 1200 odd members of WoS...hmm.. might as well fold up right now. :)
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
A mate of mine involved in games programming is having serious trouble chasing up his last (very overdue) wage packet. Meanwhile, another one (in business software, not games) works far too many hours a week, has a bastard boss who rewites all his code so that it doesn't work, and is paid not very much.
Draw your own conclusions...
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
Do What Thou Wilt... (Aleister Crowley)
[ This Message was edited by: chaosmongers on 2003-09-20 21:52 ]