Journal #8469

Posted 9 years ago2014-11-18 01:23:38 UTC
Notewell NotewellGIASFELFEBREHBER
I'm getting really frustrated in my uni program. We've got teams of 5-6 people, and we have to make a game prototype in a semester then finish the game in the next. We have to do this from scratch. On top of a standard university course load.
As happened last year, I'm getting shafted by our limited scope. I'm expected to do my job as a level designer with, not only no neat toys, but no gameplay tools whatsoever. I have a school-provided copy of Maya (Which I am not fond of, though god help me I'm starting to be able to manage with it) and notepad with which to organize the map props and the gameplay entities. Nobody else is writing tools to use with the engine, because we have no time to do so with and it's not a priority for anybody else. I'm not writing a toolset because I'm not an engineer and I don't have the skill or knowledge needed to even get started with it. Also we don't have any finalized formats so I can't even write a parser to read or write map files. I have to hardcode everything character by character, and I don't even have a full format.

If you want a level designer to do neat things, you need to give them toys to work with. Spending all my time buried in a text editor with barebones gameplay code will not lead to a stellar product by any standards.

So you know what? I am going to, right now, with all my authority of a nobody, declare Laurie Cheers the programming patron saint of level designers. Because he took a look at us, and he said "You know what? These guys could use some new features to play with." AND THEN HE MADE IT HAPPEN. Spirit of Half-Life is still used by nearly every Half-Life mod in development now, because it was that damn good, and it gave us that much flexibility and ease with which to do our jobs.

Would that we had more people like him. My headache would disappear.
Bless you, Mr. Cheers. You knew what we needed, and you provided.

15 Comments

Commented 9 years ago2014-11-18 01:59:35 UTC Comment #61181
I wish I had the time to help you out with those tools! I know how hard it is for art people to work without tools. Major game engines have full suites of tools including material editors, scripting languages, and WYSIWYG map editors that allow for fast prototyping. Artists/designers can focus on making the game without direct programmer intervention for 80% of their needs. It really sucks to start from nothing in comparison! I had to write from-scratch tool stuff for my studio too.

What kind of a game are you making?
Commented 9 years ago2014-11-18 02:21:53 UTC Comment #61192
This year we're doing a 2.5D platformer loosely based on the world of Mary Norton's The Borrowers.
By the time it's done it's supposed to have 5 enemy types appearing/reappearing in each level, a miniboss per level (neither of which was our decision - course requirements) and a climbing mechanic using player-placed thumbtacks. So far we have a graphics pipeline using modern OpenGL and the ability to move an object in 3D space with no collision or physics.

It's hard to be optimistic right now.
Commented 9 years ago2014-11-18 13:33:06 UTC Comment #61195
There are some people out there that are insane enough not to use SoHL.
Commented 9 years ago2014-11-18 17:01:42 UTC Comment #61183
For collision, see if you can attribute basic bounds per entity.
Spheres, Cubes and Rectangles are simple. Code it once, give it attributes for length, radius, width etc.
If you're coding something more than once, try to make a function out of it.
I wish you the best of luck man.
What language is everything in?

Also, I've never used SoHL
Commented 9 years ago2014-11-18 17:57:58 UTC Comment #61193
You should really try it next time you use Goldsource. You'll wonder how you lived without Movewith, particle effects, and the ability to specify models for specific NPCs.

The game's being coded in C++ with modern OpenGL. Our main programmer is really skilled, but he wanted to get all the rendering framework down first, so we don't have any gameplay code at all at the moment. One other guy has been doing the sound engine exclusively, which is currently using FMOD and completely hardcoded, which gives me 0 flexibility when choosing sounds. Our 3D artist, who is the only other person who can really code, has been focusing on his job and helping us out with the other course assignments which include code.
Commented 9 years ago2014-11-18 18:29:11 UTC Comment #61184
I suppose if you're the environment artist you might want to step back and start creating a library of modular assets that can be used in various levels. Make generic textures for now, nothing crazy, but enough to get some work done.

I wouldn't stress until it's really necessary but try to do as much as you can with your current resources.

I agree with the rendering framework. Once you don't need to worry about that you can move onto the gameplay code.

When is the deadline?
Commented 9 years ago2014-11-18 19:06:52 UTC Comment #61194
3 weeks from now for the first prototype. Then a semster for the rest of the game.

I've been doing modular assets, because I thought it would save time, but frankly that just makes things more time consuming the way things are happening. I have to assemble a scene in Maya from the modular pieces to get their locations, then I have to manually type that into a text file.

If I didn't have the restriction of one texture per model, I'd just take the assembled modular assets and turn them into a massive scene then load up just the one model and the game entities to save typing, but as is that's not an option.
Commented 9 years ago2014-11-18 19:43:36 UTC Comment #61185
That doesn't sound too terrible... But again you have a lot of other things on your plate.
Just keep your head up and keep chugging along.
Commented 9 years ago2014-11-18 23:52:29 UTC Comment #61187
Maya supports basic scripting, right? Can you write a simple script that prints out your asset positions so you can copy/paste instead of manually typing? If you have something easy like that, you can slowly build up your script to do more and more work for you. Assuming the system is even remotely capable, you should be able to work it out from copy/pasting from the interwebs, or just ask in their forums or something. A simple script would make it easy to change file formats as well.
Commented 9 years ago2014-11-19 01:01:14 UTC Comment #61190
Whoa sounds really interested dude, I wish you luck! Take Tet's advice: keep chugging along and all will be ok ;)\

Also all this talk of coding makes me want to learn to code, but I have no idea what language to start with.. I think someone here recommended C#?
Commented 9 years ago2014-11-19 02:47:02 UTC Comment #61182
C# is pretty awesome. It's a really pretty language. Microsoft just open-sourced .NET libraries, so I expect it to get more popular!
Commented 9 years ago2014-11-19 11:33:17 UTC Comment #61191
Take that JAVA !
Commented 9 years ago2014-11-19 12:26:02 UTC Comment #61186
Yeah and TWHL has a lot of talented people with varying coding know-how.
If you need, just ask.
Commented 9 years ago2014-11-20 15:11:12 UTC Comment #61189
What's a good language for making simple games in? Graphics-wise, mainly; I'm thinking simple sprite-based platformer type of thing.
Commented 9 years ago2014-11-20 23:17:08 UTC Comment #61188
It depends, really. Some options are more complicated than others. Here are some possibilities:
  • C# - Unity has decent 2D stuff, from what I hear
  • C# - Use OpenTK's GameWindow to create a multi-platform (.NET/mono) OpenGL game (OpenGL can render in 2D)
  • JavaScript/HTML5 - There are lots of free JS game frameworks for 2D games
  • Python - I hear pygame is good, and has a lot of extra libraries
  • C/C++ - Use SDL to create a multi-platform (native) 2D or OpenGL game
As much as people like to hate on it, I really think JavaScript is an excellent language to start learning programming. It has pretty much everything that you need to know about almost every programming language. It's not exactly the best option for game programming (because you are reasonably limited in what you can do, and you can't deploy JS games on Steam or mobile platforms), but it's an excellent starter language and good if you just want to make simple games as a learning exercise. It's easy to deploy as well - if you put your JS/HTML on Github, they will host it for free.

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