Game Development anyone?

[TripolySunni]

Originally Posted by orange infection

how can someone make a game in C++ ???
where's the visual interface ????
unless you are trying to reprogram hangman or tetris

You know the movie toy Story? the Whole thing was made by programming there was almost no Interface at all as I recall.

[Red Phoenix]

Originally Posted by Zayn

Game development is usually for hack artists and low-level programmers.

Basically a rejects' bin, evidenced by the slave wages that even big-name companies pay their employees.

not quite.

the wages suck ya for the individual devs, not for the companies or publishers, and ppl do it for the love of the projects in a very competitive field full of high profile artists and coders.

crysis engine wasn't done by silly programmers and the artwork of warcraft was not done by reject artists.

only a coding genius like john carmack can make use of bsp trees to make a 3d game like wolf3d run on a 286 instead of a Cray supercomputer not using bsp trees.

in this field it’s an art to stimulate as much as possible by simulating as little as possible.

any coder can program a function to calculate rigid body physics simulations in 100hours,but only a game coder can do this approximated simulation in realtime on a gpu in just 1 minute calculation time.

it’s a different ball game here.

the process is bigger than that of making movies and it employs state of the art technologies.

so u dont have to like the field, but it doesnt mean u can belittle it.

[Red Phoenix]

Originally Posted by TripolySunni

You know the movie toy Story? the Whole thing was made by programming there was almost no Interface at all as I recall.

not quite.

pixar coded and employed renderman shader language for the rendering ya.

but they had gui tools for artists back then for that first full time movie.

plus why are u comparing the work involved in a cg movie to that involved in game making ? hehe

making cg movies is only a subset of game developement.

[TripolySunni]

Originally Posted by Red Phoenix

not quite.

pixar coded and employed renderman shader language for the rendering ya.

but they had gui tools for artists back then for that first full time movie.

plus why are u comparing the work involved in a cg movie to that involved in game making ? hehe

making cg movies is only a subset of game developement.

Im just telling him beautiful Interface is not always required.

[Red Phoenix]

Originally Posted by TripolySunni

Im just telling him beautiful Interface is not always required.

hehe ya, but u gave him a weak example. :)

anyhows, this game making process is not that easy nor clear at first glance, so i understand that.

sadly in lebanon, we have very few ppl who know what's really involved in this..

but on the other hand, that fact presents a clear advantage to the first real serious game company to open here :)

[Orange Patriot]

Originally Posted by Libnene Qu7

Wow, I love this thread. I plan on starting my own games development and CGI movies company in the next 5 years. I'm dead serious about this, as it had been a long dream of mine. Start PMing me your cv's :P

I hope Orange Patriot sees this thread, as he's working on a very nice project only he can explain.

man, i cant believe my luck. i havent visited this sub-forum in months and i find this nice thread. yeah well me and q7 have had this dream for a long while as we grew up together and shared the same interests, one of them was gaming.

years of ideas have come and gone, much like others i suspect, but finally thought i'd dip my toes in the water. im currently exploring the source sdk by VALVe. i have ZERO experience or education in programing, or computer sciences or whatever. just love games, have confidence in my ideas, and idesign capability [ i am an architect after all].

i dont know i will ever reach the point of actually having a dev company, as nothing in the future is ever certain, but this is how i am outlining my self-education:

1. starting out learning one sdk, source by valve because i love their games [and business model but thats another sub-topic], then graduate to whatever is the most advanced by that time [most likely cryengine].
   
2. do this by learnign how to map for one of my favorite valve games, teamfortress 2. [currently working on an original custom map].
   
3. volunteering to help other modders on their orignal mods [not to be confused with maps].
   
4. having grasped the sdk i will move to me modding half-life 2 with my own original game idea, story, mechanics, etc. this will be parallel to learngin to model my own characters and assets in 3dsmax [which i have a fair background on due to architecture, but not advanced enough]. perhaps some basic c++ althugh i have no ide what thats like.
   
5. then hopefully a full out studio. havng had some basic development management experience with my own mod i can now go pro with a smal staff.
   
6. publishing? worst case [and arguably the best case with today's trends] it will be through STEAM online distribution. forget traditional publishers and the weight that it carries.

Originally Posted by FBM

***** u! my dream was to open up the first first game development company in the area!... Alas you will need a publisher wont you?

who cares who is first. i would be so happy to see a community of developers in lebanon. we have the creativity embedded in us and it doesnt require the massive rsources such as other entertainment industries. i.e. film and television.

we have so many somputer engineers and computer science graduates and nowhere to put them. so many architects at that as wel that can easily adopt. my personal appeal is the freedom i have on cyberspace to place my designs without them going through the scrutiny of idiots and redtape of official approval.

Originally Posted by Zayn

Game development is usually for hack artists and low-level programmers.

Basically a rejects' bin, evidenced by the slave wages that even big-name companies pay their employees.

i completely disagree. the gaming industry now accounts for more money made in the entertainment industry as a whole than film. who could have imagined that day would come?

i remember reading about how tv was a joked at when it first came out.

as red points out below, there is big money and lots of competition when it comes to the big boys.

• film composers are now transitioning over.
• conceptual artists from the film and architecture industry
• actors for voice overs, motion capture of their bodies [a la gollum], and actual live action acting in some cases.
• competition between big developers for who can provide teh best game engine not just for their own games but to be bought by smaller developers [much like how in forumla 1 you have big teams with their own engines that they also sell tothe smaller teams]. imagine the next generation of these engines are now advertising how they now include managerial benefits to gaming development.

Originally Posted by Red Phoenix

not quite.

the wages suck ya for the individual devs, not for the companies or publishers, and ppl do it for the love of the projects in a very competitive field full of high profile artists and coders.

crysis engine wasn't done by silly programmers and the artwork of warcraft was not done by reject artists.

only a coding genius like john carmack can make use of bsp trees to make a 3d game like wolf3d run on a 286 instead of a Cray supercomputer not using bsp trees.

in this field it’s an art to stimulate as much as possible by simulating as little as possible.

any coder can program a function to calculate rigid body physics simulations in 100hours,but only a game coder can do this approximated simulation in realtime on a gpu in just 1 minute calculation time.

it’s a different ball game here.

the process is bigger than that of making movies and it employs state of the art technologies.

so u dont have to like the field, but it doesnt mean u can belittle it.

yalla lets see waht the future holds. i suspect everyoen will here that wants to enter the industry will start with modding an existing game with their engine of choice. maybe if we all keep in touch we can help each other out by volunteering work for each other, be it art, scripting [programming], storyboarding/writing, or whatever and see each other move up to full-out dev.

[Orange Patriot]

someone also asked about eduacation. well i do know that valve have an educational program that the give out to universities. its a package deal with all resources from engine code to teaching resources, to online framework.

its called sourceU. for those wishing that their university had a program, this might be the best way to convince them. its wrapped practically in a box.

[darkstar]

Regarding Game Development Education:
Check the following link which outlines (almost) every university in the world that offers a game development track.

Schools - GameCareerGuide.com

Great post orange patriot. Learning a game SDK can be fun if you don't want to get into all the know hows in programming. The Source engine in addition to the Unreal engine has tons of tutorials floating all over the net .Since you have a good background in modeling then that will prove to be a big asset. I've seen some good Source tutorials on the "steam forums".

Have you guys played the game called "Everyday Shooter". That game was developed by one man. It might not be a AAA game but still it reveals just what one person can come up with.

It would be awesome if we could build a team in the near future to work on some fun projects.

[Frisbeetarian]

It would be awesome if we could build a team in the near future to work on some fun projects.

It really would be. I guess we all share the same dream here then, and that is to start up the first successful game developing firm in Lebanon. And it also seems that everyone is doing their bit of individual study , i for one picked up this awesome book on AI in games, and am learning quite a bit about neural networks and such, yet it feels way out of my league. So if u guyz need a crappy AI programmer count me in . Seriously, i would be more than wanting (say beg ) to help out anyway i can if you guyz decided on starting a project.

[Orange Patriot]

Originally Posted by darkstar

Regarding Game Development Education:
Check the following link which outlines (almost) every university in the world that offers a game development track.

Schools - GameCareerGuide.com

Great post orange patriot. Learning a game SDK can be fun if you don't want to get into all the know hows in programming. The Source engine in addition to the Unreal engine has tons of tutorials floating all over the net .Since you have a good background in modeling then that will prove to be a big asset. I've seen some good Source tutorials on the "steam forums".

Have you guys played the game called "Everyday Shooter". That game was developed by one man. It might not be a AAA game but still it reveals just what one person can come up with.

It would be awesome if we could build a team in the near future to work on some fun projects.

i cannot begin to tell you how much fun this. perhaps its just me.
its become like a hobby at home after work for 2-3 hours.

like you said, its ridiculous the number of tutorials there are out there. i cannot stress enough that i come from a background of zero programming or anything technical in that regard yet still i feel embarassingly spoonfed by the info available on the net. spoonfed is the operative word here.

in my particular case, being interested in tf2 mapping: theres th valve developer community, an official wiki, and tf2maps.net a community of mappers that just make maps, share ideas, prop libraries, a tutorial sub-forum.

and yes, would be nice to work on projects in the future.