Game News Cyclopean Canceled

[Wang Lo]

Let's see what you can do then. Oh yeah, nothing.

 

[Melcar]

So, anything interesting going on here?

 

[Jason]

 

[Wang Lo]

Not even a face?

 

[Jason]

 

[hoverdog]

Wang Lo is doing an olympics game!

 

[Lumpy]

Like I said before, game designer is not what you think it means. It doesn't mean that you design the gameplay. It's like an IT analyst in a typical project. It took me a while to figure out what really they do, too, but it's basically a lower paid programmer who talks to users more and is a general worker with a little skill everywhere. [...] It is a money saving device, not something brought about to improve quality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_desig ... e_designer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Avellone

Feel free to provide a more credible source on the definition of a game designer. Otherwise, stop arguing with people because they don't know your personal dialect of the English language.

But to go beyond semantics: obviously, a guy who acts as a programmer's coffee boy, whatever you may call him, is clearly not in a position to lead a project. Vince is clearly not that, he is the writer and main gameplay designer. So your whole fucking point is moot.


As an analogy to your argument: "Hitler was in no way responsible for the atrocities of the Third Reich. Sure, he was the Fuhrer, but the Fuhrer isn't the leader, he's actually the guy who paints propaganda posters, so Hitler clearly had nothing to do with the Holocaust."

 

[Wang Lo]

Like I said before, game designer is not what you think it means. It doesn't mean that you design the gameplay. It's like an IT analyst in a typical project. It took me a while to figure out what really they do, too, but it's basically a lower paid programmer who talks to users more and is a general worker with a little skill everywhere. [...] It is a money saving device, not something brought about to improve quality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_desig ... e_designer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Avellone

Feel free to provide a more credible source on the definition of a game designer. Otherwise, stop arguing with people because they don't know your personal dialect of the English language.

But to go beyond semantics: obviously, a guy who acts as a programmer's coffee boy, whatever you may call him, is clearly not in a position to lead a project. Vince is clearly not that, he is the writer and main gameplay designer. So your whole fucking point is moot.


As an analogy to your argument: "Hitler was in no way responsible for the atrocities of the Third Reich. Sure, he was the Fuhrer, but the Fuhrer isn't the leader, he's actually the guy who paints propaganda posters, so Hitler clearly had nothing to do with the Holocaust."

Hitler is the perfect analogy.

How many times has VD said arcanum is not combat oriented? He didn't have to kill anyone, his followers just autokilled any hostiles as he played. Hitler takes some of the blame of the holocaust but if the holocaust is a good thing he can't take all the credit, he didn't do the real work. That's like george washington taking credit for all the work his soldiers did. Generals can win or lose wars but they don't do the actual work of fighting and killing. Everyone wants to be the glorious leader but the bastille fell because proles impaled themselves on the gates. If your team is just a couple guys, you can afford the glorious leader type even less, but by all means if you are good enough of a bullshitter maybe you can pull it off. Vince has certainly generated much adieu about aod and marketing is always necessary for selling things. But, if you are not someone good at managing (manipulating?) people that probably won't work out so good.

You can say whatever a game designer is but if you've never made a game, and are not a programmer you aren't qualified to comment. You don't meet either of those criteria, neither does VD. And no, even the game designers we like can't take credit for all the work. They are closer to what a producer in tv does. The problem is all these titles are meaningless and have inherent marketing attached to them.

Gameplay designing takes like 9 minutes to write down, and months or years to fix all the dumb decisions made in those 9 minutes. If you've never designed a game system and debugged it you don't know what the fuck you are talking about, period. I have. VD hasn't. I understood going in that design doesn't mean innovashun! and I chose a kind of conservative way to do most things, there's nothing I can point to and say is an exciting new gimmick but it is well thought out, well crafted, and while I am still making little changes all the time I feel very happy with it. Like I enjoy playing even after doing some map for the millionth time happy.

I am not saying how great I am, some people will like it and some will not and it's impossible to step outside your own work and judge it fairly or even have a ballpark idea if you have descended into total madness. Though this is exactly what vince has done before. 9/10, Good job, me! Then I play it and see it's a train wreck that might not start making sense without years of work fixing it.

But my point here is, you can't just design a complex system out of thin air. All good software, and especially all good game systems, come out of testing, not design. Innovashun is almost always retarded and when people have their entire game system pulled out of thin air it is a red flag they don't know what they hell they are doing because even small changes throw everything out of whack. So if vince sat down and made a pnp system and spent 3 years playing with people to perfect it, yes he would really be a game designer in the sense most people think one should be. If he did that, he could pop the game system into AoD and it should work with no adjustments. Obviously though he just came up with a bunch of random bullshit because that's the way things "should be", and another big red flag should be that the guy designing your game system should not be a guy who only seems to really like adventure games and RPG lites.

You can agree or disagree with my view of game designers and of IT analysts but no offense but you are not even the coffee boy so you just don't have the viewpoint necessary to reach a solid conclusion.

It's just like the pics jason posted. No kidding, any doufus can project some internet pictures onto models someone else did. If you make a game quality animated character rigged and skinned and animated from scratch that is about 5000 times the work and even among the "pros" very few people do that. And if it was someone else's work or from a pack or something some faggot would already have posted that is just reskinned U3 mesh!!! like 5 times by now.

The whole idea of software engineering is to break up a task into separate parts. That's why they even have analysts and game designers in real terms. Saying they are specialists is kind of bullshit, and as a programmer yes many times analysts have been 'in charge' of a project I've been on, even though they made half the money I do. You can replace analysts in a heartbeat but if you lose a good programmer who has done a large amount of your codebase you are really fucked. They are not there because they are some special computer expert they are there to deal with the day to day shit.

 

[Burning Bridges]

An interesting thing about the indie "company" model (usually not an actual company) is that, since there is little to no money involved, there can never be an actual company hierarchy where people have some responsibility for what they do, not only to their superiors, but also to themselves, their peers, and their subordinates. Thus any hierarchy that is established, is established (and enforced) by social means, and almost inevitably leads to all kinds of crazy bickering between team members and leader(s), taking the focus away from the actual game, and bringing it closer to the obsession with this abstract idea of "being game developers" mixed with constant struggle over the team's ever-changing power structure.

I'm sure a lot of Codex posters who are into playing or modding Jagged Alliance 2 could say a thing or two about the 1.13 mod, and how it ended up in a state it currently is, and that's just a mod (though a relatively complex one). A mod that could - if a proper design document (mainly regarding the externalization of various hardcoded features) was written and its implementation properly enforced - be finished in a couple of months at most by serious modders, making the game fully moddable for hobbyist modders afterwards. But you just can't do this with a group of random internet people.

One solution to the hierarchy problem is developing a cult of personality. However, this is probably one of the worst solutions, because even if the game in question gets made, if the cult leader is a horrible designer (which is the role they usually take - sometimes with writing or programming/scripting involved), who among the team members will risk getting ostracized from the cult by telling them that a particular feature is horrible? Or if they recruit people who don't know anything about the job they're supposed to do, and bring the team down, will anyone dare to speak up?

This is one of the reasons why people usually say "learn to program, learn to do basic graphics, make the game yourself" (note how "learn to write" or "learn to design a game" are conspicuously absent), but it is also one of the reasons why people this advice is directed at don't. Because if they did, they could blame no one but themselves for the final product.

Interesting thread. I pick your post because it's the one I agree most with, on several points.

Some years ago I was on the brink of becoming an indie developer myself.

With hindsight my advice is that as an indie developer you should only start manageable projects that you can finish quickly, lets say in a year or so, and yes you should do it on your own.

I am a programmer and I can claim it's definitely no problem for a programmer to program a game in a few months. Since you can do what you are really good at, your motivation will be as high as it will go, you will work very focussed and make huge progress. It's also fun in that stage.

I also don't see a big problem with game design and story since with a good data driven engine the content can be slowly sharpened up once the basic program is available. You should of course have a concept that adds up and is fun but since most indie games are designed after a blueprint anyway (e.g. Elite) this is not so much of an issue.

The problem is of course the stage when you need graphics and 3d models and sound etc. If you're alone, you have to start over and learn to do all these things, and still keep your interest up. I found it is possible, but is hard work and simply needs too much time. So, for me the shock came when I started 3d modelling and realized just how time intensive and arduous that would be. After some time I lost interest. At least I can take positve stock that I learned a lot.

The solution most people come up is to work in a team. But it has all the problems that you point out. Most of all, everything will eat up big amounts of time. If a project has run for several years without results to show it's usually driven against the wall, because people have already lost interest, even if they manage to fuck over themselves and drag themselves to go on. I can not say it often enough, it's all about motivation. And who can claim that he can stay motivated for 5 or more years.

With hindisight I think for a programmer it's best buying the graphics, 3d model and sounds right away from royalty free sites, I mean lots of them, but that requires an financial commitment which I am not ready to make.

No idea if I could ever make a game but I would need a year or so where I am relatively free of other obligations, and enough money to buy models wtc, and at the moment especially investing the money is out of the question. But it should be possible for other people.

 

[Lumpy]

The Wang Lo method of arguing on the Internet:
- Post huge walls of texts of loosely connected points, so that nobody can keep track of what you're saying.
- Add copious amounts of facts that are self-evident, and which nobody argued against.
- Subtly imply that your opponent was not aware of those facts.
Hope people will be confused into thinking that you are right, and that consequently your opponent is wrong.

Now, be a good boy and argue precisely where AoD is failing, and shut the fuck about your "IT Analyst" bullshit when it clearly has nothing to do with ITS's team composition.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I would however say that some of his points are valid, I just don't see where it will go.

 

[Wang Lo]

The Wang Lo method of arguing on the Internet:
- Post huge walls of texts of loosely connected points, so that nobody can keep track of what you're saying.
- Add copious amounts of facts that are self-evident, and which nobody argued against.
- Subtly imply that your opponent was not aware of those facts.
Hope people will be confused into thinking that you are right, and that consequently your opponent is wrong.

Now, be a good boy and argue precisely where AoD is failing, and shut the fuck about your "IT Analyst" bullshit when it clearly has nothing to do with ITS's team composition.

I already outlined the points I was trying to make. AoD is really only a sideline to anything I was saying, you are the one who keeps steering this into the direction of a flame war.

My opinion of AoD is just that, an opinion. An informed one but still just the opinion of an outsider after 4 hours playing a buggy demo. Maybe every demo before then was solid and I got a corrupted one or something, who knows.

If your opinion is different, fine. We'll see what the future brings, but I am not holding my breath.

EDIT: Since you agree with all my premises, the basic ideas, and you can't find fault with any of my logic, maybe you should just agree I am right.

 

[Burning Bridges]

One important point that I don't remember mentioned is that many programmers who make design decisions are not gamers, and don'T understand what makes games fun. Think of the many russians that make half assed bland games with excellent engines. Those guys would deinfitely need designers! But a programmer who has also played a lot of games with a keen eye should be able to come up with a very good game design, expecially since he also understands much better than any theorizer how stuff was implemented.

Finally I recommend the book Programmers at work. All of the really important guys like Bill Gates started by programming themselves.

 

[Kosmonaut]

That is all I can do...

Jesus prosper, you are a good troll.

 

[Davaris]

The problem is of course the stage when you need graphics and 3d models and sound etc. If you're alone, you have to start over and learn to do all these things, and still keep your interest up. I found it is possible, but is hard work and simply needs too much time. So, for me the shock came when I started 3d modelling and realized just how time intensive and arduous that would be. After some time I lost interest. At least I can take positve stock that I learned a lot.

The art side just got a lot easier. Try the latest 3DCoat with voxel sculpting and auto retopology. You can do hard surface modeling rapidly, that is good enough for games, if you create some parts in an external modeler first. Check out the space ship video.

http://www.3d-coat.com/

After that all you have to learn is animation and rigging and Blender is good enough for that.

Jesus prosper, you are a good troll.

I was wondering who was sillier, Lo Wang (Prosper?), or the people that took him seriously enough to argue his points.

Lo Wang is from Shadow Warrior. Surely someone noticed?

Memorable quotes for Shadow Warrior:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0234704/quotes

Lo Wang: [to naked lady] Do you want to wash Wang or do you want to watch Wang wash Wang?

Lo Wang: Woops, Lo Wang drop soap, you bend over get it, hahaha

Lo Wang: [to naked lady defecating on a toilet] Hey baby! Pull my finger! Hahaha!

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Most pirates pirate games they think aren't worth the price, not just everything they can get their hands on.

bollocks.

 

[Wang Lo]

That is all I can do...

Jesus prosper, you are a good troll.

Just wait til I hire big time art director.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Your professional opinion - as an outsider, whatever that is - is that you are not sure that the game will get released? That's your professional opinion as an outsider even though "it's not easy to judge from outside"? Makes sense.

Professional codexer?

You mean like Volourn?

Volourn's more like a hobbyist.

A masochistic, insane hobbyist.