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A developer who spent 13 years making his childhood game

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Re: A developer who spent 13 years making his childhood game

#71

Post by ekianjo »

petercooper wrote: post #61
ChuckMcM wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize that this is an off the cuff sort of comment but two things stand out, first you have give credit to the Amiga as it was stunningly better than anything else when it was released in 1984, and as wonderful as it was, Populous (perhaps the first game will small isometric animated battles) didn't come out until 1989. In 1983 running Microsoft flight simulator on the CGA card was state of the art :-). Since I w…

It's funny how being closer to the reality and more informed about the technology can mean one's guesses about the future are more pessimistic than people making pie in the sky guesses (think scientists versus sci-fi authors). I'm not directly involved in tech/hardware and I'm imagining full on reality-quality 'virtual reality' beamed into people's brains within 20 years. I imagine those in VR would scoff at this, bu…

> It's funny how being closer to the reality and more informed about the technology can mean one's guesses about the future are more pessimistic than people making pie in the sky guesses (think scientists versus sci-fi authors).

Bill Gates has an interesting quote about this phenomenon, for which I forgot the exact wording... it says that you are always wrong as to how fast things will occur, but you are also wrong when you think stuff will not be available for a very long time. There's many examples of such assumptions being wrong now and then.

Re: A developer who spent 13 years making his childhood game

#72

Post by z3phyr »

vidarh wrote: post #28
thisjepisje wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't forget non-realism, there's still lots to explore in that area too.

While I see the appeal in realism, I'm in this camp. I don't really play any games with "realistic" graphics. I'm sure they'd be fun, but I've just never gotten into them. I play old games, or "casual" games on my phone, neither type of games where realism is much of a factor. I have a game idea I hope I get time to do one day, but if I ever do, it will be 2d - on purpose - and somewhat pixelated, also on purpose. In…

For me, video games not only serve as an entertainment package. They are a whole different worlds to me. I dream of a game which could bring me into alternate reality, with near perfect settings from the real world, with my own twist, and a game in which I will not respawn again, much like Rouglikes in UHD 3d.

I am trying to make such a game, but its too hard to complete by myself in such a short lifetime :/

Re: A developer who spent 13 years making his childhood game

#73

Post by tcgv »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #55
ido wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was at Intel working on a high end graphics chip I joked with one of the design engineers that it would be cool if you could see little armies fighting but we both agreed there probably wouldn't be enough CPU / graphics capability to do that in real time, at least not in our lifetime :-) You really didn't think that would be possible in your lifetime in 1983? I'd think that would have seen pretty feasible by t…

I realize that this is an off the cuff sort of comment but two things stand out, first you have give credit to the Amiga as it was stunningly better than anything else when it was released in 1984, and as wonderful as it was, Populous (perhaps the first game will small isometric animated battles) didn't come out until 1989. In 1983 running Microsoft flight simulator on the CGA card was state of the art :-). Since I w…

Since I was at Intel at the time neither one of us expected computers to get 1,000x better than they were at that moment in time

Wasn't Moore's law[1] as widespread as it is nowadays back then?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

Re: A developer who spent 13 years making his childhood game

#75

Post by ibrahima »

petercooper wrote: post #61
ChuckMcM wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize that this is an off the cuff sort of comment but two things stand out, first you have give credit to the Amiga as it was stunningly better than anything else when it was released in 1984, and as wonderful as it was, Populous (perhaps the first game will small isometric animated battles) didn't come out until 1989. In 1983 running Microsoft flight simulator on the CGA card was state of the art :-). Since I w…

It's funny how being closer to the reality and more informed about the technology can mean one's guesses about the future are more pessimistic than people making pie in the sky guesses (think scientists versus sci-fi authors). I'm not directly involved in tech/hardware and I'm imagining full on reality-quality 'virtual reality' beamed into people's brains within 20 years. I imagine those in VR would scoff at this, bu…

Hah, being a grad student in machine learning I feel this quite strongly. The popular science perception is that computers are already close to being smarter than us (BS articles about Turing tests don't help...), whereas it seems like if we truly reach computers that "think", it won't look anything like what we're doing now.

Re: A developer who spent 13 years making his childhood game

#76

Post by notastartup »

jacquesm wrote: post #62
ChuckMcM wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well my wrist reflexively ached when he described it and a picture of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_Air_Wing_%28video_game%... inserted itself into my head :-)

Pretty close. The game was called FlightDeck and the publisher was Aackosoft. It was a bit earlier though, 1980s, I'm a bit hazy on the exact date but it would have to be somewhere around 1988 or so. Here are some shots from the MSX version (which was made a few years earlier by an absolutely awesome programmer called Steve Course). http://www.generation-msx.nl/software/aackosoft/flight-deck-...

What an amazing feeling it must've been. I absolutely LOVE hearing these developer war stories from 80s and 90s, although 90s more because I am a 90s kid.

It definitely makes me feel that today's average devs are spoiled with all the innovations that have taken place...and still can't roll out a hit.

Re: A developer who spent 13 years making his childhood game

#77

Post by ChuckMcM »

tcgv wrote: post #73
ChuckMcM wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize that this is an off the cuff sort of comment but two things stand out, first you have give credit to the Amiga as it was stunningly better than anything else when it was released in 1984, and as wonderful as it was, Populous (perhaps the first game will small isometric animated battles) didn't come out until 1989. In 1983 running Microsoft flight simulator on the CGA card was state of the art :-). Since I w…

Since I was at Intel at the time neither one of us expected computers to get 1,000x better than they were at that moment in time Wasn't Moore's law[1] as widespread as it is nowadays back then? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

Yes, and in fact Gordon was still Chairman of Intel, but the thing about exponentials is they are always S curves. The trick is knowing when they are going to taper off and go flat :-)

Re: A developer who spent 13 years making his childhood game

#78

Post by tbirdz »

I'm always impressed when I see people who have spent such a large amount of time on a single project. Me personally, I keep flitting from project to project, creating a prototype, or a proof-of-concept before I get interested in something else and pursue that. I think a lot of people fall into these categories, breadth first vs. depth first. It's probably best to seek a balance between the two, as then you will still devote enough time to polish the outcome, while still having the time to explore many completely different projects.

Re: A developer who spent 13 years making his childhood game

#80

Post by SixSigma »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #67
SixSigma wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about the book title? That one is a guide to post ww2 combat whereas this one: The Complete Wargames Handbook http://www.hyw.com/Books/WargamesHandbook/Contents.htm Is about how to make computer war games.

This one: http://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Fourth-Edition-Comprehensive/... Called "How to Make War" and it describes the mechanics, the theory, and the variables that impact the prosecution of warfare. The Wargames book was, in my opinion of course, a derivative which attempted to re-contextualize the information from HtMW into something more directly 'wargame like' but, again in my opinion, it left out too much to be…

The Wargames book predates htmw by 10 years so htmw is the recontextualisation but thanks because the reviews on it don't really relatw to gaming.
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