Easy game creation

[Mumbles]

Since not everyone's a programmer, you absolutely must not deprecate the command MakeFPSGame()... Otherwise some people won't be able to use the engine

[Rick]

The command doesn't even make sense. It should take a parameter with the game type you want ie. MakeGame("FPS"), MakeGame("RTS"). That would allow it to be much more flexible. Better yet if should be able to take an actual game title and a clone of that game will be made: MakeGame("Crysis").

 

He should make it return a string that picks from some random smartass comment.

[Pixel Perfect]

Needs addition of a PublishGameForMe(std::string publisherOfChoice) command too .... no point in doing half a job eh

[ZioRed]

...and finally the must: MakeMoney(long whatYouDreamIsWhatYouGet) !!!

[Canardia]

Actually these ideas could develop into something useful.

[Paul Thomas]

Yeah, I guess in your case it would be: MakePhysicsEngine();

 

lol

[Rick]

Oh man Paul, low blow, but funny.

[puki]

I think everyone is being a silly-billy.

 

It's a good job there are people like me to keep the forum decorum at a sensible and intellectual level.

 

 

EDIT:

Christ! I just bumped a "Mumbles" thread - bad "puki"!

[Josh]

Well, who put out more games in 2010? The FPSCreator community, or the Leadwerks community?

 

I don't think doing away with programming is the answer, but I do think that providing a framework within which we can code together is critical. Okay, so your main program should be in C++, C#, or whatever, and that's fine. But I believe very strongly in the power of Lua for game interactions.

 

When you write code in C++, you are branching development away from the rest of the community, because from then on, your code and their code can't be combined. Not easily. Therefore, every C++ programmer is an island.

 

With Lua, code can be readily shared. We now need a standard way to code interactions so that the shared code can be more interesting than self-contained game objects.

[puki]

Depends on who you ask. If you ask TGC, then FPS Creator has been adopted by Electronic Arts and powers Crysis 2.

[Mumbles]

Christ! I just bumped a "Mumbles" thread - bad "puki"!

 

This thread wasn't the first one in this category...

 

 

When you write code in C++, you are branching development away from the rest of the community, because from then on, your code and their code can't be combined. Not easily. Therefore, every C++ programmer is an island.

 

With Lua, code can be readily shared. We now need a standard way to code interactions so that the shared code can be more interesting than self-contained game objects.

 

Being such a well known standard, how can C++ be less collaborative in nature than lua? I mean I haven't heard of Gamelib in lua, whereas anyone using C++ can just plug it straight in and have it working more or less instantly.

 

I know I claim to have a degree and all, but you might have to spell this one out for me

[Josh]

Gamelib, yes, but it's a framework you add components to.

 

You cannot interchange C++ components. You have to include headers and files, and there's a compiling step, and one code file might rely on a library that conflicts with something else...technically, it's possible to share C++ code, but it's just such a pain in the bum no one bothers.

 

Can you drop the code for someone else's groundhog AI into your C++ project? Not without so much work, it makes you seriously question whether you ought to bother. With Lua, you download the code, press F5, and it works immediately, across all supported platforms.

[Canardia]

The solution for C++ code exchange is to have community donned library. That's indeed how gamelib works. Everyone just writes some cool code snippets and I collect them from the forums into gamelib (with the authors' permission of course). My job is only to make the individual code snippets work with the whole library together, so it doesn't really matter how people write their code. I even left the original author's credits as comments in the library source code.

[Josh]

I like that you did GameLib, but it's not enough on its own. If that approach worked, it would have happened already.

[Canardia]

Of course GameLib doesn't write the game for you, but it helps a lot

And it's regularly updated with new features.

If you remember the Korean Game Contest winner "Physix", that game was written with gamelib using the power tutorial for gamelib. I would say maybe content wise 80% of the game was benefitting from the tutorial, and of course all the arts and other stuff took a lot longer time while making those 20% of the content.

[Josh]

The fact that there have been zero commercial games with Leadwerks so far indicates we are doing something drastically wrong. To solve a problem, you have to first admit it exists. The brutal reality is that people are generally making beautiful walkthroughs with left-handed guns, and very little else.

[Canardia]

I would say the problem is very simple.

There are a lot of good artists who could write a game, but there aren't enough game examples which they could copy and use as base for their game.

It's not the problem that starting a game from scratch is too much work with Leadwerks Engine, but the problem is the lack of examples how to do things.

So my suggestion is to publish a series of simple games for every game genre: FPS, TPS, RTS, RPG, Adventure, Car Racing, Platform Jumping, Sidescroller, Arcade, MMO.

They should available for all registered users with full source code and zlib license so that they can freely use the source in their own games.

[Josh]

The reason I don't do that is because if someone needs a C++ example to do that, the probability of them expanding on that is nearly zero. Then every bit of code I release gets treated as if it were the ten commandments, and if a game feature is missing, I am expected to add it. And expert programmers already have their own ideas how things should be done, and don't need my code.

 

Any game examples I provide are going to be in Lua, because there's at least a chance beginners will be able to expand on it.

[Canardia]

The community can do that. We have already working games from MAGIAM, so people could make community versions of their games. My "Cubix" game comes already with full source code, I can reupload it to the game downloads section. I think it's a 3D arcade shooter, but not really FPS as the player controls a flying sphere. But yeah, I produce new code almost daily, so there will be more free stuff coming

[Rick]

The fact that there have been zero commercial games with Leadwerks so far indicates we are doing something drastically wrong. To solve a problem, you have to first admit it exists. The brutal reality is that people are generally making beautiful walkthroughs with left-handed guns, and very little else.

 

I agree with this, but interestingly enough you are putting your chips on Lua being the way to help solve this. I don't know where you got that idea that another language will make this change, but I'd venture to say it won't. People want a structure to follow and they don't really care what language they do it in (well some do). You have to provide a basic structure for how games will be written in LE to get games made (at a general level as there will be exceptions). All these other engines provide this, which leads to programmers wanting to invest their time in making libraries that support this structure and so people who have the determination to finish a game use these libraries to actually make a game. An indie person just can't be expected to write all the pieces that go into a game from scratch (again, the majority of indie ppl).

 

Every game engine has a well defined game structure defined for people to use and extend. That's what makes it a game engine and not just a graphics library. Your fear might be that you don't want to make a FPS Creator but the fact of the matter is if you want to be seen as a game engine and not just a graphics library you are going to have to define some kind of structure that people use and not just a language.

 

The solution for C++ code exchange is to have community donned library. That's indeed how gamelib works

 

He's right about the community being the one to help, but gamelib is a complete unorganized mess because you, Josh, haven't defined any kind of structure for the programmers to follow. So that's what you end up with. Everyone does their own thing and nobody wants to share because they know it only works in their structure they've created.

 

 

I don't know if you've done a poll around this, but instead of making your best educated guess about why you think games aren't being made with LE, you might want to poll the people who are actually trying to make them.

[Josh]

I am not talking so much about our current users, but the total potential market. Because of the emphasis on programming we tend to attract programmers, but for every one of you guys there are twenty people who don't know how to download visual studio, but still have money to spend.

[Rick]

but for every one of you guys there are twenty people who don't know how to download visual studio, but still have money to spend.

 

If your goal is to attract non programmers who have money then I think you have to do flowgraph for coding the entire game. It might end up crappy and limiting (to us programmers) but those non programmers will eat that stuff up and fork over the cash, because it'll make them feel like they can make the next Crysis.

 

FPSCreator may have more games created last year, but I promise you 99% of them all "suck", but hey, they are all paying customers so who cares right. I'd still venture to say they had more games created because they define a game structure to follow. Be it a programming structure or a non programming structure they had something to go off of and people could make libraries that would fit and be reusable because there was this common interface defined for them already.

[L B]

This thread clearly branched off because all you troll-feeders forgot MakeFPSGame is a current working API command.

It's interesting, though.

[Rick]

Well, Josh had to go get all serious on us

[Canardia]

gamelib is a complete unorganized mess because you, Josh, haven't defined any kind of structure for the programmers to follow

How is it a mess? It's using clean OOP classes. It's not overusing OOP to make it unreadable though, but it uses an easy to understand OOP way which is very fast and optimized.