Thursday 21 March 2013

Thursday Things

Things That Happened Today

On a professional note, it looks like I finished the AGK apps, with no more bugs reported on them from a days testing. Not celebrating yet. Will do that when I see them on the iOS and Android stores :)

In the late evening, I did some GDC prep work such as making my slides and also cleaned up some of the UCCII Perceptual Webcamera app to make it more polished. Will do the bulk of the final polish over the weekend, but I wanted to get movements done towards the end of the week so I have a good app experience for the GDC goers.

On a personal note, I sold my car today. My most favourite car ever, and it's gone, gone, gone. A sad day indeed. Going to see what it's like to live without a car for a while. I do have a 1962 land rover but it does not really count as a car, more like a vibrating mad washing machine on wheels, controlled by a wagon wheel and powered by hope.

Reloaded

No new explosions to report today on the Reloaded side. I did submit my story board script for the level that will feature in the product. Mark liked it, and thought the 'stylish noire theme' would work very well. Rick hated everything about it (I suspect he wants a MW3 clone). I've given him the GDC week to come up with a better script :)  In the meantime, lets take a blog vote. Would you prefer 'Detective Story' with puzzles and a bit of shooting, or 'Military Mayhem' with a few puzzles and lots of shooting?  You can't say both :)  The plan is to do one game and put extra energy into the quality finish, rather than quantity.

Signing Off

I've been staring at this PC so much over the last few weeks I think I need new glasses due to the amount of physical change I've put my eyes through. Probably go in for an eye test when I get back from GDC to see how blind I am getting and buy some prescription telescopes.

17 comments:

  1. I've been reading from the start of your blog...so far I've reached "Thursday Not Friday" in January. Very interesting it all is, too.

    I don't mean to annoy you, but from your posts you do seem a fair bit similar to me, so I thought I'd say this...you've made a few spelling mistakes repeatedly. Here are some reference thingies to help you in your future blog-writing adventures:

    Wander = To move aimlessly - Pronounced "wonder" (short "o" sound, as in "clock")
    Wonder = VERB: To consider a possibility; NOUN: An emotion or the cause of astonishment - Pronounced "wunder" (short "u" sound, as in "up")

    Where = Preposition, meaning it describes a position ("Where did Lee place his games?")
    Were = Different form of "was" ("They were on the window sill.")
    Wear = To don clothing
    We're = Contraction of "we are"

    P.S. I'm the guy that contacted you some time ago requesting to create FPSCPro/FPSC2/FPSC-R for you :)

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  2. My vote is for Detective Story. FPSCR will be best suited to the tiny indie developer creating the smart and simple shooter. There are far too many military shooters anyway and big budget ones at that, so FPSCR will just merge into the background if Military Madness is put forward.

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  3. I also vote for the Detective Story.

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  4. Military Mayhem without doubt as its a First Person Shooter engine first and foremost so lets see what it can do and let others from outside of this inner circle which is not the whole picture see that too.

    Puzzles and and other game play features can and may well be incorporated as part of any game type to advantage and have their part to play perhaps in any game but in this instance they are not the primary function of the product a "Shooting" enemies Mayhem would be more befitting this product as a showcase of what can be done with it despite any individuals preferences for anything different.

    Its not about individuals but the wider needs and requirements of the general user/player market and the potential for attracting new and more user/purchasers for FPSCR for the longer term.

    Enemies, Player and the battle between them as built around the Game Story is what its all about in an FP Shooter and theres nothing better to show off what an FPS engine can do in promoting itself than have lots of that in an example Demo Game made with it by the developers. This is and always has been severely lacking amongst all game engines and is the proof of the pudding. There is no other way to better convince potential purchasers to buy and use a given engine.

    If you like pudding or FP Shooters its by far the best and only option that should be considered of those options mentioned.

    In fact I am not sure that Total Mayhem alone is required or is the best option and doubt it is (though better and more beneficial to the product my main consideration) than a puzzle type game even if shooting is involved. What is really needed is to show off the quality of the Gameplay and interaction between Player and enemies in a way that best shows that. You dont need Mayhem necessarily for that but some smart enemy AI and behaviours. If you can add some of that to the Mayhem well we have a winner.

    Puzzles, traps, climbing, jumping, problem solving and so on - Tomb Raider style or whatever - great lets have some but dont forget as with that game type the primary focus is the Shooting of and interaction with enemies who hopefully can provide something of a challenge to get the heart pumping and the sweat dripping from your forehead.

    The end users as we know will always find ways of ingeniously adding many things good ideas, graphics, level design and content and including the puzzles and so on into their game mechanics. Yes?

    What they will find it much more difficult to do with Reloaded as we know too is to add the same level of ingenious game play mechanics to their Player, Enemy game play scenarios and interaction, Player behaviours and Enemy AI in their Shooting Battles and games in general.

    First and Foremost lets please see some of that which serves the priority purpose of promoting the product as what is it - primarily in the first instance. A FP Shooter.

    FP Shooter - Please lets see the Player and Enemies shooting at each other first in the best demonstration possible and anything/everything else you want to add in support of that in the Demo Game for FPSCR.

    :-)

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  5. Lee, u shud be writing da inglish like wot I duz, not like wot da grammar nazi tells u 2!!

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    1. Grammar nazi? Seriously? Lee said "where" EVERY SINGLE TIME he meant "were".

      Ah well, I suppose it's people like you that will never get anywhere in life.

      Spelling IS important. Not because people are unable to read miss-spelled words; on the contrary, people have a nasty habit of easily reading miss-spelled words. Spelling is important because it means you take the time to think, and when people don't think (like almost everyone these days), they become government dogma-controller drones.

      But enough off-topic...

      Delete
    2. "Ah well, I suppose it's people like you that will never get anywhere in life."

      Now THAT was funny, you've redeemed yourself!!

      I mean, seriously? I'll never get anywhere, simply because I don't feel the need to correct other people's spelling, and I'm quite capable of understanding what someone is trying to say, even with spelling/grammar mistakes?!!

      The fact that Lee miss-spelled a few words does NOT mean he didn't take the time to think about what he was writing.

      I wonder how much time he would waste, spell-checking absolutely EVERYTHING he writes, simply to avoid being corrected by people like you?!! Time that would be better spent on making FPSC Reloaded a great piece of software (not forgetting DB-Pro and AGK, which he also has to find time to work on)!

      Delete
  6. On topic; I vote for the Detective puzzler. MW3 clones are two-a-penny these days, and while FPSCR is promarily for creating first person shooters, it never harms to creat something a little different every now and then...

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  7. Jeeze Pete; I thought I was reading a Blog within a Blog, I didn't even have to look at the pic by your name to know it was you! ;)

    Whichever way you choose to go (as Uman suggested), it has to be solid....rock solid; both in game-play and in laying out the visual advances you're trying to showcase. In short, no "programmer art". Don't forget the importance of character to character dialogue as well.

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  8. I'd vote for the Detective genre, however, as has been said, this is a FPS engine, and solely going down the puzzle route wouldn't be a good demonstration of it's capabilities. So, I'd actually vote for a mix of the 2. Imagine, for example, A shot out between AI's to which the player is just a bystander.

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  9. I don't think MW3 alike would be any good considering FPSC isn't really the best for those types of games. I'd much rather see games with occational shooting and puzzles rather than a run through of military men. I don't think the AI would be good enough to have full out combat situations.

    I'm quite interested in what FPSC Reloaded would be like in the sense of when your interacting with characters. It was a CRAZY hard task just to make a basic in-game dialog screen with choices and etc.

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  10. Noir is my favorite genre so I vote for Detective Story.
    I'm sorry about your car by the way.

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  11. Why is everyone voting for Detective? The idea of Lee creating a game in FPSC-R is not to create a new game to play, it's to create a high-quality, high-polish example of what FPSC-R can do. Who cares if the game won't stand out among the likes of MW3 and BF3? That's not the point. It's a showcase game, not a big-budget AAA blockbuster.

    Pete Coleman got in a nutshell:

    "Military Mayhem without doubt as its a First Person Shooter engine first and foremost"

    The thing is, in FPSC Classic, it's dead easy to create puzzles. You can use the built-in switch functions or you can get (slightly) technical and go for scripting. The puzzles can be complex and detailed (although somewhat lacking in a decent physics engine; yay for Bullet in FPSC-R!!).

    Despite its name, what FPSC Classic fails miserably to deliver on is FPS combat. The AI is not smart, the default animations are stiff and they can't be combined, which makes for some interesting sliding shooting. Now obviously, FPSC was created many years ago and hasn't evolved to keep up with the times, but that still doesn't make it any good these days.

    My point is, FPSC-R must deliver modern FPS combat, or it simply won't be worthy of the name First Person Shooter Creator.

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  12. Thank you Clonkex for that supporting post.

    As I understand it unless theres a change of heart. First Person Shooter Reloaded (FPSCR) was specifically decided upon as the name for the new product largely because it would keep the general thrust of being primarily that a First Person Shooter game creation engine.

    That is not to say that such engines as said should not have support for a range of game mechanics in support of that so users can use their ingenuity in creating a wide range of Shooter types games.

    The whole point being that any demo of the capability should depict what its all about first and foremost and thats FPS.

    More importantly - is that any demo of the products capability is a true demonstration of itself and is actually created with the product itself "FPSCR" and not created in DB Pro or some other software simply as an example or indication of what it may or might possibly be capable of and or contain somewhere down the road in the vein of what we have experience of from the past promotional materials. That would not be a viable demo of the product but a promotional creation which we and the product could do without for various reasons. i.e. What it should be a is a true and accurate example of FPSCR capabilities generated by the product itself.

    To do that presumably FPSCR has to be created and developed to the extent that it can generate the demo of itself and I would very much hope that development of FPSCR itself will not be held up at all to sidetrack resources in generating a demo via other external engines or software which is not truely representative of the actual FPSCR product.

    No idea when this demo is going to be available but I cant see how you can make it until FPSCR is developed to a stage where a demo can actually be created with it?

    Until you get there then I dont see how you can decide what type of game you can make with it as it does not yet contain features you can make anything with and who knows what it will actually contain as yet?

    Seems it may be some time until you can say FPSCR can generate a demo of any type of game so as to have the luxury of choosing which type.

    If you want organised "Military Mayhem" demo then that presumably will require some reasonably sophisticated AI. If you want a good Detective or similar type demo then that will require some equally good quality interactive element features of various kinds perhaps including possibly character interaction needing some level of AI?

    All of those kinds of features seem to be a long way off yet before they will be sufficiently functional inside a working FPSCR to a level it would be possible or worthy of creating any kind of demo with it?

    If the features dont get in it and to a high level of quality how will you create a decent enough demo with it for any specific demo game level type needing them?

    A poor demo is worse than none at all. If you have a demo then it should be good or at least as good as the response you expect to get from it. The last thing you need is to put out any demo that does it an injustice and does more harm than good by putting it in bad light.

    What I would like to know is this Demo - is it to be a user playable demo level made in FPSCR?

    or

    A Video demo or other some such material made in something else for instance simply made as a promotional marketing item?

    The first is a Demo of value whereas the latter is worthless to end users or potential purchasers and just pants and not worth interfering or holding up FPSCR development for particularly.

    In fact at anywhere in the near future I dont see any need for any demo at all.

    Much better that time is spent on getting FPSCR engine product progress done for real and getting a demo of the actual engine in the hands of those waiting for it. i.e. a Beta of FPSCR product so that users can test and help to move development forward at the earliest opportunity would be much more valuable that a demo of a level of a product that is not at stable release for sale stage.

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  13. To boil Pete's amazingly long comment down a bit and to show I agree with everything he said:

    1) FPSCR is first and foremost a FPS engine, so it must support highly advanced AI and weapon systems. Also, all demos created with it must show off its FPS features.
    2) Even though FPSCR is a FPS engine, it must support a wide range of features to allow for complex and varied gameplay and a variety of game types (such as a puzzle game).
    3) All demos created should be created AFTER FPSCR has been released. Don't waste time creating useless demos until you're selling FPSCR, at which point demos will function as promotional material.
    4) All demos created MUST be created using FPSCR. If they are mock-ups, perhaps created in DBPro and designed to show what FPSCR might be able to do in the future, they're not worth a rat's backside to anyone.
    5) All demos created MUST be of a high standard. If they are low quality, poorly designed or if they simply don't make use of most or all of FPSCR's cool features, they will do more harm than good; people will see the bad demos and think FPSCR is bad.
    6) Right now, we need betas, not demos, so get to work on the engine and not on planning a showcase game.

    Pete, you tend to use somewhat convoluted sentences and I'm not sure if I entirely understood what you were saying. If I didn't manage to capture exactly what you were getting at, please correct me.

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  14. Yes.

    When FPSCR is released then everyone will be able to see its potential or not from any playable showcase Demo Game level, any restricted feature Engine Demo Version perhaps that might be made as a promotional item and from users developments made with it. Cant do any of that without an engine to make them with so getting the engine actually done as a priority must surely be paramount.

    In the meantime anyone that pledges can get Beta development versions apparently/possibly to test for themselves what it can do as to each stage of the development as they are released. They act as a showcase in real time as it were during the development.

    Additionally this Blog is a Showcase of development as we have seen to date with what has been displayed of what it may be able to do.

    I can understand and perhaps the intention is that TGC will have to presumably test out the development, features and so on as they go and I guess theres is no better way than to Create something actual with it and test it internally as well as Betas being released to users. So adding things to a Game Engine Demo for TGC as you go is a good idea then when its approaching finish and release you will have a Complete Demo of its features to any stage which could be used for the said purpose.

    A truely worthy Demo might be a lot of work I dont know exactly for a master user or team using it for such. I guess it could take some months which is a lot of time if it will take time away from actual engine development.

    convoluted : sorry. Point is made I think in a round about way then. I will end my comments here now.

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