Hi Phil,
Yes, that makes perfect sense. As a developer myself i understand your
desire to obtain permission from Carl before just handing out his source
code and work to someone else.
As far as creating a game engine that is "easy to use" I'm finding that
is a very difficult task. Part of the problem is that the gamers in our
little community range from absolute newby to super power user. When
creating a game engine that is to be targeted at this community the
engine has to be made to balance the two extremes, and that can't easily
be done without dumbing the engine down too much or making it too
advanced. Dumb it down too much and then many possible advanced features
such as scripting have to be left out, and make it too difficult you
will get scripting and other advanced features at the expence of having
to educate someone how to use the engine, how to script it, bla, or
simply make it too hard for somebody to use.
For example, when the Audio Game Maker came out quite a few people found
it too difficult to use. However, from a development point of view it
was fairly simple. Place an object in the game world, open its
properties, set all properties, triggers, and move on to the next
object. In my personal view it was too symplistic because I couldn't
script the objects to add more functionality or advanced features to
them. Together with a lack of advanced features, pore documentation,
lack of tech support, etc it was a failior in my book.
Unlike the Audio Game Maker the GMA engine seams to be a very well
thought out, put together, game engine. It has a lot more advanced
features than the Audio Game Maker, and is really one of the best tools
for creating accessible games out there right now. However, as nice as
it is some people would find it daunting and complicated to use.
Although, because of its added complexity it is possible to create games
like Shades of Doom, Sarah, Packman Talks, etc with the GMA engine where
the same types of games wouldn't be possible with the Audio Game Maker.
It was just too symplistic to create anything that complex.
For example, with the Audio Game Maker when you created an enemy you
basically dropped an enemy object on the game world say at 50 50 and
then assigned its sounds, triggers, and other properties. Beyond that
you couldn't randomly place the enemy in the world, alter its AI, or
anything else you might like to do. You were restricted to the options
in its properties menu.
With the GMA engine while the developer is somewhat restricted by the
engine it is still quite flexable for the average developer. You can
certainly have enemies be randomly placed and change the behaviors of
the enemies somewhat as needed. Peev's can steel items in Sarah where
other ghosts can not. That's a feature you wouldn't have in the Audio
Game Maker, but get with the GMA engine. So while the GMA engine is more
advanced, perhaps more technical, that is the price of more advanced
features and abilities.
Phil Vlasak wrote:
> Hi Thomas,
> I wanted to update the PCS DOS games with better sounds and release
them as windows free games but I don't have the skills to do it.
> I worked on the source code with Carl Mickla who spent a lot of time
in writing the games so I would not want to release the source code
without his approval.
> I have been waiting for someone to produce a game engine that was
easier too use then the ones that are out now.
> Some of the games for DOS I am still planning to developed for
Windows using the GMA engine.
>
> Phil
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