Hi Shaun, I'm afraid you completely missed the point. Weather someone has updated equipment, programs in language x, whatever really has nothing to do with it. It has more to do with the fact there are certain common features I would call standards in mainstream games that don't often get included in audio games because the developer doesn't know about them or he or she doesn't know how to program it. Either way it is something of a problem as we are in a sense accepting a lower standard or quality of games because of it.
I'll return to my comparison of Pull to Dunk Hunt I posted to the list yesterday. Pull is a simple game in concept, which is perfectly fine as far as that goes, but it lacks many common features a game like Duck Hunt has which would improve the game play if they were added. Things like increasing the speed of the clay pigeons after each round, randomly changing the direction where the clay pigeons are launched from, add more clay pigeons to target, a dedicated scoring system, high score board, perhaps two-player mode, etc isn't really all that much to ask. These are fairly simple additions or features that could be made to improve the game to make it more like mainstream games of that genre or type. You see what I mean? This has absolutely nothing to do with system specs, 64bit, and all this stuff you seem to think is required to catch up to the mainstream. I'd agree if we were talking Doom 3D or Star Wars Battle Front with 3d graphics etc, but we aren't. We are talking about how various games, even simple games like Pull, could be improved just by adding more challenges, features, etc more commonly found in mainstream games. In fact, I can safely say a game like Pull could be written in something like visual Basic 6, DirectX 7, and built for Windows 95, a Pentium 133 processor, and 32 MB of ram, and still support all of the mainstream features I mentioned above. These kinds of things don't necessarily require huge changes in the game or state of the art hardware and software. The same kinds of changes could be suggested about a game like Sarah. Now, I'm a big fan of SCW, play it all the time, but there are things here and there I think would make the game just a bit better. One of those is rather than faking 3d movement by having Sarah flying on the broom by setting a flag it would be a bit more realistic to rewrite the game with full realistic 3d movement so Sarah can fly up/down, left/right, forward/backward on the broom in 3d space. The same holds for the pond/lake where Sarah should be able to swim up/down, left/right, forward/backward, but she can't. It would be nice to rewrite the map of Hogwarts so the rooms line up on top of each other rather than the basement being basically just another room or area of the same floor. The problem is that everything in Sarah is pancake flat and that's not at all realistic. It isn't something a mainstream developer would necessarily do given the same type of game. However, I'm well aware the GMA Engine doesn't really have the ability to do what I suggest, which is too bad, but all the same that's not really my point. Its just that we often get use to overlooking features and development standards often found in the mainstream game industry when creating a similar type of game, and I honestly feel that we are cutting ourselves short because of it. Cheers! On 7/31/11, shaun everiss <[email protected]> wrote: > well tom its safe to say that most of us here are just starting. > Most don't have your background. > I sertainly don't. > When I started the most complex game I knew was intergalactic battle > a graphics/menu game. > Yes compaired to mainstream we are probably not that attractive. > The point is that we have been stagnating in emulated arcade. > Its not a bad thing but if we need to move foreward we will have to > bite the bullet and try to go mainstream etc. > Which brings up an interesting thing. > Unless you are sighted and know what stuff was then you won't know > what to really do. > I have never been sighted in my life. > You can go left right up down run left and right and jump. > I know that mainstream stuff goes so much more than that. > But there are limits in sounds, the number of sounds, etc. > Then there is the fact most of us don't have updated equipment. > And even if we have its not the most up to date. > Ie I have what would be quite an ancient second generation dulecore > with no real hard drive or memmory requirements running on an > extremely insecure os, and old ish hardware that won't go anywhere > and being unable to run major things. > We are limited at least for a while to the fact most people will > still have 32 bit systems. > I know for a fact a few still have single core systems. > Some may still use dos 6 and win98 still. > With acceptions with those with linux or apple mac systems Hmmm not sure. > Basically we are stuck with simple for a while I think until we get > 64 bit fully then we will be behind again. > > So before we move foreward we need some online servey For our > systems and what features etc we could have in a game or just the system > specs. > We need to know how many have medium spec systems like mine, to > really old, to new to whatever, what os and what stuff we will want. > I am thinking of making a test servey on surveymonkey or something > just to see what things are like. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
