Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming
Hi Phillip, Is BGT only for audio game programming? Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Philip Bennefall Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 1:01 AM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Thomas, A good summary, in my opinion. The problem I have with a, shall we call it clicky-pointy tool is that it's ridiculously limited. Somebody asked on the audio game maker forum how easy it would be to make a sports game (I think it was basketball or socker or something). The response was, the engine doesn't support making a ball at this stage... I'll say no more. The way I'm doing it in Bgt, as I mentioned previously, is to build a powerful base that is capable of making pretty much anything. I still have to add a few things such as file IO, some processor demanding AI that can't be done so well through the script, parsing directory trees, encryption and decryption of files and strings etc, 3d vectors and advanced math, eventually networking and so forth. Though over-all, the core of the engine will stay unchanged and the only thing that will be added is extra modules. These, the script writer can simply include and use as though they were functions and classes that they had written themselves; #include, in other words. This will enable me to go as high level as I could possibly wish, even to the point of providing almost finished games where all you need to do is make a few tweaks to variables and supply sounds. This, however, would not be a good foundation for a core which is what the audio game maker tried to do. In short, I'm trying to provide the best of both worlds; extreme simplisity if you want it, and complete control once you've mastered the language operation enough. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 7:43 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Philip, That has been my concern as well. What seams perfectly easy to a skilled programmer may not necessarily be that simple and straight forward to someone who has no programming skills at all. The only thing I can compare BGT to is the Audio Game Maker tool that was released a couple of years ago which flopped. In design the Audio Game Maker was really simple to use, or at least was to me. You started the AGM up, created a new project, and were placed on a 100 by 100 grid. You then could drag and drop objects on the grid such as enemy objects, the player object, walls, etc. You could point to a certain object and bring up a properties menu that would allow you to configure the objects properties. For the more advanced developer you could ignore the GUI tool altogether and modify the xml scripts directly. However, one thing that became imediately apparent is a lot of people had troubles using the Audio Game Maker. For one thing it wasn't well documented for some users, and they couldn't understand some of the key concepts involved from the get go. For another the team who developed it were college students and pretty much blew the project off after creating it. Which meant no official technical support for the project which was really bad. However, those problems aside I did manage to create a couple of simple games with it and was able to figure out most things on my own without docs or technical support just by experimenting with things. Although, I know a lot of people couldn't. I know with you BGT will be well documented and well supported so those two problems won't be an issue here. However, the question of how fast or quick people will learn how to use it remains to be seen. We've had this situation before with Audio Game Maker and the GMA Engine where people are eager to try the new game development tool only to quickly get frustrated with it and give up on it. My personal conclusion is, and has been, programming games isn't necessarily something for the masses. It is difficult to take a very complex subject like game programming, wich covers many different areas of programming, and package it in a nice little tool that everyone can easily understand and use. You either end up with the totally keep it simple stupid design which lacks a lot of advanced features for simplicity sake, or has every feature you can think of but is too complex for the average user. I'll be interested to see how BGT is recieved in our little community. Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. 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/gam
Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming
Hi Hayden, For the time being, the answer is yes. However. Depending on how popular it gets I might extend it to support graphics as well, but that's still in the future. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: Hayden Presley hdpres...@hotmail.com To: 'Gamers Discussion list' gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 3:23 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Phillip, Is BGT only for audio game programming? Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Philip Bennefall Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 1:01 AM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Thomas, A good summary, in my opinion. The problem I have with a, shall we call it clicky-pointy tool is that it's ridiculously limited. Somebody asked on the audio game maker forum how easy it would be to make a sports game (I think it was basketball or socker or something). The response was, the engine doesn't support making a ball at this stage... I'll say no more. The way I'm doing it in Bgt, as I mentioned previously, is to build a powerful base that is capable of making pretty much anything. I still have to add a few things such as file IO, some processor demanding AI that can't be done so well through the script, parsing directory trees, encryption and decryption of files and strings etc, 3d vectors and advanced math, eventually networking and so forth. Though over-all, the core of the engine will stay unchanged and the only thing that will be added is extra modules. These, the script writer can simply include and use as though they were functions and classes that they had written themselves; #include, in other words. This will enable me to go as high level as I could possibly wish, even to the point of providing almost finished games where all you need to do is make a few tweaks to variables and supply sounds. This, however, would not be a good foundation for a core which is what the audio game maker tried to do. In short, I'm trying to provide the best of both worlds; extreme simplisity if you want it, and complete control once you've mastered the language operation enough. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 7:43 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Philip, That has been my concern as well. What seams perfectly easy to a skilled programmer may not necessarily be that simple and straight forward to someone who has no programming skills at all. The only thing I can compare BGT to is the Audio Game Maker tool that was released a couple of years ago which flopped. In design the Audio Game Maker was really simple to use, or at least was to me. You started the AGM up, created a new project, and were placed on a 100 by 100 grid. You then could drag and drop objects on the grid such as enemy objects, the player object, walls, etc. You could point to a certain object and bring up a properties menu that would allow you to configure the objects properties. For the more advanced developer you could ignore the GUI tool altogether and modify the xml scripts directly. However, one thing that became imediately apparent is a lot of people had troubles using the Audio Game Maker. For one thing it wasn't well documented for some users, and they couldn't understand some of the key concepts involved from the get go. For another the team who developed it were college students and pretty much blew the project off after creating it. Which meant no official technical support for the project which was really bad. However, those problems aside I did manage to create a couple of simple games with it and was able to figure out most things on my own without docs or technical support just by experimenting with things. Although, I know a lot of people couldn't. I know with you BGT will be well documented and well supported so those two problems won't be an issue here. However, the question of how fast or quick people will learn how to use it remains to be seen. We've had this situation before with Audio Game Maker and the GMA Engine where people are eager to try the new game development tool only to quickly get frustrated with it and give up on it. My personal conclusion is, and has been, programming games isn't necessarily something for the masses. It is difficult to take a very complex subject like game programming, wich covers many different areas of programming, and package it in a nice little tool that everyone can easily understand and use. You either end up with the totally keep it simple stupid design which lacks a lot of advanced features for simplicity sake, or has every feature you can think of but is too complex for the average user. I'll be interested to see how BGT is recieved in our
Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming
Hi Phillip, Maybe I should've clarified. What Imeant was, is it capable of producing other programsbesides games? Best Regards, Hyden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Philip Bennefall Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 10:11 AM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Hayden, For the time being, the answer is yes. However. Depending on how popular it gets I might extend it to support graphics as well, but that's still in the future. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: Hayden Presley hdpres...@hotmail.com To: 'Gamers Discussion list' gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 3:23 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Phillip, Is BGT only for audio game programming? Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Philip Bennefall Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 1:01 AM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Thomas, A good summary, in my opinion. The problem I have with a, shall we call it clicky-pointy tool is that it's ridiculously limited. Somebody asked on the audio game maker forum how easy it would be to make a sports game (I think it was basketball or socker or something). The response was, the engine doesn't support making a ball at this stage... I'll say no more. The way I'm doing it in Bgt, as I mentioned previously, is to build a powerful base that is capable of making pretty much anything. I still have to add a few things such as file IO, some processor demanding AI that can't be done so well through the script, parsing directory trees, encryption and decryption of files and strings etc, 3d vectors and advanced math, eventually networking and so forth. Though over-all, the core of the engine will stay unchanged and the only thing that will be added is extra modules. These, the script writer can simply include and use as though they were functions and classes that they had written themselves; #include, in other words. This will enable me to go as high level as I could possibly wish, even to the point of providing almost finished games where all you need to do is make a few tweaks to variables and supply sounds. This, however, would not be a good foundation for a core which is what the audio game maker tried to do. In short, I'm trying to provide the best of both worlds; extreme simplisity if you want it, and complete control once you've mastered the language operation enough. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 7:43 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Philip, That has been my concern as well. What seams perfectly easy to a skilled programmer may not necessarily be that simple and straight forward to someone who has no programming skills at all. The only thing I can compare BGT to is the Audio Game Maker tool that was released a couple of years ago which flopped. In design the Audio Game Maker was really simple to use, or at least was to me. You started the AGM up, created a new project, and were placed on a 100 by 100 grid. You then could drag and drop objects on the grid such as enemy objects, the player object, walls, etc. You could point to a certain object and bring up a properties menu that would allow you to configure the objects properties. For the more advanced developer you could ignore the GUI tool altogether and modify the xml scripts directly. However, one thing that became imediately apparent is a lot of people had troubles using the Audio Game Maker. For one thing it wasn't well documented for some users, and they couldn't understand some of the key concepts involved from the get go. For another the team who developed it were college students and pretty much blew the project off after creating it. Which meant no official technical support for the project which was really bad. However, those problems aside I did manage to create a couple of simple games with it and was able to figure out most things on my own without docs or technical support just by experimenting with things. Although, I know a lot of people couldn't. I know with you BGT will be well documented and well supported so those two problems won't be an issue here. However, the question of how fast or quick people will learn how to use it remains to be seen. We've had this situation before with Audio Game Maker and the GMA Engine where people are eager to try the new game development tool only to quickly get frustrated with it and give up on it. My personal conclusion is, and has been, programming games isn't necessarily something for the masses
Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming
Hi Hayden, The engine is primarily intended for audio game development. Having said that, however, many functions found in games are also found in other types of programs so it is not at all impossible that one could use the engine to write something other than a game. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: Hayden Presley hdpres...@hotmail.com To: 'Gamers Discussion list' gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 4:16 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Phillip, Maybe I should've clarified. What Imeant was, is it capable of producing other programsbesides games? Best Regards, Hyden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Philip Bennefall Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 10:11 AM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Hayden, For the time being, the answer is yes. However. Depending on how popular it gets I might extend it to support graphics as well, but that's still in the future. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: Hayden Presley hdpres...@hotmail.com To: 'Gamers Discussion list' gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 3:23 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Phillip, Is BGT only for audio game programming? Best Regards, Hayden -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Philip Bennefall Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 1:01 AM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Thomas, A good summary, in my opinion. The problem I have with a, shall we call it clicky-pointy tool is that it's ridiculously limited. Somebody asked on the audio game maker forum how easy it would be to make a sports game (I think it was basketball or socker or something). The response was, the engine doesn't support making a ball at this stage... I'll say no more. The way I'm doing it in Bgt, as I mentioned previously, is to build a powerful base that is capable of making pretty much anything. I still have to add a few things such as file IO, some processor demanding AI that can't be done so well through the script, parsing directory trees, encryption and decryption of files and strings etc, 3d vectors and advanced math, eventually networking and so forth. Though over-all, the core of the engine will stay unchanged and the only thing that will be added is extra modules. These, the script writer can simply include and use as though they were functions and classes that they had written themselves; #include, in other words. This will enable me to go as high level as I could possibly wish, even to the point of providing almost finished games where all you need to do is make a few tweaks to variables and supply sounds. This, however, would not be a good foundation for a core which is what the audio game maker tried to do. In short, I'm trying to provide the best of both worlds; extreme simplisity if you want it, and complete control once you've mastered the language operation enough. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 7:43 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Philip, That has been my concern as well. What seams perfectly easy to a skilled programmer may not necessarily be that simple and straight forward to someone who has no programming skills at all. The only thing I can compare BGT to is the Audio Game Maker tool that was released a couple of years ago which flopped. In design the Audio Game Maker was really simple to use, or at least was to me. You started the AGM up, created a new project, and were placed on a 100 by 100 grid. You then could drag and drop objects on the grid such as enemy objects, the player object, walls, etc. You could point to a certain object and bring up a properties menu that would allow you to configure the objects properties. For the more advanced developer you could ignore the GUI tool altogether and modify the xml scripts directly. However, one thing that became imediately apparent is a lot of people had troubles using the Audio Game Maker. For one thing it wasn't well documented for some users, and they couldn't understand some of the key concepts involved from the get go. For another the team who developed it were college students and pretty much blew the project off after creating it. Which meant no official technical support for the project which was really bad. However, those problems aside I did manage to create a couple of simple games with it and was able to figure out most things on my own without docs or technical support just by experimenting with things. Although, I know a lot of people couldn't. I know with you BGT will be well documented
Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming
Hi Philip, Exactly my point. In a sense the AGM is too simplistic a game development tool because it is extremely limited in what you can actually create with it. You are not able to modify the enemy AI or use any kind of if type conditional statements to change the behavior of any game elements. This is a huge drawback as you know conditional statements are absolutely essentual for creating games where there are several random variables involved.The point and click game development tools don't give you that kind of control over the games creation and behavior. Which was one of the reasons it failed to impress game developers such as me. I understand some users desire to have a simple point and click all in one game development tool, but such a thing isn't realistically feasable if we want the developer to be able to create new and unique types of games. I think what you are doing with BGT is really the best compromise possible. You have a scripting language with special modules/add ons that helps simplifies the process of game development while not giving up any features in the process. I think in the end I'll probably end up doing the same thing with Genesis as well. There really isn't any better way to do it. I don't know about you, but ever since I mentioned I was working on the Genesis Engine I often get asked if he/she will have to know any programming to use it. Like you if I go with a scripting language for scripting the engine the end user wouldn't necessarily have to know how to program to use it per say, but they would have to learn how to use the scripting language which some might find a little daunting. That may put people off from buying it as they wouldn't be able to pick it up, point and click a couple of times, and have a new game. It still may require some scripting by hand to create a game which is a big turn off for the common computer user, but is necessary to have a fully featured game engine. Cheers! On 3/14/10, Philip Bennefall phi...@blastbay.com wrote: Hi Thomas, A good summary, in my opinion. The problem I have with a, shall we call it clicky-pointy tool is that it's ridiculously limited. Somebody asked on the audio game maker forum how easy it would be to make a sports game (I think it was basketball or socker or something). The response was, the engine doesn't support making a ball at this stage... I'll say no more. The way I'm doing it in Bgt, as I mentioned previously, is to build a powerful base that is capable of making pretty much anything. I still have to add a few things such as file IO, some processor demanding AI that can't be done so well through the script, parsing directory trees, encryption and decryption of files and strings etc, 3d vectors and advanced math, eventually networking and so forth. Though over-all, the core of the engine will stay unchanged and the only thing that will be added is extra modules. These, the script writer can simply include and use as though they were functions and classes that they had written themselves; #include, in other words. This will enable me to go as high level as I could possibly wish, even to the point of providing almost finished games where all you need to do is make a few tweaks to variables and supply sounds. This, however, would not be a good foundation for a core which is what the audio game maker tried to do. In short, I'm trying to provide the best of both worlds; extreme simplisity if you want it, and complete control once you've mastered the language operation enough. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. 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/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming
Hi Thomas, Agreed 100 %. We had a discussion on the private beta team whether or not we should have high level wizards for making different styles of games but it was a unanimous no in the end as far as I remember. And as for whether programming knowledge is necessary... I've been asked the same question more times than I can count, and the short answer I give is that yes you do need to have an idea of how scripting works, which is like programming but 10 times easier. The fact of the matter is that a game is a program like any other, and so one cannot make a game without programming. Then how easy or difficult the programming is, that's a science in itself. Smile. I can only try to make it as simple and user friendly as possible, which I'm hoping to achieve not only by having an extensive text documentation but also by providing it in a readily accessible audio format. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 9:18 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Philip, Exactly my point. In a sense the AGM is too simplistic a game development tool because it is extremely limited in what you can actually create with it. You are not able to modify the enemy AI or use any kind of if type conditional statements to change the behavior of any game elements. This is a huge drawback as you know conditional statements are absolutely essentual for creating games where there are several random variables involved.The point and click game development tools don't give you that kind of control over the games creation and behavior. Which was one of the reasons it failed to impress game developers such as me. I understand some users desire to have a simple point and click all in one game development tool, but such a thing isn't realistically feasable if we want the developer to be able to create new and unique types of games. I think what you are doing with BGT is really the best compromise possible. You have a scripting language with special modules/add ons that helps simplifies the process of game development while not giving up any features in the process. I think in the end I'll probably end up doing the same thing with Genesis as well. There really isn't any better way to do it. I don't know about you, but ever since I mentioned I was working on the Genesis Engine I often get asked if he/she will have to know any programming to use it. Like you if I go with a scripting language for scripting the engine the end user wouldn't necessarily have to know how to program to use it per say, but they would have to learn how to use the scripting language which some might find a little daunting. That may put people off from buying it as they wouldn't be able to pick it up, point and click a couple of times, and have a new game. It still may require some scripting by hand to create a game which is a big turn off for the common computer user, but is necessary to have a fully featured game engine. Cheers! On 3/14/10, Philip Bennefall phi...@blastbay.com wrote: Hi Thomas, A good summary, in my opinion. The problem I have with a, shall we call it clicky-pointy tool is that it's ridiculously limited. Somebody asked on the audio game maker forum how easy it would be to make a sports game (I think it was basketball or socker or something). The response was, the engine doesn't support making a ball at this stage... I'll say no more. The way I'm doing it in Bgt, as I mentioned previously, is to build a powerful base that is capable of making pretty much anything. I still have to add a few things such as file IO, some processor demanding AI that can't be done so well through the script, parsing directory trees, encryption and decryption of files and strings etc, 3d vectors and advanced math, eventually networking and so forth. Though over-all, the core of the engine will stay unchanged and the only thing that will be added is extra modules. These, the script writer can simply include and use as though they were functions and classes that they had written themselves; #include, in other words. This will enable me to go as high level as I could possibly wish, even to the point of providing almost finished games where all you need to do is make a few tweaks to variables and supply sounds. This, however, would not be a good foundation for a core which is what the audio game maker tried to do. In short, I'm trying to provide the best of both worlds; extreme simplisity if you want it, and complete control once you've mastered the language operation enough. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages
Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming
Hi philip, Yes, that makes sense. When using the Windows Scripting Host you pretty much have to use a single scripting language for demonstration purposes. That's pretty much what GW Micro does with Window-Eyes 7. Although the latest Window-Eyes version can use just about any scripting language you can imagine most of the official scripts and documentation is written in VB Script. However, I can clearly see where using the Windows Scripting Host could cause a developer problems. Especially, if someone wants to use a scripting language other than the default one you decided to support for your project. I could certainly see a situation where various Window-Eyes third-party scripts are written in VB Script, Javascript, ASP, etc and it would make it difficult for GW Micro to maintain all of those scripts since they would be written in several different scripting languages all supported through the Windows Scripting Host. A game developer could in theory have the same problem with game modules unless he/she stresses using the default script language. As far as cross-platform support goes I understand, but I've learned the hard way that's easier said than done. For one thing Mac and Linux really do have infurior game APIs such as SDL and SFML which aren't in the same league as DirectX. I've actually started moving away from the open source game APIs for exactly that reason. DirectInput supports a wide range of game controllers such as keyboards, mice, and force feedback game pads and joysticks. SFML and SDL have very generic keyboard and mouse support, but I find there joystick support really lacking. OpenAL is a decent enough audio library, but I still feel DirectSound and XAudio2 are superior products. Using multithreading through SFML or SDL is a joke. To get really superior multithreading you should do it using something native to the operating system such as the Win32 API. So while it is possible to create games for Mac and Linux I feel they have a ways to go before they are on equal footing with Windows for PC gaming if we do a feature by feature comparison. Plus as you know I've recently ran a survey on this very issue. While everyone felt cross-platform support would be nice nearly all of those who responded to my survey stated they are running Windows XP, and have no interest in moving to Mac or Linux themselves. Only about 8 people out of around 90 people said they were running Mac. So even if there are a few more blind Mac users they are still a huge minority compared to the people who are currently running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7. So financially speaking I think the Mac and Linux markets are still too small to worry much about it at this point. Especially, since they can still run our games via Boot Camp or something like that anyway. Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. 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/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming
Hi Thomas, I agree about the cross platform issue. While it would be nice to support every platform imaginable it still comes down to whether one can afford the time and investment that such an endeavour would take. I, for one, decided against it for the time being. I am about to go public beta with Bgt now, but my only concern is that people will find it too difficult to use at this stage and then give it up for lost even though new and simplified high level modules are added all the time. In short, what is available now is the core and a few higher level wrappers, and while this still is 10 times easier than c++ and perfectly sufficient for a reasonably experienced programmer to work with, it might not appeal to a complete beginner. I have had success in my beta team where people have been able to pick up the tool and make things very quickly, but I don't know if the reaction of the masses will be the same. The documentation that comes with the package is quite extensive, the language tutorial will even be provided in narrated form read by a professional voiceover artist, but I am still not quite sure. Kind regards, Philip bennefall - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 6:28 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi philip, Yes, that makes sense. When using the Windows Scripting Host you pretty much have to use a single scripting language for demonstration purposes. That's pretty much what GW Micro does with Window-Eyes 7. Although the latest Window-Eyes version can use just about any scripting language you can imagine most of the official scripts and documentation is written in VB Script. However, I can clearly see where using the Windows Scripting Host could cause a developer problems. Especially, if someone wants to use a scripting language other than the default one you decided to support for your project. I could certainly see a situation where various Window-Eyes third-party scripts are written in VB Script, Javascript, ASP, etc and it would make it difficult for GW Micro to maintain all of those scripts since they would be written in several different scripting languages all supported through the Windows Scripting Host. A game developer could in theory have the same problem with game modules unless he/she stresses using the default script language. As far as cross-platform support goes I understand, but I've learned the hard way that's easier said than done. For one thing Mac and Linux really do have infurior game APIs such as SDL and SFML which aren't in the same league as DirectX. I've actually started moving away from the open source game APIs for exactly that reason. DirectInput supports a wide range of game controllers such as keyboards, mice, and force feedback game pads and joysticks. SFML and SDL have very generic keyboard and mouse support, but I find there joystick support really lacking. OpenAL is a decent enough audio library, but I still feel DirectSound and XAudio2 are superior products. Using multithreading through SFML or SDL is a joke. To get really superior multithreading you should do it using something native to the operating system such as the Win32 API. So while it is possible to create games for Mac and Linux I feel they have a ways to go before they are on equal footing with Windows for PC gaming if we do a feature by feature comparison. Plus as you know I've recently ran a survey on this very issue. While everyone felt cross-platform support would be nice nearly all of those who responded to my survey stated they are running Windows XP, and have no interest in moving to Mac or Linux themselves. Only about 8 people out of around 90 people said they were running Mac. So even if there are a few more blind Mac users they are still a huge minority compared to the people who are currently running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7. So financially speaking I think the Mac and Linux markets are still too small to worry much about it at this point. Especially, since they can still run our games via Boot Camp or something like that anyway. Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. 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/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. 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
Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming
Hi Philip, That has been my concern as well. What seams perfectly easy to a skilled programmer may not necessarily be that simple and straight forward to someone who has no programming skills at all. The only thing I can compare BGT to is the Audio Game Maker tool that was released a couple of years ago which flopped. In design the Audio Game Maker was really simple to use, or at least was to me. You started the AGM up, created a new project, and were placed on a 100 by 100 grid. You then could drag and drop objects on the grid such as enemy objects, the player object, walls, etc. You could point to a certain object and bring up a properties menu that would allow you to configure the objects properties. For the more advanced developer you could ignore the GUI tool altogether and modify the xml scripts directly. However, one thing that became imediately apparent is a lot of people had troubles using the Audio Game Maker. For one thing it wasn't well documented for some users, and they couldn't understand some of the key concepts involved from the get go. For another the team who developed it were college students and pretty much blew the project off after creating it. Which meant no official technical support for the project which was really bad. However, those problems aside I did manage to create a couple of simple games with it and was able to figure out most things on my own without docs or technical support just by experimenting with things. Although, I know a lot of people couldn't. I know with you BGT will be well documented and well supported so those two problems won't be an issue here. However, the question of how fast or quick people will learn how to use it remains to be seen. We've had this situation before with Audio Game Maker and the GMA Engine where people are eager to try the new game development tool only to quickly get frustrated with it and give up on it. My personal conclusion is, and has been, programming games isn't necessarily something for the masses. It is difficult to take a very complex subject like game programming, wich covers many different areas of programming, and package it in a nice little tool that everyone can easily understand and use. You either end up with the totally keep it simple stupid design which lacks a lot of advanced features for simplicity sake, or has every feature you can think of but is too complex for the average user. I'll be interested to see how BGT is recieved in our little community. Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. 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/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming
Hi Thomas, A good summary, in my opinion. The problem I have with a, shall we call it clicky-pointy tool is that it's ridiculously limited. Somebody asked on the audio game maker forum how easy it would be to make a sports game (I think it was basketball or socker or something). The response was, the engine doesn't support making a ball at this stage... I'll say no more. The way I'm doing it in Bgt, as I mentioned previously, is to build a powerful base that is capable of making pretty much anything. I still have to add a few things such as file IO, some processor demanding AI that can't be done so well through the script, parsing directory trees, encryption and decryption of files and strings etc, 3d vectors and advanced math, eventually networking and so forth. Though over-all, the core of the engine will stay unchanged and the only thing that will be added is extra modules. These, the script writer can simply include and use as though they were functions and classes that they had written themselves; #include, in other words. This will enable me to go as high level as I could possibly wish, even to the point of providing almost finished games where all you need to do is make a few tweaks to variables and supply sounds. This, however, would not be a good foundation for a core which is what the audio game maker tried to do. In short, I'm trying to provide the best of both worlds; extreme simplisity if you want it, and complete control once you've mastered the language operation enough. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 7:43 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Philip, That has been my concern as well. What seams perfectly easy to a skilled programmer may not necessarily be that simple and straight forward to someone who has no programming skills at all. The only thing I can compare BGT to is the Audio Game Maker tool that was released a couple of years ago which flopped. In design the Audio Game Maker was really simple to use, or at least was to me. You started the AGM up, created a new project, and were placed on a 100 by 100 grid. You then could drag and drop objects on the grid such as enemy objects, the player object, walls, etc. You could point to a certain object and bring up a properties menu that would allow you to configure the objects properties. For the more advanced developer you could ignore the GUI tool altogether and modify the xml scripts directly. However, one thing that became imediately apparent is a lot of people had troubles using the Audio Game Maker. For one thing it wasn't well documented for some users, and they couldn't understand some of the key concepts involved from the get go. For another the team who developed it were college students and pretty much blew the project off after creating it. Which meant no official technical support for the project which was really bad. However, those problems aside I did manage to create a couple of simple games with it and was able to figure out most things on my own without docs or technical support just by experimenting with things. Although, I know a lot of people couldn't. I know with you BGT will be well documented and well supported so those two problems won't be an issue here. However, the question of how fast or quick people will learn how to use it remains to be seen. We've had this situation before with Audio Game Maker and the GMA Engine where people are eager to try the new game development tool only to quickly get frustrated with it and give up on it. My personal conclusion is, and has been, programming games isn't necessarily something for the masses. It is difficult to take a very complex subject like game programming, wich covers many different areas of programming, and package it in a nice little tool that everyone can easily understand and use. You either end up with the totally keep it simple stupid design which lacks a lot of advanced features for simplicity sake, or has every feature you can think of but is too complex for the average user. I'll be interested to see how BGT is recieved in our little community. Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. 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/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo
[Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming
Hi tim, Yes and no. That's sort of the million dollar question. One I'm not sure how to answer at this point. The problem is that at this current stage the engine is far from a complete and ready to use product for the lay person. At the moment the engine consists primarily of a collection of classes and libraries which I can use to program future games. However, I eventually want to automate the process by creating a game editor that will allow you to draw levels, configure game objects, select default sounds, etc. Although, I'm a long way from the fully automated game development tool I'll likely be selling to the public. So the short answer is currently someone needs to know a fair amount of C++ to use it, but eventually I'll be switching over to a fully automated game creation tool that doesn't require much programming knowledge. So short answer is by the time it is sold to game developers you shouldn't have to know much programming to create basic games. However, that opens up a big can of worms which I'm not sure how to handle at this point. Automation tools are good and great things, but they only are good to a point. At some point, regardless of the game engine, you need to be able to program or script the engine's abilities to add specialized game objects, change the artificial intelligence for the enemy characters, whatever. There are just some things, no matter what, that can't be automated and have to be programmed manually. So I'm concerned while tools may exist to create basic games there still has to be a way to manually create advanced games that has all the features the automation tools lack. So what I may have to do is sell a basic version with simple and easy to use automation tools that do almost everything, but is limited in what it can do, and a pro version that is more programmer oriented that allows a developer to extend the engine using something like Visual C++. If you or anyone else has any thoughts regarding this let me know. Cheers! On 3/11/10, tim kilgore tim8...@sbcglobal.net wrote: Hey if some one bought your engine from you, would they have to know programming to make a game? Tim --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. 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/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming
Hi Thomas, The way I am doing it in the Bgt engine is to provide the core functionality in the actual package, and then let people of course including myself write modules for it. This way, you can go as high or as low level as you wish when making games. The engine is about to go into public beta in a month or two, and I am very interested to see how it's received mainly because while it is about 10 times easier than regular C++, it's still a fully fledged scripting language. My engine does not currently provide high level objects for environment and character management etc, as I feel that that is a little too game specific for the basic engine. This, however, will very likely be provided as includable modules. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 4:35 AM Subject: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi tim, Yes and no. That's sort of the million dollar question. One I'm not sure how to answer at this point. The problem is that at this current stage the engine is far from a complete and ready to use product for the lay person. At the moment the engine consists primarily of a collection of classes and libraries which I can use to program future games. However, I eventually want to automate the process by creating a game editor that will allow you to draw levels, configure game objects, select default sounds, etc. Although, I'm a long way from the fully automated game development tool I'll likely be selling to the public. So the short answer is currently someone needs to know a fair amount of C++ to use it, but eventually I'll be switching over to a fully automated game creation tool that doesn't require much programming knowledge. So short answer is by the time it is sold to game developers you shouldn't have to know much programming to create basic games. However, that opens up a big can of worms which I'm not sure how to handle at this point. Automation tools are good and great things, but they only are good to a point. At some point, regardless of the game engine, you need to be able to program or script the engine's abilities to add specialized game objects, change the artificial intelligence for the enemy characters, whatever. There are just some things, no matter what, that can't be automated and have to be programmed manually. So I'm concerned while tools may exist to create basic games there still has to be a way to manually create advanced games that has all the features the automation tools lack. So what I may have to do is sell a basic version with simple and easy to use automation tools that do almost everything, but is limited in what it can do, and a pro version that is more programmer oriented that allows a developer to extend the engine using something like Visual C++. If you or anyone else has any thoughts regarding this let me know. Cheers! On 3/11/10, tim kilgore tim8...@sbcglobal.net wrote: Hey if some one bought your engine from you, would they have to know programming to make a game? Tim --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. 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/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. 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/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming
Hi Thomas, I chose not to go through the Windows Scripting Host for two main reasons. First, because I don't know very much about it. Smile. This, of course, can easily be taken care of; I could sit down and do some research into it, but from what I know of it already I decided to go with a dedicated language instead. My main issue that I can see, which brings me to my second point, is just the fact that there are so many scripting languages that it supports which makes it very hard to adapt the engine to function the best that it possibly can. For instance, you might want to use callback functions for some purpose but before you can do so, you need to be sure that all the scripting languages that you intend to support through the host have this capability. Also, it makes it much harder to document the engine as you will most likely need to provide usable examples for every function/method in multiple languages. I also ask myself, how easy is this to enter into as a complete beginner? Would I, as the engine's creator, decide to favor one language supported by the host that I then provide a tutorial for? Or do I tell people to go read tutorials online? Or, do I in fact provide tutorials for a whole bunch of these languages as part of the package? The root I decided to take was to go with a dedicated scripting language, not one that I wrote myself but one which is extremely customizable and flexible and that allows me to know exactly what is happening at all times. The Bgt package includes a comprehensive tutorial that teaches you how to operate the language from the ground up, as well as a few well commented example games to show you the engine in action. This way, I can guide the user from writing their very first hello world all the way to writing yet another space invadors clone provided that they don't come up with a better idea. SMile. To summarize this long-winded rant. With the ability to focus on one language alone, I feel that I am able to really stretch the engine to its limits by exploiting every single feature that the scripting interpreter in question provides. Also, it will be a whole lot easier to go cross platform in the future if that should ever be my wish, as the interpreter runs on everything from the IPhone to Linux to Windows to the XBox. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 5:17 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Genesis Engine was Retro Gaming Hi Philip, Ah, just the person I need to talk to about this subject. grin I'd like to know how you are handling the scripting aspect of the BGT toolkit. I know you said it has a C++ style scripting language, but is this something you created on your own or did you go through something like the Windows scripting host? I've come up with several ideas for scripting modules for the engine, and one way I have thought of is using the Windows scripting host. That way I could add support for VB Script so anyone with a basic knowledge in Visual Basic could script this thing, and it would not be as difficult as say C++ to program. Plus the fact the engine itself would handle all the core stuff like handling Windows events, keyboard input, joystick input, sound support, Sapi support, whatever. All the scripter would have to do is call the SpeakMessage function to tell Sapi what to say or use the SoundOpen and SoundPlay functions to play sounds, etc. As for creating high level objects that's a good point. although, I think I could create some generic classes to choose from such as warrior, adventurer, wizard, etc that would cover just about anything the developer could want. With a little imagination a person might even use some classes for duel purposes. For example, a Star Wars junky could in theory use a wizard class for a Jedi character since some powers and abilities could be used for both. On 3/11/10, Philip Bennefall phi...@blastbay.com wrote: Hi Thomas, The way I am doing it in the Bgt engine is to provide the core functionality in the actual package, and then let people of course including myself write modules for it. This way, you can go as high or as low level as you wish when making games. The engine is about to go into public beta in a month or two, and I am very interested to see how it's received mainly because while it is about 10 times easier than regular C++, it's still a fully fledged scripting language. My engine does not currently provide high level objects for environment and character management etc, as I feel that that is a little too game specific for the basic engine. This, however, will very likely be provided as includable modules. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription
