How I Saved the Gaming Industry 252
Jamie found a nifty blog entry where indie game designer Jeff Vogel writes about game engine and art re-use. He is criticized for not rewriting his core engine for a decade. It's an amusing little rant with thoughts that actually might apply to anyone working in engineering.
It's not just games (Score:5, Informative)
It's not just games. In the finance industry I've witnessed many failures of projects to re-write systems from scratch. Some of the best teams just keep updating their old lumbering system, occasionally slapping a web interface or window dressing on it. But it works! And they ship on time! And they make money! And that money goes to fund these colossal re-write failures.
Re:Exactly right! (Score:4, Informative)
Avernum (I played it in the 90s when it was "Exile") is quite fun. I have pretty much played all the Exile and Avernum games. I'm not a sci-fi type guy, so I didn't like Geneforge.
If you like a game where really the story takes precedence - as well as the general fun in gaining experience and leveling and new skills, etc - then you should indeed like Avernum...
No, I don't work for him... just have enjoyed his games for 12-13 years now. :) Also, I really like his shareware mindset... giving, for free, a large portion of the actual game (like 20%), to me, was very effective. If I didn't like the game, I didn't pay for it. If I did like the game, I really wanted to know the end of it so I paid for it.
Re:Aren't there plenty of engines used this way? (Score:3, Informative)
Note carefully that the author is also talking about re-using most of his resources - models and UI - and only adding new story content.
OK, Source is derived from Quake, but does Half Life 2 look like Quake 1?
It's an apples to Bad Analogies comparison though, since RPG audiences are not FPS audiences.
Re:Kind of an Anecdote (Score:3, Informative)
When I start a new game, I spend 3-4 months rewriting the worst or most dated part of my engine, and then I take that old (but solid) engine and make the coolest story I can with it.
This allows him to not only tune the engine for performance and stability, but also to take advantage of new technology. On the flip side, the engine is not likely to be redesigned, which can be a problem if the design itself gets dated.
Snicker... (Score:3, Informative)
Actually he did rewrite 5 games at least once, the first 3 Exiles games were re-hashed with his "new" engine and his "new" (and crappier) game mechanics as Avernum I-III, and he also re-did Nethergate, which I actually originally liked as being a nice change from his bland Exile world. OK, he did add some things to the "new" versions of Exile aka Avernum, but still... give me a break here. Oops, I said 5, and the one that I haven't mentioned yet is Blades of Exile cum Blades of Avernum.
Same so-so graphics for years, same tired old engine when it would/should have been entirely possible for him to move along to something a little more modern. e.g. Minions of Mirth using the Torque Game Engine and licensing a good deal of art, graphical effects, and commissioning other pieces is leaps and bounds ahead of Jeff's stuff yet still not entirely graphically pleasing, but good enough for more CRPGers I think. (Music was donated for Minions of Mirth AFAIK.) If he wanted to he could EASILY pick up any one of several OSS engines(e.g. Torchlight showed off OGRE pretty well IMNHO) or for little cost, license an engine like Torque(preferably the newer one), and given MoM's art he should be able to get good enough artwork to justify his grossly inflated prices for what is a VERY OLD creaky engine with artwork from the late 80s/early 90s. i.e. IMO Jeff is just being lazy and cheap. He's comfortable with crumbling old game engine, meaning that he has to spend little effort with each game actually programming, along with the endless re-use of the same graphics. (OK the graphics bit isn't so bad as you would expect some continuity in tilesets between games set in the same geographical region(s), however I've grown more and more to appreciate first person centered single character CRPG games, and 3rd person for party based all with 3D graphics.)
Actually given his commentary about re-writing the oldest portions of his engine every game, I'd bet that using some other OSS or other game engine would enable him to spend even LESS time on it once he got things going the first, as he could rely on commercial or OSS updates along with more testing. (Apparently he's never even bothered to look at other engines given his commentary on their "costs", yet apparently quite of few of these AAA games can afford expensive 3rd party engines, have a price point $12 or so about Jeff's and MANY of them still turn a profit, sometimes a VERY good profit.)
A new engine would allow him to implement a FAR more robust scripting engine than what he has, making something like the Blades games actually useful and possibly actually getting some people to create mods for it.
Anyways, my beef beyond the technical/art/mechanics aspects was the way he moved to his "new" engine re-releasing old games that I had already purchased while simultaneously jacking up his prices to unreasonable levels given the quality. (I stopped caring, mostly about Spiderweb after being burned by Avernum I. Go look at his current prices for his games, I paid little more for Drakensang which was a FAR better CRPG than any of his efforts, and better looking to boot while being produced on a budget which amounts to peanuts today.
Geez! He's just so arrogantly full of himself in that article, that it's er... disconcerting... I think that in the end is that he is so 1-person company centric and afraid to take any sort of risk that his commentary is just marginalized. I'm surprised he didn't work in something about PR and hype while he was rambling on there. OTOH Minions of Mirth was also made by, primarily, 2 people. Jeff really just comes off as a whiny wannabe in the post.
(End note: as to graphics, I still play alot of older CRPGs, and alot of roguelikes generally in TEXT mode, although for some I will use a graphical tileset if there's something halfway decent avilable, so graphics aren't everything but once you start putting yourself into a certain price category you WILL be compared to other games in the same general range, e.g. Drakensang v. Avernum/Geneforge.)
Re:No one wants to be behind the times (Score:3, Informative)
Well AFAIK The Dragon Age engine is based on the same engine used for KOTOR and many other Bioware games, just updated for the modern era.
Actually, it doesn't.
Mass Effect uses the Eclipse engine. This is considered a wholly new engine (although it doubtlessly shares some code from earlier projects, just because it is the same development house and performs similar functions).
Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2 and Jade Empire used the Odyssey engine. This in turn was based on the Aurora engine, first used in the Neverwinter Nights games (as well as a number of third-party titles).
Prior to that, of course, Bioware used the venerable Infinity engine, which powered Planescape Torment, the Baldur's Gate and the Icewind Dale games.
Close. Mass Effect actually uses the Unreal 3 engine.
Re:No one wants to be behind the times (Score:3, Informative)
While it's true that you can have both, the question is what do you play after you've finished those 3 games.