Developing Online Games 240
| Developing Online Games | |
| author | Jessica Mulligan and Bridgette Patrovsky |
| pages | 495 |
| publisher | New Riders |
| rating | 8 |
| reviewer | Peter Wayner |
| ISBN | 1592730000 |
| summary | The Sociology of building online games. |
The book's strength lies in the deep experience of the authors and the efficient, occasionally gimlet-eyed voice they use to analyze their collective addiction. Jessica Mulligan's bio lists work on more than 50 online games like Ultima Online, while Bridgette Patrovsky's includes time building games for Electronic Arts, Sony and Interplay Online Services. If you believe that Online games are the latest thing, Mulligan would like you to know that you're wrong. She wrote a column celebrating the 30th birthday of the Online game in 1999. Rick Blomme wrote Spacewar back in 1969 and Dave Arneson started an RPG named Blackmoor in 1970 or 1971. It was so long ago, he can't be quite sure.
All of this experience weighs a bit heavily on the authors. The book is more of a core dump than a logical progression and that means we hear bitter echoes of the past. One section is entitled "Yes, it really will take 2-3 years to complete" and another is called "No, More Programmers Won't Make it Go Faster." These sections don't add much to the usual literature about herding cats, but they do offer a strong reminder that this isn't a task for slackers who never could get around to forming that garage band.
The better parts are aimed at the design of the games themselves. While game players are slaying monsters or saving Princesses, game designers are questing after a full Player Satisfaction Matrix. Good games sate the player's need for socialization, accomplishment, discovery and conflict as they journey from the state of confusion (0-1 month), on to excitement (2-4 months), glide through the state of involvement (5-48+ months) before landing in boredom (until VH1 starts making "Behind the Game" documentaries). The trick to good design is making sure that there's plenty to feed the player's involvement.
For instance, you may be driven to create a new persistent world that emphasizes socialization because you're tired of all that death. The authors gamed that scenario and decided that "killers do have a positive role to play from the point of view of the socializers." Good can't exist without evil acting as a contrast and besides, players can usually find some other passive/aggressive technique for stabbing each other in the back even if knife objects aren't instantiated.
The authors tend to view the online realms as ecosystems. If you want to "increase the number of achievers," then the authors advise that you "reduce the number of killers, but not too much" while maybe "increas[ing] the number of explorers." I suspect that these recommendations are to be taken with a grain of salt, but they do reflect the observations of people who've spent a long time managing these games. I'm even tempted to develop my own Sim Sim that lets you simulate the process of crafting a simulation.
Ultimately it's hard for the authors to offer much more than these recipes and matrices. The details about the management, the strategies for stopping cheaters, and the intricacies of player relations are essential parts of the journey, but those are only half of the battle. Making the characters sing and the world come to life is a job for the artist.
This book is like many of the simple guides for writing a screenplay. They talk about arcs, hinge points and beats, but end up counseling that the screenwriter should aim to make each of these "good," This book can't tell you how to make your characters "good," but it can give you much insight into how others have done it before.
You can purchase Developing Online Games from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Could be an intersting read..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, the majority of broadband adoptors, in the home, are online gamers, but broadband saturation is still very low; and the availability, coupled with the price will probably keep it low for a while. I know people in Canada who pay between $25-$30 US per month, and get better speeds with their broadband than I get paying $55 US a month for mine.
Online games need to be optimized, no matter what connection the programmers would prefer. There's still plenty of lag on broadband when playing games, and a lot of it has to do with unoptimized code (which normally is fixed later down the road via patches on the PC).
Uncle Thursday
---In Soviet Russia, I might have gotten the first psot.---
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:5, Funny)
You're right..... (Score:2, Funny)
I forgot what really is important when desinging games.
Thank you for bringing me back into the light.
Uncle Thursday
---Who wouldn't ever dream of talking about issues with merits...The EULA is obviously the most important thing.---
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I feel the most important aspect is gameplay. But, in online games, shoddy network code can ruin the gameplay.
Uncle Thursday
---Gamer. Lover. Fugitive. Not necessarily in that order.---
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:3, Insightful)
robi
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:2)
What makes a game successful is the gameplay every time, not anything technical. The technical side just stops it being a failure. And in the entertainment industry with horde
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:2, Interesting)
Online RPGs are a different story (pun), and usually require a lot of writers for quests and dialogue. Online action and strategy games rely on gamep
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:4, Funny)
If you need to be more bandwidth-friendly than that, compress it [zuggsoft.com]!
Agreed (Score:2, Funny)
Who's with me?
Anyone?
Hello? Is anyone there?
Uncle Thursday
--Listening to the crickets chirp.---
Re:Agreed (Score:2)
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:2, Insightful)
At this stage of online gaming much of this has already been done. Many people are already playing online games(specifically MMORPGs) in a lag free environment from broadband and modems alike. I'm not saying that there won't be more advances, but they will most likely be evolutionary and not revolutionary(ala what Quakeworld did for Quake).
Online gaming is no longer in the infancy stage. People expec
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is largely a myth. "Optimize," in regard to network code, means "fool the user into thinking it's faster." There is nothing you can do to get rid of network lag. It's a fact of life. So what game developers do is play tricks to make
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:2)
Zilch.
We already had our per-client bandwidth down to like 28kilobit/sec(the head honcho likes to play using his zaurus with a wireless modem) unless somebo
The Video Card Conspiracy (Score:2)
Game players and the Game players Mind (Score:5, Funny)
Already done.. (Score:5, Funny)
It's called Grand Theft Auto 3. Now if they'd only make it massively multiplayer on-line, then the holy grail will have been achieved!
Re:Already done.. (Score:2)
Re:Already done.. (Score:2)
Re:Already done.. (Score:2)
No... it's just that someone else just jacked the car you'd previously jacked.
Remember - if it's not bolted down, it's mine. If I can pry it off, then it's not bolted down.
Re:Already done.. (Score:2)
That's because it's a port of a Playstation 2 game. That machine's not big on RAM.
Re:Already done.. (Score:3, Interesting)
senseless violence glorifying immoral crime. grow up."
"I don't know what it is that you're talking about, but I heard about it on TV. It's that
Re:Already done.. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that's not what this game is about. Though I'm curious how you could mistake a game called "Grand Theft Auto" for a game where the point is to beat people. *eyeroll*
"senseless violence glorifying immoral crime. grow up."
One should know what they're talking about before telling people to grow up. If you had actually played the game, you'd know that senseless violence is the fastest way to lose in that game. Run over a pedestrian, the police chase you. Fight the police, more chase you. Etc.
I find it hard to accuse it of glorifying violence when playing it trains my reflexes to avoid hitting people.
The reason that GTA3 is controversial is because a lot of parents (mothers mostly) have no clue what their kids find in video games. So when some jackass politician *cough*Joe Liberman*cough* comes along and says "the style of entertainment you're uneducated about harms your children", suddenly their fears get voiced. They say stuff like "GTA3 makes prostution a good thing! Just watch, the woman gets in the car, and his health goes up when they have sex! That's immoral!!" And the mothers are like "My babies would never have sex! That's wrong!"
The reality of that aspect of GTA3 is a little bit different. The prostitute does get in the car. The car does shake around. The health of the player goes up. None of that is in dispute. However, they are not actually depicting sex. If you turn the camera a bit, you'll see that both the driver and the prostitute are sitting in their seats staring out the window. They're not touching in any way, that's unmistakable. The car's just shaking around, it's not clear why. The point? If the player doesn't know what a prostitute is when they play this game, they're not going to find out by playing this game. For somebody to understand what's happening here, they'd also have to be educated on the dangers of sex with prostitutes. It's called innuendo. Nothing new here that a child isn't exposed to by watching a little TV, even the news. (ZipperGate comes to mind...)
In any case, the point of this post is not to defend GTA3 specifically, it's to point out that just because you've heard a compelling side of an argument that does not mean you really know what you're talking about. There's always other points of view. If you're going to run around calling people immoral without understanding the other side of an issue, then you shouldn't be telling people to grow up. Finding information supporting your point of view is easy. Complete understanding of an issue, that's a grown up method of debate.
Re:Already done.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Already done.. (Score:3, Interesting)
"...It is a crime-based gangster game, but those old ladies and prostitutes you just killed... that's you doing that. You're choice. The game does not say 'kill old ladies to win'."
I just had this discussion with a coworker this morning. My point was a little different. Here's the gist of what I said:
Re:Already done.. (Score:2)
Screw that, do it for PC so it can be modded.
Re:Already done.. (Score:2)
It had serious technical issues - it could barely handle lag at all, and the interplayer messaging was utterly broken. And of course the whole engine was inferior to that of GTA3. But god damn it, it was fun! You just drove around following the arrow to your friend. Once you found her, you had three options: ram her car with yours until one of them exploded, get out of your car and try to shoot her with
Re:But does it run linux? (Score:2)
No, but you can play Morpheus dressing up as Cowboy Neal [x-entertainment.com].
They missed the point! (Score:5, Funny)
What we really need to know is how to make a decent game without doing any programming, merely posting a bunch of unrealistic demands to a web forum that lets us make cool icons and signatures!
I hate (Score:5, Funny)
From what I've seen, they way to capture an audience is to make them wait for hours before spawning a monster, let high level characters be able to farm, and have little to no support.
Great place to learn game programming (Score:5, Informative)
I know, I know you can't learn everything from there and you should pick up a book after a while, but nonetheless a great place to start.
Re:Great place to learn game programming (Score:3, Funny)
I learned most of my karate skills from karate Kid.
I learned most of my doctoring skills from watching ER.
Re:Great place to learn game programming (Score:2)
I didn't actually say I knew very much ;-) I just dabble.
Re:Great place to learn game programming (Score:3, Funny)
"No, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night."
Re:Great place to learn game programming (Score:2)
"No, I'm the actual size!"
The Big Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Big Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
The game engines that are avaliable don't seem to have too much a cause-effect relationship to provide the in-depth immersion that is neccesary for good storytelling.
I mean, you can kill a monster 100 times in a row... and nothing happens.
Re:The Big Problem (Score:2)
Re:The Big Problem (Score:2)
Re:The Big Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
That's one way to do it. I don't think it's very fun, but a lot of people obviously do. Even though there are a lot of lore-based quests in EQ, it's fair to say the story is missing because the player doesn't encounter it in day-to-day play. It's there if you want to search for it, but you're certainly not immersed in it.
Take a look at other games like SimCity or Civilization. There's no storyline, but that doesn't make it exactly meaningless. You're given a task to accomplish: Take over the world, build your city, destroy the orc hordes, etc. Any storyline made to support it is obviously artificial, and rather irrelevant. The fun is in accomplishing your task.
I've played Shadowbane a little bit, and it feels like a strange combination of the two genres, but it works pretty well. You're given a task: Take over the world. Expand your nation diplomatically, or by war, or economically, or however you like so that you control everything. There's a little story behind it, sure, but it's mostly irrelevant. The leveling treadmill is there, but it's vastly shorter, because the real point is the far-sighted goal of world domination. You could say they strategically opted out of storylines (though they do exist).
Anyway, this isn't an advertisement. Things can be fun without the traditional storytelling approach the works so well in single-player though. I think EverQuest is a good example of why it usually doesn't make a lot of sense to try to extend that to MMORPGs.
Different type of entertainment (Score:2)
If you aren't interacting with other people, adventuring with friends and the like, yes, MMORPGs are not really competitive with traditional CRPGs.
Re:The Big Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
EverQuest tried a small sample of letting the players change the world. Ok, so those 40-60 people went and changed the world. The 20,000+ other people then bitched that the world has been changed, and they didn't get to do it.
Re:The Big Problem (Score:2)
Re:The Big Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Stop laughing, I'm serious. What more do you want from a MMORPG than to influence the rise and fall of nations? Leveling isn't a chore, it serves as an introduction to the game. Once you join a guild, you're taking part in your nation's saga.
Let me give you an example:
A guild of which I was briefly a part was at war with a bigger, more powerful guild. There were many nights where our armies met on the rolling plains and sparse woodlands around our city. We were routed, time and time again, until we were forced to become allied with a different rival nation. Together, we turned the tides of battle - now we take the battle to them.
It's not about levels, money, war, or diplomacy - it's about all of them. Being skilled at some of those four will make up for deficiencies in others.
And take the reviews you read with a grain of salt. The review I read at Gamespot made me wonder if he was playing a different game.
-lw
Re:The Big Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure you are paying $10 - $20 each month, but so is everybody else. When every one gets to be a super powerful mage that gets to save the world from evil "forces from the north", it kind of loses its appeal.
Instead, everything is reduced to competition: who can level faster so they can kill more monster so they can level even more!
And who cares about a quest where you have to slay the dragon that's ravaging the countryside? It will re-spawn a couple of minutes later so someone else can do it!
You want storylines? Buy an solo game. The last game with a good storyline I played was "The Longest Journey". I'm partial to adveture games more than FPS and RTS, so YMMV.
Re:The Big Problem (Score:2)
First off, the MMORPG can't be as massive, maybe 100-200 players tops. Second, they have to give up some things, to get the story.
#1 They apply, as in submit an application, to become a player.
#2 Their character is mostly chosen for them. Perhaps they're given 3-5 different characters to choose from.
#3 They're given a detailed history of their character, and must know it by heart, before playing. Playing out of chara
Re:The Big Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that the MMORPG developers think of their job as developing a fancy virtual world engine for people to go ape in. This is like a MU* administrator thinking that their job is to write LPMUD or TinyMUSH, rather than work on their actual game content.
Which leads to an interesting point: this is a book about game design, written by programmers/desi
MUDs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MUDs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MUDs (Score:2)
Jessica Mulligan at Themis Group (Score:5, Interesting)
Jessica Mulligan does indeed have one of the longest and most respected resumes in online games. I was distantly acquainted with her back in 1989-91 when (as Richard Mulligan) s/he was product manager for GEnie's online games, and even then her knowledge of the field was extremely comprehensive.
Now she's involved in The Themis Group [themis-group.com], an interesting venture that basically lets online game services outsource their customer support [themis-group.com]. (Another notable figure on the Themis team is the esteemed game designer Greg Costikyan [costik.com].) Given the problems some online game companies seem to have with customer support, sometimes regarding it almost as an afterthought, I wish Themis well. They're good at conveying the important message that an online game company isn't selling the game, it's selling the service.
Re:Jessica Mulligan at Themis Group (Score:5, Interesting)
Jessica Mulligan
Dani Bunten Berry [anticlockwise.com]
Jamie Fenton [fentonia.com]
I hope I'm don't come off as intolerant, but this got me thinking: Is this a coincidence? Or maybe it's just that video game programmers (or programmers in general) tend to be dissatisfied with their lives, and thus more likely to try something extreme?
Re:Jessica Mulligan at Themis Group (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, we're sure to see Joan Carmack in a decade or so.
Re:Jessica Mulligan at Themis Group (Score:2, Insightful)
Online, you can create a persona for yourself that is not dependant on your physical appearance. Being online (role-playing in game
Re:Jessica Mulligan at Themis Group (Score:3, Funny)
I kill me.
Quickly deploying underpaid games? (Score:3, Insightful)
The best games will always follow the 'good gamer' strategy: have plenty of customization, tight control, run fast on older hardware, and light bugs (fewer than 4 or 5 if possible.)
While these ladies seems to know a bit about how to paint a gauntlet in Ultima Online or the coolest magic effects in EverQuest, I can't see anyone following this advise in a professional gaming environment. The commercial depression is just too high.
as they journey from ... (Score:4, Funny)
You realize what this means? I've been playing /., and I still have at least two years left.
Re:as they journey from ... (Score:2)
Irony (Score:3, Funny)
Required Reading (Score:3, Insightful)
I really appreciate the fact that this book focuses more on theory and concepts rather than code, but statements such as "...and it should be the first and last book read by game developers..." is a little ridiculous.
Please give a little thought before you post something.
(of curse now, someone will find a typo in my post...;)
Richard Bartle, Players Who Suit MUDs (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm [mud.co.uk]
This is the source of "reduce killers to increase achievers" and such. I haven't had the chance to see this book yet to verify if they give him the proper credit for his research, however.
MUD/MMOG development resources/references (Score:2)
I think MMORPGs are a bad idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest problem with games like Ultima and EverQuest is that there is very little actual role-playing going on. This is news to no one in here, of course, but I do find it interesting how the term 'RPG' has been kind of mutated.
Traditionally I would not call something like Final Fantasy an RPG, but that's what it is in computer game terms. You don't get to shape your character's identity, or their destiny. You don't get to 'act' the character. You merely plod along the pre-determined timeline towards your only fate; in the case of FF, sometimes this line abandons you, to search for the next game thread. That's not what I want RPGs to be.
An interesting approach to online RPGs: throw away the Massively Multiplayer aspect. It's possible (in my mind anyways) that this is just an unattainable fantasy, to have a fluid, engrossing, plot-driven world where everyone is a character. The qualifications just aren't there. They've already identified these little subgroups (achievers, killers, etc.) and those players, for the most part, don't seem that interested in the role playing itself.
Rather, I like the dynamics of Neverwinter Nights. Small groups of people, who are like-minded. It's what you look for in your typical RPG anyways; the party comraderie, the give-and-take, clasing of personalities... a great story to tell later, if successful.
What if, rather than selling a packaged online game for all comers, you started a sort of RPG Society? You'd apply for membership, pay a monthly fee, knowing that every player is absolutely into the role playing. Applying would consist of your character history and thoughts about what you want to get out of it. Keep the number of players on each server small. Several instances of the game world. That way you' d be guaranteed of a much better experience. Pipe dream I know, but a nice thought.
I mean, look at what has happened to Star Wars Galaxies. Ugh. It's already become fucked up before they've even released it (yeah, I'll smuggle stuff on foot. In Star Wars.)
Re:I think MMORPGs are a bad idea. (Score:2)
So what you're after is an online version of SCA?
Honestly, look into the world of MUDs - there are quite a few out there that are more about role playing than character advancement. As with everything else, it's merely a matter of looking in the right place.
Re:I think MMORPGs are a bad idea. (Score:2)
You mean I could play Asheron's Call, but as a Klingon wearing a T-tunic, since it's close enough, and I don't have to pay, unless I want to be the King or run something big?
I won't go into the getting blotto drunk or chasing tail all over while putting on an atricious accent... let's just leave it at "SCA == everyone is absolutely into the role playing" strikes me as rather amusing... and I'm a kingdom webmaster.
Re:I think MMORPGs are a bad idea. (Score:2)
Maybe you've never heard of "live action roleplaying", exemplified by the "Vampire: The Masquerade" from White Wolf. I'm sure someone around here has.
Re:I think MMORPGs are a bad idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
The best "multiplayer" RPGs, plot-wise, were the single-player Wizardry series. One player commands six people. The first week, it always seems weird - these guys are cannon fodder, these guys are generic spellcasters. The second week, it sorta gels that they're working together. Fred's the guy who's mean with the sword, Zapp's workin' on the polearm. By the end of the third week, all six have their own (imaginary) personalities and the party just wouldn't be the same without 'em.
If I'm gonna play an online multiplayer RPG, let it be with three of my friends from meatspace, the four of us taking on the world, to emerge as heroes a month later... only to re-roll and do it all over again as another party if the adventure was good enough the first time.
The idea of being an anonymous luzer scraping out a living killing orcs in a vast countryside teeming with 100,000 other anonymous orc-killing luzers... shit, if I wanted that, I'd play The Sims Online... or I'd just drop the RPGing and stick to real life.
Re:I think MMORPGs are a bad idea. (Score:2, Insightful)
Finally, someone on /. who isn't pixel-blinded as to the definition of "RPG".
"MMORPG" is a misnomer at best, and really dilutes the meaning of its "RPG" element. I've said it before and I'll repeat it here: Quake + character.creation != RPG. Unless the R stands for "roll", no
Re:I think MMORPGs are a bad idea. (Score:2)
I agree with many of your points. The best way to bring the players closer together would be voice chat. Naturally you'd need a small, NWN-type party system in order for it to work. The griefers just love to abuse voice channels. You need to gam
Dave Arneson (Score:5, Informative)
Talk about an understatement. This guy is one of the founding fathers of the RPG, who co-created D&D with Gary Gygax. Here's a good article [cgonline.com] detailing a little more about exactly what his role was in the development of the RPG.
It'll get better, I promise (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It'll get better, I promise (Score:2)
is everything hush-hush for now?
how to make good movies, books and TV shows (Score:3, Insightful)
However, where does programming, networking design, latency considerations, etc fall in here? Well that is the difference between specific concern about the game making and the game creating. Being a programmer I of course hoard every book on game making. (why yes, I do actually have a new book on game oriented data structures :) Yet that will not help me to understand the important design issues that act as a composer. The coding is the implementation portion of one part of the game manufacturing process but there seems to be a shortage of design oriented books available.
Personally I think this reflects the industry as a whole. This is why you get (via customer comments) the endless stream of clones pumped out with no real feeling of content. Or perhaps it is better to say that the lack of materials focusing on this is just as much a symptom as the cookie cutter games themselves. What seems to be the real problem is short term greed. Too many publishers want games that only fill the niches in name. Instead of actually focusing on specific aspects of the game and thus specific target audiences and making it great, they would rather you dump in the "mass market components" box of crap that will justify their claiming a game has "elements of" something. Look at MMOG's. There are a many that exist now and are in production that call themselves Role Playing Games when it is obvious that they are nothing but persistent action/adventure with thousands of simultaneous players. Each seems to be nothing but another cookie cutter game to absorb your money and time until a game comes out that really fits the description of what you are currently playing. However, many like these games. It would be foolish to ever change games like EQ and UO. Instead focus on the niche. Have a game or two that is totally different from these in respect to gameplay and character/avatar involvement and development. You will attract a different set of folks and will have less to worry about the "corruption" of each other game type. The RPG'ers want more "non artificial" RPG elements in the action/adventure diablo type games while if it was RPG's out then you would have the hack-n-slashers demanding more focus on killing endless hoards of critters. Don't merge the two, focus on the differences and make them better. Imagine if Baskin Robins advertised "32 flavors... all mixed together into 32 different containers but with all different food coloring."
Lets start focusing on what you really want in a game and how to make those unique aspects as good as they can be. Learn from other genres but don't force merging and evolution... let it happen naturally.
What language? (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only C and C++ programmer who finds the "C/C++" label annoying as hell? Having it come from HR people who don't know any better is one thing, but hearing it from programmers drives me up the wall. I sometimes suspect it comes from C++-only programmers operating under the mistaken assumption that because C++ is a superset of C, they know C, too.
Despite similar syntax, C and C++ are completely different languages. C++-only programmers write C code that's on a par with the code produced by C-only programmers dabbling in C++. Perl, PHP, Objective C, and several dozen other Algol-descended languages have really similar syntax, but no one says "Algol/BCPL/C/C++/PHP/Perl/Pascal" with a straight face.
My guess is that if the authors are extolling the virtues of objects, they are primarily extolling the virtues of C++.
Re:What language? (Score:4, Interesting)
So I don't know if I'd say that C and C++ are totally different languages, just that C++ in its entirety is such a complex language that there are many stylistic variations possible that result in greatly different program structure. C certainly has different stylistic variations possible too, but not to the same extent, and clearly structuring a program in C and in C++ usually result in fairly different designs and solutions, though it doesn't have to be that way (object-ish C programming is certainly possible).
I think it's fair to say that somebody exposed to all of these stylistic variations is able to better pick and choose the appropriate techniques for the job at hand, and equally importantly, is able to pick up and read a much wider variety of code than your average schmoe who claims to be a "C/C++" programmer.
Re:What language? (Score:2)
That's irrelevant. The important difference is that a good C++ program looks little like a good C program. In fact, it's easier to translate good Pascal into good C than good C++ into good C.
That's what makes them separate languages, and more importantly, that's what makes them two separate programming skills.
Re:What language? (Score:3, Funny)
I stopped worshipping at the standard temples long ago. They take anybody...
Re:Yes, it's just you. (Score:3, Informative)
The context in which "C/C++" appears most often is a job ad, where it is in fact crucial whether you find yourself a C expert, a C++ expert, or an expert in both. In fact, even an experienced embedded systems C++ programmer may be unfamiliar with exceptions and templates, which are generally only usable on higher powered machines.
A person who doesn't make a distinction in this case is not likely to hire the best person for
Re:Yes, it's just you. (Score:2)
No, C doesn't require an explicit cast to convert from a void *, and C++ does. You can convert to a void * freely in either language.
gilmlet-eyed? (Score:2)
Jessica Mulligan Article (Score:2, Interesting)
Bites The Hand [skotos.net]
It is her bi-weekly editorial/thoughts on the gamming industry. Skimming over these bring some interesting insight into the industry over the last 20 years.
The four player types (Score:4, Informative)
Player Typologies, in 1987 (Score:2)
FYI, in 1987 or so, TSR came out with the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, which explicated a three-fold typology of gamers, in its DM section. They were (approx.) "hack-n-slasher", "dectective" and "role player". Not online-specific, but obviously similar and for an obviously similar purpose.
Why so many books on game design? (Score:2)
Content (Score:2)
It was ready to do the 'easy stuff': content. Thats when things got bogged down. Turns out that games have huge lists of people on their credits because there is a huge unavoidable time sync in doing content. This article says 2-3 years and I say they are being very aggressive with that estima
Re:Women Programmers (Score:2, Insightful)
Not quite (Score:5, Informative)
Also, there may be more flux among likes. TV tended to homogenize interests -- you watch one show that's in line with your interests, and it becomes very easy to also try another show that isn't quite as much as it, and eventually, you watch a pretty broad range.
If someone tries a MMORPG, it may be easier for them to play similar games.
Re:Not quite (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, I know a few Girl GamerZ who can kick serious ass in FPS and RTS games.
This past New Year's I saw the side of a few girls I didn't even know existed. All of them attractive and in their 20's...playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Their sole intent in playing? To kill as many people as possible, in as many ways as possible.
One girl found the 'bail' button while driving, s
Re:Not quite (Score:4, Interesting)
And NO, you may not have her either.
I didn't even ask (yet)!!! (Score:2, Funny)
I see my reputation preceeds me.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. At least you'll all know who you're dealing with. ;-
Uncle Thursday
---Cuses! Foiled again!---
Re:Technically..... (Score:2)
Actually, the original thread was entitled "Women Programmers." But I never said s/he was underestimating them. Is that off-topic? Gee, I think if we were not given the liberty to digress slightly from the context of the original thread as long as we keep somewhat near the thread that posts would not be worth reading after the first 2 or 3 becuase they'd be the same thing just different wordings.
he was saying that women tend not to be the socially-maladjusted, em
Re:Women Programmers (Score:2)
You realize, of course, that Jessica Mulligan was previously Richard Mulligan and male?
Frankly, the mentality of those players isn't worth it. Goody - it gives them their jollies. You're better off without their revenue, because they cause more people to be disgusted with the game and quit it, o
Re:Women Programmers (Score:2)
Bull. And it doesn't matter.
In the successful game producing teams I've had (perifferal) contact with, Programmers != Designers. It is the designers who must get the mentality of the gamers. The programmers must get the polygons to render at an aceptable speed or whatever.
Besides, by far the best Quake player I've personally seen was, you guessed it, a female game programmer.
Re:The Slashdot Game (Score:2, Informative)
Many people redefine "killers" to be any person who engages in grief play. In MUDs and other MUD-like games, these are usually people who indulge in player-killing for the sheer sport of being annoying. Other ways to grief play include destroying or hording items needed to complete quests, spamming communication channels with gibberish or swearing, etc. It's pretty clear that the /. trolls you mention are grief players who can mostly be lumped into the killer category.
For th
Re:c++ sucks (Score:2)
C is the only real programming language where high end graphics and other high performance requirements are needed. Object oriented programming just slows things down.
Re:c++ sucks (Score:2)
Re:slightly OT : Networking question (Score:2)
Your client opens a socket to the server. Now both client and server have input/output streams for that socket. Use a thread for each stream and you have asynchronous bidirectional communication. You can put whatever you wish through these streams, be it XML, or Objects (eg. ObjectOutputStream). Multiple serialization APIs exist.
Write your own abstraction layer above the "plain socket programming" if need be.
Re:slightly OT : Networking question (Score:2)
- marshalling
- unmarshalling
- and having to write this for every method call...
that is why I need a 'framework' that would do it for me. any suggesions?
thanks