Re: Gaming Engines

From: "MindShift Design" <teammsd@mindshiftdesign.com>

Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 00:00:00 +0000

"MadCentral" <madcentral@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20001025095958.09168.00001497@ng-bh1.aol.com...
> We developed the Nexus engine three years ago and have been using it ever
> since.  All our games these days are run from Nexus, including
DungeonWorld,
> Riddle of the Sands, Steel Fury and the forthcoming Destiny.

That's the idea we're going for. A central engine that will handle all of
the games. By seperating the actual game "code" from the engine, we plan to
make it quick and easy to make changes to the game processes without having
to go through the recode/recompile/rerun process. We simply drop the engine
into debug mode and process the new script - which is process during the
run-time.

> Even given the fact that we have been designing games for over a decade,
that
> we have constantly improved the engine in the three years that we have
been
> using it, and that we have had several very successful commercial games to
fund
> those improvements, we are only just now getting to the point where the
engine
> is flexible enough to do everything we want.

That's one of the reasons we're sitting down and working it all out first.
Design of any application should take at least 50% of the time it takes to
build it, and should be built to the 80/20 rule - build 80% of it that'll
work in 20% of the time, then have the rest of the time to fix or upgrade
things.

> We still find cool new things to add every day.  The engine is now so
complex
> that it almost seems like another programming language.  I've been
training
> Justin Parsler on the engine for over a year and he still doesn't know
> everything it does.  To write a manual detailing the engine would involve
many
> hundreds of pages.  Possibly thousands.

Erm. Hence the reason for designing a software project on paper first, and
documenting as you go so that you don't end up with a project that looks
like MS Windows <g>. The same goes for adding features. I've been involved
in a lot of software development in many circmustances and I've seen most of
the problems that occur with feature creep, "wouldn't this be cool"-itis,
and bad planning from the start. All of our projects are heavily documented
and go through a lot of design before anything is even prototyped. The
original STSI code wasn't, but the new code will be. I've seen some scary
things in the past couple of years working on software projects as a third
party developer or fixing sites and programs gone bad. <shiver>. I'm sure
others in this NG can relate. I'm a firm believer in revisioning, but
planned revisionsing at planned intervals, with features being added because
they are planned to be added and make sense to become part of the new
revision.

> What Im saying, then, is that you'll find developing an engine with 'plug
in
> modules' as you describe, rather more difficult than you might expect.
> Basically, if you are thinking of putting less than a couple of years into
it,
> with fewer than a couple of hundred fully active playtesters, you'll run
into
> trouble.  Just my opinion, of course.  But then, we *have* done it. <g>

Yup you have... and on Macs as well <g>.

We've developed modular programs before and are used to rapid application
development techniques, so we don't plan to take a couple of years - 6 to 9
months we hope. But who knows ?

Opening up the conversation here helps me focus my thoughts as well as see
what other developers think.

--
Jason Paul McCartan - jasonm@mindshiftdesign.com
CEO/President
MindShift Design LLC
http://www.mindshiftdesign.com

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References

Re: Gaming Engines
"Enno Rehling" <schick.mir.spam@gmx.de>
Tue, 24 Oct 2000 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Gaming Engines
madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)
Wed, 25 Oct 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Gaming Engines
"Enno Rehling" <schick.mir.spam@gmx.de>
Tue, 24 Oct 2000 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Gaming Engines
madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)
Wed, 25 Oct 2000 00:00:00 +0000