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nice column. I hope GGS blurb gets there too
I dont know how do god-forbid-quake programmers think about their projects, but I can confirm what you said about civ ones. We are here to stay!

A good premise on what separates our projects from the usual, and well presented! I hope your article gets the attention it deserves. Speaking of which...

Dan:

Could you possibly put in a link to Ron's article on the Civ3 forum? By putting the main notice of it here you IMO ensure that most of the people Ron had in mind to see this won't (I and many others rarely go to the Apolyton main page which would be another way to know the article's posted). The people that hang around here already know most of this stuff, its new eyeballs he's looking for (sorry if I'm putting words in your mouth Ron )

VetLegion:

Yes, it is a dissipation of talent. Don't know that there is any solution for it though. I didn't even know about MD when I started clash (nor did I know of freeciv for that matter). As I understand it, members of GGS in its formative period expressly wanted to do the design from the ground up, which precluded joining forces with any other project. (C++ v. java was another issue)

Yes, you're blurb made it in, everyone's did. You will see the rest of them in part II of the series. It's a little bit too bad that the article had to be split into two parts, but I can understand why it is so. It was just too long to be a single entry, and Dan had to split it somewhere. Anyway, I made the blurb entries in the order the games are listed under Alt Civ. GG&S isn't listed there (why?), so you guys came last.

As for dissipation of talent and resources, you probably have something of a point. The thing of it is, I've noticed a trend among lead programmer types - they're all control freaks (I know I am ). You have to have an Alpha, more than one causes friction, I think. We have several Alphas, therefore we have several projects.

But I also don't think that's a bad thing. We all have different visions of what we want our games to be. One isn't necessarily better than the other, just different, and diversity is a good thing. In the end, I think it's better to give potential players several choices of game(s) to play in this genre, rather than just one, ya know? The success of even one of our games will probably have a positive influence on the success of all of them. That's why I feel we always ought to help each other when we can.

And anyway, I think every project considers themselves understaffed (I don't think they are necessarily wrong, either, heh). I know we are. I would love to have a couple more programmers here, if we could afford them. I'm sure you guys would as well. But even if you had them, would you not still wish for more? At what point do you have enough people?

Your observation matches mine. Before GGS I followed some of the civ3-suggestions and Clash forums discussions. Huge amount of things have been said and written, and I guess we on GGS are in process of doing it the third time. With the exception of when playing civ, I hate reinventing the wheel
You are right, we are probably a little stuck right now, each team in its world, but we should leave doors open to cooperation.

Ron,

quote: Originally posted by VetLegion on 12-04-2000 05:34 PM If I understand what you mean with Alphas, you are missing what I think is the greatest feature of internet - it allows us darwinism of ideas, rather then the one of peoples and personalities

Oh, don't get me wrong. We too get tons of ideas from our boards. Some of our best stuff was suggested by our testers. None of our games are the exclusively the vision of one person, MD included. I just think that at the end of the day, there is one person making the final decisions on what goes in and what does not.

So which is it, more coders or tech knowledge? The two are totally unrelated you know :)

I think you'd be surprised at how many coders go into games. I've read several dozen post-mortems for games, as well as interviews and the like, and most professional teams have only a half dozen coders.

All you need is knowledge and time, and if you have plenty of the latter, you can always acquire the former.

Just out of curiousity, how come there's problems with the 3d map?

"Jason, too many cooks would spoil it if they would all be chefs, but if they vote what ingrediants to put in, it just may be digestible."

Except you're counting on everyone giving up a chance at being chef. So many games go wrong because they lose focus, and adding more coders with opinions doesn't help that.

quote: So which is it, more coders or tech knowledge? The two are totally unrelated you know

well, its more tech knowledge. But a man and a horse are always smarter then man himself, so I wouldnt mind any coders

quote: All you need is knowledge and time, and if you have plenty of the latter, you can always acquire the former.

So true. But I can only work on project couple hours a day. It is a slow process.

quote: Just out of curiousity, how come there's problems with the 3d map?

There is only one problem with 3D map - we dont have a 3D map . As you know, making a 3D world demands a speciall set of skills. For example, learning the API to programm it. I still think of it for future, but so to speak, people are screaming for results, so we do what we know how to, and leave out things we dont.

quote: Except you're counting on everyone giving up a chance at being chef. So many games go wrong because they lose focus, and adding more coders with opinions doesn't help that.

You have a strong point there. The organisational problems with too many people may be overwhelming, but I hate to see the ideas floating around uncoded. And about loosing focus, you are right, but only designers can lose focus and make a bad game. We can only make it buggy

quote: I've read through your programming documents (that took a while and you clearly have your act together (more than I do apparently , so I seriously can't see why you think you need more coders.

Thanks! By far the best compliment GGS got this far. There are only 2 programmers active now (me and amjayee) and the progress is I think really good. We should soon have an in game UI, and few models are being paralely coded.

quote: There is only one problem with 3D map - we dont have a 3D map . As you know, making a 3D world demands a special set of skills. For example, learning the API to program it. I still think of it for future, but so to speak, people are screaming for results, so we do what we know how to, and leave out things we dont.

I wouldn't consider 3D programming a special set of skills unless you're working on the next Unreal

If you're going for a map like you've got in the screenshots, you should have no trouble at all (especially if you fix the camera). Take a look at the tutorials at: http://nehe.gamedev.net

quote: Originally posted by VetLegion on 12-16-2000 07:46 AM Ahem, judging by Ron Hiller .plan files, it took some 8 months for you guys to glue some textures on a polygon, and that is not encouriging amount of time

Yeah, but most of that was trying various aspects of getting a spherical world to work. I spent a vast majority of that time working with DirectDraw, essentially attempting to write my own custom 3D API. In the end, it did work, but because we couldn't use hardware support, it was slow. When we finally decided to switch to D3D, the world was up and running in a very short time (three or four weeks, as I remember). Putting together polygons and attaching textures to them is really a pretty simple process.

As for our interface, we are probably going to, at some point, enhance our UI so it doesn't look quite so spreadsheet-like, but that's a nicety, and has a very low priority. I'm more interested in getting a working game finished than making it look good right now

quote: Ahem, judging by Ron Hiller .plan files, it took some 8 months for you guys to glue some textures on a polygon, and that is not encouriging amount of time

Ahem, Ron Hiler and I arn't even in the same country
I'm just the webmaster, though I also have my own programming project (Slick6, the one without a link), that happens to be hosted at rjcyberware.com as well.

quote: But seriously, we are working with DirectDraw, and as you may know, DirectDraw does not exist any more so I guess we will be forced to move to 3D API sooner or later.

Sure it does. DirectDraw will always exist, just like DirectX1 still exists, thanks to COM.

Not to mention, while DirectDraw isn't in Dx8, it will be in Dx9. The old architecture, 3D on top of Draw, was backwards... it had to go sometime, and since DirectX tries to stay on top of new features, the new Draw has to wait for the next version.

I agree completely about functionality before nicety. Too bad, since I was hoping for some tips'n'tricks, advice etc

Jason

well, I think we will be using Direct3D API eventually, since there is no DirectDraw in DX8. They do keep the backwards compatibility, but I want to learn 3D anyway at some point, and no better chance then working on this. Plus I d like to have a 3D map (like Railroad Tycoon II) eventually.

quote: Jason you are MD webmaster, but no Slick6 website? why is that? Also ... is there a slick6 demo/proto?

Well, if I ever get around to it, it'll be up at:
http://rjcyberware.com/.6/

Not yet... eventually, I swear!

Lately I've been working on the engine for it (I got bit by the must-build-3d-engine bug) which I've also been trying to use for an entry in next year's IGF Student Showcase... except we had under two months and there's no way we're going to get a complete game (despite it being a relatively simple one) ready by the January 10th deadline.