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Geek Culture / reproduce a game acton by looking at it

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viperjay
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2006 06:05
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Hi, I was wondering if anyone played a game and said hey that is really cool trick and then go to your computer open your dbc or dbp and replicate the same action?
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Van B
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2006 08:39
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That's how Codemasters got started.

I often see console game effects and go replicate them, but I think that's where most of us suss out game techniques. Like the fire in Unreal Championship, it looks cool and most people would be impressed, but it's just a plain floating up the screen, once you figure that out replicating it is straightforward.

You might never use these little tricks in a game, it's just good to know what and how you can do this stuff, it kinda broadens your horizons in terms of the sorts of games you end up making.


Van-B

Put away, those fiery biscuits!
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BatVink
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2006 10:36
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At the convention, Lee told us his current project was playing every Playstation game he could get his hands on for half an hour each. He was playing them to see what gameplay was implemented, and how it was acheived.

One example he gave was shadows in Gran Turismo. As impressive as the game looks, he found the shadows were simple plains, placed above the ground. When you perform an extreme maneouvre, the technology falls apart slightly and reveals itself.

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Fallout
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2006 10:40
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Yeah, I do this all the time as well. Looking at my desk now, I see the case for Rome Total War. When I heard this had gone 3D, I was skeptical. How could they have 5000 3D soldiers on screen, all animating? Not possible, surely. Well, no, it's not. They use textured billboards for troops until the camera get really close up, then simply swap em for 3D units.

It really pays to pay attention to how pro developers do things and how other do things, cos you can't expect to figure out the best way to do everything yourself.

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viperjay
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2006 16:12
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Was it possible that you had the game "effect" figure out in about a day? this question goes to all.
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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2006 16:16
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I saw a nice smoke effect in 'CUE CLUB' a pool hustler game. I though, "Wish I could put that in my game..." Then I noticed that it was just two transparent plains spinning around in a circle.

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re faze
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2006 17:13
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i dunno, if you can tell exactly how something is being done, perhaps its not implemented correctly.

Dont code slowly be SWIFT about it!
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Van B
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2006 17:35
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The gap would be the maths involved. I mean, decals that turn corners for example, they're tricky and need a good understanding of vectors etc to stand a chance.

Often your left thinking 'If I could figure out how to calculate that, I could...etc etc'. I suppose you can't really say you can do something until you've done it, so proof of idea is often different from the way things are really done - but as long as it does the trick. For me I often have to excercise these demons, if I see something I think I can manage, it annoys me until I give it a try. I hope I'm not alone here, otherwise that guy eating beatles was right about me being a freak.


Van-B

Put away, those fiery biscuits!
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BatVink
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2006 17:44
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You are not alone.


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Fallout
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2006 19:44
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VanB, maths is the killer. I both hate and love it. There are so many things I know I could do if my maths was better. And the problem is, it's good enough to make a start, and often good enough to get it done, but rarely good enough to do it the best way.

I hate it when I do 50 lines of complex trig to find out 4 vector commands do the same thing 100 times faster.

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viperjay
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2006 21:08
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So, lets say you for example copy the price of persia turn back time effect and then copy the psi-ops lifting people and throwing them effect, and then made a game with all those effects you copy from other games into your own game and then you sold it. Could the companies take you to court ?
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Grog Grueslayer
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2006 21:43
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I doubt a company can sue for something the company themselves copied from other games/movies.

It's always good for us to analyze and at least try to figure out how a game works even if we don't program something similar right away.

The first time I remember doing that is when I heard Gauntlet in the arcade for the first time. I was amazed at the digitized speech and wondered how they could make complete sentences with all the different characters and situations. It didn't take long to realize they were recordered separately and played back to back to form the complete sentence... "Red" "warrior" "is about to die!"... "Blue" "wizard" "needs food badly.". I was programming in Quickbasic at the time but didn't know how to record or play digitized speech... but when I did get around to it about a year later I remembered Gauntlet.


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