Re: Why is it so hard?

[Jan Ekholm <chakie@infa.abo.fi>]

On Mon, 12 Jul 1999, Tomas Andrle wrote:

>On Sun, 11 Jul 1999, Jan Ekholm wrote:

>> No, this was a good rant. I'm too quite fed up with games that are just a
>> demo for nice graphics. Few games have become better by adding gorgeous
>> graphics...
>> 
>
>There are probably too many good programmers who make too much cool graphic
>effects :-). Developing games also needs designers, designers need
>ready-to-use game tools and engines. I guess there are not too many such
>engines. Yeah, CrystalSpace? Well, this is mainly a 3D library, not a 3D game
>library right? I'm talking about higher level stuff like collision detection
>(item pickups, realtime deformation & physics), AI support (starting with
>enemy 'vision' of other objects in the game) and networking which is built
>into the system.

Do I get the picture that talking about 'games' implies talking about
'3D'? Oh, how many games aren't there that haven't even heard of 3D and
still manage to be good games. Best known are probably Civ-like games,
C&C-like (although these are 3D by now, I think?). I'd personally love
working on a heavy strategic wargame with no 3D, juts some rough
approximation of 2D. Good multiplayer, turnbased and lots of things to do.
Now _that_ would be a good thing. But, alas, people don't seem to care
about games with depth in them (Civ being one exception) anymore... Just
3D gfx, 3D sorround sound.

---------------------+------------------------------------------------------
 Jan 'Chakie' Ekholm |    CS at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland
    Linux Inside     | I'm the blue screen of death, no-one hears you scream