Re: how to add assembler?

["Rick Genter" <rgenter@ibasis.net>]

----- Original Message -----
From: Erik <br0ke@math.smsu.edu>
To: <linuxgames@sunsite.auc.dk>
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 1999 12:10 PM
Subject: Re: how to add assembler?


> but games like starcraft represent a 3d world, so it should be fairly easy
to
> do in true 3d, using opengl. It'd simplify things like faking altitude and
> drawing by altitude so tanks don't appear over battlecruisers.

Every so often someone writes something like this and it makes my blood
boil. Not to single you out Erik, because I see this a lot, both explicit
and implicit.

There is NOTHING easy about a commercial game. Period. And, while on the
surface, your statement makes sense, let me tell you that to do a game like
StarCraft in 3D would be MUCH more complicated than to do it in 2D.

Why?

Because expectations would be higher. In a 2D game, you can get away with a
single fixed light source, occasional graphics glitches (drawing order
problems), and minimal effects. In a 3D game you HAVE to do colored
lighting, you HAVE to support full translucency, you HAVE to have killer
special effects, or you don't have a successful commercial game. And even if
you don't tell anyone it's 3D, they'll know; you can't get the polygon count
high enough for the models to have truly rounded edges like you can when you
render for a 2D game. So you have to make up for the lower polygon count by
having such dazzling special effects that the gamer doesn't notice the
unrounded edges.

I don't mean to jump down anyone's throat, but being a former commercial
game developer, I feel the game developer's pains when someone says "why
didn't you *just* do <feature X>?", knowing that <feature X>, while on the
surface simple, probably means 6 person-months of work.

Rick
--
Rick Genter
Director, Software Development
iBasis, Inc.
<http://www.ibasis.net>
<mailto:rgenter@ibasis.net>