General Chat

Yeh, I read that a short while after the whole Ratbag incident happened. I think he's working at Krome Studios now, actually.

[QUOTE=Souri]I think he's working at Krome Studios now[/QUOTE]

Aren't they all? Red 52006-10-15 06:10:07

wow, funny you mentioned stalker, I thought the exact same looking at the environments.

Alan Wake is looking nice, it'll be interesting to see if it's going to be a fresh take on the genre or not.

And speaking of Stalker, Still waiting for that game to come out too... have a heap of work in the cinematics which is getting really aged now :(

Alan Wake looks surprisingly like Mafia .. hope it plays as well too.

It should sound good too using fmod as the audio engine

Alan Wake looks like such a nice world/environment to muck around with. I hope Remedy are going to offer some modding or machinema capabilities for it, or at the very least provide what they did for Max Payne 2 (which wasn't much, but it was something). It'll be a shame if they didn't otherwise. Sure, there'll be the throwaway mods that will be all about trick jumps and other trivial things, but sooner or later, some smart gem will make something interesting with it, particularly with those destructable buildings and environment / physics effects.

I'm surprised that the Unreal Engine 3 seems to have garnered most of the attention / licenses over some of the other engines around. Alan Wake's engine by Remedy and the Crysis engine is much more aesthetically pleasing to me. It's probably mostly due to the lighting that lets the UE3 engine down a lot - I haven't seen a good example of it doing a decent daylight scene yet. Gears of War is taken place mostly in the night, but the few shots seen of UT2k7 and other games using UE3 (Huxley etc) have some pretty weak lighting when things take place during the day.

Some of those environment shots are just breathtaking.

Psychological thriller ... . yea I?m not keen on the scare my self stupid for no reason thing (something I can do quite easily .. dam you scary things) I can say for certain I wont be playing this game :( which is a shame cause it looks really pretty.

Yikes... Alan Wake is going to require a beast of a machine to run nicely... [quote]The developers have stated that the game will not run on any single-core platform, although it might just about work (with reduced graphics and physics, of course) on a Pentium-4 with Hyper Threading enabled. What the game has been thus far demoed on has been a heavily overclocked 3.73 GHz Core 2 Quad system.[/quote]

HookedGamers.com

Ow. That hurts me.

It hurts me in the wallet.

Looking forward to this game. I like Psychological thrillers. Hearing that the game wont feature HUD is also good news imo. And about time I put my shiny new Intel Core 2 to use :)

Yeah this game should be fat. @ alanwake.com it say's you will also need vista along with a beefy machine, but I guess we will all have that come 2008.

Alan_Wake_video_lowres

KILLA DEE2006-12-20 04:10:54

maybe its time for a career change....

Are you interested in games companies that are just selling their own games?

Probably not for that page, but we could always make another page for companies that do :)

Great idea! Have added in Gamehead.

The beginnings of a most useful wiki, I say!

After I'm doing some things on the forum, and finishing off the design for Sumea Creative, I'll be hell bent on working on Sumea Game which will have a tonne of features, and will definately draw infro from the above entry in the Wiki.

As for feedback, I've used Gameswarehouse a lot, and they've never disappointed me.

Poll testing.



The moo's have it.

It could be a forum... It could be a taco... Been a long time 'tween tacos...

its funny you say that about lego star wars 2.... I do not actually have a job in the industry yet; still just a student.... but when I played through the first lego star wars, I was thinking to myself the whole time "THIS is what I want to do when I get a job"..... I dont remember the last game I thought that so strongly about.... maybe syndicate?

Monkey Island.. all the way!

quote:Originally posted by Angel

Monkey Island.. all the way!

Ah beat me to it! [:D]

Generally LucasArts during the 90s would have been an awesome time for their developers, so much creativity (too bad they have kinda lost it lately).

I also think that working on a horror game must be extremely fun (Silent hill, Resident evil). Trying to come up with new ways to creep out your player just sounds so good [:)]

Generally though, any relatively original action or adventure game would be sweet to work on, and if its reinventing a popular franchise it could be very interesting as Jackydablunt points out. That leaves out sports, racing, and most FPS games. Especially with regards to sports and racing sims, I cant think of anything more mindnumbing than working on such titles (even though I do play some and like them).

Metal Gear Solid :D
If I had to pick one from the series it would No.1 since thats just a pure classic.

Early bullfrog -- syndicate, theme park, populous...

Definitely Syndicate, one of my all time favourites. Also wouldn't have minded working on the second KotOR game, I reckon they could have used a couple more people at Obsidian to make that game even better. Hoping they do well with NWN2.

quote:
Generally though, any relatively original action or adventure game would be sweet to work on, and if its reinventing a popular franchise it could be very interesting as Jackydablunt points out. That leaves out sports, racing, and most FPS games. Especially with regards to sports and racing sims, I cant think of anything more mindnumbing than working on such titles (even though I do play some and like them).

Not always the case my friend. As far as the racing games go. There are expections. Go take a look and play of JakX. Now i'm not a racing nut like so many but even i have to say this is a damm fine game. And by the flare and style executed with it it looked like a labor of love to produce. So.. i probably wouldn't mind developling on this game. not my favorate..but still good!

It's gone platnum now..anyone with a ps2.. i urge you to buy it.

quote:Originally posted by Caroo

quote:
Generally though, any relatively original action or adventure game would be sweet to work on, and if its reinventing a popular franchise it could be very interesting as Jackydablunt points out. That leaves out sports, racing, and most FPS games. Especially with regards to sports and racing sims, I cant think of anything more mindnumbing than working on such titles (even though I do play some and like them).

Not always the case my friend. As far as the racing games go. There are expections. Go take a look and play of JakX. Now i'm not a racing nut like so many but even i have to say this is a damm fine game. And by the flare and style executed with it it looked like a labor of love to produce. So.. i probably wouldn't mind developling on this game. not my favorate..but still good!

It's gone platnum now..anyone with a ps2.. i urge you to buy it.

Mario kart is heaps of fun too but I wouldn't want to be developing it, thats just me though.

The Way of the Exploding Fist, without a doubt. That would be a game I'd be immensley proud of if I had some part in making it. I guess I'd love to have worked on some of the much older games where the teams were smaller and you had a larger contribution to the game and everyone wasn't striving for absolute realism. Other games I'd love to have loved to have worked on would be Street Fighter 2 (or the alpha games), or Gunbound. Is there a correlation to the games you love work work on to the games you play all the time? For me, even though I love BF2, Quake Wars, UT2k4, I wouldn't want to work on them games.

Metal Slug woulda been cool as well, you could just go overkill and reference everything, adding whatever coke induced spin you want on it, a lot of the time the simplest mechanics are the best to work with.

Shogun Total War: the Mongol Invasion, I'm just a Samurai/Japanes history NUT, and I woulda loved to work on any serious Samurai license, and that will always be one of my top five in terms of atmosphere. I really wished CA would remake that, but I doubt they would. Taking that game and adding some more spiritual elements would be cool, also emphasising heroes and the "one guy against an army" thing you see in stories like Lone Wolf or Azumi and that would've been good too. Theres a hell of a lot of gold in Japanese History that could really enhance that game all the more.

Also Return to Castle Wolfenstein, I'm a massive fan of WW2 and German tech, researched the hell out of it for a novel I did, and being able to create a WW2 game with a fantastical occult skew would've been awesome, the atmosphere of the lighting and music and sound would've been great to get into as well.

Wow, that's awesome [:)] Some very nice pixel art there, and there's so much to look at!

Holy cow thats huge. Man... pixel art MMO! :P

I..don't know wether this is taking the micky out of his work or it's a hommage.. i remember seeing blue poles in grade 6 while in camberra.. i initialy thought it was made by a retard..then again i was 13 at the time and i thought good artwork was anything with a face... of how my views have changed.

lol! well he might have been retardedly drunk when he made it. I understand when Blue Poles was purchaced by the Australian government there was public outrage - so your views in grade 6 were probably in step with the greater general public.

I would like to think the site is having fun WITH Pollock rather than making fun OF him. My rendition of Blue pole is of course paying hommage :)

Thats... awesome. Lol i love it, i have some lecturers that will like to see that link. Thanks for that!

[:D]

..... Ok that's one young texture artist who's first job is about to vapourise into thin air...

hopefully not. <.< personaly i think we need this kin of humor. It's a hidden message thats pritty hard for anyone who just plays a few casual games to notice. So the texture artist can always content that he just put 6 random numbers and letters into the texture and was none-the-wiser.

Then again it's not often I want to purchase a game based solely on playing only a few minutes of the demo.

Relic have done great things for the RTS genre with Dawn of War and now Company of Heroes.

Let's see if EA can match their level of quality and innovation with the in production Red Alert 3.

Seriously Caroo, don't go getting inspired by that when you land an industry job, its fine for relic, they're relic, but that kind of thing could cost an aussie company millions and lose you your career. Unless they're doing their own IP's an aussie company is generally fighting for scraps because the publishers know the best experience and their best licenses are overseas so it really doesn't take much for them to pull a plug. I've been dealing directly with US publishers a fair bit lately and although they're certainly not the devil like what a lot of people believe, they are still hardcore, and you'd be surprised what even a slip of the tongue could do, a little self righteous, pre-meditated snip like that could do a whole lot more than you think, it could shut down a company. They've got egos these guys, and a lot of money and power.

I know its a laugh and all that kind of thing, but leave it to the guys who can afford to do it.

Sorry to bring this thread down.

Sounds like Jacky is rather paranoid... you must be working for either a jaded publisher, or a young company that a large publisher is taking a risk on....interesting.

I think that for to long, developers have been bullied by publishers and the 'big' guys. There is nothing wrong with a little friendly humour such as that, and I think that EA would have bigger things to worry about than some texture artist's joke.

If it turned out that the same texture artist was an ex-employee of EA, then I could see a problem - but not otherwise.

Can't comment directily on the games industry, but I have heard of marketing contracts being lose due to equally 'small' issues. I suspect Jackydablunt's sentiments might be not far off the truth, and I wouldn't be supprised it the texture artist found themself without a job at the end of the project. The irony being if the message was a different one, maybe the artist would have been up for a pay-rise instead for implementing such a cleaver idea!

It's truly sad that we're so moody about this sort of stuff... I think it's hilarious, and I'd keep that artist on the payroll if I were running Relic.

Not quite as subtle as the EA-bashing in Ultima VII though.

I'm not paranoid at all, and the Publisher rep I talk with is legitly a good guy, I quite like him, we joke around no problem, hopefully we'll be heading out together when he gets here soon. I don't get why everything someone says has to be read as a projection all the time.

I'm just warning the people here wanting to get into the industry to just be careful of doing this kind of thing, its just so very hard to get into this gig, and employees of lower exp are susceptable to making light mistakes that cost them dearly. I'd just hate to see a few people on here who have tried very hard, get it then lose it over something like that.

Like I said, I'm sorry for bringing the mood down, I'll keep it to myself in future.

Yeah..It reminds me of the show Transformers: Beast Wars. This show was one of the first fully 3D on TV. But even they got to get away with things. Megatron having a rubber-ducky on his energon bath. Optimus prime having sun glasses as he says "Asta lavesta baby? small things in many respects could get an animator fired.

But they never got fired. In fact the rubber ducky joke continued onwards.

Jokes and small hints in media is fun, as it requires you to be a fan of the show or game to spot this stuff out. If were forced to make absolutely "you can't make jokes" games. Then your going to get a lot of jaded devs who will go out of their way in their free time to make anti-games [games that take the shit out on something like a publisher]

I can just imagine an "anonymous" source making a mod where you infiltrate EA HQ to blow the heads off the executives.. You got some pent up rage their buddy!

I'm assuming that Relic had no problems with this swipe on EA at all because I can't imagine it getting past so many people during development (assuming there's a dedicated texture artist -> modeller (checking mapping), creative director (quality control), others in the dev team reviewing and testing builds, QA testers) etc

Feel free to 'bring the mood down' anytime you have a valid point to make in the future Jackdablunt. I think some of the others here have underestimated how fiercely corporate entities guard their name and reputation.

I assumed it would have been the opposite Souri. One of those things that you do as a joke thinking it will be picked up then somehow is overlooked/forgotten! It is amazing what people overlook- I've seen people fail to see errors on their own mobile number whilst proofing a business card. And the best example I can think of is SA licence plates. Briefly the tag line was 'SA, going all the way'. Made it into production before their was public outcry about the sexual interpretation!

quote:Originally posted by Soul

It's truly sad that we're so moody about this sort of stuff... I think it's hilarious, and I'd keep that artist on the payroll if I were running Relic.

Not quite as subtle as the EA-bashing in Ultima VII though.

Those were the days.. :P

Edit: not that I'd encourage such behaviour..

Meh i think its pretty lame...

"SA, going all the way" lol!

Anyone see the news recently of EA finalising the purchase of DICE just a few days ago? They've closed down DICE Canada just hours after completing the buyout.

[quote]On the morning of Oct 2nd hours after EA finalized the buyout of DICE, it closed the Canadian subsidiary DICE Canada (Developers of BF: Vietnam and BF2: Special forces). There where 28 employees at the Canadian office.[/quote] - Bluesnews

Damn, that's cold.Souri2006-10-04 12:05:20

Holy blind-siding bovines Batman! did you read the linked story Souri?

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=71…

I hope the staff weren't fed the same guff that EA and DICE representatives told the media.

edit:
dug a bit further:

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/061002/20061002005636.html

hmmm, on second read I think it might be not as bad as my initial interpretation - the article suggests at least some staff have continued to work under the banner of EA. A case of journalistic slant to maximise 'EA bashing' sentiments... still, a shame for the 'non-management' workers who would have gotten the shove in the aquisition.JohnN2006-10-04 20:16:09

Wow, that was incredible. If anyone can't be bothered waiting, skip to around the middle part of the video where the real interesting stuff is. They can reconstruct a pretty accurate 3D head model from just a single photo. They try it out on a black and white photo as well to show that program can calculate realistic skin tones for it. They also tried it on the Mona Lisa painting. Amazing. I wonder if they're working on a morphable body system next. [:0]

Had a look at the one where they did it on Tom Hanks face, Amazing!

Will this be more accurate than acually scanning a live actor?

[QUOTE=vshen] Had a look at the one where they did it on Tom Hanks face, Amazing!
Will this be more accurate than acually scanning a live actor?[/QUOTE]

It did seem pretty amazing. I didn't pick up from the video whether they can use multiple source images to improve the model. The example they had of Hanks ended up with some odd shading on the left-hand side of his face probably due to the original photo lighting. And of course it'd be completely guessing about the back of his head.

Another thought that just occurred to me - most human faces are asymmetric in varying degrees. The more beautiful a face, the more likely it is to be symmetric. If the software only has a side shot to go on, it'd probably end up producing a symmetrical face which is going to be more attractive than the original person.
richard2006-09-21 19:39:43

betas aren?t the end of the world if it's a "sir-crash-a-lot" game. with possibly tens of thousands of hardware configurations what crashes on your computer works like a dream on someone else?s.

When you're getting to near-release of the game. Then you gotta start to question the solidity of the programming [though with the horror stories that come form EAs core projects I?m not surprised if the code is compromised in areas.]

Make sure to direct your findings to EA..they might just ignore it but you never know...

It actually is near release of the game, with the launch date just a month away (October 10). I must have an unlucky hardware configuration of a typical Dell tower with an ATI gfx card [:(]. Battlefield 2 was pretty buggy as well (it used to frequently crash to the desktop for me when I clicked join game. They fixed it in the latest 1.4 patch - the bug appeared after the 1.3 patch).

I know I shouldn't be using Epic Games as a shining example of good, robust and reliable coding, but at the very least their games were very stable for me. And with the odd crash here and there, the game would at least bring up an error log that has a tonne of relevant information for the developers, and it's easily sent off to their mail form on their site. It's something DICE should have implemented. With BF2142, I get a crash to the desktop, and I'm not sure how useful my feedback would be if I posted "Game always crashes when I do stuff" [:(]

Oh man.. i was really hoping i wouldnt see that trend over and over again with BF2142. I remeber when i patched special forces when i got that the patch executable seemingly died all the time, locking up for 10-15 minutes. It took hours to complete. And all the mess with the stupid login system that just timed out and died more often then not, the clumsy server browser and the occasional CTD when having just loaded the map. These days i turn the TV on when im booting up battlefield 2, cause i expect about a 1/2 hour or so before im playing. The game itself can be so much fun but by god how many people left in fury after all the patch issues of BF2, youd think/hope theyd be trying their best to overcome that with the next release.

So, quake wars it is then?

I'd like to add that I downloaded the final public demo release of BF2142, and unfortunately the game still crashes to the desktop within a couple of minutes of playing the game. I wasn't planning to buy the game anyway, but I was pretty curious on the new game mode. Unfortunately, I don't think I've been able to do more than run a few metres before the game crashes.

So, Im not the only one, BF 2145 demo is crash fest 2006

EA's new warranty agreement:

Satisfaction guarantied until you open the box. Opening box voids warranty. Playing game voids quality.

yeah.. i made that up..but still.....

this all is best summed up by a daffy duck quote my friend.

"MONEY! MONEY! MONEY! MINE! MINE! MINE! MWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!"

And just like daffy. Those who are greedy will be punished in the long run. maybe not in australia.. but other countires it wont be tolerated to long.

Much agree with that, development costs are growing very fast, and something needs to be done to alleviate it or we will all be paying more than ever for console games.

But looking at IT development more broadly, I think the problem becomes alot more obvious - and its software development itself. Even an average application (in any IT field) can take months to years for development, and still end up being released with bugs and problems.

Added to that the difficulties in producing resources for applications - like art, audio, gameplay, animation, movies, physics and collision controls, and particle and effects systems (shaders, materials etc) you have a system that simply costs a huge amount of money to produce, with little guarantee of success, or profits.

The industry is at a pretty crucial point, not just the game industry but software development as a whole. Even OS's and simple applications are becoming far too costly to produce. So what choice do developers and publishers have? They arent going to continue to foot the bill until they are broke (they have shareholders to cater for).. and most recognise that product increases will directly impact their bottom line.

Who ever solves this catch-22 problem (software development) will take over this industry. By this I mean by solving the process to create software by whatever means possible - whether it is through abstraction and moving up API layers and development layers (middle ware?), or whether its a new technology in hardware to reduce the required codebase and assets needed to complete the same job (say large common libraries)... in any case.. something has to change. You couple this with increases in CPU complexity (AMD, Intel and IBM multicore chips) the development pipeline looks to be in the midst of growing by a few factors - 4 yrs for a game? 10 yrs for an OS? 10 years for an Office Suite? and what about reliability? How do you reduce bugs with increased complexity?

Solve this one.. and you'll be the next Bill :) In the meantime.. I really think higher product costs are going to be a fact of life. I really dont see many ways past it.

I am not that convinced.

Perhaps I am not the norm, but, I rarely paid full price for current-gen titles. The few instances I did, I did because I felt I needed to for work purposes. And every time I have resented it.

I usually wait until prices are 50% or less than their starting point. My reason for this is that most games just aren't worth the full price tag that they start off with. Perhaps if they (publishers, platforms) focused on quality instead of quantity, then there would be more games worth paying full price for. Instead of the crap they try and pass off as quality.

Passing on this cost to consumers, so that they can recoup their losses on the crap they have tried to pass off as quality, just seems unfair to me, and I don't see it making things any better, nor do I see how it will make Sony (or MS / Nintendo) richer in the long-term ? people will continue to wait for discounts or buy second-hand titles.

It may only serve to alienate people, especially when they see a game coming out on XBOX and X360, the same game that is, but one is $10-20 more than the other because apparently it is next-gen.

And from Sony's perspective being the market leader. I see no competitive advantage that setting title price points as high as X360 or even higher, will get them ? especially if the Wii has a much lower one. Microsoft may have to set theirs higher because they are not the market leader with the XBOX, in fact they have a much smaller market share. So as to recoup development costs for the X360 and also recoup the losses of the XBOX, they have to set their price point higher. Sony do not with the PS3, they can stay where they are, and become more competitive in that respect, and retain much more of their market lead.

Not that I am convinced that they will lose much to the X360 and Wii anyway. As I think the Wii will be a secondary console to either X360 or PS3 owners, they will most likely retain much of the GCUBE market share, and will probably increase their size further by not attracting consumers away from the other consoles but by rather doing what the DS has done, attracting new consumers in the way of female gamers (Nintendog type games) and older gamers staving off dementia (Brain Age type games).

My guess is that at best, they will probably sell more units than X360, but not PS3 ? though, just my opinion and it is still early days.

speak for yourself, my wii will be my primary console, and my only (non handheld) that ive actually owned (snes being the last one, owned not by me specifically)

Yeah... I was talking about the next-gen console market in general. Not about any particular fan-boy and their preference, as that is kind of what the thread is about - more specifically the price-point of next-gen titles.

Yeh, just found out about it then. All the news sites are slowing down as it seems word is getting out pretty fast. Man, what a shitty week it's been.

Aussies dying doing things they love most. As depressing as it is, you gotta look on the bright side.

That's true. Elsewhere in the world, rockers die of drugs, tv personalities die of body failure, influential people get shot...

But us Aussie, we go kickin', doin' what we love, earnin' the respect.

*raises stubby, tear in eye*

*a real blokey kind of tear*

ugh! what a week :(

I should have a beer in their memory.

How very australian of you, finding quality reasons to drink beer.

Theres lots that can be done - it takes will, cooperation and funding however. Lets look at each on its own:

1. Will
This is missing in the Aus game industry. There is no will/need/want to try and move the industry into a more 'inclusive' industry, and the industry is behaving much more like many other traditional industries in Aus (like Car, Mining and Farming) where the the number of companies is reduced to a few large monolithic companies, making the majority of the products, and minimising the potential of startups - when was the last time you heard of a startup car company :)

Also, the industry players need to have the Will to better the industry itself. By this, I mean they need to want to make each other more profitable and not just themselves - this is horribly lacking.

By providing a grouped cohesive 'Will' the industry would be more effective at lobbying the government for investment, tech programs, incubator programs, grants, education and so on. Without a single effective lobbying group, with a determination for improving the industry the result is pretty obvious - Will.. important.

2. Cooperation.
For the Aus industry to become globally competitve (Games are in their own right a global market) we need to have a cohesive industry aimed at improving the ability for the industry to tackle and succeed in such markets.

A good example here is defense. Australia (its gov) spends millions (and billions) of dollars on defense development, but they also spend large portions on marketing, growing, and sustaining the industry as a whole. The Aus gov provide conferences, overseas business conventions, business analysis, cooperative organisations with related markets, and so on. But the industry itself works together to often achieve this.

While there are many thousands of defense products being developed for overseas customers, you will often see many products being promoted side-by-side. On top of that, often these companies leverage each others IP, and resources to get their products to fruition.

This is the sort of cooperation that puts Aus as one of the top defense product developers outside of the US. I think if the games industry here could become more cooperative, and think more in terms of longevity rather than the next contract, there would be a large number of benefits not just for themselves but for our industry as a whole.

Some of the benefits include: Becoming a relaible and valuable contracting source, Growing a mature and experience development pool of talent, building entry points for smaller companies to develop and flourish, expanding investment in Aus for digital media, and generally just adding to the possible profit opportunities for games built in Aus.

3. Funding/Financial
Without money, the Aus industry is a stone cold dead turkey. We need very large investments, because the product cycle costs are very large. But, like all industrys, if you invest well into an industry and give it the funding and momentumn it needs, you create an environment that feeds itself.

The current situation is pretty much like a kid getting allowances from his parents to go to the movies. He can afford to go to the movies, but cant really do much else. For Aus game industry, most companies in Aus get enough money to cover production of the game, but not much else. Thus making it hard to develop their own IP, and even harder to sell their IP and manufacture their IP to shelf.

Given an even small subsiduary boost in earnings more development studios here in Aus could allow for development of original IP. Consider this for a minute: If we have the majority of our companies continually developing original IP (as well as meeting their contractual obligations) there would be a continual stream of original IP coming from our studios after a short period of time. From this stream, lets assume only 10% are viable market products, and we have some way to get these to market (say gov assisted production/marketing or even a gov run publisher) even if the games sold limited amounts, we would start to have a completely Aus based product funded cycle, that could then grow, as the IP becomes more and more refined (with the contual assistance).

This is only a single idea, and its scope is dramatic (youd need billions) but the fact is, after a period of time the industry would be valuable - the publishing, the IP, the taxes on the products, the taxes for business, the employment boosts, the subsiduary side companies that would grow (digital media related - web, paper publishing etc).

But.. I am a realist too - I know full well to get these three things to occur (which I beleive is the minimum for succes - others will obviously disagree) is a very big stretch and potentially frought with risk. But any great risk, can have also great results.

Who knows.. itd be great to have a huge, well organised, well developed Aus game industry. I sadly think that its all a little too late just now though - imho the writing was on the wall about 3 yrs ago, we are now about 3 years behind the eight ball.

Was anyone surprised, really? There were warning signs a short while ago when Kutaragi (or some other Sony person) mentioned that PS3 production had not even started yet. It didn't take much further thought to realise that they'd have to pump out PS3's at an impossible rate if they were to meet their 4 million units for the planned November gobal launch date.

Couple with the fact that the launch titles aren't too incredible (with the exception of Metal Geal Solid 4 and a few others), it may not be too bad to get the console later, when hopefully any issues that the new hardware has is sorted out..

* 6Gun 2 - BattleBorne Entertainment
* Avalon - Climax Studios
* Dark Sector - Digital Extreme
* The Darkness - Starbreeze Studios
* Devil May Cry 4 - Capcom
* EA Sports Fight Night Round 3 - EA Chicago
* Eyedentify - TBA
* Fifth Phantom Saga - Sonic Team
* Final Fantasy PS3 - Square Enix
* Formula One PS3 - SCE Studios Liverpool
* The Getaway PS3 - SCE Studios Soho
* Heavenly Sword - Ninja Theory
* I-8 - Insomniac Games
* Infraworld - Quantic Dream
* Killing Day - TBA
* Killzone PS3 - Guerilla Games
* Metal Gear Solid 4 - Kojima Productions
* Mobile Suit Gundam - TBA
* MotorStorm - Evolution Studios
* Ni-Oh - KOEI
* Omikron 2 - Quantic Dream
* Possession - Blitz Games
* Project Delta - Playlogic International
* ShadowClan - Tiger Hill Entertainment
* Tekken PS3 - Namco
* Vision GT - Polyphony Digital
* Warhawk PS3 - Incognito Entertainment

Anyway, I don't think we're getting too neglected in this case, seeing as there'll only be a paltry 400,000 units for launch in the US and 100,000 in Japan. That really is a tiny number of PS3's to fight over!

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/Souri/200696111924_ps3.gif[/img]

im just eager for sept 14 to see if Nintendo announce a date. at least they are smart. They cant delay a launch if they dont have a date :P

ain't a chance in hell I'm spending a grand on something that does pretty much exactly what its predecessor did but WITHOUT a rumble function, then a couple of extra grand to get a TV that will show it properly, even if Andy Serkis IS in Heavenly Sword, I'm spending the money on other usless stuff like my car instead

Seriously, I mean what casual gamer will spend that much on the same old thing when they could get a Wii for a fraction of the price. So what if it's hi-def, 120fps, however many processors and all that other wank, half of it'll never be used anyway, what casual gamer cares in the slightest about that stuff? all they'll be seeing is one console that does less, which costs faaarr more. The lead in the market? Sony can certainly kiss that shit goodbye.

Ultimately I can't say I have toooo much anticipation for PS3. I think it'll have all of my 'hero' games I look forward to the most with fanboy anticipation (MGS4, DMC4, FF's, etc), but I'm also not too fussed with having to wait or not. The Wii has my anticipation right up.

after the last round of consoles, I think I played the xbox the least, ps2 the most, and gamecube in the middle; had the most fun on gamecube, least on xbox (ninja gaiden I think is the only memorable title I can think of) and a good run at ps2 (not as much fun factor as gamecube still).

So far with the xbox360 I've had a lot of fun -- no defining yay-I'm-bouncing-off-walls-fun ala gamecube provided, but it's definitely a well balanced system that's offering me a lot in terms of diversity and accessability.

So, go wii, not fussed about waiting for ps3, but still looking forward to getting my hands on my fanboy titles on it [:)]

I must say I am intrigued by Andy Sirkis' "sacred genitals" though...

I didnt give the Cube enough of a chance, Xbox was my number one of last gen, I'm looking to go Wii first, then the 360..... aaaaaand maaaybe a PS3 if it drops dramatically and comes out with some pearler titles, Im talking like 6 or 7 completely astounding ones, which frankly I'm not seeing yet.

Sadly my favorate game ever wa son a ps3. Dark Cronicle.. so as much as i hate this bull from sony..if they bring out a new Dark series game for the PS3 i'll have to be a whore and buy it!

Not happy with sonys crap..then again. Not happy with any of the concole makers. My choice comes form my taste of games and whats on offer.

Thus why i don't have a Xbox 360

Cmon, give the PS3 a chance, it hasn't even been released yet and everyone's writing it off already? Look at the PS2, it got delays, it launch sucked bad, but eventually after a year or 2 it got some pretty good games and continues to get AAA games even now.

Anyways, i'm buying all 3 as soon as I have the moneys [:D] but i'll probably leave the PS3 till next year so it builds up a competent number of quality games. Heavenly Sword seems like a system seller to me, i'd be quite dissapointed if it turns out to be shit.

yeah, Im going to buy a PS3 when I've got the money too........... so I guess that means I'll probably never own one......

and seriously though, all the games Im excited about on PS3 are coming out on 360 anyway, so I know who's getting my console dollars......

"Cmon, give the PS3 a chance"

Ok man, fair enough you talked me into it, you buy me one, and I'll give it a go.

No seriously, I will

quote:Originally posted by Jackydablunt

"Cmon, give the PS3 a chance"

Ok man, fair enough you talked me into it, you buy me one, and I'll give it a go.

No seriously, I will

i'll buy you one when there's a price cut [:p]

Ill wait an indefinate amount of time for any console that goes hand in hand with the Final Fantasy series, bring on the FF13 Artistry.

Sif you'd buy a console on launch anyway. Price cuts, hardware quirks fixed, finding out what's worth buying before you spend the dosh, and these days, you'll get a smaller console with a cooler colour. Waiting ftw.

Wow. The anti-Sony, and anti-PS3 pervades everywhere. Quite funny stuff people. You know its just a piece of electronics, and to this point why do so many people spend so much effort posting how they wont buy one? Is it an attempt to convince others? Quite odd..

Basically when I look at consoles I look at the games, and features. If they have something I like, I buy it. Surprise, surprise. And guess what everyone is different, so like I said the anti type comments all seem quite moot and pointless - would be nice to see some solid reasoning being them other than the usual gear you see around forums like: "Too expensive, CPU is hard to code on, Bluray is crap, launch has been delayed, .. and so on".

For something that isnt even available yet, there sure seems to be alot wrong with it if you read the web media? In fact the web media is in-part responsible for most ppls attitudes I think. After a little email exchange from an Inquirer editor, it has become blatantly obvious to me, that most writers just dont like not having news to print about a coming device - ie to not have the hot goss of the day.

I personally think Sony had done a tun of silly mistakes, but they are all founded on Sony's actions.
Heres a rundown:
1. Misrepresent launch in Spring 2006. This was simply tempting fate. And it was a pretty sizable disappointment for many. However, its important to note this has nothing to do with the end result - the market, and the main reason for that is MS's poor performance to take advantage of a very good opportunity. So Sonys mistake, may have been a calculated ploy - who knows, but it made some ppl reasonably grumpy and disappointed.
2. Attempt software emul for PS2 compat. This was purely from a technical view, and imho the fact they have rectified that decision and replaced it with a hwardware solution is admirable, but it was a silly waste of time.
3. Multiple skews - I wonder if this should have been first, but hey. Its in my list. I simply dont take kindly to making developers lives harder than they are, by having multiple hardware combinations to cater for - thats just stupid. Yes.. MS are stupid too. Nintendo is the only one to get this right (in some ways).
4. Bankroll - Sony have put alot at risk for this. Too much I personally feel. But its a plus and a minus for me.

For things I think Sony have done right.. and there are many, but for some reason people prefer to ignore them:
1. Bankroll - Yes, I labelled this as a bad thing. But its also one quality I have to admit, that I admire in them. They are the only company of the three to literally put their balls on the wire in terms of dev, and say "well bugger it, its all or nothing". While companies like MS and esp Nintendo have minimised there development costs and technology as much as possible, Sony, coupled with IBM and Toshiba have tried to look to the future with developing their own technology and systems. Massive risk, who knows if it will pay off, but to me, utterly admirable.
2. Sony listened to people when they complained about the boomerang controller, they listened when ppl said they wanted perfect PS2 compatibility. They actually made many changes on the prototype in response to peoples worries, concerns and feedback. Again.. kudos, especially with so much at stake.
3. Third party support, and I will include MS in this since they have done an excellent job of improving third party support. This is where Aus developers live - in third party development houses. Sony and MS have done some great things in this industry to make their machines reach a broad developer spectrum. Nintendo has alot to learn here.
4. CPU - this is what interests me the most. Even if it wasnt in the PS3, and was in some other machine, Id probably get something with the Cell in it. Why? Well thats simply a personal technology curiosity I have with it, being such a non-standard CPU. And having tinkered with the IBM Cell SDK, Im pretty excited about its capabilities and properties - I know this seems irrelevant within respects to gaming, but I beleive it is important. This particular document was what intrigued me the most - a move back to realtime raytracing becoming a possibility: extremely interesting.
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/a/ashwini/E3%202005%20Cell%20Blade%2…
5. Bluray is an important feature. Whether you like Sony or not, you will have realised the massive jump in HDTV sales in the last 2 years. Try buying a brand new standard CRT TV now :) BluRay brings much more space on disk that DVD, and thus meaning you can have far higher quality movies, and much more richer game content. Now, all of you out there are thinking "Oh.. but X360 will have HD-DVD", this is irrelevant. That is an addon, thus its optional. With PS3, it will be within every console sold.. every single one will be able to play high definition movies by default. To put this in perspective, of all the PS2's sold in the first year in Japan, over 70 percent of buyers bought it for playing movies as its primary function. Couple that with the HDTV boom.. this is a pretty big piece of market.

Id like to read about peoples reasons for not buying a PS3, if they can put it into some tangible point. Even Souri's comment that there isnt any games he'd prefer to play on it, is a little moot. We all know games on the PS2, for instance, cover a massively wide audience of gameplayers - Im sure there will be something for everyone, to assume otherwise seems a little neglectful of the history of Sony's products.

There are also many other interesting facts I have collected about all three machines (the Wii, X360 and PS3) that interest me all to their designs. But without doubt the PS3 hold the most promise ... mainly because of the step its trying to make. Whether that step will occur.. is only a matter of months away before we find out.

Personally I dont care much about the points you made above, my reasoning for buying a PS3 (whenever I have the money of course) is for the GAMES. Every generation sony have always released a steady stream of awesome first-party exclusive games that virtually make their consoles worth buying. And i'm not talking about the obvious MGS4, FF13, etc, I'm talking about new IPs.

Think of it this way, with the PS2 generation, Sony managed to release awesome new ips such as Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, God of war, Ratchet & clank, Jak & Daxter, Sly, and quite a few other series i cant think of right now. Thats totally new, AAA ips. So, its only logical to expect them to come up with even newer, awesome ips with the next generation, games that may have not even seen the light yet. Playing the new Zelda, Metroid, and Mario games are ok, but at some point you want to have something new, and Sony and MS are the ones pushing new IPs at the moment.

Nice to see that some people aren't swayed by this argument of ?Sony have already lost and the PS3 is a lemon? rant. Which really seems to border on the delusional.

Grover makes some great points, and Skunx helps round this off and put it into the perspective of the 100m+ PS2 Sony consumer base, that have come to see Sony and the Playstation brand as a brand of quality gaming experiences, and new gaming experiences.

I do wonder why so many developers or hardcore gamers who wish to become developers, have come to resent Sony and the PS3 so much.

It is something that I have been suspicious of for a while now, and I think my gut-feelings on this might very well be correct ;).

Well, personally I don't give a damn as to market leaders and I don't hate Sony, why should I? that's stupid, and I'm not that self absorbed or that obsessed about games. If Sony maintain the lead in the market after all then wooly for them, I'd be surprised if they did however. I'm just talking about spending double on something that does the same as any of the cheaper competition, I don't know, maybe I'm just not that big a gamer anymore, Heavenly Sword looks great but not that great.

Then again I drive a rotary so I cant really talk about ecconomical benefits of technology too much... screw it I will anyway

If i had the money, id fork out for a PS3, but since i have to decide on how to use my limited funds, its going towards a Wii, because i think they are contributing (or at least are trying to) the most to the games industry.

I always considered my self a sony girl, i had a ps1 and a ps2 (well the family did) so naturally i thought yea PS3 FTW ... then i saw the price >.< there no way i can convince my folks to get me one for christmas now.

Sorry to say folks but the games on the Wii look utter rubbish. Metroid and Mario look like bad ports at best and although WarioWare is cool you're better off buying a DS and getting a whole heap of other cool games on that platform for the same price.
Essentially, from what I've seen and heard first hand, the Wii software available at launch doesn't look much better than the stuff that's currently available on the Cube.
Don't get me wrong, the casual sports games look cool and really make the most of the functionality of the groovy new controller, especially baseball, golf and tennis, but Metroid is so unintuitive it takes at least 45 minutes just to be able to get used to playing the game. That may not sound like long but it's plenty of time to get bored and walk away for most micro-attention span gamers these days.
For the record I'm not a Sony or Xbox fanboy but between what was shown of Wii at E3 and what we've seen in the last few days, my excitment has waned somewhat.
Prepare to be disappointed.

No opinion, just links.

Nintendo Wii
Good
bad

Xbox 360
Good
Bad

ps3
Good
Bad

[QUOTE=baboon] Sorry to say folks but the games on the Wii look utter rubbish. Metroid and Mario look like bad ports at best and although WarioWare is cool you're better off buying a DS and getting a whole heap of other cool games on that platform for the same price.
Essentially, from what I've seen and heard first hand, the Wii software available at launch doesn't look much better than the stuff that's currently available on the Cube.
Don't get me wrong, the casual sports games look cool and really make the most of the functionality of the groovy new controller, especially baseball, golf and tennis, but Metroid is so unintuitive it takes at least 45 minutes just to be able to get used to playing the game. That may not sound like long but it's plenty of time to get bored and walk away for most micro-attention span gamers these days.
For the record I'm not a Sony or Xbox fanboy but between what was shown of Wii at E3 and what we've seen in the last few days, my excitment has waned somewhat.
Prepare to be disappointed. [/QUOTE]

-the games look great to me, for the most part
-i already have a DSlite
-ive never played console FPS because its frustratingly hard to learn. 45mins to learn FPS on the wii sounds fantastic, and at least worth my time.

ive watched quite a few PS3 vids, and there are few that impress me. the rest, while looking pretty, just dont hold my interest. trust me, id love to own one, my apartment has a giant plasma, but id rather spend it on a wii. yes, im a fanboy, but i watch the industry, and i consider myself rational. if the PS3 had the control technology of the wii, id save up for a PS3. but nintendo have the kind of vision needed to pull it off, or at least give it its best shot.

ive grown to accept that some people (not implying that you do or dont) only see skin deep with games. and the wii has it fair share of shallow games, but shallow games played in a whole new way.

Nintendo deserves my money the most.

but i digress. once i get a salary under my belt, ill get them all. but my most immediate and desired purchase? Wii.PeterDavis2006-09-28 01:28:22

Yeah I'm definitely getting curious as to how nintendo's going to go. With the emulation thing and all I think thats absolutely kick ass, and the wiimote specific games that are being released I think it will be a unique enough experience to pull people in initially.

But I've been getting pretty hands on with the Wiimote over the last week, I've got one here on my desk, and I have to say that porting a game's functionalities and actions from the 360 controller to this thing takes some serious thought. Handling it right now my fingers can only really access four buttons, and one of them is really not that intuitive. Obviously this means seriously thinking about what functionality you can adapt to the phyisical capabilities, and although it certainly can be done if you spend the time, I'm still not very convinced of the thing's precision even if you do.

Basically my point is, the Wiimote is going to be great for games that are made specifically for it, but it may be a lot of trouble for developers to port to (could be just me). Even Smash Bros is not even trying to use the controller and that's gotta be one of the more simplistic games out there. What I'm thinking, is whether developers when making for all platforms are just gonna take the easy way out and port it directly for the GC controller rather than the Wiimote, and I think that if they do, then with Wii's inferior hardware, its gonna lose out because obviously Players will go for the better delivery.

If Nintendo really pull off some kick ass Wiimote specific games then I reckon they'll be cool, but I've not really seen any which have blown me away yet.

well you seem to have had some experience developing on the wii, or at least know people who are, whats your opinion on development? i like the idea thaat, despite the fact that developers needs to think a little outside the box, development costs will be lower for the wii.

we all complain about the lack of power in the wii, but it always has and always will be the software that make a system. but i think it will play out a lot like the DS. Maybe the figures wont line up quite as well (or badly), but the idea that it will take some time for developers to get comfortable with it will be fairly likely.

edit: damn you for having access to a wiimote. :PPeterDavis2006-10-03 00:21:08

Oh simply pick up a regular TV remote and wave it at a screen, that's pretty much the extent of my experience of it, except we have a couple of really simplistic tech demos to go with it. Anyone who buys it at launch will probably know more than me in the first 15mins.

Yeah I really don't know what to try predict with this next gen thing to tell the truth. I used to think 360 was gonna take it out, then at launch I was really quite unimpressed and I thought Sony would hold their market. Then I look at Sony's rediculous price for hardware that frankly I dont think we'll ever see utilised, and I hear about the legal issues they're having and all that and it turns me right off.

Then in contrast I see the Wii which is going straight for the casual and indie gamers that the PS3 is leaving behind. I see the party potential of the games and feel nostalgic about like the whole year literally that my friends and I spent playing Goldeneye and Marikart 64, and I start thinking Nintendo's actually on to something here.

THEN I get my hands on the controller and start seeing a few limitations and start hearing a couple of development issues a few Wii launch titles are having. I realise that the Wii controller really isnt a casual game system at all due to the Player having to sit straight on to the tv and not being able to lay on the couch which is the tried and true. I then start thinking of buying a 360 for xmas and I look at the games comming out and I see Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Test Drive, Alan Wake, Gears of War, Bioshock, Dead Rising, Halo Wars..... thats like my entire gaming year plotted out for me already, and with the PS3 not comming out with much in comparison for me, I've swung back to the 360 again.

... I certainly know which one I'm getting first (ill eventually get all three) But who knows who'll take out the market. I think Sony's gotten a little ahead of themselves and placed a little too much in their name, but they have that name for a reason, the PS1 to date has to be probably the most defining console. But then I think they may be Sony, but Microsoft's Microsoft, and these guys right from the start have always said the xbox was the test, and the 360 will only have a shelf life of about 4 years (I may be wrong). I wouldnt be surprised if they've released an inferior system early at a loss, simply to bait Sony into revealing themselves, and in a few years they're gonna hammer them with the most impressive system of all, I mean tech wise the xbox kicked the sh*t outta the PS2, the only flaw it really had was the market, and that lead Sony has is being wittled away. Microsoft are smart cunning guys, they've planned the next 20 years, not just the next gen.

Who knows, and really you can't allow yourself to care too much since (I imagine) no one here will be recieving any of the profits from the next gen war anyway.

DanJackydablunt2006-10-03 19:24:49

No, i wont be, but i want my purchase to be a worthwhile, sustainable product.

I too want to get all three eventually, just because i like games. but i doubt that will happen until im under a salary.

And about the Wiimote; development issues aside, ive read countless accounts of how well the wiimote does what its meant to do - when its done right. Id say its that initial hurdle for the development industry as a whole - once they are over, many more, polished titles will hit the Wii with full functionality of the Wiimote.

I will be getting into it on the weekend :) Perhaps we can do something with it for the next programmer challenge...

Cool downloading it now, i'll have a play with it and report back.

ohhhhh .... my type of art <3<3<3

what can i do to help !

Thanks for your interest.

Well, initially I hope the the market will expand to the point where it will support local development. Nonethelss I would be happy to hear from artists or teams that would like to work on such a project, or who have a similar product in development and require production assistance or even just a distribution outlet. Email me please...

Andrew

Hey, I really like your artwork and your site is excellent. [:)]

looking good -- your works can stand up on their own, but I think you really need to get away from flat colour tones (eg highlights/lights= white, darks/shadows=black), it's making your works very muddy. Check out some colour theory and get some realistic colour into your tones!

The site itself is clean and easy to navigate, easy on the eyes, and your work is presented well and clearly. Good job! I could learn from that, my site is cluttered to hell :)

Use it :) Love it! I have used it to play Animal Crossing with some of the Sumea peeps and I know Joel has used it to play Mario Kart for random races.

I must say that I haven't picked up my DS in a bit :| But have found wifi reliable, and I think its one of the aspects that make games like Animal Crossing more fun.

This is how it will work.

"Open Firefox"

You have selected Internet Explorer.

"Close that"

"Open Firefox"

Do you want to delete Firefox.

"Cancel"

You have deleted Firefox. *Opens Internet Explorer*

It does look pretty impresive though. Can't see myself using it, talking to a computer seems.. weird. Though I bet in a few years using a mouse will probably be weird.

Wow, that was pretty amazing. Speech recognition could have a pretty big future if it keeps improving. Writing any kind of document by speaking instead of typing could save huge amounts of time.

I also like the way Vista can easily display active programs ? just like a Mac.

Hmm, combining smarter AI with better speech recognition could be interesting.
?Open monster09.max?
?Animate cool walk cycle?

The whole thing just feels like a strange move from Microsoft, to me. Microsoft makes most of its money from big companies; the average home user is relatively unimportant by comparison. But maybe this is who Microsoft is trying to appeal, because how many of us have their own private, completely sound proof, office space? Can you imagine working in an office full of people talking at their computer? Personally, that would drive me nuts...

hmmm, I agree with you Leto. Hearing people in an office chit-chat on a phone is bad enough, listening to them repeat mundane instructions to their computer would be horrific! I also doubt that it would have any real use, i think most people could navigate folders faster by mouse and many people can type way faster than they can cleary speak.

voice commands were avaliable on mobile phone for a while (don't know if it is a feature that is still offered) but never caught on as a useful/useable feature as far as I know.

So I am voting it to be a grab for some marketing hype. I do think the technology will lead to useful applications down the track and has great potential in gaming. Maybe we will see this technology in Xbox games soon? or is it already, I should really get up-to-date on console technology.

Triton... lol at that post.

Better if there is a program that just draws what you imagine lol.

The commands will probably be for simple things. I hope there's a push to give commands key binding thing lol. Don't want it to think you are giving a confirmed command while talking to someone.

Have you had a look at books on Amazon and so forth. I am sure that I have seen books on the topic.

Another option - I am on a mailing list (female orinted) that I know has some writers. Maybe getting in touch with people there could be useful..?

One thing I do know is that most companies treat it very differently from one another. In the last company I did probably 4 game docs (give or take) and I did all of the writing for those, and shared it for another, the place I'm at now its very much shared, in others they hire a specific guy for the job (I think Krome does, or did at least). As for the process of game writing, I could tell you how I approached it personally but I've never done things to convention so it may not be too helpful for a thesis. Of course it also depends entirely upon the game you're making and the team you're with.

Hey BOB! [8D]

Just wanted to say hi! Do these belong to U?

[img]http://hail.sensatefx.com/team/matt_p/pic1.jpg[/img]

[img]http://hail.sensatefx.com/team/matt_p/pic2.jpg[/img]

Juullees

They sure do, I am rather ashamed of hte texture work on the croc haha.

Hey! Long time, I think I have the model file somewhere.Hehe[;)]

Jackydablunt, would you be able to post up any examples of your works?
I would be very interested to take a look. How detailed are most of your game design docs?

I've been working on a couple of game designs myself, but I?m not sure how much detail they require (I guess it depends on the job).

There's no answer at all to what companies require man, Design's gotta be one of the most obscure positions to get (just ask Caroo), and to work in. The first gig I got, I started as an artist and moved in-house to Design simply because I had good ieas and knew how to present them. The current job I'm at now I got because of a collection of skills that I guess my boss saw potential in.

As for how to write a game doc? christ knows, some companies write singular massive ones with narrative and VO line counts and all the above, others prefer to write a whole heap of little ones, some print out textbook sized GDD's some upload to wiki... They DO need to be detailled but you have to know where to put that detail and when, the best thing I can suggest off handedly is to separate narrative from assets and mechanics, describe them all separately.

Look into the Design forum, there are a few discussions going on there regarding this very issue. Sorry I'd give a better reply but I've just realised it's like 7pm and I'm still at work, so screw that I'm outta here :)

*puts on a pair of intelligent looking spectacles*

It's my view that this utter luck of identification of what a game designer is, is what makes it so hard for anyone who is not yet a designer in the industry to actually becoming a designer. You can have skills in one area that?ll get you a job in one studio but will be absolutely meaningless to another. The little dot points on studio job websites don?t help much ether.

And then there?s the issue of getting noticed and recognised! ooooh don?t get me started.

But we?ll stay away from ranting for now.

On what to write on documents? You have to get creative. Knowledge and Detail is power in writing a good design document. The mechanics and outlay of a design document is never fixed and is diverse and different from man to man to woman.

But whatever way you write it. Here?s what to keep in mind:

? If the document is big. Have a contents/index and number your pages.
? Spaces are your friend in a document. Don?t cramp everything to close together.
? Spelling has to be readable [I fail at times at this] and more importantly grammar must also be top notch.
? Like Jacky said. Don?t mix emotion and story with technical and mechanics.
? Be detailed where it?s needed. Don?t use a page to describe that the texture on a wall is going to be grey concrete when that time and page could be spent writing about a massive cannon you have to blow up.
? Pictures and plans of what your trying to convey only helps. But use it wisely as its time consuming.
? Be flexible in your designs. For both the valuable ideas others have and for your games time/budget.

To me. These points are very important. And I hope that clears a little up for you mate.

Now if you excuse me I gotta finish off another small UnrealED map and sometime this week do some document writing of my own. Don?t worry. As always it?ll be up on the design section of sumea. Wish more people would post replies though.

Cheers.

Julz - Ahh man, yeah I look back and shudder some days. My artistic style left a lot to be desired. :P

I have done some research into game writing, and I predict that there will be an industry standard for this in place within five years. It's all going the way of the film industry. I think if people want to write for games (write, not design), they're going to have to learn to write scripts first.

Scriptwriting = poo. But it's insanely structured poo written for a visual medium. Mark my words!! It'll happen.

quote:Originally posted by Sorceror Bob

Julz - Ahh man, yeah I look back and shudder some days. My artistic style left a lot to be desired. :P

I have done some research into game writing, and I predict that there will be an industry standard for this in place within five years. It's all going the way of the film industry. I think if people want to write for games (write, not design), they're going to have to learn to write scripts first.

Scriptwriting = poo. But it's insanely structured poo written for a visual medium. Mark my words!! It'll happen.

I strongly agree with this. Not so dramaticly but yes designers will have to face in the next few years where they wish to go with themselfs. To ether make the storyline or the gameplay mechcanics. I guess it comes down to the designer in question. A lot of designers i know of are first and foremost writers. So gameplay designers are going to be very desired in the next few years by my prediction.

Thus why I'm heading in that direction.

I think as the industry matures, designers and writers will not be positions held by the same people, just like they are not in any other field. They are different disciplines. There may be some overlap, where a particular person has the skills to perform either role, but they would still be seperate jobs in bigger places at least. Just like back in the day, the programming and the art was done by the same guy, that does not mean that they are the same discipline. As the industry grew, there became the need and the facility for that sort of specialisation. Its a progression of that I believe, and in the not too distant future Im sure it will be common for most game studios to have their equivalent of a screenwriter on the staff.

Uuh - I don't think that - within the definition of what a game is - there is *no* overlap between how the game 'mechanically' operates and how the narrative operates. I think that a good understanding of how the two can be used to complement each other as well as how they supplement each other is necessary - and simply annexing the two into separate roles would be ... well crap really.

Sadly i have nothing useful to contribute in the way of potential resources for your thesis Sorceror Bob - but good luck none the less!

No you're right there, and I didnt mean separate them into separate docs and things (sometimes you do), I mean separate them in your mind, you have to know what you're writing and who you're writing it for. Once the production team knows the general jist of the story then the last thing they want is to sift through it again and again to get to mechanic descriptions, you have to know when it's needed and talk purely in context.

I also find it helps to write how you speak, use the same words and don't try to talk down or sound itellectual unless there are calls for it. Production teams hate reading docs so you have to make them easy to read, and author them as well so people know who to go to for more detail.

Killadee, what aspects are you hoping to improve upon? It's just that in my opinion there's no real definite way to write a game doc, I threw out all thoes templates you get from gamasutra and stuff a long time ago. The last full doc I did was different from the previous, and that was different from the one before that. Some people here may be able to help you define certain areas though.

Dan

Hey, (sorry to bump this thread)

I would like to improve the structure of my half baked ideas/designs. I?m interested in any industry standards or practices that aren?t blindly obvious (like spelling and grammar). Examples of any game systems, flow, mechanics etc would really help. I have been surfing around for a while but any hot leads or links would be greatly appreciated.

quote:Originally posted by KILLA DEE

Hey, (sorry to bump this thread)

I would like to improve the structure of my half baked ideas/designs. I?m interested in any industry standards or practices that aren?t blindly obvious (like spelling and grammar). Examples of any game systems, flow, mechanics etc would really help. I have been surfing around for a while but any hot leads or links would be greatly appreciated.

Hi!

I visit this site now and again but I don't really post very often (too busy working!! :) )

Anyways, I've worked in the industry for around 12 years, been involved in design for the past 5-6 years. I've written many designs/proposals, so here's my tuppence worth. Hope it helps!

Try and include the following in your design (these are in rough order but it really can be mixed up).

An EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ? this is a half page description of the highlights of you game. Be a succinct as possible. Include: platforms, genre, what are the USPs (unique selling points) of the game.

KEY FEATURES ? list the key features of components of your game. For example:

- 3 Modes of play
- Multiplayer Options
- Innovative or proven gameplay mechanics (VERY IMPORTANT!)
- Realistic physics
- Exciting use of license
- Replays
- Stats Trackers

Don?t list every last detail here, just categorise so that now, everything you mention in your KEY FEATURES you?re can expand on. This really will be the meat of your design document and what?s in here will really be determined by the type of game you are doing.

Note: I put very important next to Innovative or Prove Gameplay Mechanics ? this is really where your game should be described. Anyone can write, ?we?re going to have great physics? or ?a fantastic story? ? all these things are great and sometimes important to a project?s success BUT describing the actual gameplay in detail is KEY to a cracking what the project is about.

Games take a long time to develop so you need to know what the CONTROLLING THEME of your game is and keep that creative focus. As a project progresses and people add ideas and opinions it?s easy to get lead down a side-street and then suddenly the game you are making is no longer the game you set out to make. So, make sure it?s clear in your proposal the creative direction that the game must go in.

Other things you want to mention:

CONTROLS: What is the controller layout.

CHARACTER: If it?s a character based product you really need to get out all the info you can about the main characters. What they can do, how they develop, what they look like etc. If it?s not a character based game, say it?s a SPORTS game or a CAR game then you really need to define the mechanics and feel of how the player controls the car/team/avatar/whatever.

USER INTERFACE: What do we need to show in terms of maps, HUD, etc.

STORY ? depending on the type of game there may be or may not be a story. How will it be told to the player? Cutscenes? Pre-rendered? In-game? Spoken dialogue?

VISUAL STYLE ? how you see the game looking. The art director of the project will ultimately decide this but as a designer you can suggest what you think here. (Pictures help ? i.e. create a mood board type montage)

AUDIO ? again the audio guys will play a large part in the final sound design, but this is the place to mention key audio features that you want ? whether that?s a classical music score, or a famous actor?s voice for dialogue.

HELP SYSTEM and TUTORIALS ? how does the player learn the game? Is there tutorials, in-game help? Explain it here.

GAMEPLAY WALKTHROUGH ? good to give people a feel for the game, describe yourself playing it. Again dependent on the game type you may describe a minute section, or you may have to give the overview of an entire quest or whatever!

UNLOCKS ? How do you reward the player. What offers replay value?

LICENSE USE ? Could a license be attached to this project? If it is a licensed project explain why you design reflects the key values of that license.

TECHNOLOGY ? Again, same as ART and AUDIO, after the initial game proposal is written the code guys will take it apart and tell you exactly what can and can?t be done. I personally, come from a coding background so I do tend to give my high level thought on this, i.e. this project can build on technology from our previous game (always good).

As said prevously, good written skills are essential. Spelling and grammar are important - so if you need to improve these, then you better do so now. No creative director/lead designer wants to have to re-write or proof-read every thing you submit - they want to hire you so that you help get the game done, not hinder them.

Good luck with your designs!

Yeah articulation is pretty much the most predominant skill you need. The primary rule I always go by when writing something for the top end of a game doc is the presumption the reader is not from the industry, doesn't play games, doesn't care or want to care about games, has no technical knowledge, and has to read the document while running out the door. The way you write a doc should be for all readers including thoes that may never read it. Keep it brief for thoes only scanning for the core points, yet descriptive and focused enough for the others who may take interest. Author the doc as well, possibly with the addition of your email address so people can ask you further detail.

Keep the detail separate, and to the back of the document or in separate appendicies whether they be docs or wiki. These are the parts written for thoes doing the work so thats where you write more attuned to them. If its a mechanic doc for coders then write like a coder:

- Keep it straight to the point
- Use steps and bullet points
- Coders dont care about other crap.

For artists you can deliver more emotionally depending on what it is you're describing.

And try to not be insulted when others don't read what you've written, or ignore the doc and make you step through it all in person when you easily have better things to do. You have to understand that just because that document may be your primary interest and focus, it doesn't mean that its theirs, in fact expect that it wont be. I'd say about 50% of what you write will be read by most people, and 20% will be actually absorbed, the leg work and personal communication is I think the key to design, not the document, and it's your approcability and ability to compromise that'll be the thing most required. The doc is merely the first step, Design it the delivery.

Dan