home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!news2me.EBay.Sun.COM!cronkite.Central.Sun.COM!texsun!exucom.exu.ericsson.se!s09a05!exuhag
- From: exuhag@exu.ericsson.se (James Hague)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games
- Subject: Re: Mac Game Programming Secrets?
- Message-ID: <1992Dec28.201718.9648@exu.ericsson.se>
- Date: 28 Dec 92 20:17:18 GMT
- References: <Bzp0F5.8B4@news.cso.uiuc.edu>
- Sender: news@exu.ericsson.se
- Reply-To: exuhag@exu.ericsson.se
- Organization: Ericsson Network Systems, Richardson, TX
- Lines: 40
- Nntp-Posting-Host: s09a05.exu.ericsson.se
- X-Disclaimer: This article was posted by a user at Ericsson.
- Any opinions expressed are strictly those of the
- user and not necessarily those of Ericsson.
-
- Just a few late additions:
-
- - Game programming for *any* platform takes a lot of hard work
- and inspiration. There are no exceptions. If you are inspired
- enough you can get past any obstacles. There were quite a few
- classic Apple II games that were written by people who were driven
- to learn to write games. They found out that they needed to
- learn assembly language to do it, so they did. Hi-res graphics
- required all sorts of weird programming to get proper colors, so
- they figured it out. Writing games requires solving problems on
- your own, things you aren't going to find in books. It is only
- natural that the sort of person that can design games on their
- own can also figure out the programming aspects without outside
- help.
-
- [I've always found it interesting that there is no correlation
- between quality games and ease of implementation. Look at the
- sticks and mud used to create Asteroids, Star Castle, Tempest,
- Defender, etc. Programming tools are much better these days,
- computers are way faster, optimizing high-level language compilers
- are the norm, yet overall game innovation and design seems to
- have declined. More effort seem to be expended cloning those
- old games than writing new ones--and most times the original
- is still superior.]
-
- - Don't concentrate solely on the technical aspects, just do what
- you need to write a game. Most popular IBM shareware games are
- technically brilliant, but just plain awful in terms of concept
- and design. Rec.games.programmer is filled with discussions
- of VGA registers and blit routines ad nauseum. Everyone is
- concerned with technical junk and the games really show it.
-
- A related "rule" is: every game does _not_ have to make some
- sort of technical innovation. There are lots of pleasant
- little games (john calhoun's stuff comes to mind) which aren't
- cutting edge and don't need to be.
-
- --
- James Hague
- exuhag@exu.ericsson.se
-