RE: [Algorithms] Scalability costs

[Tom F. <to...@mu...>]

> From: Jamie Fowlston [mailto:j.f...@re...]
> 
> Jim Offerman wrote:
> 
> > > It's a nice idea, but is it worth the cost in development time?
> >
> > I think that any form of scalability (whether it is 
> achieved through some
> > pre-calculated LoD levels or through advanced techniques, like the
> > forementioned VIPM, or even just scalability/modularity of 
> your engine it
> > self) is worth the cost in development time, since it 
> potentially increases
> > the replayability of your game and/or the reusability of 
> your engine.
> >
> > So your game can potentially sell more copies of a longer 
> period, since it
> > can still compete with the newest releases (hence you earn 
> more money with
> > it)
> 
> Is this true in the PC market? For consoles, you get most 
> sales in early days,
> very little afterward. Tom's suggestion that you can still be 
> looking good in n
> years time isn't matched by sales in our circumstances.

There are a few games that have the distinction of earning money well past
the usual sell-by date. True, most of them tend to be the "sim" or "theme"
games, but there is the odd graphics-heavy one (e.g. Half-Life, though it is
helped by having more superb mods than you can empty a full mag at).

Having a good scalable engine can only help...

> > and you can potentially reduce the development cycle of 
> your next game,
> > since you already have a good basis to start from.
> 
> Great idea, does it really happen in practice? We seem to end 
> up starting from
> scratch every time. Or at least taking the old stuff, using 
> it as a base, and
> then rewriting most of it. New consoles don't help, of course :)

It does happen when the engine has some nice generalities to it. Even if
none of the actual code get shared (which is the usual case, admittedly),
the people involved usualy just rewrite what they had before, maybe with a
few neat tricks they've learned in the meantime. You can rewrite something
very quickly if you've done it once and solved all the hard problems. It's
that sort of "reuse" I meant, rather than the actual code itself.

[snip]
> Algorithms that scale well are a good thing... he says, 
> frantically trying to
> convince himself the thread's not OT.... :)

I don't think it's even close to OT - this is a games algorithms list, and
LoD algorithms are amongst the trickiest and most varied algorithms out
there.

> Jamie

Tom Forsyth - Muckyfoot bloke.
Whizzing and pasting and pooting through the day.