Re: [Plib-devel] Re: KobayashiMaru & plib

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

Wolfram Kuss wrote:

> He did this only when the scene or the camera changed, and rendered
> the complete models once everything was static. The program was
> similar to PPE and he could draw the 3D-cursor without rendering the
> rest (when drawing the 3d-cursor, he saved the pixels underneath).
> Anyway, I guess THIS method (not LODs though) is slightly outdated.

It's not even legal in OpenGL.  When you do a 'swapbuffers', the contents
of the back buffer are "undefined" - which means that you can't rely on
the previous image still being there...which indeed it isn't on some
machines.


> >Let me tell you about Tux-A-Quest-for-Herring.
> >
> >It was the first *ever* 3D game for Linux.
> 
> Yes - a very interesting thing. I would probably have contributed if I
> had heard about it beforehand, but I was not in the linux community.

I didn't really publicise it until it was more or less playable.

I have a lot of fun working on these games - and to start with, I
don't *want* help...that just increases the hassle factor and reduces
the fun.

Once the game is basically working, it would be nice to get help - but
I no longer have illusions about that.

Oliver and I had just finished playing Mario'64 (yep - all 120 gold stars)
and were disappointed that there wasn't any more.  We fondly imagined
that if we built a good game 'engine' and a couple of demo levels, we
would have hundreds of OpenSource level designers building new levels.

Hence we'd end up with a game we could play *forever* without ever
getting to the end.

Well, I'm less naive now!
 
> >I got:
> >
> >  150,000 people visiting the web site over the first 12 hours.
> >   15,000 people downloaded it in the first 12 hours.
> >    1,500 emails complaining/complimenting/thanking me for TuxAQFH
> >          within the next week or so.
> >   ...one year later...
> >      150 people are subscribed to the Tux mailing lists.
> >       15 people have *ever* offered to help with artwork/music/models.
> >      1.5 (OK...2 actually) other people have actually contributed
> >          *anything* to Tux *ever*. One piece of unusable music - and a
> >          couple of unusable models.  No significant chunks of code at all.
> >    *NONE* of those things has ever been useful enough to distribute with
> >          the game.
> 
> Wow, that's even worse than I thought :-(.

Yes - it's kinda depressing.

What suprises *me* is that there are LOTS of contributors to PLIB and
LOTS of people working PPE - but *nobody* wants to contribute to the
games.  I expected the reverse.  Games are fun to write - and do great
things for one's ego and popularity - I'd have thought there would be
WAY more contributors than for a boring support utility library.

Well - I guess not!

> It seems many want to start
> a new project (see all the modelers on Sourceforge) and few want to
> contribute to the project of other people :-(.

I guess that's it.  Perhaps people contribute to PLIB so that they can
write their own games.

That's a little unfortunate because it makes it hard to write really
complex games when only one person is involved.

> >Remember - it took 100 people working full-time 5 years to create
> >Mario'64.  You have about three times that amount of work.  You should
> >be finished in about 1500 years.
> 
> Well, out of the 100 people there are many managers, advertisement
> people, manual writers etc.

True - but still, at least a third of that effort must have been
programmers, musicians and artists...so 500 man-years then!

> But of course it is not possible to compete with the commercial games
> writers except MAYBE under the best conditions (many knowledgable
> contributors with much time and motivation that work together well)
> or of course by programming simple games that work because of the
> idea, a la Tetris.

I have a personal hatred of Tetris.  The last time I counted, there
were 23 versions for Linux - of which about 20 were a complete waste
of human effort!

  Blocks CXHextris Columns fscktris Ltris CrystalSpace-Tetris
  GTetris JTetris Jetris Stax Quadra Tetrinet TwinTRIS VGA-Tetris
  XBlockout XJefris XJewel XTrojka Xemeraldia Xinsane Xpuyopuyo
  Xtet42 Xtris

-- 
Steve Baker   HomeEmail: <sjb...@ai...>
              WorkEmail: <sj...@li...>
              HomePage : http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
              Projects : http://plib.sourceforge.net
                         http://tuxaqfh.sourceforge.net
                         http://tuxkart.sourceforge.net
                         http://prettypoly.sourceforge.net