My New Game Development DVD
polycounter lvl 12
I just released my first DVD in a series of 3 DVD's. My DVDs are focused at game development and not "Become a Pro at Z-Brush" or "Become the best Programmer", I'm strictly focusing on the task at hand: make actual games. Nobody else is doing this and nobody seems to want to teach to complete a full awesome game, instead they either work towards simple games or towards just every in and out of programming or 3d art etc and get you caught up again, in becoming a pro at a specific task. I want to make professional game developers as a whole process.
DVD1: PONG and Tanks(Worms clone)
DVD2: Air Combat (Apache Air Assault / Ace Combat)
DVD3: Something like Halo Multiplayer
Pretty excited and will be starting DVD2 starting Monday. Doubt anyone here would be interested in these DVDs, but I'm just posting to get the word out and maybe someone is interested.
http://www.ultimategamedevelopment.com
DVD1: PONG and Tanks(Worms clone)
DVD2: Air Combat (Apache Air Assault / Ace Combat)
DVD3: Something like Halo Multiplayer
Pretty excited and will be starting DVD2 starting Monday. Doubt anyone here would be interested in these DVDs, but I'm just posting to get the word out and maybe someone is interested.
http://www.ultimategamedevelopment.com
Replies
Without watching the dvd, I have a few crits..
Your website needs work. I think people will be less willing to risk their cash with a website that doesn't look professional. There are alot of broken links, and the layouts are all over the place. I'm sure you're aware of this already, but it's probably something you should of done before pimpling your DVDs on sites like this.
I think you need more info about what you're actually doing in the DVDs. You need to have a break down of whats covered in the DVD. People won't buy your DVD if they don't know exactly what you're covering.
Also, This is speaking purely from my perspective: From what I saw on the website, you are writing these games from scratch. I think you might appeal to alot more people if you used a common game engine (UDK, Unity, etc:- ), rather than writing your own. I think it makes things seem alot less intimidating for beginners, and opens up a larger potential audience.
Good work though, I'll keep my eye on this.
I was about to ask the same thing...
How long have you been programming, have you been in the games industry as a games designer, do you have any known titles you can refer to?
It is more geared towards programmers, as you can still make games with crap art you know? But you cant make games without knowing to program a bunch of graphics,physics, gameplay. But when I first started I learned art and programming to make my own 3D games. So I won't have a dvd thats "make this barrel" now "make this awesome normal mapped character in z-brush". Gnomon takes care of that and those dvd's are already several hours long. So basically no its not really a all in-one series in that there is not DVD1:mastering animation DVD2:texturing DVD3:programming the best physics engine, but I'm going to focus on: lets make this game. So I'm not going over every piece of art in a timelapse, but I'll cover some art (I think its important for programmers to know art), and some animation, but mostly programming. I'm not trying to make someone a master in programming or master in art, I want people to be able to open up their tools and make some games.
Well I learned almost everything I know on my own, went to Digipen, had a couple game and non-game programming jobs. But my personal knowledge I learned as a hobby was way more than anything else combined. As for experience, it comes down to: my next dvd which is on 3D game development, I will have a trailer for the game I am making from scratch and a playable version of it. If you want to know how its made, well that demo is the end result. So the end result will be the qualifications
The reason I dont like UDK or Unreal or whatever is 2 things. 1: Using Unreal doesn't teach you how to program or the concepts in 3D programming or how to make and manage a terrain system. UDK is more like "hey I can put my art in this thing and it works." 2. I want to train the people that make UDK and Unreal engines. Most people want to know how to do stuff rather than just use the stuff blindly in my opinion. Plus how many people that are pre-college or in college that want to make a game, can afford to pay for something that big. How many times to people say "we are using UDK but we need programmers for this game we want to make" and the overhead is HUGE, sorting through all that code and what not. And how do you add a camera path or add gameplay in that engine if you don't know what a camera is or any 3D math? You cant.
You got to understand I love working on games, I do it a lot in my spare time and I had to take such a hard long path to get there because there is nothing like what I am doing to just be like "do this, do this, ok let me take explain you this for 5 minutes visually rather than read a confusing book with 1 image".
Most people here will don't have to, and never will go into hardcore engine programming, it is a lengthy process when it's better to just go straight at designing a game instead of making an engine.
UDK or Unity is the perfect pick for someone who is just getting into making games since the most important aspects of making a game is designing it, and learning different aspects related to the core elements of a game, not the engine.
I like videos, but yours seems to be better aimed at people wanting to become game-engine programmers, not people that want to become game designers.
Well I have been a member of gamedev.net and believe me there are thousands and thousands of people who have game ideas, they can design it and be like this game is going to be sweet: then comes, how do we make it? Thats what I want to fill you know. And most of those people do pick UDK as an engine, but then they go, well crap we need programmers. And lets say their design says when I shoot this missile, I dont want it to shoot straight, but I want it to swirl in circles until it hits its target. To implement that design, UDK won't do that for you. When I started years back I was like "I want to know everything about making games." So you have to start somewhere and I'd rather spoon feed people info instead of have them do hours of online searching for tutorials and not understand them or books by all these different authors. None of them actually make a 3D game demo in full.
DVD 2 is basically this:
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So once I'm done filming this whole thing I will put out a video + demo that is: "We are going to make this whole mission together." So when you ask what I am covering, I'm covering that video. Broken down: C++ with OpenGL API, 3D Math (matrices,vectors will be covered extensively throughout the dvd), working in a modeling application, blender (its free, and I love it and am proficient at it) so making basic shapes / texturing / a bit more complex modeling / I will provide all of the art but will again cover some 3d art. No one is going to make sweet 3D art in 1 day, but I also want you to make a game that looks cool and not some like minecraft flight sim game.
And then how to get that art and actually draw triangles and manipulate the model (rotate, move etc). How to make a mini map(basic math, 2d images), put some sounds, how those explosions and smoke work (particle systems), terrain etc. I'm going to go as in depth on these topics as I need and then move on because you could spend more time covering all the topics of how to make and render terrain different ways and that's for someone to go research after they have a running game and want to polish their terrain. This is not a lesson either at how to be a professional programmer, because I'm not covering: the full 9 yards of c++, extreme optimization, multi-threading, every single type of data structure. It's just about taking the steps towards learning how all these games actually made. Not magic, but x,y,z tools, and x,y,z knowledge.
A link to playable games you created using the materials covered by the DVD would also be a good thing to show.
Also, one of the reasons why UDK and Unity are widespread is not just because they are popular or hyped. Their main appeal for artists willing to learn "game making" is that they include powerful editors similar to what we have been using for years, and a rock solid art asset importing pipeline. Taking the time to write importers or even an animation engine from scratch would just be a waste of time...
The problem with this assumption is several things.
1.) Lots of game companies write their own engines, I dont know the percentage but believe me its a lot.
2.) BF3 was a complete engine from scratch, so if you want to get hired as a programmer, you cant just say well UDK did everything for me. UDK is not the answer to everything and believe me some of these engines in the tech world are looked down to, its not just me. But what if you work for game company A,B,C, and they use UDK,Source, CryEngine. Cool you can program some simple scripts in one, but if you have to do any hard core in-depth feature that requires you do know how things work, then again you are hosed.
3.) UDK is a tool to help you, so you can learn how to program the animations you make in maya to work, or use UDK and it will handle the playback, but then comes the problem of "I want to do this or that with animation inside of UDK" If you don't understand how animation is programmed, then your again trying to cut corners and assume "UDK is out there and free, so I know how to make games."
4.) I myself like to know how everything works and because of that in my own engine that I have re-built about 4 times is that I code 60x faster and fix bugs 60x faster because I am in sync with my code, I can make my own game, know every line of code. And when I'm at work it might take me 60 minutes to fix a bug in someones code vs 1 minute or less to fix it in mine. Could you imagine someone that wants to know how to make games and doesn't hardly know programming to open up UDK and try to program my example of a missile that locks on to a target and swirls around?
In other words, you know how to do art probably fairly good, you might know UDK. Could you make the game by yourself. You would say, no cuz I'm not a scripter/programmer. So again that's why these are geared at programming. I went to DigiPen and it was and probably is the only school that makes you write everything from scratch, so that when you get hired or want to make your own games, you at least know whats going on. Interview question: "How would I make a missile swirl." "Well I would load up UDK and drag this thing on this thing." "ok, we dont use UDK, what math would you use to do this." Does that explain it a bit more?
UDK as far as I know is still not free to release indie games on is that correct? So if that is true, then what happens if I actually do want to make a sweet game as and indie:
http://www.wolfire.com/
This guy now has a publishing deal on his own! and didn't pay 1 million to get Unreal licensed.
[ame="
http://www.frictionalgames.com/site/ (3 guys, 1 programmer, created Amnesia)
But If I'm not mistaken, It's $99 for an indie to release a game with it. Then once you earn over $50,000 you start paying 25% of your profits. For most indie devs, the tools are well worth that.
What you're saying about UDK and Unity is true. However you're advertising your DVD on a forum full of artists, we're only telling you what we want. You can take that how you will, we're only trying to help out.
But there are 2 things wrong with this idea,
1) Math and Programming DVDs do not sell well, I would rather read a book for it instead of watching a DVD.
2) You do not have a single proper game figured out. Aside from the pong game, since the codes are right at the back of "Deitel's C++ How to Program: Sixth Edition." The tank game is kind of easy once you get through the pong game.
<.<
Good stuff though. My suggestion, try posting this on www.gamedev.net and www.dreamincode.net.
EDIT: You are right, it is a huge ass task. And also, I dont know if you can explain concept of AI in one DVD. =\
EDIT2: I also suggest that you should break the process down even further in your second dvd.
I'm proud of my art, I used to feel shit about it but lately (first 10 images or so) I really stepped it up. Most programmers cant even make a cool looking box you know? I just loved seeing good looking games and 3D art in general so I did it slowly as I learned. And thats ALL self-taught through trial and error. Never had any training.
http://dpadam450.deviantart.com/gallery/
For 1.) I would have LOVED video tutorials and still would love them to expand more knowledge. I love seeing video/slides of GDC stuff online, are you kidding me. You can watch how Halo Wars did their terrain system. Of course it won't help much if you don't already know programming again. And what is offered in books right now doesn't answer what I wanted to know, how do I accomplish making a full 3D game. I read so many books and still go "what next"? I'm making this because I wish this was out when I started because I would have paid for it and probably would have learned so much stuff so fast instead of learning a bit from this guys book and that book and asking for help online hoping someone answers and explains it in a short forum paragraph. For 2.) I said I'm doing a flight sim game, very similar to recreating a mission in the video I posted. I have not started that DVD yet so nothing is designed at all. Hoping to start tomorrow but after some suggestions from here and elsewhere I'm fixing a few things.
Again this was originally just an announcement, I don't want to try and explain everything I'm doing. When its done then its done.
Again though this whole idea of I dont want/need to ever write an engine is the artist perspective. But if you started a project today in UDK, you would need a programmer. I was told once that in at least one of the version (maybe still is) of Unreal that they didn't have IK in their animation playback. Can you imagine not having any experience coding an animation system and then trying to put IK so your characters feet don't go through the ground. These ideas are still taught and need to whether you are going to pick up UDK or not. I've never worked in UDK but I know someone that worked on a game in Unreal as an animation programmer to blend animations and do things. Again though, focused for a programmer. Not for someone that wants to fiddle with strictly artwork and level editors. Someone has to build the editors, add new features etc.
With that I'm burnt out for the day and hopefully not too many more questions need to be asked, especially because I don't think anyone cares as the stuff here probably doesn't interest anyone specifically, plus I havent even started the good stuff yet. Nothing more to show other than to announce.
Not true, I'm sure a lot of people here have worked on indie titles before or would like to in the future. If this was an announcement by Eat3D or 3DMotive with a title like "How to make indie games Vol.1" or "Engine programing and development" It would have been swarmed with prospective customers. But that's because they already have a reputation built up for quality training materials.
Honestly, I have the same approach, thats why this thread interests me. The difference is, I am learning it thoroughly on both the artist side and the game programming side. Even if you do not have a sample to prove that you have been studying how to program a game atleast have proper resources stating them out thoroughly and explain what have you used.
I just crammed through your website and found out that you dont even have proper resources, Gamedev.net is not a resource, it is a game programmer / developers forum where you practically go and do what we do here. The only difference is, the majority there deals with coding. Same goes for Dream in Code.
What books are you reading if I may ask?
Before you go on any further. Here are some books that I suggest you should consider:
Maths:
Grade 12 maths book that has problems you can practice on.
Mathematics for game developers by Christopher Tremblay.
3d Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development by Dunn and Parberry.
C++ Programming:
Deitel's C++ How to Program: Sixth Edition.
and any C++ book with complete reference.
3d Game Programming:
Introduction to 3d Game programming with Directx 9.0c by Frank D. Luna
Introduction to 3d Game programming with Directx 9.0c by Frank D. Luna (Shaders Approach)
Isometric game programming with directx 7.0 (Only because the writer starts with 2d than takes it on to 3d)
Beginning C++ Through Game Programming, Second Edition.
Windows programming with C++.( Not exactly necessary because creating a basic window is what every game programming introductory book will teach you)
For game engine:
Pro OGRE Programming by Gregory Junker.
Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory.
Try these and see if they help you in terms of making the fighter jet game for starters.
Coding an animation, rendering, and coding dynamics are a bit too advanced topics for startups.
Good luck.
EDIT: The reason I said that people would prefer books instead of DVDs for coding and maths, is because when you are coding your own program, you wont have time to look for the dvd, skip through the sections. I dont know, it kind works that way.
As Polyhertz said, you couldn't be more wrong. I think the fact we're giving feedback shows we are quite interested. As prospective purchasers of your DVDs, you should be taking what we say onboard. Sure, you arent going to change your series focus to UDK or Unity, but you know for next time that there is a market for it.
You should at the very least take onboard our comments on the presentation of your DVDs. There isn't enough information on your webpage for any of us to make an informed purchase.
It's true, but they wouldn't ever do engine development videos. Large amounts of indie developers have never ever written engine code, and most don't have to, and people here would want to make games, not engines.
You're over-dramatizing it, every engine has its up and downs, and engines like UDK has the least downs, but since there's a licensing costs involved companies still choose to build their own tech.
But then you're applying for a job as an engine programmer, you wont work as a game designer or gameplay programmer if you do, game designers these days might know how to make games, game design rules, how to implement stuff in code, but it's likely they don't know how to write a renderer.
It's the biggest bane of programmers wanting to be game designers today, they'll spend nearly all their time writing engines and never ever get to making the actual game, a lot of time is wasted doing this.
Going back to having worked in the games industry: Most people here would agree, working with real games give you some real raw experience that will shape your skills and give you something that just cannot be learned any other way.
If you haven't been through the process of making proper good games and released them, having to take feedback and low scores and then re-iterate, how will you teach good and proper game design and game-play coding?
Many people writing tutorials or books about game design or game programming are veterans and have real experience to refer back to, and most will almost always tell people to not re-invent the wheel so that they can easily prototype games and get to making games without having to make an engine.
People should only get into engine programming if they truly enjoy coding.
Ok, first off; People should only get into game engine programming if they want to create a valuable asset for their independent game studio, and they have a good knowledge of how it will be when coded.
Secondly, it saves you from a hell lot of Royalties that if you happen to read Epic License agreement will tell you. Since you will be making close to nothing when you startup your game studio. I assume if you do not rely on loans and grants, you are pretty much fucked.
I think this topic is about Game Development as a whole, you are sectioning things out for Game Designer and Game programmer. If thats the case, dont you guys have like 10 people sitting in line where some 2d artist would complete the arts, than passes it on to a 3d modeler, 3d modeler would pass a completed model to a render/texture dude, render/texture dude would pass the textured model to animator, animator would pass the rigged and animated model to the coder, coder to the analyst, coder to the database, analyst to coder...and so on.
This is just a brief break down of the things but seriously, think from the game developer's prospective instead of game designer's for this discussion please.
No idea what you're talking about
More money is wasted on time-wastes and not actually getting games done at all, using tested and versatile tech like udk or unity will definitely without a doubt be worth the price unless you're doing a simple 2d game.
If we're talking indie games then the game designer and game programmer will often be the very same person, if we're talking the games industry the game designers will often have some experience in programming even if he might not use it fully.
While we do have seperate groups for different areas of game art, we still have environment artists doing both models and textures, and might even decorate the environments with it, so while there is specialization, it's not be all end all, and with indie games you do just about everything.
You should name the thread "my new game engine programming dvd" if you wanted it to not be about that, otherwise game development is about designing and programming games, not often engines.
not too sure about that, I'm sure you can trace Frostbite 2 all the way back to the Refractor engine in '99 or at least back to Frostbite 1.
I'm not doubting the DVD, most programmers will be involved with rewriting major parts of an existing engine until it becomes a new engine for their studio. For example: Unreal 2 became the LEAD engine or how Gamebryo evolved into Creation.
So by the end you might say, well I want to add to this game. I want to put a nuclear bomb in. Ok so I model the bomb, place it onto my airplane by parenting it, ok I need to build a particle for it, ok parent that to the bomb, etc. I don't know UDK tutorials that well, but how many teach you how to add a spot for weapon attachments onto any object, and tell it that when it collides that it should play this particle system, when you hit A it should detach from the plane and go into free-fall etc. Or to say do a turn around like good old starfox where you do a backwards loop and go in the opposite direction. UDK doesnt have a button that says "Do starfox backwards loop." You have to program that into UDK.
I see the same things being said over and over.
1.)This is aimed to make you able to learn art and coding to make your own games. It is focused on programming as you can still make a bad looking game, but you need programming to do anything. UDK or not.
2.)Programmers are everywhere in game studios, whether you are writing an engine from scratch on BF3, using UDK, writing your own indie game, you STILL need to know all the stuff I am presenting in this game. When its done you can take it to any lead programmer and be like "hey do you know this stuff", they will tell you yes. Interviews as a game programmer with be like "what is a dot product and how do you use it" (most common thing asked). So one obviously that is covered here, and the answer is "to compute the angle between vectors, I can use it to do lighting in a shader, I can use it to find the angle of a gun in the world so it shoots the proper direction." So this question wouldn't be asked if what I'm saying I'm doing is not relevant.
I'm just putting it as one big resource. So again, what I am teaching is 100% essential, some people might just focus on UI programming, some might do graphics, physics, but I'm giving you the overall of what you need to know to author your own game, or get hired as a game programmer(doesnt matter if its gameplay, systems, graphics). So if your only focus is pro 3D art and animation, then, correct, use UDK and go to gamedev.net and post that you need a UDK programmer. I'm trying to train that UDK programmer you need though.
Furthermore, to nail it in completely. If you have never written an animation engine, or at least read about it, how do you expect to be hired to fix something with an animation system? You will do this in a pre-built engine or a studio internal one. I'm teaching stuff that is 100% used, relevant, and essential to know. And when it is broken down as I am doing, it is not that hard to do a lot of things. At some point you will realize how everything you see when you play a game works. Until the DVD is out, then I don't have anything cool or any better way to explain this so that's all.
My hope in the future is to have more specialized DVDs, but again my goal is to actually have people make a complete game. I don't care about writing c++ or doing 3D art if I don't know how to make a game. Other places teach those 2 things, I'm teaching how to make a game.
Besides the luxurious fact of having it on DVD, how is this any better than the books that I have enlisted for starters and read almost all of em?
Practically, you are just putting that on DVD. It is understood that no one else have done it but so far thats the only reason I am seeing. The main reason there are very few programming DVDs is because people would prefer books over DVDs for programming.
So aside from that. What is new in your dvd that is not stated in any game programming book?
A DVD offers showing visually what you are programming, if you imagine taking a college course in CS, you will have slides, whiteboards. So almost everything in this entire DVD has to be done visually in my opinion. Its not just write this class, ok inherit, it is so much more. You could learn from a book, but I'd still prefer a DVD even if that is all I was covering.
The books I read early on that left me with still no complete scope of how Halo is made are:
Beginning C++ Game Development (good for learning a bunch of c++, not learning game development)
Advanced 2D Game Development (early edition was really bad, still didn't teach me to make a game, after reading this book I tried to make the tank game I make in this DVD1 and I couldn't do it)
So after 2 full books I still couldn't make the game tanks and have destructible terrain.
Game Coding Complete (not a step by step book doing each line of code/problem, never finished reading)
OpenGL Game Programming + More OpenGL Game Programming (more like just OpenGL game programming, you don't make a full scale game with these. It will teach you openGL but not how to make a full game)
I read a couple other ones and then just kept at it and it took me a good 5 years to be like "dude I get it, I can make my own games now, by myself". But after that I still have read some of the AI Wisdom, GPU Gems, Shader X, and those are great if you have the 5 years behind you to add something to your engine, but none of these books either by themselves or as a group, will ever teach you how to break down a full 3D game step by step. I'm creating these DVD for the simple fact they did not do enough justice in teaching me what I wanted to know. Even college bugged me a lot because everything was "student games" and I pushed (and failed so many times) to make REAL games both in class and outside of class. I spent a lot more time than everyone did at actually wanting to make real games. One kid that was even claimed smart, got a 4.0 or close to didn't know what "diffuse" meant. Whether you are a programmer or artist, I think it is absolutely needed to know as much as you can about everything game related.
If you are seriously interested, I'll be putting the new site up and you can sign up for the "Notify when available" button.
It comes down to: I release the DVD with a video + game demo. If you feel like you could make that game demo on your own, the DVD is worthless to you, if not, then its going to teach you to make the whole game demo. Each chapter has separate source code files that add up over time, so you can always just watch the parts to see what I am doing if you already know a few things and just want to see what I did.
Good luck
Thanks for this!
For those interested again, there is a notify button when available on the next DVD. ETA is at the shortest 2 weeks, probably in the 3 to 4 week range though.
Also why dont you put the first free 1/4 on the site itself ? It's all quite puzzling really.
All you really need to show is a bunch of games you created. Also don't bother with 1995 style website, just go for a simplistic blog template.
I think the gnomon site is great but I don't have 20 DVDs and authors and this and that, so it is hard. Not big into web stuff. Maybe a simple flash site? That sound good?
Track downloads. Could remove it. The banner originally was to be the idea: PONG to Halo. I thought of changing it already as it doesn't really fit the web design.
Avoid Flash.
As for blogs, again its all about being efficient ad to the point - you don't need to make a website from scratch in CSS if your goal is to sell a DVD. Go for the most effective route.
Some examples, not necessarily great but just wanted to show that less is usually best.
http://www.bloggerbits.com/2010/08/14-beautiful-minimalist-design-blogger-templates/
You can go veeeery simple too
http://piorism.blogspot.com/
Guess I'll disagree about the blog though. My last site was pretty crap and as people said "It just looks so bad it doesn't appeal to me to spend money." So I kinda feel the same way about those blogs, at least from the ones you posted.
Going to be a fun journey and hopefully it overall pops some good reviews. If it doesn't get a 5 star, then I'll edit it to make sure people understand the topics better. I want people to really get this stuff.
With that I'll cut the thread, it's pretty long already.
Be sure to update this thread as you update your vlog, and request the admin to move this thread in to Pimping and Previews section for critics and show offs.
EDIT: Stating that you have slacked off just because you were playing video games isnt a good idea. You can talk about it sure, but make it relative to the subjects of your vlog since its focused on game programming. Or if, you created the stream:: i/o s and you know that it is going to take alot of time to compile, you can talk about those between that time. But make sure you relate that to your work, for positive reviews.
Good luck.