How to make a game.

[fais3000]

hey, first i must say ,its a very very informative thread. I was wondering could any one tell me how much a person has to learn to make a character in a 3d envoirnment explore the area, without any ai involved, only collision detection with the objects around. I hav fair amount of understanding DX , C/C++, MFC and most importantly modelling. But i am new to game programming.

[fais3000]

sorry , i forgot to mention, i dont want to use a mode to create above kind of demo

[hyperkinetics]

Originally Posted by Animaleante

where can I find this torque program??

http://garagegames.com/
You can download a demo of it there, and buy the proper version, it is worthwhile buying it. access to lots of info, and very active forums

[Animaleante]

oh...thanks hyperkinetics...I was almost giving up on finding this program

[MIFUNE]

Originally Posted by fais3000

sorry , i forgot to mention, i dont want to use a mode to create above kind of demo

Huh??

A MOD could be more than a simple demo... ... The authors of Clive Barker's Undying did something like a MOD with the UT Engine, and this game is a true JEWEL .

[Yaurah7]

Based in relativity to the functions oƒ time we are already 4-D, but 7-D with duality, and progressive energy change and sorting mechanisms 7 Dimensional architecture is right around the corner ƒor a few programmers...need like a dual quad machine (MCPUC) Multiple Comp. Processor cores with separating support, and a good reality scan laser modeler ƒor input....Sorry Im getting carried away a bit....I like the article though...Time is oƒ essence in anything....


PEACE 7000

[Bor1s]

First i just want to say that i am a complete amateur.I've never even seen 3ds max or something.I now some of the terms and i've seen some videos,read some articles but that's it.Here is what i don't understand with games.Why can't we have games with photorealistic textures?I mean check out the first Mortal Kombat games.They look great.Well yes the resolution was kinda low but we have HD now so this shouldn't be a problem.What does it take for a game to become photorealistic?What do today's games don't have which the games of tomorrow will?It seems i asked more than one question...oh well they are connected.Thank you!

[madmenno]

Maybe i'm just talking a bunch of crap , but this is what i know.

Some scenes and characters are nearly fotorealistic from a distance. Thing is you can stand close to something in game and then it needs more and more detail. From what i have heard, the video memory needs more speed and capacity to increase the amount of textures that can be loaded.

And theres lighting too, real light bounces, deforms and scatter on differend kind of surfaces. Some photoreal renders take days to render on a normal PC, thats mostly becaus of the lighting.

Also if you look at the normal 3D model section, those fabulous models that people create sometimes have millions of polygons to make round surfaces (computers can't draw round things, they build it up out of pixels.

The late 2D computer games often looked way better then the first 3D games. This is becaus there was no need of a complicated 3D engine, it had no geometry to render and could focus on textures only. But now, look at some next gen game models, only if you look closely you can see a squary silluette.

[Bor1s]

So what you are saying is that it't all about numbers-polygons per character,number of textures,resolution of textures.And of course the lightning.But how can we make photorealistic textures-is it about talent?I mean there is difference in the skill of Leonardo and some average artist,right?
And can't we photograph the textures?
P.S.Actually your answer seams very sensible(because i thought the same things but i need more (as you can see i am still asking questions) ).

[Perversonality]

There's no reason why you couldn't use photos for textures. A lot of studios use photos as the basis for textures and paint over the top of them to get the effect they want. 3D engines are becoming more sophisticated and realism is increasing as a result, but if you want to sell a game in massive amounts then you need to make sure that you still support older hardware as not everyone runs the latest systems. There are also time considerations for photorealism in terms of development time. Graphics in games do not need to be perfect - when you look at a still shot of a game, it looks worse than when it's moving. Check out most MMORPGs. The graphics are lower poly than racing games or two character fighting games, but when they are moving around, they are often more immersive (and addictive) than more complexly modelled games. The brain is very good at filling in missing details automatically.

Photo-realism isn't always a good thing too. Check out Rise of the Robots. For its time, the graphics were the best thing ever. The gameplay absolutely sucked though as too much effort was put into the visuals and not enough into the playing/enjoyment side of things. FMV in movies was a fad that thankfully seems to have passed away - millions were thrown at famous actors who were basically filmed as if making a movie. The problem with the games was that it was like watching a movie instead of playing a game, and not so much fun.

Playability > visual perfection/realism

Fun > visual perfection/realism

[madmenno]

It's just we have to wait a while to get perfect photoreal 3D shooters and other games. Textures need to be sharp even when your walking against a wall, textures need to tile perfectly seamless. And if you look around in the real world there are a lot of things to look at, like my desk for instance... it's so dirty you will need a whole lot of poly's and textures to model it photoreal .

Anyway it will probably take a couple of decades to take some screenshots of your bank rob in GTA and make someone beleve you realy did that .

But hey, there are already people who make environments for next gen where i have to blink a couple of times to see that it's modeled so maybe i'm wrong .

[Bor1s]

Check it out.By my calculations we should have photorealism in 2025.PS2 launched in 1999 and it reached a max of 6000 polys per character.The polys of the PS were 8 times less.Now PS3 launched in 2006-7 years after PS2.It's bound to have atleast 8 times the polycount of the PS2.You get something like the law about CPUs-every 18months they double their speed.My law is that we 8th the polycount every 7 yers whcich means that in 2025 a few years after the PS5 will have launched i will have about 3mill polys per character which is perfect.I also want to state that gameplay is the most important thing but right now i'm just asking about graphics because graphics show our technological advancement.Gameplay is more due to imagination and ones genius if i may do say so myself.

[agony]

I am a C# user that wanna learn Direct X, so if there is a direct X user here can you tell what time do U need to learn it and what is the best way, does those tutorials that comes with it are enough?

[madmenno]

I think it takes us longer then 2025. Like i already said it's not the polies that count alone. It's animation, textures, lighting, sounds. If some guy here on the forum is rendering out a model of a pretty simple but "real" room it takes him a lot of time. Let's pick an hour (i know some insane people are rendering every light bounce till theres no more light, wich would take severly longer ofcourse). So in a video game you would like to have a fps (frames per second) of atleast 40.... calculate again .

Then you need ai, animation, sound running smooth and nicely too....

Also, they can't realy speed up processors anymore with the current technolgy. Just make them bigger or introduce dual core. The technology isn't evolving as quickly as 20 years ago. The digital revolution is near his end... Unless there comes another real big breaktrough that gives us another sprint in technology to 2025.

In short... I don't think we gonna make your deadline

[KVachon]

they can always just pack more onto the processor. apple has already announced 8 core.