questions about game development from web developper's point of view.

Question

hi folks, i've been making web app's and working with various server side language like php, ruby, perl for a while now. I've always been curious about game development, it's actually what I set out to do but I ended up in web development. I am trying to transition in to GD, but I cannot help see games from a web development POV.

GD = Game Development WD = Web Development

Technical Questions.

1. How do you design UI in games? in WD you have CSS, and need minimal graphics to create a quick menu. are there similar tools or concepts in GD ?

2. How do you deal with storing data ? Do you use flat text files? Or is there something like MySQL or sqlite that you use to store information about objects, users, and etc ?

3. What game engines is commonly used ? Are there any that use scripting languages ? I only know VB and basic understanding of C.

4. With the proliferation of Iphone and Android, is J2ME being phased out for mobile phones ?

5. open 3D web is coming. What is your thoughts on having 3d applications running natively from your browser ?

6. What tools make it easy for creating 3D objects, levels, game environment, and animating characters and so on ?

7. Where can I find out more about how server/client, client/client, and MMORPG networking works ?

8. Where can I get or find generic or commonly used game flows ? for multiplayer ?

9. How do you deal with physics? Is there freely available algorithm or library that you can use ?

10. How are real time cutscenes made in games ?

Market Questions.

1. Which market should you enter? Mobile, iphone, wii, PSP, DS, android , ps3, PC etc. Shouldn't you always enter mobile market, as it is easy to make small games on your own yet sell a lot ? Are there any resources where i can find more about each markets ?

2. What is your thought on Steam content distribution ? Is it the distribution model of the future ? Whats wrong with the traditional publisher/distributor model ? How does the traditional model work exactly ?

3. How big is the web games market? ex) Flash games.

4. How is game development different from any other software development or web development ?

I have a lot more....but those are the ones that I have been thinking about lately.

Thank you very much for reading !

Answer 1

1. UI Development

   Depends on the game- is it animated, or a board-style game? Generally, UI assets are created as images, sprites, or storyboards.

2. Data

   Again, depends on the game type. Realtime games need FAST access, so you want to store your data in a local database and cache it as much as possible. Local file-based databases tend to be the norm, either custom or off-the-shelf, such as SQLLite.

3. Engines

   There are tons of engines out there for 3D, board, etc. Popcap has made their C++ game engine open source. Others include Unity, Ogre3D...

4. J2ME

   I wouldn't target this platform for games.

5. Don't know much about "Open 3D Web" but it sounds very browser-dependent, so mileage may vary across browsers.

6. You can play with 3D with Google Sketchup and Caligari Truespace. Truespace was bought by Microsoft and made free.

7. Again, tons of engines out there for networking. Example: Microsoft's XNA framework has some networking bits you can leverage.

8. Not sure what you mean there.

9. There are physics engines built into some of the gaming engines I've mentioned, and external ones you can use.

10. Once upon a time, realtime custscenes were pre-rendered with 3D Studio Max or Maya. These days in-game rendering is often good enough for cutscenes: look at the latest Halo 3:ODST game. All cutscenes use the in-game engine.

Market

I looked into game development earlier this year. Casual games look to me like a growth industry- high volume, relatively low development cost. Big Fish Games for the PC is a good example there- they publish a few titles and resell most.

I think mobile game development is a huge potential market but the barriers to entry are high because it will be a crowded space. iPhone games are the 800lb gorilla but Android is coming up. PSP and others have a limited audience and are notoriously difficult.

The most important thing I learned in my research is that game development is a labor of love. It's hugely multi-disciplinary: you need programming, art, concept, production. It's more like making a movie than anything else. It's also rough to make a profit because of all that overhead. If you want to get into it, I recommend joining a game developer to learn the business. Once you have experience you can carry it forward to larger gigs at larger publishers. Eventually you can get to work on a major AAA title, after which you can really write your own ticket.

Answer 2

It depends very much on the platform you are developing for. some game engines, or platforms, have built in platform specific means of creating UI systems. An example is developing for the 360 where there is a proprietary UI system provided with the SDK tools.

However, systems like these tie you to a particular platform and this can be undesirable.

Another alternative is cross platform libraries like Scaleform, which provide game-side libraries for displaying UI elements, and a common way of editing and creating UI systems across different platforms.

Answer 3

The complexity of UIs in videogames varies wildly. Look at something like Peggle, compared to something like Codemaster's Dirt or EA's Dead Space. Each system is therefore implemented differently.

Some use 3D packages and the standard game engine to animate and render UIs. Others implement Flash. Others roll their own custom solutions. There's no easy choice or a standard like CSS I'm afraid!

Hope this helps,

-Tom

Answer 4

I'll stick to answering the technical questions:

1 - UIs are usually completely bespoke, with nothing resembling a standard in the same way that HTML/CSS is a web development standard. Some people use ScaleForm which is based on Flash but that is by no means common.

2 - Data is often stored in flat files - rarely text, more commonly binary. Again, these are almost always completely bespoke formats. Sometimes they are aggregated into archive files which use the zip format or something similar however. Occasionally, some programs might use sqlite, and online games often use SQL databases.

3 -There are many game engines used, although the definition of 'common' is vague. There are well-known ones like the Unreal or Source engines, down to lesser known ones like Panda3D or Torque. Some of these are heavily focused on 3D and leave much of the rest of the functionality to other packages (or the game developer themselves). Most are able to be used with scripting languages, or come with one built-in. (eg. UnrealScript).

4 - J2ME - couldn't say, that's not the sector I work in.

5 - 3D web will be interesting when it's ready, but cutting edge games currently require gigabytes of client-side data. Running the application in the browser doesn't get around that download, so it's not a great benefit. Nor is it likely to be as high performing as a dedicated 3D game renderer for quite some time. So while it opens many doors, it doesn't significantly change the state of play for gaming just yet.

6 - 3D art assets are usually made with 3D Studio Max or Maya, although there are several other related tools.

7 - MMORPG networking firstly requires understanding of basic networking (ie. strip away all the HTTP fluff and get right down to the socket level). Start with Beej, work up. From there, you're best off reading talks given at conferences and reading the Massively Multiplayer Game Development books, coupling that with anything you can find on traditional game networking. 2 good starting points are the Source Multiplayer Networking docs, and Gaffer's Networking for Games Programmers. Don't expect to understand everything the first time you read it, either. And bear in mind this is a field with ongoing research and the problems are far from solved yet. And that it's also a field where "if you have to ask, you can't do it yet". Emphasis on yet.

8 - I don't know what you mean by game flow - it's not a term I've heard used before.

9 - There are several physics libraries available, including Havok, ODE, Bullet, PhysX, Box2D, etc. Some are free, some are not. You can also write your own physics for simple games, as it's not all that hard, and indeed that is what everybody did until relatively recently.

10 - Real time cutscenes are typically either pre-animated in something like 3D Studio Max, or scripted to run within the game engine.