Digital Amusement Game Development
  
|
Fortunately, I suppose..., I can rely upon knowing that a number of high profile names in the FSK405 community have assumed bitter feelings towards myself and would not easily welcome my presence. Realistically, none of them should, and I suspect any bad feelings towards me are just inherit artifacts of the internal drama that ensued before my departure. No substance, just a feeling of necessity to fill some arbitrary role that paints me ..whatever ugly thing I’m potentially perceived as. It’s no wonder drama is essentially the basis of most religion. Can’t pick up my masterpiece map, cause I gave it away! “Should I have done that?”, I now ask myself. Phew, regret anyone? Nah. I did the right things all the way through. On the flip side, my accomplishments are growing. Through my new efforts, I found myself standing in front of Richard Garriott’s manor, now for sale. In my /end gamedev. post, I utterly failed to remember the whole basis of what got me in this realm of game development in the first place. It was the famed Lord British, and his open world designs that opened my mind to realize what a fun game really can be. The concept of doing what you want, how you want. Totally forgot to explain this and it’s been burning at me to write a follow-up. I modeled so much of my life based on inherit principles laced in Richard Garriotts’ work, starting 20+ years ago when I was introduced to Ultima V. Later, I find out he’s so much more. It makes me wish I could start over, then work my way up through a different path, a similar one to his, in respect to having the tools to succeed rather than the setbacks that have perpetually grounded me throughout life. Damn. So now I try harder. Maybe I’ll catch up to a glimpse of his shadow over the horizon, if I’m lucky. Seriously if there was one person to really look to for a positive influence, Richard Garriott is the man to beat. He is a living legend. His accomplishments are stellar, consistently keeping ahead of everyone else by leveraging practical innovations. Btw, thanks to all for the shouts in my shoutbox. It gets spammed, but I clean those out occasionally. Let it be known that I don’t have any hard feelings toward anyone in the FSK405 clan, nor the UrT community. If it wasn’t clear before, it was time for me to get out and get away and do something truly productive. I’m glad to be disconnected from FPS’s. Duke Nukem Forever still sits unfinished. BF3 is the current fad I’m glad not to be sucked into. Pouring over shaders for hours, days; can’t do it. The change is nice. Stuff that has sat waiting for attention is getting done. When I get around to it, the gamedev site, and digitalamusement will undergo necessary reconstruction. Although this is a simple site with simple html, it could use some serious renovation to adapt modern web functions. I’m only discussing this here because the forums are effectively decommissioned. Email is the best way to contact me, and if you don’t get a response, assume some configuration issue happened and I never got it so try again or use some other way (no I’m not ignoring you). Those of you that have known me as Wily, I continue to recognize the name, but I don’t really use it for new communications. Thanks for stopping by!
I am officially done with Urban Terror. After letting the dust settle for a week, I went back and read the responses to my goodbye letter. Wow. Sometimes, I guess a person just doesn't realize how much effect they have even when they think they do. The two most senior developers in Frozen Sand were the first to write in their sentiments, and honestly, I am moved. To my greatest curious interest, RabidCow, whom I don't think has ever responded to anything I've ever written, and whom extremely rarely makes any forums posts, had the most powerful words that pierced a hole in my strong will to walk away forever. I've committed to my new path, so I can't balk, and will continue moving forth. But man, words like his, like Bladekiller's, and a number of others, makes it hard not to look back. My greatest contribution to Urban Terror has been preserved. ut4_superman, and the still-in-development ut4_supersoldier maps have been transfered to the most capable mapper in the game, SleepingGuy. He has accepted the responsiblity as maintainer for these maps. Had he not, I would have released all material as open source for the community to do as they please. Over the course of my time as a mapper, I found that releasing .map source files with my maps was far more beneficial to the lifeblood of the game. I was easily able to point green mappers to these files for real world examples of maps they already knew. Quite a number of current community members attribute their successes to my work, which makes me both proud, and reinforces that I made the right decisions to release my work for all to learn from. One member, RFX, made some powerful comments as well, indicating my influence upon him. This is truly an example of what goes around comes around. His contributions to venturing through the hellscape known as the gtkradiant codebase resulted in patches to zeroradiant (1.6). If there was any one contribution through the whole community through the entire time I made maps for the game that really made a difference to me, this was probably the most significant. He patched bugs, added features, and for a short time maintained the code. Being that radiant has been the source of a great deal of frustration over the years, few other contributions could be more welcome. It is a shame that I had to leave FSK405 on unstable terms. Internally, the ongoing struggle between FSK405 superman server admins and key members of the UM3 clan became too much to bear. This was my turf, a realm my work directly created. In that realm some do treat me like a god, and it is a power that comes with responsibilities. The natural cycle in that realm was losing balance. I intervened to restore that balance, but in doing so it appeared I stepped on one side of the scale way too hard. What started as drama was quickly deteriorating into scandal with fingers turning to me. In an emergency manuever to prevent further damage before the situation went catastrophic, I sacrificed my position in hopes that the clan could find an alternate resolution. Unfortunately the price of this move was cashing out my integrity within the clan. With too many external factors in play, I found it impossible to re-invest myself. After weeks of consideration, I submitted my resignation to FSK405 and all related entities. This helped justify my move to quit Urban Terror and leave the community. Developing for supersoldier has been made more difficult by my questioning of my time to a game that doesn't seem to be going anywhere. It'll be 4 years soon since the last game update was released. Many players are refocusing their game time to other games, like Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for instance. At one point Frog mentioned FSK405's main public server was dying (in terms of player usage), which threw me back a bit, but I saw why he came to that idea. Frozen Sand developers had been adding members over the past year to increase their manpower. Decoy as their PR leader and FrankieV as the teams' animator (and alternate PR person in my opinion) have been working with the community in strides to re-strengthen Frozen Sand's image. This however has been like watering the lawn in an extended drought. The water bill is expensive, the grass still dies in spots, the soil just won't retain moisture, and until the environment reshapes itself to sustain life, it's generally an unpleasant place to play for extended periods of time. These guys are trying hard to make a difference - but it's not enough without the actual content the environment needs. Secondly to my point is that when the rain does come, is there any roadmap beyond? How long does the community need to endure another drought? No one in Frozen Sand will publicly commit to a future beyond the next release, nor commit to a release. I had posted to internal UrT quality assurance that point releases are critical to this game, rather than a new version. Working up to a full version via point releases will sustain that metaphorical moisture. I had suggested backtracking to the 4.1 codebase and applying certain updates there, producing a 4.2 version, rather than a now 6.0 version (UrTHD). Even the HD version can not garnish the excitement the developers hope for; not without substantial gameplay improvements. I would expect such improvements as: new movement(s), e.g. power slide or wall jumping, vehicles, basic physics, explosive triggers, full hit detection, a stronger and LESS balanced weapon system (more on that below), automatic environment detailing such as sun and weather lighting, and definitely my biggest beef with 4.1 in it's current state is using maximum resolution textures. Because the current codebase uses single threaded code with almost no hardware acceleration, this makes a graphically rich experience difficuly to achieve for the mapper. On weapons, the by far worst feature in Urban Terror is called "hit spread". Holding the trigger causes your hit grouping to substantially increase by the round. By the time a half-a-magazine is spent, the grouping is spraying over a 15-20 degree area. Even kneeling. Finish the last round, and you could be up to 30 degrees, shooting wildly like some civilian who never handled a gun. It's like a Compton drive-by trying to hit your target. The weapons should all be reset, then assessed against their real-world counterparts, and damage as such. The negev should be a monster. Instead of making it's hits weak, make the gun fire super-loud, volumetrically, so players half-way across the map know you're firing in the distance. The snipers can come get you then. There are so many better ways to balance this game. I'm done concerning myself with these thoughts. I have no game to move on to, no mod, no online game community. In fact I think I'll re-iterate that digital gaming is a bubble with probably another 8 years left before that bubble bursts. Physics have now gone mainstream and have become common features. The next frontier appears to be physical 3D displays, like the Nintendo 3DS, and other displays like it. Sony continues to push 3D shutter glasses. Game companies are finding clever new uses like displaying per-frame rendering per player, so both players can look at the same screen but see completely different views. The XBox Kinect is the coolest thing since the Wii controller, and I expect we will see further related advancements using this technology such as 3D cameras that record movies in polygons rather than flat film. The media center abilities of both the Xbox and Playstation dominate the home theater, making it easy to purchase games through digital distribution channels, but saturates the user with a continually growing library of games - many from indie developers trying to make a name for themselves. Like me! Except I see this trend and don't want to contribute to that uneding saturation. Innovation in indie games is trendy too. A time will come where even game innovation will be lost in the spectrum as the bright colors beamed into the eyes of the gamer become nothing more than blinding white light. Those that stay are the addicts whom have discarded their social ties for the digital entertainment drugs they can not live without. What I'm saying is that even these people will become numb to the euphoric effects of new games, succumbing to immenient boredom, regret, and anger at the industry for failing to provide the quality of drugs they need to sustain the high. After 40+ years of gaming, no significant technology advances remaining, the advent of automated development using statistics, designing based on the optimal neural emotional feedback, including game features solely on sales numbers in widespread fashion, effectively eliminating the game designer to pursue financially safe games, the bubble will burst. I can't compete with this. Maybe now, but not later. I started thinking about the effect of me leaving the UrT community has had. More or less the situation started to set in finally a few days ago. I began seeing the numbers of non-UrT players that got word of my exit - wives, kids, friends, etc. It gave me a sinking feeling, contemplating just how far my presence has extended, and the disheartening impact on scores of people beyond my comprehension. I had become a part of the game. I guess that's why I couldn't quit before, even when I wanted to. In that respect, I would have to say DankRider was the bond, the man who invested so much into my work, helping earn my fame with his contributions to a map concept he believed in. That bond was broken over FSK405 disputes with the UM3 clan, which effectively landed me the opportunity to disconnect. This was the time to act, the time to end a decade of Id Software based gaming. The time to shelve FPS gaming and refocus on personal ambitions. This is a good time. Quite a few new beginnings are emerging. From the ash, the Phoenix is being reborn. These times are always painful, a bit messy, prone to misteps, but significant exponential leaps can not be made without such rebirths. Starting over retaining the same experience? It's a wish of determination. Perseverance. The desire for greatness. Game development has afforded me numerous rich experiences that I will take with me to the next level. Back in 1999, I had applied to get into Digipen for game development. Somehow I came across a guy who was a student there named Sheldon Baines. I asked him questions about the school, the career paths, his perspectives. He sent me back a most enlightening email detailing concepts I would need to know then and through the future. It was quite inspiring. I keep a paper copy of that email as the original was lost. Sheldon went on to work for Nintendo on a few high profile games. Eventually, he too gave up game development to pursue a different path. His success story provides me further inspiration in my new endevours. This is where I take my calculated swan dive into the oblivion below. People that take leaps of faith like this can not tell you where they will be 5 years, 3 years, one year from now. I'm dying to know myself. /end gamedev Archives |
