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Discussion on game development

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BDR:

--- Quote from: Kornel Kisielewicz on June 22, 2007, 05:07 ---Yay, first ChaosForge forums flamewar ^_^

--- End quote ---

>_>; Are you really sure this is the kind of thing you want to mark as a milestone? ...:P

Picklish:

--- Quote from: Karry on June 23, 2007, 00:13 ---
--- Quote ---A good coder, like any other discipline, is someone who can take the job placed before him/her and get it done efficiently, regardless of what the job is.
--- End quote ---
Uh, yeah, right. "hello, world" - anyone ?
--- End quote ---

I'm sorry, but Derek is right on the money here.

Karry, your argument seems to boil down to this: games in some genres are more complex, therefore people who work on them are better coders.  I would agree that some genres require more resources to complete, but not that they require better programmers.  I would also even maybe agree that some genres also require more outside knowledge (physics, math, AI, networking, hardware, graphics, etc.), but working on tasks that require them don't make people better programmers either.  That sort of experience and knowledge is orthogonal to being a good programmer.

(BTW: Does anybody else but me feel like coder is a pejorative word or at least a bit myopic? Saying coder is like calling an author a wordsmith.  There's way more to writing than just pen to paper.)

Santiago Zapata:

--- Quote from: Picklish on June 23, 2007, 06:56 ---(BTW: Does anybody else but me feel like coder is a pejorative word or at least a bit myopic? Saying coder is like calling an author a wordsmith.  There's way more to writing than just pen to paper.)

--- End quote ---
Yeah... I prefer the much more sophisticated term: "Developer" :P

Anyhow...I don't want to hype the difficulty of developing a roguelike compared to another genres... it is an entirely different endeavour; development and game design skills are fuelled by willpower instead of money when you develop this kind of games.. thus, profficience in programming is on a secondary layer when compared to willpower and capacity to complete playable products.

Also, I think that's one misconception of you Karry... roguelike developers are not commonly perceived at DA 1337 h@x0rs.... In my opinion the common perception is of a dreamer developer fighting (commonly alone) against the tides of modern gaming,

Newts Revenge:

--- Quote from: Rabiat on June 22, 2007, 01:31 ---
--- Quote from: Newts Revenge ---I've been in a few game-making teams, and it's disheartening to see people arguing about whether someone is a better coder because they work on graphical 3D games or roguelikes.
--- End quote ---

This topic is about someone's qualities as a coder? I mistook it for a discussion about the difficulties of coding RLs. My bad.


--- End quote ---

My bad, although it did seem to have degenerated into "who is more l33t" at one point.

Anyway... I think I agree with most posters on this thread except for Karry. Roguelikes have their own set of difficulties and not all of them are to do with programming. Lone wolf developers who produce anything good are worth a lot of respect, especially so if they give it away for free and develop a community around it. And procedural content generation is a technical and design Holy Grail for games, which most commercial developers shy away from due to its difficulty, even while they are putting complex graphics and physics engines into their projects... so a Roguelike isn't just a "hello world" project by a long shot. However I do think that the poster above who pointed out that roguelikes arrange content procedurally more than they generate it has an excellent point. I don't know whether I agree with that or not, I would say it depends where you draw the line to say what is "content".

Also, to me "coder" is just a shorter way to write "programmer" :) "Developer" is more all-encompassing though.

Kornel Kisielewicz:
For me, the "pinnacle of coding" is definitively Frontier : First Encounters. And this is the "Castle in the Sky" (Berserk fans - pun intended) that I'm aiming at.


--- Quote from: Karry on June 23, 2007, 00:13 ---
--- Quote ---If you're talking about the "pinnacle" of coding and discussing genres, you've already hurt whatever argument you're going to make afterwards.
--- End quote ---
No, i dont think so. I just happen to know the specifics of working on said genres, while you do not, thats all.

--- End quote ---
I rarely write anything negative about posters on my forum, but with this quote you've made a fool of yourself Karry :). Yet, it made me laugh, so kudos for you, and please don't feel offended -- negative comments are always welcome too :).

As for "coder". Maybe it may sound negative. I always liked the term "developer" more anyway.

My main point with the whole "programming hardness" discussion -- imagine a roguelike. Imagine a space-shooter. Frontier is what happens when you move the roguelike philosophy into the space genre. Coding a frontier-like is a LOT harder than a normal space shooter. And this jump in hardness is *A LOT* bigger than jumping from "ASCII graphics" to "nice graphics".

Thanks Derek for your voice in the discussion - it means a lot to me :).

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