Things that piss me off about people that want to make FPS games

What were you programming at age 4? I can't imagine a pre-k writing in a language during that period. I ask because I'm not sure if it's an exaggeration on your part or I'm underestimating what my 5 year old can do since she can only write her name and alphabet. She wants to help me I've told her she has to learn to read and write first (instead she draws her designs on notebook paper).

 

I can't clearly remember back that far, but I'm pretty sure I was using command-line OSes before I could otherwise read or or write.

With regards to superpig's conversation with the newbie, it's really common in general software development. The following couple are examples, not quotes from real conversations, but they're the kind of question I get asked pretty commonly.

Other: Sweet, so how long will it take to let me save and load that?
Me: Probably a couple of days.
Other: Days? To add a couple of buttons?

Another one I commonly get challenged by is convincing people that continued work on a prototype, or selling the prototype, is a bad idea.

Other: But I've seen it working. Why can't we just use that?
Me: Because it's a protoype. It's not maintainable, it's inconsistent, and it's buggy.
Other: Why not just fix the bugs?

To be fair, even a lot of programmers don't understand that one and would rather work from the prototype than start again. To me that's a potential sign of inexperience, though, because there's a good chance they're not considering the non-code and/or long-term aspects of the software's development.

 

OP, edgy, funny, full of truth's...... gave me a good laugh and made my day

 

Well, I think kids are not a problem.
Some are brilliant, others not but they are usually easy to read.
Customers who do not pay, employers that do not deliver, platforms that die can be a problem, if you let them.
Question is if how wish to interpret a given situation. "Reality" is truly subjective.
I suggest laughing with those messages. It can make you feel good.

 

Another one of those examples where age does not equal experience or ability, nor is it equal for everyone. Personally, I was reading by the time I started school and up to full chapter books by 2nd grade or so. When my friend's daughter started kindergarten, the school was amazed that she already knew her alphabet; her writing skills are lower than I would have expected, but she excels in other areas.

I realize this is slightly straying from the topic at hand, but it also reflects on the fact that some of those folks who are asking what may seem like "ridiculous" questions to those more experienced with programming simply either have less overall experience with programming or have a focus that is in a different direction.

This is not to dismiss the existence of "I've got an idea. You do all the work; okay?" folks, because there have been too many clear examples of those that I've seen. I do argue that some of the folks who are asking questions like, "How do I make a gun be on a model and shoot?", just do not have the experience to understand how complicated a question that really is. Some people really do expect the "put gun on character" type of button another poster mentioned.

 

I have to admit, I was just thinking this.

Oh, great! You're panning for a pro liscence, and you have figured some really impressive stuff out: the gun's swaying around in the viewport, you've got animated arms and legs and

oops, still S***tier than the Frostbite game with a $10 million dollar budget. I wonder if the $10 million dollar budget, custom engine, publisher support, 100-man team, and three previous game iterations had something to do with that game working so well?

Kids will be kids though. I had that dream, I was realistic about it. This last week I sat up and realized I do actually have the programming and artistic ability it would take and had a reverse mid-life-crisis which is now sucking up all of my time.

 

The bottom line is trying to learn game development before programming concepts on their own is like trying to learn how to ride a bike before walking.

If someone says they have no programming experience you should refer them to step back, learn C++ basics (the real differences between it and C# will be irrelevant) and then come back when they know what data types are, their scope, classes, and how inheritance works at the very least. Unity is a tool for organizing assets and interfacing with an engine, it will not make a game for you; and if it does you probably just made a S***ty placeholder game and learned nothing.

P.S. BUY BOOKS

Also, you should check your narcissism; nobody cares if you're a literal savant, the OP is still very true.

 

As others before me have stated, age isn't the issue. I think the issue comes from influences. I myself for example got exposed to coding when I was about 8-9 years old (Game maker to be exact). I remember spending hours getting a system to work (wasn't actual coding it was a block based system) or making the animation for a 2D character, drawing every frame (with a mouse .-.) That really made me realize, that game development, heck programming alone (I found it hard even with the block based system) wasn't an easy task. More than meets the eye, you could say.
Then I see other kids, who never heard of things like the Commodore 64, or let alone the Nintendo 64, and expect a game to be done overnight. These people aren't dumb, they are ignorant. One is not dumb for asking questions, one is dumb for asking questions, and expecting a simple answer. Be it people older or younger than me, no matter what their age, I will always try and help them get into game development, if it is their passion.


(p.s.: Is it me or did this thread suddenly come back to life after a month cause of my post?)

-Jan from CDS.

 

Each to their own, but the op's post comes across to me merely as judgemental and elitist, showing little more maturity in treating other people with equality or compassion than those that he is accusing of being immature. To me, those newcomers with their apparently limited level of experience are merely offering an opportunity for said op to show us all why he's actually on the same level as their immaturity, and that they merely remind him of himself, which is why he is trying to use them as a skapegoat. I would've instead liked to have heard some reflections on how, in spite of the fact that certain individuals are less experienced, less mature, or perhaps do things that some of us would consider naive or full of delusion, it calls for our compassion and patience and respect, instead of just attacking them as wrong, trying to make ourselves seem more important or righteous. Let them be where they're at. I realize some here might consider this a professional community because they consider that this is what's important to them, but everyone gets equal say in what the community means to them and everyone is allowed to be in whatever state of experience they choose. I would rather not see this community become filled with cold-hearted counter attacks disguised as some kind of justified and important reason for treating certain people as inferior. By all means vent, I guess, everyone's allowed that, but let's not be just as immature as those that we're saying are immature by failing to understand why they're perfectly allowed to be the way they are. When someone says that they are pissed off, that pissed-off person has a problem, and not those that they're trying to blame their upset on.

 

I agree with some that OP came a bit offensive. I can understand that because it is probably an frustration outburst. Seems like one.

Now on the subject. Yes, this is very common. It actually is not strictly related to FPS games.
It is related to video game development in general. Why?

Well here's my opinion. Video games are 'a fun'. So developing them is often misunderstood as being fun as well. When it should be taken work, a job.

Driving a car is not considered fun. Well, it can be fun, but its not purpose of it. So people do not related care development as being fun.

Well, I think most should get my point.

How to solve this? Um, education. Non game developers do not know much about video game development. And another problem is that it is really easy to get into. And I don't mean, learn it. But get access to it.
Search web, get to sites like Unity, download engine. Start messing. Go on forums and ask for FREE help.

When you compare this to trying to ask someone to help you build a car people would laugh.

But this situation wont go anywhere anytime soon until people start to get educated about this. What is not likely to happen.
So people who want to avoid this should learn how to recognize beginners. And not work with them.

On the other hand. There is a good side of this.
Bunch of beginners working on project that will fail (coz it will) is not a bad thing to get FREE experience.
Some of them will become something one day.

Bottom line. Seems like OP has problems with getting right teams.


EDIT: Very funny post tho. Relatable to most I would say.

 

That is where I started as well (though clearly not as bright as you... I was 7-8). I had TONS sheets of graph-paper with my graphics all shaded in. I loved doing that. Then came color, but using sets of two bits you could up 4 colors per char. That was amazing, 4 DIFFERENT colors! Those were the days.

 

This is very generous of you and I do think this community should support hobbyists and young developers, which I believe it does.

I was a little offended at the comment that this is a "Professional Community". I am a hobbyist and although I have decades of programming experience, I asked a lot of dumb questions, which the Unity Community responds to in a helpful way.

I believe the main point that OP was making is that many newbies look for an easy answer without doing some investigation first. i.e. They should use that search box at the top of this page before they hit the "New Thread" button.

 

I am feeling very old reading these nostalgic comments. For me, it was machine code on my home built Z80 system with 8k of ram. On the school computer, I had to use punch cards.

 

Clearly you have never hit JamesLeeNZ on one of his bad days.

 

I love James. His sharp comments always give me a laugh.

 

I don't really understand how it's hard to simply ignore these threads. People need to start somewhere, and when they are starting out they are going to ask noobish questions and think that game development is easier than it actually is. This is natural and it happens all over the place, not just in game development (the more you know, the more you realize what you don't know). If you don't like these questions, it's really not difficult to ignore them. I haven't really noticed this problem because I simply chose to ignore threads that ask oft-repeated questions, and I suggest you do the same if you don't like them.

 

Am I the only one that started out trying to make an RPG?

Still am actually. Lol

I

 

No, and you're not the first person to drag a five year old thread to the top of the forums with nothing to say either.

 

I occasionally miss the days when Crytek and Unreal used to have an insane price tag, and when someone asked that question you could respond with "no, but then this game engine doesn't have a million dollar price tag".

 

How did those kids get their hands on frostbite though, it's a proprietary game engine.

Why not make a FPS? Triple A companies make them mainstream and boring, it's always indie companies that make the best FPS games. The entire genre was invented by a indie studio called ID Software. The genre was then built up by indie companies like Valve (half life) and Digital illusions (Battlefield 1942). Today games like squad and tarkov show the way.

And then we have those awesome VR shooters

 

One of my first projects was writing a 3D raycasting engine using ANSI graphics as a BBS "door program" in QuickBasic. I got it to the point of being able to render a maze and walk around, until I realized my big mistake. I miscalculated the frame rate the modems of the era could handle. I think I forgot to include the ANSI codes to change colors in the data estimates. So what I thought would result in a little below 20 FPS turned out to be around 4 FPS.

I was already making the game just a small box in the corner of the terminal, so I couldn't lower resolution anymore for a playable game, and 4 FPS was unplayable as well.

Young preteen me sad face.

(Note, this was in the long long ago before time, prior to the Internet taking off, when 14.4 modems were brand new and getting online was Compuserve, AOL, or local BBS's)

 

This one time back in 2000 we decided to make an FPS. Talked to Valve about licensing the Half Life engine, etc. but due to various reasons the project never happened. Then we made an adult game on a whim and that became what we've done for going on twenty years now. I don't even play adult games. But we're good at making them, I guess.

Anyway, every time we finish one of our games up we start talking about making the dream game, an old school FPS. Happened just recently again, since we're wrapping up the latest game this week. Now, though, I just don't know. I'm not sure how much more mileage I have in me to keep making games. But yeah, that damned FPS keeps calling.

 

Let's see. Old school FPS checklist:

Guns.
Babes.
Bad one liners.

You've got babes down. Just two more things to add in?

 

Btw FPS for desktop is dead, even valve understands this and makes the next Half Life game in VR

 

CS:GO would like to have a word with you.

Also, the only thing Valve understands is that games you can't monetize extensively are not worth their time.

When your baseline is getting 30% off an entire industry while doing nothing, the bar is set pretty high when you have to do something.

 

I don't think valve expect to monetize extensive on Half Life Alyx but they do it anyway because VR is the future and they want to Kickstart it.

 

1. I'm not convinced. (no cosmetics? nothing?)
2. Even without microtransactions, the "monetization" in this case is "buy our VR stuff, YOU LIKE HALF LIFE, RIGHT?"

 

This is the dumbest thing you've said yet. The retro FPS is seeing a massive resurgence thanks to games like Ion Fury, Dusk, the upcoming Wrath: Aeon of Ruin, and even modern titles like Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal.

 

I think if all video games were only VR, I would stop gaming entirely. It's just too much.

 

If you cant behave, don't post

 

The ROI at best will just be a piss in the ocean compared to if they released for desktop

 

Nah, ROI of a single game means nothing (it's like the same money with 3 other successful games they did not make).

Surely cornering a whole new sub-industry has much greater long term ROI.

 

Yes because they know VR is the future, Valve are visionaries. It's nice to have a game ready in VR when the masses migrate to it

 

I've heard the working title for Half Life: Alyx was "Please buy our VR headset, we swear it's pretty cool".

 

If you can't say things that are true, don't post.

Also it's been years and VR usage reports on Steam are still just barely scratching 1%.

 

I really love how valve sends F*** you to the poor that can't afford VR. When popular franchises like Half Life becomes VR exclusive a new kind of PC master race is born

 

Valve hasn't made a single game other than Dota 2 that has moved the needle for over a decade now. Their talent pool has been drained and refilled a dozen times since then. Half Life hasn't been a relevant franchise in ages because they dragged their feet for so long.

Hell, even Dota 2's been floundering, with queue times so long that a lot of people simply don't bother.

 

Yeah, that's why half life 3 has its own meme culture, it's not hyped at all. Speaking about dumb.. Haha

 

It does have a meme. It has a meme about how it's never coming out. And, hilariously, that meme is getting bolstered by the fact that it's never coming out and they're making a VR prequel instead.

 

True, and if it ever came out it surely never would live up to the hype. So they take that hype and make another game in the same universe, similar to opposing force or blue shift.

It will be awesome, knowing valve they will make good use of the knuckles controllers for some cool physics puzzles

 

Or, you know, it'll be a mess, like Artifact.

And, you know, it probably won't move the needle much at all because Valve's done little more than work on monetization attempts and tech demos while also getting bogged down in money laundering scandals.

If you actually kept up with what's going on in the industry instead of getting mired in your personal fan style reactions, these are things that would be a lot more apparent.

 

Yeah, I too think it will be as successful as their last game.

 

Similar to my self valve don't do half assed things, take their bow mechanics in the lab, it's better than any other VR bow.

I'm sure it will be a very well made game, sure a bit mainstream so it won't have as good and realistic gun mechanics as our own game, but it will be awesome never the less. And as a bonus it will draw in new players to the superior medium

 

So you haven't played Artifact.

 

Nothing is ever dead in the indie world. If there was once an audience for something, there very well likely still is. For a company like Valve, yeah, it aint happening. But I don't think any of us here are running companies like Valve.

 

Offcourse it won't be entirly dead, but they will switch places, VR will be the norm and desktop the retro old school thing only elders play (and hipster youngsters)

 

Haven't even heard of it

 

It was literally Valve's most recent game.

Think on that for a moment. Think about how you didn't even know about their most recent game.

 

I don't see it, but then again I'm not working on a VR game.