Why?

All of the above.

And lastly, I would venture to say that many aspiring game programmers look at existing 3d engines and think to themselves: "You know what, I don't like their paradigm and API nor do I want to expend the time learning it; I'll just throw together the elements I need in an engine." Eventually, they find themselves being an engine developer, rather than a game developer.

The programmers are by nature drawn to the aspect of the engine design, rahter than the game design. But the existing engines out there still require programming, so any non-programmer group is unable to leverage the work already done in a graphics engine.

Edited by - bishop_pass on December 31, 2001 11:28:53 AM

These are good points. And a lot of everyday people asking this question underestimate how hard programming a game can be.

For beginners, and super users who think ''wow, programming a game would be cool!''...
They don''t know the score, and quickly fall victim to beginning programming myths, like:
1.''Working out a concept is the hardest part of a task or subtask''
2.''If I program something logical it should work''

When they find out the reality that solving concept of a problem is 10% of the problem, and implementation and integration is the other 90%, it''s a big wake up call. When you are programming a concept, you really aren''t programming a concept, you''re programming a computer to program a concept. Big difference.

Making a game engine is not the most important part of the game, as you can use any of the engines that are out there. Even a lot of new games are beign based on older engines (American McGee''s Alice and Return To Castle Wolfenstein usin Quake3 engine)

It''s the graphics/sounds/music/level design/gameplay/story ... That are hard to do. You can find a lot of programmers around (mostly not good programmers) but you can''t find a lot of level designers hanging around.

quote:

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Original post by pouya
but you can''t find a lot of level designers hanging around.

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And companies don''t hire them anyway. Games nowadays havee great graphics but nothing else because programmers and artists and sometimes designers are just about the only paying gaming positions. (And testers).



------------------------------
Simple DirectMedia Layer:
Main Site - (www.libsdl.org)
Cone3D Tutorials- (cone3D.gamedev.net)
GameDev.net''s Tutorials - (Here)

I hated programming. I''m a game designer/concept thinker/artist at heart.

But I was like: seems like that won''t be enough to get in and be the game designer in a project. So I started to stuff programming by force into my mouth since grade 9. Very slow process when you ain''t a programmer at heart; I still can''t make a game. And I feel my creation skillz deteriorating.

I actually thought that guys like me(thinkers) where all over the place, and that it''s by having technical capabilities that you are worth something.

so you guys say that guys like me are scarce.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ya guys fuck me up.....

well, here I am, if anyone needs an idea-head for a project, ya know where to find me...

quote:

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Original post by pouya
Making a game engine is not the most important part of the game, as you can use any of the engines that are out there. Even a lot of new games are beign based on older engines (American McGee''s Alice and Return To Castle Wolfenstein usin Quake3 engine)

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Depends on what sort of game you want to do. If you want another Doom/quake clone then yeah, I agree.

quote:

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It''s the graphics/sounds/music/level design/gameplay/story ... That are hard to do. You can find a lot of programmers around (mostly not good programmers) but you can''t find a lot of level designers hanging around.

---

Just because there are less artists/designers than programmers doesn''t make programming an easy job. To design and implement the code for a complete game, with an engine that''s scalable, includes multiplayer, sound, menus, input, visibility determination, accurate collision detection and response, etc, etc... is a very hard task.

www.elf-stone.com

This reminds me of one of my math professors. I was taking differential equations and one day the prof was "showing" us how to solve a particular class of diff eqs.

So he writes down a problem on the overhead projector, tells us a couple things to consider, then says "and via the appropriate trigonometric identity" as he writes down the answer!

Of course no one spoke up, but someone should have said "dude, you just gave us the 10 second answer to a 30 minute question".

My point here is my good ''ol math professor considered all the details of getting from the problem to its solution trivial. Truth is having a general understanding of the problem and jotting down the answer were the easy parts. The difficult part was doing all the *trivial little* details he left out.

The same holds true with alot of game programmers. They see and largely understand the problem (in this case programming a game), and the solution (the finished game). Too many, however, gloss over are the millions of details between them.

Those details *are* the game. Unfortunately these are details not too many game programmers have the time or dedication to finish.

~don

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin