Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Ngruk said:

This is one of those comments that is somewhat humorous to me. If you have something that can churn out your trees at 1/10th the production cost and 1/100th the time, it"s a no brainer right?

That"s making the assumption that it"s completely compatible with every technical aspect of your design.

I thought the same thing, Speedtree? Hell ya.

Not that easy now that I have learned a bit about it.

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Heh, everything looks so good on paper before you get to work on the technical stuff right?

I suppose this is why there are a bilion arm-chair developers with their little visions, and fewer Gallenites/Pardo"s/McQuaides that can actually implement it.

As for the technical back-end; pick whatever works best, I am sure you are much more educated than me. PLEASE however, avoid making games that take a nasa workstation to run with the idea that by the time the game exits development a nasa workstation will be the norm, or that performance optmization comes last.

holymight said:

Well if a game uses a certain engine it becomes easy to know if the game will run on my computer. It also hints at the type of gameplay I can expect. For example, it a game uses the Source engine I expect it to run really smoothly, and have a physics component to its gameplay.

Things like speedtree I don"t really care about. You can use it to make trees, or you can custom model the trees. I don"t care as long as it works and the trees look good.

Though we really haven"t seen middleware specifically designed for MMOs yet (or at least I don"t know about any). The HeroEngine will change that, but until some games get released that uses it we can"t really discuss it. It does seem that it will speed up MMO development time with its tools and give developers more time to focus on the mechanics and content.

That is about all I know/care about for middleware. And I really only care if I played another game that uses that same engine.

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That"s cool, and kind of what I expected. I would imagine that as the industry moves forward and middleware becomes more prevalent we will see a superstar or two, and a dud. The industry is literally exploding right before our eyes.

The revenue in the game space has gotten to the point that all participants, no matter how big or small, can no longer dismiss it"s global impact financially.

There are companies, gaming companies, that are funding their development through the licensing of their game engine (which presents an entirely new set of issues itself).

The middleware market itself is huge, and I can"t see that changing anytime soon.

I asked the question more to take a pulse of a hardcore gamers sect.

As we get ready to eval our 3rd of 9 engines I am finding the disparity in them as enormous as the services they provide.

Our thoughts are to do 2-3 passes at each available choice, narrowing the field as we get into deeper detail with each, and eventually crown a winner.

Twobit Whore said:

Well, maybe you shouldn"t use Chinese children in sweatshops to make your game, but barring that, use whatever works.

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Crap... Back to the drawing board.

Gnome Eater said:

PLEASE however, avoid making games that take a nasa workstation to run with the idea that by the time the game exits development a nasa workstation will be the norm, or that performance optmization comes last.

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Another reason to give thanks to men like Brad McQuaid and others. Being able to glean even the smallest hints and tips about what"s gone right/wrong before this is an immensely important set of lessons we don"t take lightly.

Look we"ll make mistakes, of that I have no doubt. What I don"t want to do is make mistakes that have already been made, that"s just bad business and poor leadership.

I came in with the mindset that no one knows less than I know, but with my eyes wide open, and my people as my #1 priority, I"d allow us to make mistakes as long as we were a little bit better as a company at the end of each day. If we take that approach then we are doing what it is we need to do to make a legitimate run at being the best in the world at what we are doing.

Making mistakes is fine. They will happen, it"s how much you learn from them and how quickly you are able to identify and rectify those mistakes that counts in the eyes of the consumer.

As long as the mistake isn"t the "nasa computers will be available by release" mistake.

Ngruk,

Met "D-Mat" yet?(i cannot spell is name offhand and not looking it up)

and it"s nice that you are picking and choosing your engine so meticulously, the one that is best for you guys, hope it is a winner

Yeah, the build your game for the next gen hardware 2 years after release is a killer for a lot of folks. I know about 10-20 people that either couldn"t play EQII at all or after playing it a bit became so frustrated by how it ran they stopped playing.

You end up building yourself right out of a market by releasing a game like that.

Lenardo said:

Ngruk,

Met "D-Mat" yet?(i cannot spell is name offhand and not looking it up)

and it"s nice that you are picking and choosing your engine so meticulously, the one that is best for you guys, hope it is a winner

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For the love of all that is holy, don"t perpetuate the atrocity that is "D-Mat." He"s got a far less awful nickname already in "Dice-K."

I"ve been thinking about GMG in light of Interplay"s attempts to raise $75 mil for Fallout Online. At this point, the lesson MMO developers need to pay attention to is "Go big or go home." Having a great concept and a great license is not going to cut it these days. Unless you have something both truly innovative and largely player-driven, like EVE, you need to be in Blizzard"s league in terms of polish, elegance, etc. You need the resources to execute the great ideas your designers produce. As best I can tell, that takes obscene amounts of money.

I"m skeptical that most developers will be able to marshal the necessary resources. But given the names attached to Green Monster Games, I"m optimistic that both the passion and the money will be there to make something worthwhile.

Even then, the graphics for next-gen hardware wouldn"t be so bad if you didn"t focus so much on the technology rather than the art. I mean, it"s cool my armor has bumps. It"s not cool that my dude jumps like a limp wristed faggot that is too weak to hold a damn sword. Don"t even get me started on the "BOP I GOT U" animation of EQ Luclin.

As long as there"s a *viable* graphic slider, having the engine in place and ready to go for hardware that won"t come out for two years is fine by me. It has yet to be done, however, so I"m pretty shady on if it"s even possible.

It does seem like a lot of games come out with graphics based on what is technologically feasable rather than what is artistically pleasant. Graphical bells and whistles are all well and good as long as the art assets are there and that has been some of the issue with EQII and VG to this point. The stuff in game looks technically very good and makes good use of the new technology, it just lacks soul.

Its akin to comparing Toy Story and something like Snow White. Toy Story is awesome, clean, and makes use of technology to bring a world to life while Snow White relies more on just old fashioned artistic ability to look good. People can argue which is better till the cows come home, but you can"t deny the organic, warm feel that Snow White has compared to the almost antiseptic, cleanliness that is Toy Story. That warmth is the soul many people are talking about.

Ngruk said:

Be curious to hear customers take on middleware right now. Is it something you even remotely consider when you are thinking about a game purchase or is it totally irrelevant to you?

I would imagine there will be a minority of players that actually know what middleware is and does, and a large majority that says "what the hell is middleware?"

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On the Engine side of things it actually does make a difference as I tend to compare its capabilities to what I"ve seen before, if you say used Gamebryo(or whatever its called today) the instant comparison would be Dark Age of Camelot and Oblivion with their respective good looks but bad camera feel and limited Z axis.

As fas as preference when actually buying for the most part it doesn"t make a big difference.

Ngruk said:

Be curious to hear customers take on middleware right now. Is it something you even remotely consider when you are thinking about a game purchase or is it totally irrelevant to you?

I would imagine there will be a minority of players that actually know what middleware is and does, and a large majority that says "what the hell is middleware?"

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In general, it doesn"t matter because the merits of a package will generally be wiped out by the modifications made by the people making the game (such as Vanguard managing to make the unreal engine perform awfully), and plenty of new flaws will be introduced. Havok is pretty much the only package that has any amount of recognition that hasn"t been screwed up in some game, although it"s often pointless. As a result, deciding to play a game based on the technology behind it is pretty stupid.

The one exception for me is Gamebyro. All of the Gamebyro games I"ve played (Oblivion, Morrowind, Civ4, and Freedom Force) have had a 3 frame delay on the mouse cursor, which is only fixable by signficantly hurting performance. This makes the game completly unplayable after a few minutes. At this point, I"d never buy a game using Gamebyro without playing it first as a result.

On middleware the design tools and world build tools shoudlnt be too tied in with an engine - and release with a realistic engine which folks can run but be workign on that next gen one already kk...

From technical overview I think the hero engine simutronics is pimping out looks interesting, looks like you can plug in diferent display engines and the design tools are meant to be very good.

Ngruk said:

Be curious to hear customers take on middleware right now. Is it something you even remotely consider when you are thinking about a game purchase or is it totally irrelevant to you?

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As others have said, paying attention to the engine and other middleware being used in an upcoming title can give hints about how the game will look, the physics element, how it will run, and so forth. So yes, it does play a small role in how interested I am in a title.

More generally (and importantly to myself) is whether the title is using a newer/upcoming engine (e.g. using the Offset Engine instead of the Source Engine) that could offer new and improved graphics, physics, development speed/costs, etc. With less hands-on previous knowledge about the middleware, instead, psychologically, it can turn into a big self-hype session. "Holy crapiola, GMG is using the Unreal 3 Engine/Offset Engine/CryEngine 2?! It"s gonna look so awesome!"

At this point, with the current trend of games going further and further into the realm of reality, I"m a bit more interested in whether games will utilize new hardware designs like PhysX. While I haven"t bought one yet (there simply aren"t enough games to justify the price) it would be nice if the technology could advance to where it becomes mainstream and necessary to enjoy the full physics, AI, and graphics of new titles.

OK I could be the next Joel Zumaya.... Can"t take much more Guitar Hero II.

Amazing how we search the world for the right mix to make "Thee Game" and it never fails to be something so damn simple it"s laughable.

Ngruk said:

OK I could be the next Joel Zumaya.... Can"t take much more Guitar Hero II.

Amazing how we search the world for the right mix to make "Thee Game" and it never fails to be something so damn simple it"s laughable.

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It"s the graphics.

Ngruk said:

OK I could be the next Joel Zumaya.... Can"t take much more Guitar Hero II.

Amazing how we search the world for the right mix to make "Thee Game" and it never fails to be something so damn simple it"s laughable.

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Just goes to prove that gameplay is vastly superior to even the most detailed background story, the most stunning graphics, and the easiest of use interface.

That"s not to say those dont contribute greatly, but some of the most fun games I"ve ever played have been on old 16 bit systems with 2 buttons and a 4 way directional pad.


I havent had a chance to check out GH 2 yet, but guitar hero was a blast =)

Tyen said:

Don"t make something thats already been done. Guitar hero is where its at now because its something that no one else has put out. Come out with something new, buy the IP to fallout or work with those guys to make that game right.

I can gaurentee if that game is done right it will be HUGE.

Hell, I"d help market Fallout to the public if you took it up.

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Did you just say dont do something thats already been done, then suggest remaking fallout?