6 ms·

Memories. Is this a lost art or do people still do this starting out? I mean now that everyone has unity to play with do people no longer have to know about the

by dublo7 8y ago

Memories. Is this a lost art or do people still do this starting out? I mean now that everyone has unity to play with do people no longer have to know about the actual hardware?

bluedino 8y ago
You can do the same thing using an HTML canvas element: http://slicker.me/javascript/fire/fire.htm http://slicker.me/javascript/fire/fire.htm (not mine) There are similar demos out there using particle effects.
blt 8y ago
This effect doesn't require knowing anything about hardware...
beetwenty 8y ago
In general, people will code to the API they have. For graphics that mostly means GPU hardware and shaders. The old raster tricks still come out from time to time, and there are reasons to software render certain effects, but there are many new GPU-centric effects that are equally diverse and clever. Experienced devs will often use third-party engines as cross-platform deployment tools and then work around whatever the engine provides. But indies are relatively more likely to engage with the higher-level systems which can lead to a certain defining aesthetic(e.g. in the era of Flash games, the built-in filters, masks, etc. got a thorough workout, even though by the end, everyone making optimized games was caching their results to bitmaps). With audio, on the other hand, everyone will just look for fmod or an equivalent. There's rarely much time budgeted for audio and there's much less shared experience in doing it ground-up.
k__ 8y ago
I have the feeling many game devs do their own engine, but yes, the new people start with a existing engine.
- hurricaneSlider 8y ago
  Most game developers do not code their own engines. In fact unless you're doing something special (e.g. claybook, Miegakure, anything with true videos, or an unusual development pipeline/platform), it is immeasurably more economical to use an engine like unity/unreal with their large communities, asset stores, support and decent tooling. Even many 'AAA' games are now starting to use these commoditised engines (possibly with their own extensions/forks)
  - failrate 8y ago
    Lots of game developers roll their own game engines. Some even make game engines as their new programming language training exercise. Unreal and Unity are making inroads into AAA.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    Aren't game engines like Unity and Unreal only appropriate for first person shooters or third person adventure games? What about 2d platform games? Real time and turn based strategy games? Flight sims? Sports games? Board game remakes? You wouldn't choose a generic "game engine" for any of these, would you? Honest question, I'm not a game programmer, but as a programmer it sounds unlikely that a single package could be appropriate for so many different genres of games.
    - hurricaneSlider 8y ago
      There actually has been a lot of work done to make it suitable for use cases such as 2d, racing, etc. An engine like unity basically provides utilities such as physically based rendering, camera systems, visual editors, scripting environments, a scenegraph editor, preview windows, io, asset import and conversion, audio, etc. Some games are of course easier to make than others in such engines, but they aren't that prescriptive.
    - wmil 8y ago
      Hearthstone is done in Unity. Unity has a bunch of 2d platformer features these days. What you're missing is that these big engines are also game development environments with extensive tools and integrated market places to purchase assets and features. Learning Unity is learning an entire platform. It's a marketable skill. Generally smaller developers don't have the development resources to roll custom everything. But modern platforms have enough spare hardware resources that the inefficiencies of Unity are worthwhile.
Sharlin 8y ago
These days you can implement many oldskool effects as pixel shaders, only with about a zillion abstraction layers added. Another nice and very exploration-friendly way to learn graphics programming from the ground up is the HTML5 Canvas/ImageData API which lets you put pixels into a framebuffer like it’s 1995.
- tomxor 8y ago
  Yes, this is my favourite aspect of being a web developer today, it is possible to refrain from using all the heavy weight libraries and just play with canvas and raw code... you have a lot more fun, have (almost) complete control, get to learn a lot more and the result is way leaner. Also https://www.dwitter.net/ https://www.dwitter.net/ uses canvas + JS as the basis for it's code golfing. It's surprising what you can fit into 140 characters, and forces you to think more mathematically when creating effects.
z3phyr 8y ago
Make emulators. Program for them the old school way. Win

by dublo7 8y ago

Memories. Is this a lost art or do people still do this starting out? I mean now that everyone has unity to play with do people no longer have to know about the actual hardware?

bluedino 8y ago

You can do the same thing using an HTML canvas element: http://slicker.me/javascript/fire/fire.htm http://slicker.me/javascript/fire/fire.htm (not mine) There are similar demos out there using particle effects.

blt 8y ago

This effect doesn't require knowing anything about hardware...

beetwenty 8y ago

In general, people will code to the API they have. For graphics that mostly means GPU hardware and shaders. The old raster tricks still come out from time to time, and there are reasons to software render certain effects, but there are many new GPU-centric effects that are equally diverse and clever. Experienced devs will often use third-party engines as cross-platform deployment tools and then work around whatever the engine provides. But indies are relatively more likely to engage with the higher-level systems which can lead to a certain defining aesthetic(e.g. in the era of Flash games, the built-in filters, masks, etc. got a thorough workout, even though by the end, everyone making optimized games was caching their results to bitmaps). With audio, on the other hand, everyone will just look for fmod or an equivalent. There's rarely much time budgeted for audio and there's much less shared experience in doing it ground-up.

k__ 8y ago

I have the feeling many game devs do their own engine, but yes, the new people start with a existing engine.

hurricaneSlider 8y ago
Most game developers do not code their own engines. In fact unless you're doing something special (e.g. claybook, Miegakure, anything with true videos, or an unusual development pipeline/platform), it is immeasurably more economical to use an engine like unity/unreal with their large communities, asset stores, support and decent tooling. Even many 'AAA' games are now starting to use these commoditised engines (possibly with their own extensions/forks)
- failrate 8y ago
  Lots of game developers roll their own game engines. Some even make game engines as their new programming language training exercise. Unreal and Unity are making inroads into AAA.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  Aren't game engines like Unity and Unreal only appropriate for first person shooters or third person adventure games? What about 2d platform games? Real time and turn based strategy games? Flight sims? Sports games? Board game remakes? You wouldn't choose a generic "game engine" for any of these, would you? Honest question, I'm not a game programmer, but as a programmer it sounds unlikely that a single package could be appropriate for so many different genres of games.
  - hurricaneSlider 8y ago
    There actually has been a lot of work done to make it suitable for use cases such as 2d, racing, etc. An engine like unity basically provides utilities such as physically based rendering, camera systems, visual editors, scripting environments, a scenegraph editor, preview windows, io, asset import and conversion, audio, etc. Some games are of course easier to make than others in such engines, but they aren't that prescriptive.
  - wmil 8y ago
    Hearthstone is done in Unity. Unity has a bunch of 2d platformer features these days. What you're missing is that these big engines are also game development environments with extensive tools and integrated market places to purchase assets and features. Learning Unity is learning an entire platform. It's a marketable skill. Generally smaller developers don't have the development resources to roll custom everything. But modern platforms have enough spare hardware resources that the inefficiencies of Unity are worthwhile.

Sharlin 8y ago

These days you can implement many oldskool effects as pixel shaders, only with about a zillion abstraction layers added. Another nice and very exploration-friendly way to learn graphics programming from the ground up is the HTML5 Canvas/ImageData API which lets you put pixels into a framebuffer like it’s 1995.

tomxor 8y ago
Yes, this is my favourite aspect of being a web developer today, it is possible to refrain from using all the heavy weight libraries and just play with canvas and raw code... you have a lot more fun, have (almost) complete control, get to learn a lot more and the result is way leaner. Also https://www.dwitter.net/ https://www.dwitter.net/ uses canvas + JS as the basis for it's code golfing. It's surprising what you can fit into 140 characters, and forces you to think more mathematically when creating effects.

z3phyr 8y ago

Make emulators. Program for them the old school way. Win