Acumen
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Posts posted by Acumen
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Job Title(s): Audio Lead
Joined: 22nd February 2005.
Department: Sound.
Job Responsibilities: Sound effects and audio implementation.
Location: Minnesota, USA.
Birth Year: 1975.
Home Town: St. Paul.
Interests/Hobbies: Skating on an ice sock, THB, Yoshitaka Amaano, Vinyl Toys, Qee, Noise.
Favourite Musician/Band:
Godspeed You ! Black Emperor, Grandaddy, Acid Mothers Temple, Metric, Rilo Kelley, DCFC, Spiritualized, Miles Davis, Yo La Tengo, Kings of Convenience, Led Zeppelin, The pogues, Slowdive, Mercury Rev, Alice Coltrane, Explosions in the Sky, Elbow, Missy Elliot, Belle & Sebastian, Merzbow, Olivia Tremor Control, Nico & Neko Case, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Kid 606, Bjork, Ravonettes, The Orb, SkyeKlad, Pharaoh Overlord, Ornette Coleman, Digable Planets, Postal Service, Mice Parade, Sub Arachnoid Space, My Bloody Valentine, Bjork.
Favourite Computer Games: FFX: Good delivery of storyline. Enter the Matrix: Fun & Trashy. HL2: Absolutely fantastic for what it is. MONO: Most hallucinogenic freeware in a long time. Gish: Who ever thought physics could be so fun? Katamari Damacy: John Cage Re-appropriated, Musique Concrete for the neXt generation.
Bio:
Damian is skilled in audio sculpting, asset management, and implementation of specific details. He has a full-time job 40 hours a week, and works on video game sound effects 20 hours a week.
Some earlier projects include:
PlayfulMinds.com - Sound effects / Audio implemetation for 3 games / Audio supervisor on 1 game ... including reviewing music submissions as well as programming implementation and asset management.
Epiphany6.com - Sound effects / Audio Supervisor for their mobile development wing including reviewing music submissions for games / asset management / audio and music implementation.
Age of Chivalry.com - Sound Effects for all battle sounds included in this HL2 medieval themed total-conversion.
Teamwork, communication, dedication and vision are the things that get me up in the morning.
Motto: “If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience. “ -John Cage
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Job Title(s): General Programmer.
Joined: 18th February 2005.
Department: Programming.
Job Responsibilities: Helping out with engine programming.
Location: Eastern Washington, USA.
Birth Year: 1982.
Home Town: Edwall.
Interests/Hobbies: Motorcycle riding, basketball, movies, lan parties, piano, and family functions.
Favourite Musician/Band: Jeremy Camp, Kutless, Pillar, Switchfoot, Jamie Slocum.
Favourite Computer Games: Command and Conquer: Generals/Red Alert/Renegade/etc, City of Heroes, Battle for Middle Earth.
Bio: Currently finishing BS in Computer Science at Eastern Washington University with focus in graphic programming. Grew up on a farm but loves mathematics, science and art more than mechanical technology. Started programming in Jr High with QBasic, editing games like Nibbles and making color coded text games. Grant enjoys playing games with my close friends and currently works as a tech salesman at CompUSA in Spokane.
Currently working on: Catching up with the project before my first assignment.
Quote: "Life is really about relationships and time gives us the free will to make those good or bad."
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Job Title(s): Lead Gameplay Programmer.
Joined: 18th February 2005.
Department: Programming.
Job Responsibilities: I've worked on a number of areas, including gameplay logic, unit AI, random maps, water rendering, and multiplayer.
Location: Berkeley, CA.
Birth Year: 1985.
Home Town: Toronto, Canada.
Interests/Hobbies: Reading (most types of fiction), board games, and math and programming contests.
Favourite Musician/Band: I like almost all kinds of music.
Favourite Computer Games: Age of Kings, Age of Mythology, Age of Empires 3, and 0 A.D.
Bio: Matei's background is Romanian, but his family lives in Canada. He is currently a grad student in Computer Science at UC Berkeley, after finishing undergrad at the University of Waterloo. He has been involved in the RTS community since Age of Kings, both in the multiplayer community and map design. He enjoys programming and problem solving.
Currently working on: Multiplayer.
Quote: "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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Job Title(s): RMS/AI/Trigger Scripter.
Joined: Mid-December 2003.
Department: Scripting.
Job Responsibilities: I help design the scripting system for the 0 A.D. engine using the Javascript language.
Location: United States.
Birth Year: 1984.
Home Town: Brooklyn, NY.
Interests/Hobbies: Other than computers, I skateboard until I break something then I wait to heal to get back at it.
Favourite Musician/Band: Linkin Park, Blink 182, Eminem, & Evanescence.
Favourite Computer Games: Age of Mythology, Halo, NFS Underground, & Tony Hawk Series.
Bio: A computer enthusiast since the age of 13, Jeffrey has evolved through many communities and has gained a lot of experience through the years, experimenting with anything he comes across. Now, busy trying to shape his interest into a career, he works with Wildfire Games on the side to help shape what he feels can be the best RTS created by indie developers.
Currently working on: RMS Design.
Quote: "Sleep is for the weak".
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So ... No requests? No preferences? No suggestions? Nada?
Hmm, due to lack of interest, I guess we shouldn't release any more articles, then ...
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Job Title(s): Graphics Programmer.
Joined: Thursday, 3rd February, 2005.
Department: Programming.
Job Responsibilities: Develop code for the game's engine.
Location: Warrington, England.
Birth Year: 1974.
Home Town: Warrington.
Interests/Hobbies: Travelling, Films, History Buff, Scaring the Girlfriend and Catching Last Orders.
Favorite Musician/Band: None, really; whatever's on the radio.
Favorite Computer Games: All the Ensemble Studios games. Battlefield 1942: amazing visuals and just plain fun.
Long Bio: Matt has been a programmer for many years having been brought up with them. He completed a Degree in Electronic Communications, worked in communications software for a while then became a games programmer for the Gameboy working for Software Creations, then for Acclaim.
During this time, he worked on a number of GBA titles including "Simpsons Treehouse of Horror", "Rugrats Castle Capers", "Stuart Little 2" and "All Star Baseball 2004".
After Acclaim went into decline and his team got the boot, he decided to go see the world, so went off on a mini world tour (Egypt, China, Wales …) from which he has recently returned at time of writing.
Currently working on: Settling into the team as a new member.
Quote: “Scisco mihi laxus.”
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As you probably already know, we periodically post articles about our experiences at Wildfire Games in the Developer Articles section of our website.
So are there any topics that you would particularly like to see in future articles? This would help us to ensure that these articles are relevant and interesting to you. Please post your suggestions below.
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Hmm, while we're on the subject, allow me to dispel the myth that QA (in the mainstream gaming industry) is simply an opportunity to play a game before anybody else does, and is something highly desirable. "You get to play games all day and they even pay you for it? You're in nirvana, man!"
Or to resurrect my driving metaphor from an earlier article: "This lucky guy gets to drive a prototype Ferrari hot off the assembly line before the company has begun final manufacture? We curses him, my precious. We hates him forever."
Er, yeah, but this isn't a fully functioning Ferrari identical to what the "end user" would see. If it was, there'd be no point in testing it. Our erstwhile tester is the human equivalent of a crash test dummy (and in the industry gets roughly the same rate of pay and unpaid overtime).
When he starts driving this bootilicious "wonder", he'll find the seat adjustment controls are totally out of whack. The fuel meter shows his speed. Punching the cigarette lighter opens the bonnet. The image on the rear view mirror is reversed. The wheels don't spin unless he's on a road with a name starting with W. It's not uncommon for the engine to fail when he flashes his headlights. And if he ever reaches 120mph in 4th gear, the brakes stop working.
Oh, and he has to make sure that the airbag works under all conditions. The hard way.
And he'll have to somehow get this smoldering wreck to a halt so he can write out reports and hopefully not endanger his life/PC the next time those problems are found and fixed (assuming he's provided enough information that the problem can be replicated and repaired, and that the programmers have time to do so).
Although fixing that first layer of bugs tends to unleash ten more, and he'll have to find those too, often in the same places he looked yesterday.
It's the tester's job to go through all this hell so *you* don't have to. Day after day. Month after month. For the pay of a clerk at Virgin Megastore.
Sure, playing games is fun. Playing the same game ten hours a day for six months, pushing your avatar against every collision boundary and trying to do every crazy thing a user could do under every possible configuration, and having no choice but to come into work tomorrow and do it all again under increasing deadlines, that's a *job*.
But you know what's the worst thing? After playing Generic Shooter VIII under those conditions for half a year, you'll probably shudder every time you pass its gamebox on store shelves. You'll certainly have no desire to ever play it (or possibly anything similar) again. And though you really loved that series, you're probably not that keen to play the sequel anymore either.
When you spend your days finely dissecting human entrails, somehow your fellow man don't look quite so attractive anymore. Sometimes it's better to only see the surface veneer.
Thanks for listening. Just wanted to put things in perspective.
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Yeah but the CPU doesn't have to calculate anything for buildings, only units
Not exactly; buildings still have their own properties that need to be accounted for (researching, training, garrisoning, increasing housing, sometimes attacking, etc). However, they don't move around (costly pathfinding) or have the wide variance of animations and related actions that units do.
Good point, though, Bakayaro, as buildings do still take their share of the available processing time.
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Nebula: It means that each player can't have more units on the map than that specified by the cap. So if the cap is 200, each player can't have more than 200 units at a time (so if there are 8 players, that'd ensure there are no more than 1,600 units in the game at a time, so players can't build unlimited units and slow the game to a crawl as it does continuous calculations for them).
(That's assuming that each unit is worth one population point, of course; some games have infantry worth 1 point and cavalry 2 points, depending on the complexity -- horse and rider takes more polys than just the humanoid unit -- and strength of the unit).
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Though keep in the mind that the FAQ merely reflects information at the time of writing it, and is highly subject to change. Conservative conceptual phase estimates are likely to adjust depending on more accurate insights discovered through actual implementation.
In other words, until it has an accompanying completed game, the FAQ is a guide for what is likely to happen, not a gospel of what shall be forevermore.
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Job Title(s): General/Graphics Programmer.
Joined: Saturday, 22nd March, 2003.
Department: Programming.
Job Responsibilities: Develop and implement appropriate tools and entities of the game engine.
Location: USA.
Birth Year: 10th January, 1983.
Home Town: Norman, Oklahoma.
Interests/Hobbies: Most of John’s spare time is spent developing other personal projects, working on his 94’ 300ZX, or just taking it easy with some friends.
Favorite Musician/Band: Outkast, Led Zeplin, The Eagles, Ludacris, Nirvana, Jack Johnson, Super Tramp, Jay-Z, Pink Floyd, and many others.
Favorite Computer Games: Lucas Arts' Monkey Island series, Need for Speed series, Morrowind, Rise of Nations, Final Fantasy series, The Incredible Machine, Sierra's Leisure Suit Larry series, Fable: The Hand of Fate, Dungeon Siege.
Long Bio: John was born in Clinton, OK and moved to Norman shortly thereafter where he was raised. He began learning to program at the early age of 12 where he soon found his passion.
While attending high school, at the age of 17, he acquired a position as Computer Technician where he became very aware that fixing other people's computers wasn't exactly what he wanted to do in life.
Once graduated from high school, he went on to attend college at the University of Central Oklahoma and also obtained a position as a Visual Basic Front-End Developer for the Oklahoma State Department of Health. Although he was now developing software, it still wasn't what he was looking for in a life-long a career.
Only working there for a year, he took on a less time consuming job as Webmaster for the University of Oklahoma's Drama Department. This was even worse than working for the state. Resizing 200 images a week still didn't have the flare he was looking for.
About this time, John discovered the 0 A.D. project where the faint hope of finding something he would love to do for the rest of his life, burst into reality.
He now attends the University of Oklahoma attempting to get a degree in Computer Science and once again is working for the State.
Currently working on: Next task.
Quote: “I came, I saw, I conquered” – Julius Caesar.
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TLA is currently in preproduction; in other words, they are busy designing and discussing the game in its entirety, documenting the game mechanics, producing concepts, and so forth.
0 A.D. started a bit earlier, so they've already completed their design phase (more or less
) and are now implementing their design, steadily working their way up to alpha milestone.It's far too early to say yet, but when 0 A.D. is (eventually) released, that'll hopefully coincide with TLA completing its preproduction and ready to reuse the engine (the more mature and stable the engine is when they begin, the less fixes will have to occur in parallel).
So probably what'll happen is that some experienced staff from 0 A.D. will move over to TLA, some will work on the 0 A.D. expansion pack, and no doubt many others will collapse from exhaustion, retreat from human contact, and go into hiding on a remote island out in the South Pacific to subsist on clams and coconuts.
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Job Title(s): Historian.
Joined: 24th December 2004.
Department: History.
Job Responsibilities: Researching game background, authenticating content, and writing history articles.
Location: Indiana, USA.
Birth Year: 1992.
Home Town: Indiana, USA.
Interests/Hobbies: I have a fondness for history from, say, Rome to the 1500's or so. I also like the "Age series" (Age of Kings, Age of Mythology, etc) made by Ensemble Studios and Microsoft. I spend a lot of time doing math.
Favourite Musician/Band: Mozart.
Favourite Computer Games: Age of Kings - the time period is very attractive.
Short Bio: My name is Nathan Benjamin. I found out about Wildfire Games from my brother, Dnas. I occasionally browsed across the forums, until the recent announcement on a vacant spot on 0 A.D. for the job title of Historian. I enjoy history and researching it, so I decided to apply. Some hobbies of mine are math, computer games, and history.
Currently working on: Settling into the team, having just joined.
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<insert bio image here>
Job Title(s): Historian.
Joined: 24th December 2004.
Department: History.
Job Responsibilities: Researching game background, authenticating content, and writing history articles.
Location: Arkansas, United States.
Birth Year: 1985.
Home Town: Stuttgart.
Interests/Hobbies: When not sitting in front of my computer, I love to do outdoor type things, such as camping, fishing, hiking. I also like to play softball.
Favourite Musician/Band: Creed, Bob Seger, Creedence Clearwater Revival, .38 Special, ACDC, Linkin Park, P.O.D., Disturbed.
Favourite Computer Games: Age of Empires - This was my first historical game, and I absolutely love it. Praetorians - Even though I've beat this game several times over, I continue to play it, just to execute new strategies. Caesar III - I'm always building a better Rome. Pharaoh - I haven't yet completed this one, but believe me, I will. Building pyramids is a wonderful pass-time. Children of the Nile - This game completely rules. I love how the people at Tilted Mill leaned more toward accuracy, other than caving in to publisher wishes. The Sims 2 - This game helps me relive the child inside. It's like having virtual legos that actually look like walls and furniture.
Short Bio: I have been studying ancient history for some time now, probably around 5 years. I run an ancient history website which has plans to use 0 A.D. for tournaments based around the Mediterranean. I don't have any development experience, but I have beta tested several games, including Age of Mythology, the Saga of Ryzom, Rubies of Eventide, Dransik, Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, along with several others. Right now I am studying Computer Science at ASU (Arkansas State University). I also run a moderately successful history site which I maintain during my spare time. I've had an interest in history ever since I first laid my eyes on the pyramids at Giza. I love to play all types of games, both online and single player, and of my 156 game collection, roughly 95% of them are historically based.
Currently working on: Settling into the team, having just joined.
Quote: "It don't mean butt if it ain't got that jutt!"
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"Go ahead, punk ... Make my day."
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Then my work here is done.
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Also what did you think of the unconventional user interface? I've heard mixed reports about it.
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We're planning to include "non-essential" assets (ie anything not used by the official campaigns and random maps; those just intended for custom scenarios, stuff that we made but was later superceded, that kind of thing) in an optional download pack, so scenario designers can use that stuff without making average gamers download extra content they aren't going to use. The stuff used in the official maps will also be easily available for placement in your own scenarios or for modification. I hope that answers your question. This article may give you some more details if you haven't already read it.
A hearty amen to Adam's points.
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From the forums at Renderosity, a 3D art forum. It's a long story, but has to do with 0 A.D. and a solo game project I was working on both being sprite-based at the time, and Jason and I brainstorming about how to overcome some shared issues with the prerendering technique. [plug]Details in the article that Boris just posted.
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Let me just clarify the situation (I think there may be some confusion between releasing the game(s) and releasing the engine source) ...
0 A.D. and TLA will be released as freeware, so you can download the games for no cost.
The distribution will include a compiled executable of the engine used to run the game's assets, but the engine itself isn't open source (ie we won't be releasing the engine source code), much like most commercial projects (except that you download 0 A.D, for free, and it's made by amateurs rather than people who do this for a living).
But the games are designed with the intent of moddability (a lot of gameplay logic is scripted rather than being hardcoded into the engine and unchangeable), with open formats to make it a little more flexible than many commercial games to alter the game data to make and install mods, if you so desire.
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a] As Malte said, we're not a profit-making organisation. We plan to use the engine exclusively for in-house Wildfire Games development projects, which will be released as freeware.
b] Selling an engine that's still under development would be like selling a bag of spare parts and calling it a car.
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One thing they did do to speed things up was to have the hero unit's portraits in the bottom of the window. It was sometimes hard to find your hero on screen when its surrounded by simliar looking units. So all you have to do is select that hero icon and it selects him.
Also makes it easier to keep track on their progress (it shows their health, level, etc).
Should be easy enough to do, if you want it. Depends on how much of a role you intend for heroes to play (eg integral to the plots of campaigns, required to complete objectives, etc, as in AoM and Warcraft 3).
In WC3, they similarly stack Hero portraits against the side of the screen, where you can click to select/centre them. In AoM, they had one button that cycled between however many Heroes you had on the map. Current game rules state that in MP, we'd only have 1 Hero at a time, so it's less of an issue, but the player could be given anybody in a campaign.
If it would be to complicated to impliment an anchor, what if we just had a menu that could be popped up by a simple keyboard command like the spacebar?Right now anchoring isn't implemented, though as mentioned we'd need some kind of anchoring capability at some point to handle things like health bars (unless they're hardcoded into the entity system, like selection circles are).
If they don't need to retain a position relative to the target, then I could start experimenting with them now.
However, without that relative positioning, you lose a lot of the benefits of this scheme. Travel distance is increased if you're, say, clicking a unit in the corner of the screen. Usually the icons only appear when you hover the mouse over the unit, but here they'd be visible all the time unless disabled (though translucency helps), that kind of thing.
Still, would give an opportunity to at least set some ground work in playing around with it.
About the building... Not sure if you would have to do it like the C&C mobile construction vehicle...Sorry, I didn't explain that very well. What I meant was that if we did it like: click builder unit; click ground; building options appear around ground; pick a footprint ... then we'd get the issues I mentioned. Placing buildings of varying sizes is an example of when we can't get around having to use a verb-noun approach.
As for the approach you suggested, yes, that'd work well in theory. The things to consider have already been mentioned ... a] Whether it'd be awkward to activate that interface around small, mobile units; b] Whether it'd take longer to navigate through multiple rings of options to get your choice, versus the traditional "click in the corner" method. As pointed out, context-based games with lots of options tend to need a pause option (as in Neverwinter Nights and TS2) as the complexity gets out of hand. Though with only a few choices, it's very efficient.
Anyway, thanks for your comments, guys. If I get some time I'll try to play around with it in our GUI and see what I can work out.
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