Why you should stop complain about A8

So, I decided to make this topic as I always see threads like "look at this, its made in XXX for the YYY, and then look at this A8 game. Don't you see that A8 just sucks?" (Ratchet, this is a thread for you!)

Before I start my rant against various users here, let me get this clear: A8 isn't perfect. It lacks some stuff needed to create an awesome title like Crysis, but(!) A8 is made to create games with different genres. RPGs, Shooter, RTS etc. The Cry Engine on the other hand is a pure Shooter engine. Its streamlined to serve this one and only genre, everything is optimized for this. Creating an RTS will be pure pain as you have to develop the very basic stuff first before you can even think about making the prototype.

Another thing I learned as developer: File some damn bug reports. It may sound obvious, but, as more people complaining about X or say that they want to see feature Y, as more priority gets said feature.
If only one says that he/she wants feature XY, its most likely will never implemented, even if you complain in other threads that the engine lacks those features. This counts for A8 as well as for Unity3D and even operating systems like iOS or Mac OS (there are bugs in iOS from 2.0 which doesn't get fixed because no one complains about it. Telling the press that this sucks doesn't help in any way).

Everything clear now? Fine, lets look at the topic. You want to make a game, probably you want to become famous and rich with the game so you want to make a good game.
The only problem is: A good game needs also good assets. No one will rate you game by its code, but what they can see! You may have the best looking source code (which is also very subjective), but your game looks like crap. Then your game _is_ crap!
Complaining about "oohhhh, everyone looks at the graphics, no one knows that this soooo hard work and we are just indies" doesn't help. You know that you also look at the graphic, you may see also some other aspects from the game that others may don't see, but you are a graphic whore too. Face it.

So, your very good game needs very good assets, this begins with textures and models. But where should they come from? You paid 200 bucks, so they better put some nice texture with the engine, right? Okay, lets assume that your lousy 200 bucks are worth AAA quality textures, you wouldn't use them anyway. You would says "well, they look nice etc. but everyone uses them" and you want to be different. Thats okay, because that is also a factor that sells games.
So, you need to spend another 200 bucks for some nice textures. If you want to be the only one who is allowed to use them (again, you want to be different), then you have to pay a lot. Even good artists need many hours to create something that doesn't look like 10 minutes Photoshop images made by my neighbor. You know that too, you also need time to write good code!
Think about what you would take for exclusive AAA stuff, and then think about what you think you have bought with 200€

This of course also counts for models and shaders. Someone has to spend his/her time for you stuff! I really don't know why you don't realize how much worth time is. If you think time is a god given gift, please read the awesome book Momo (german title, dunno if its also the same in english), to understand how much time is worth.

But now you say "Yes, you know, Unity3D" (and at this point I would normally either slap you in the face or stop reading) "Unity3D gives you this all for free. You know just drag the pre-built shader onto the tree and it will become a totally awesome uber tree" (I'm pretty sure you have mistaken pixie dust with Unity3D).
Yes, Unity3D has some built-in shaders, but have you already looked what Gamestudio delivers for free? Now you will say: "Haha, but Unity3D has better shaders (the one with pixie dust)". No. They don't have, you will also reach the point in Unity3D where you can't click anything together. Where you have to touch the dirty stuff. Where you have to do the stuff you won't do. You need to work to achieve your good game.

Writing shaders in Unity3D is the most fucked up stuff. I hear Slin everyday complaining about the horrible shader pipeline and how good the Gamestudio one is.

Programming with Unity3D also sucks (sorry that I always rant against Unity3D, but it looks like all of you see something like god himself in this piece of crap).
It might be easy to click some stuff together in Unity, but then you will reach the point where it just isn't enough. Where you want to be exclusive.
I said at the very beginning that everyone looks at your graphic and that you have to deliver good graphics. But thats only the half, your gameplay needs also to be good!
Take Gothic 4, it looks really nice, but its gameplay is not extra ordinary. It will sell some units because of its name, but not because it is good. And where is the problem? It lacks of great gameplay content. Just throwing textures and models together isn't enough.

And please don't post any screenshots from AAA titles or hobby projects with great assets and tell me that Gamestudio lacks those.
At first, the AAA titles have a budget. Not only 200€ from the last birthday, but much money. They can pay people for their time. You want AAA assets? Pay for it!
And what about those hobby projects with the nice assets? The may have not paid someone because its a hobby and made with friends, but as you are not a modeler and don't know anyone who can do this (forever alone), you have to pay someone. Thats it.
This has nothing to do with the engine, either you have someone who makes your stuff for free (having talented friends is the way to go), or pay someone who is able to do the stuff. Even Unity3D cooks with water, and once you realize that you can't create a game with a Palm, some Grass textures and a built-in normal mapping shader, you will see that Unity3D doesn't make your live easy at all. It just satisfies your inner graphic whore.

However, you will reach in A8, Unity3D, Cry Engine, Unreal Engine, [insert another engine here], [some more engines], [don't forget this engine], a point where the built-in stuff just isn't enough anymore. Where you have to tweak your game, where you have to streamline your work to let it perform well. The point where you stop clicking around in a nice UI and where you have to work.

JustSid: Your post reads very well and is absolutely true from the point of view of a programmer. Still I can tell you that there is a huge difference for people like me. I am creating a game level each week, importing around 80 models each week, around 100 textures each week. I worked with T3D, Gamestudio, Unity, UDK and C4 and there are huge and I mean very huge differences. In some tools I have to do a lot of steps manually, importing, material-creating, camera scripting and maybe even shader-editing.
In other tools I can copy everything into a project folder and it imports automatically, creates materials automatically (only one for each diffuse texture, so different models share automatically the same materials) and so on.

Then there comes the point where I need flickering lights and a camera movement through the level to create some nice preview for recording a video. This works fine in some tools just with an inbuilt animation editor. In other tools I had to script, to run, to see that it looks bad, to script again and so on. I would not have time any more to work on my assets.

I will not mention any names of engines here, just to not start any flames. But on my end I could save sooo much and I really mean very much time just while using the right tool for that.

Still I understand when somebody says he needs a certain feature or more performance and thus just has to live with worse tools, losing time there just to get a better performing game in the end.

But what I want to tell here is that there are advantages and disadvantages everywhere and the truth is just in the middle of what most people tell you.

Another very simple point of view is to count how many good games users of a certain tool produce per year. There must be a reason why one tool allows people to create games faster and easier than another.

Yes, are absolutely right, I wrote it from the programmers point of view. A8 is a engine for programmers and not for designers, totally agree.
I prefer a nice IDE over a good looking world or model editor, because thats where I spend the most time.

Your post ist btw really interesting because you don't focus on making a whole game but on how your models may look in a game. Unity3D is great to serve this part because it has this very nice Editor.
This is the point of view of an designer and its totally okay, I never intended to tell you that A8 is great for your kind of work or that Unity3D doesn't do the job better. It was a rant about programmers that can't face that a nice editor doesn't create automatically create great assets and games.

Oh, and I have nothing against reasonable feature requests or bug reports! I mentioned at the very beginning that filing bug reports is essential!

About counting the finished good games, we first need to discuss what a good game is. I saw a few Unity3D games on the iPhone and neither of them were good at all. You could almost feel that they were clicked together just to make the big money really quick. Yes, they looked nice, but not more. Just like Gothic 4.
I don't know how that looks on the PC or Mac as I don't play much games there.

I wasn't complaining about this. Maybe I should start right now.

[/sarcasm]

I've never seen or used Unity, but it sounds like it's just another "click-em-together" toolkit. My experience: these packages may come with a lot of nice, fancy features right out of the box, but in the long run you will find that the equipment provided is less than what you need to build a real, decent game. Essentially these tools are like "Battlefield" type games, whose reception essentially plays out like this:


Developer: Look at us! We made this great game where you can drive tanks and command troops and capture flags!


Player: Wow! This game looks so cool!


*plays for a few hours*


Player: Well, I drove tanks and commanded troops and captured flags. Is there anything else I can do?


Developer: Nope!

Yes, quality of games is a difficult point to discuss.

And I can understand different positions there. I made games in the past myself as a student. And I did not get much money per game from the publisher. So I had to make small games quite fast. That way I decided to go the fastest route each time. I programmed in a very good programming language with a powerful library at that time and I made 2d-games only. So I could sometimes finish a game on an extended weekend (Friday to Sunday).

And because of this I think it still works that way, many small lone developers have to make several games per year just to survive, otherwise it is a pure hobby. And it will be difficult to start coding your own tools and libraries for each game. They also have to get to as much platforms as possible to earn something.

I have read that Torque2D attracts a lot of people who really earn money with games, Shiva, Flash and Unity also does out of the reasons I mentioned above.

I am sure you can also earn a lot of money with a really good looking and bigger indie project, but you have to invest a lot of money in front and this will be harder.

I am dreaming myself of making a great looking shooter and I probably will make one. But it is a long time project and might never become very successful. And in this case I would probably rather use UDK even when Unity has a more easy workflow. But my tests show that I can get better looking results even render faster there.

I can read such discussions each week in other forums. T3D and C4 users claim their engine choice is the best just because they have the source code to adapt whatever they like. C4 users often write they already know Torque and C4 code is just better organized. Both suffer from worse tools compared to Unity and UDK. Unity and UDK users love their tools just because of the pure power they have at their hands. They might bounce against some walls but they help each other to solve it or just work around it. In the end it works for most of them.

First of all it is a bad start to start a discussion with "I never used but...". Besides that you will find even more "click-together" features in big engines like CryEngine or UDK. And nevertheless they produce fantastic triple-A games. A click-together-editor approach is nothing bad when combined with a powerful scripting language and enough engine functionality exposed to that language. And if you dont want that, you can only get most freedom with full source code. Then you will be only happy with engines like Torque, C4, Irrlicht or Ogre3d.

By the way: I did not complain about A8 since it exists. I am only writing about my experience with different tools here. And I tried to concentrate on the good sides of them.

yes, from a programmer's perspective open source solutions actually should be preferable.

i don't get whats supposed to be so great about gamestudio from a programmers perspective? lite-c is a proprietary c dialect. there often are compatibility issues if you want to use 3rd party c libraries. debugging is a pain. it's way more efficient to do gameplay code in a modern garbage collected language. for stuff where c/c++ would make sense... with gamestudio you don't have access to a lot of engine internals, so for every small thing/bug fix you could easily add/fix yourself (look into firoball's recent threads) you have to spend weeks of back and forth with jcl. for the most tricky parts of a game engine it also only uses free 3rd party libraries (physx,...).

regarding gamestudio vs. unity... in my opinion in a lot of ways they are more similar than many people think. unity has more manpower and money behind it and so it is more polished but i don't care much about the editors (most of my work gets done in blender anyway) or fancy features. what makes unity more interesting to me is the support for many platforms. windows isn't very interesting anymore as a platform.

edit:
hm... if you look at the most popular indie games of the recent years... most of them seem to use their own custom engines (minecraft, world of goo, penumbra, darwinia,...). why is that so?

minecraft and world of goo both come from
"indyprogrammers", that made many experiemental gameplay demos.

So they have a well funded programmer background anyhow.
Having your own engine lets you have more power over the
design and features. (no workaround looping back and forth)
But I think they are special cases.

Torchlight was done in Ogre for example.

But..that..was...my argument

The text is very well written and now I want to have A8 too, I understood your arguments and they are all very logic. I know many points of your text from Gravvix and can totally agree with them, everybody want to be different but everybody want the one tool with aio and no difference.

Actually they still want to be different but want an efficient way to get there.

What they really want is a short cut, some help to get a bit faster to their goal. This is not a bad approach.

I can tell you from experience that you can do a lot the long way. You will even learn a lot then. But you will probably not get to that initial goal. I started making games on a C64 in Assembler language. I even had to code graphics from a rastered paper into 8 bit values for each block and then typed all those value into the memory to laod them into the graphics chip later. Consider this, I had to look for 8 pixels on that paper and calculate a number from those pixels. This was the beginning. We had no debugging, no script, the program just crashed when we wrote wrong data into the wrong register.

Now the coders want to have code refacturing, syntax highlighting, debugging and instant help. They just want real-time feedback when possible.
Designers just want the same, they want realtime feedback when editing materials and levels in a visual way. This is nothing bad to complain about it is just how it all develops, how it progresses. This is the present and the future will be even better. I dont understand why we should fight against something like that and struggle to find reasons to explain why we dont need it

I'm fully agree with JustSid! And A8 needs to be much better than all its competitors! And yes, unity gives shaders for free, even if its really hard to make some shaders yourself. To use even some basic shaders in game studio you need to buy commercial version at least... I'm not designer or modelier, even if I can make some models and I can draw very well, I don't like to spent a lot of time with making models and so on. I really like to programm (even if my knowledge isn't really good enough, I'm still learning), but to make a good game, you need really some good looking models and textures... And making levels with WED is just kind of bull shit... And I'm pretty sure, every one knows this. As well as game studio textures and models are old as hell!! And nothing much changed since A6! The main change is Lite-c... And yes, there are templates to make some games without programming... But projects made with them, looks really ridiculous...even if you'll spent more than 200 dollars for models and more than 200 dollars for textures...

Edit: And could you show me some really great tools, that come with even commercial version? Most of the useful tools are made by engine users! Even still, if some newbie want to start learning anything about pathfinding, they will find some not fully working examples from AUM (the only one that works with the latest A7 and LITE-C, is the one from AUM 64, but till you get it working with multiple bots, you'll have heart attack!), not supported at the moment IntenceX (I heard that there some sort of bugs with game studio, don't know are they fixed...), some other examples from enging users (can be found on Wiki), but is there any good looking pathfinding that comes with game studio? Where is the example, that will show me the whole power of engine?! It doesn't exist... But still, I'm not changing engine, I've started with GS, and I'm still working with it... May be I'm to lazy to start learning something new from the very beginning, I don't know. But I know a lot of GS users, that changed engine to an other one...

That my friend, is completely bullshit.
I am not a Unity fan boy, its just the engine i like to use recently (and i'm open to many other engines, i've tried and used a lot without complaining about it, and i would use other engines if i feel like it's better to achieve games in it (like TGB)).
But why do you think the programming sucks in Unity3D? I am a programmer myself and i enjoy it so much programming in C# with Unity, there are (almost) no limits, you can use almost every system library and do whatever you want. And if it's not enough/working, you can write a dll and include it.

Prototyping is just so damn fast in it as well, i have so many small projects i've started for myself (beside all the commercial stuff i've already did thanks to unity).

NOTE: I am NOT comparing Unity vs A8 here, i don't know A8, i don't know A7, but i loved A6 as well.

So yeah please get more information before ranting about products (and using it for a short while doesn't really count) and keep your pessimism out of topics like this so people can actually take it serious.

i don't think they are exceptions. i admit that i didn't do a thorough search but the biggest indie hits of the recent years that i quickly found all used their own engines (often a combination of several open source libraries). to me this kind of questions tools like gamestudio and unity. this shows that to be successful you first of all need to be a "indie programmer" and not an artist with nice ideas and tools that claim that you don't need to be much of a programmer.

(Ratchet, this is a thread for you!)
Thanks JustSid i appreciate.
Critics are the only way to evolve ! even lot more in real life ! if nobody never critcs you you can't evolve and stay at same leve all yiour life !


Well i presume it's my thread on Iphone games where i talked about A8. Don't forget i stated well that the team making
the game with Unreal engine on Iphone would do as good and even more better if we told all their very skilled 3D artists
to use A8 indeed

For all the rest of engines talks Machinery_Frank have resumed very well all that.

A8 is used by programmers mainly, Unity by 3D artists mainly
and Iphone game makers !
Even that resumes very well these two engines that target
different people and projects.

JustSid :
Use Unity indie also , try their tutorials, i'm sure you'll find some fun
I like a lot A8, i don't use actually Unity free version for my current project and i use ..... A8 !!!!
But if i switch to some more advanced grahical game , i will switch to Unity !

Critics on A8 can only boost the engine even more on tools and workflow, if all people say A8 is prefect ....
ok let it be what it is with programming features only ... ?
Critics are needed to make things move like in life !


Everyone should choose what really brings fun to them , or what engine they really need !



In real life, i have people that make critics on me, that's hard to hear, but sometimes so true, finally it helps me changing my closed mind and open it !


Everyone should critic their prefered 3D engine to make it even better !

Interesting you say that. My game is pretty simple and could easily be done in Unity (gameplay-wise). Visually that would be an effort and a half. I'd use Unity to make my game so that I had a wider audience (most of my friends are non-gamers and so don't know any better than to own a Mac , so they can't try my game even though they want to just to see what I do), but I want my game to look nice (part me being a graphics whore, and part me taking pride as a shader programmer), so I stick with A8 even though it'll only work on Windows.

To me it's like this:
Unity effort to use industry-standard effects:
--|
A8 effort to use industry-standard effects:
--------|
A8 effort to use gorgeous, application-specific effects:
-----------|
Unity effort to use gorgeous, application-specific effects:
---------------------------|

Jibb

But you see, they also use libraries and premade functions
to get the stuff working.

An engine is just a compilation of several methods into a
bigger package. But if you know the architecture, its better
to only "outsource" part of the code, such as rendering (OpenGL interfaces),
sound, input libraries etc.

--

You can also make a great game using a very restricted engine,
that has all sets of tools and structures,
but then its called a Mod. (like the game Nehrim based on Oblivion)

So the more freedom you need, the more you can
move down the ladder of predefined functionality.

Gamestudio for example encloses too many things (resource formats, rendering procedures) from direct access and modification.
Thus its not a good choice for a bigger team, that
can rely on experienced programmers.
For them its better to use some libraries, and set up
their own engine.

its still funny to see (even more serious) attemts
to use gamestudios build in multiplayer functions.
its the type of stuff you dont touch, but make your
own implementation. (which ultimately gives the reason for
dlls to take over that job)

Its similar to using an engine that only allows integer math,
and building a workaround to simulate floating point calculations.
..instead of using floating point calculation directly.

You can also make a great game using a very restricted engine,
that has all sets of tools and structures,
but then its called a Mod
I agree making mods is also another solution.
But unity really let you do the game you want, its' not predifined, you can script anything !

For programming features, i admit A8 is perhaps better ??And if you have a solid programing team, any engine
more programming oriented A8 , ogre 3D or other engine will do the job !

But for the lonewolf wanting to do a game, that want to manage as simple as possible ressources, and apply basic shaders as fast and simple as possible as possible , well
A8 is not the best in that domain indeed

But i use A8, and for me that's really ok for my current project ! So it really depends on your needs , and your skills !
In fact i would want to say :
Use two or more engines, try to make things with them !
Then decide depending on your goal and money or if you have simply fun with it what is the best to use in that moment !

And don't forget to critic A8
I remember during the A6 days , the engine stayed one year and more without updates, critics on forums have changed things ! Today, they are very often betas even if little or only code oriented !
Critics bring better things !

Programming wise best use A8 as DLL and do everything in C++ or C# via the C# wrapper.

Lite-C has some nice extra features which are very handy, but also annoying limitations which you usually don't notice... but never ever try to port some heavily runtime optimized unreadable spaghetticode to Lite-C. Believe me - it's a waste of time.
I got it to work - partly... then I gave up and compiled the original source as DLL. Worked right away.

Lite-C indeed has some bigger issues - and once you run into these problems you are stuck with ancient debugging methods.

"I said at the very beginning that everyone looks at your graphic and that you have to deliver good graphics. But thats only the half, your gameplay needs also to be good!"

In my opinion it is the direct opposite at least at an Indie level
Put it this way
Commercial software houses normally enmployes 2 / 3 artist oriented people and 1 / 3 programming oriented guys
The reason is that graphics ia more time consuming than programming but it would be a mistake to assume that it is also the most important stuff

Lets take a 12 people team with 9 artist and 3 programmers
Useless to say that the reality is more diversified but it is just a rough example
You are a lonly wolf , good artist and good peogrammer and you want to compete with this team+
What would you do ?
Maybe you dedicate 2 / 3 of your time to graphics and 1 / 3 to programming ?
A bloody mistake

You are 1 vs 9 on artistic side , you will never win
Better to fight on the game play side
Here you are 1 vs 3 a little better

This is what the succesfull Indie designers do

Indie games graphics is normally rather poor but their game play sometime is great

In other words it is a strategy based on a simple benefit / cost analysis

The main problem about A8 is not the engine itself, but the tools that look like they were developed 10 years ago. I love the engine, its a joy to code with it - but hell, everything about it just screams OUTDATED. WED is propably the shittiest map editor ever; GED is just a lame excuse. Looking at tools like Unity, its not hard to see why those other engines have a better reputation - they just look and feel better, no matter what coding power they got. Oh, and they are able to export to iPhone and co, so a huge plus for indie developers.

Well said , it resumes A8 vey well !
The coding aspect and control is great indeed with fast learning curve
But the tools rae incomplete , missing or 10 years looking old !

Some of us wished new interface for A8 , it seems impossible ,
it's thesame fundation windows GUI from A5, A6 or older ... from ages ! In fact A8 is the result of improvement and solutions to keep the engine up to date without re writting all from the root.


If i really need workflow or modern tools i use another engine, that's as simple as that !
Well, for the moment i have projects , and some casual
(like 30 minutes games) for A8 !
So i'm happy with it

some very good points, fact is I stay with GS because of it's simplicity. I am a beginner coder at best, and to change engines would mean really learning how to code(lol).

The power of the engine will be waste if the user keep complaining about simple thing.....

This thread remind me the debate of BlitzBasic/DarkBasic vs GameStudio many years ago.

At that time most people got the percetion that GameStuio is target for FPS game designer, as the bundle demo and templates are target for FPS games. While Basic like game language without any level editor is target for programmer.

Today, the default editor of GameStudio is the lite-C IDE, on the contray, Unity comes with a good level editor and may code perfeb code for designer to make prototype quickly.

The designer/programmer debate start over.