Project Efficiency

[Synth]

Here's to hoping this argument doesn't kill the mod.

I, (and I hope others, as well) sincerely appreciate any effort that goes towards this amazing mod.

Would it be far-fetched to call jealousy?

 

[KarrdeKNR]

Muff, depends on what I want as a lead developer. If I'm making a game on a pre-existing engine, and I don't plan on making major changes - IE I'm not looking to develop new systems, and basically will use prexisting engine scripts, resources, etc, I'll prolly go with the guy who's done nothing but that before. I could probably get someone like that for cheaper, too. However, if I plan to mess with the innards of an engine and make sweeping changes, then I want someone who has done that before. This kind of work requires more creativity than implementing things into a completely preexisting framework. Same goes for building an engine from the ground up. Working on HL and working on UT3 isn't that big of a difference overall. Anyone working for any game company will be up to date on modern coding. The difference is the creativity, ingenuity and experience in engine coding.

 

[Darth Revan]

I think this thread should be closed before it all gets out of hand

 

[TwisteR]

Way to add to the conversation. Its civil enough to stay open, let the forum staff worry about it.

True, it looks good for a person to see that they can work with newer technologies (game engines) but in my eyes its more impressive to see someone do more with less.

Like cars, Id rather work on making a slow car fast than buy a car thats already fast. Helps the learning process, and makes me appreciate my work a little more.

Though, buying a car thats already fast means its less of a headache to deal with, more reliable. Because doing alot with a little is not always easy but the end result is what makes it worth it. Same applies for working with the HL1 engine versus working with something newer.

 

[Damaera]

I think this thread should be closed before it all gets out of hand

Then we should close all the other threads as well, because there's a chance that they can get out of hand.

 

[TehMuffinMan]

Since you asked

I love how Muffin completely overlooked my posts.

I love how you completely overlooked my previous post about my poor choice of example and to use google to find an example to suit your own needs. but since some people cannot master such things, a quick scan of google gives you plenty of examples of mods done in a year too by small groups so pick your poison.

Since all your previous posts were all on the borderlands choice, that should eliminate your feeling of your point being overlooked no?

Muff, depends on what I want as a lead developer. If I'm making a game on a pre-existing engine, and I don't plan on making major changes - IE I'm not looking to develop new systems, and basically will use prexisting engine scripts, resources, etc, I'll prolly go with the guy who's done nothing but that before. I could probably get someone like that for cheaper, too. However, if I plan to mess with the innards of an engine and make sweeping changes, then I want someone who has done that before. This kind of work requires more creativity than implementing things into a completely preexisting framework. Same goes for building an engine from the ground up. Working on HL and working on UT3 isn't that big of a difference overall. Anyone working for any game company will be up to date on modern coding. The difference is the creativity, ingenuity and experience in engine coding.

True, and your right to think that. My point was relating to both of these CV's having the same amount of time spent and in the same aspect of work. I'm pretty sure sweeping changes on UT3 would be far far far more preferential than sweeping changes on HL1.

Would it be far-fetched to call jealousy?

As far as night is from day

I think this thread should be closed before it all gets out of hand

It wont get out of hand, taking turns on a soapbox is a far cry for trading insults. i think we can hold a civil conversation even if the topic is of a fragile nature. besides this has no doubt spurred a bit of activity on the forums!

 

[Skiwan]

Its pretty funny you're questioning efficiency when nearly all the graphical and technical improvements have been made within the past year, and that's with people only working on it when they can. ESF has moved forward much more within the past year than it did in the previous 7 years of its existence put together.

Note that you dont really know how much the gameplay experience has changed either.

 

[TehMuffinMan]

Where have I questioned efficiency? I pointed out that the push in the past year is not unmatched as many mods have come forward just as quick. This entire discussion (in my intention) is about the flaws of the phrase "ESF>UT3" which gameplay wouldn't make a monumental difference to either

you guys have all done a brilliant job with the project and i'm by no means trying to debate that. My "beef" is with several peoples stance that pulling apart a ten year old engine is more complex and held in higher regard than pulling apart a more recent engine, that working with half life 1 is more complex than working with UT3.

 

[KarrdeKNR]

I'd also say there's limited difference between code used in HL the way we're using it and UT3 engine code.

 

[Spunky]

Muffin, you still don't understand, so let me try to break it down for you. Unreal Engine 2 is a newer engine with more recent technologies already implemented. Let's forget about the fact that this project started 8 or 9 years ago, motivation and finding dedicated team members has always been a problem, starting over on a new engine would be idiotic and focus on the technicalities instead. Unreal Engine 2 really is less challenging from a programmer's perspective. UnrealScript is a scripting language designed by definition to make it easier for programmers to develop games, and to speed up the development process as a whole. These scripting languages actually limit the extent to which you're able to modify the engine. Sure, you can still do some neat stuff, but I'd love to see you try to implement the latest Cg shaders into your UT3 mod.

The HL SDK comes with no scripting language to make development easier, so it is in fact more of a challenge to work with and you get more control over what you're doing as a result. There's nothing to argue here, that's the entire reason scripting languages exist. Yes, Unreal Engine 2 is the ideal platform for people who want a large portion of the work done for them. Woohoo! What are you trying to prove here, that Unreal Engine 2 is a superior platform? This team has been able to pretty much reshape the GoldSrc engine, and that's only in the last year or so of development.

I'll reiterate the overlooked parts of my posts which you completely missed:

ESF is not a professionally developed game (though some professionals may be on the team), and has never even pretended to be. These aren't people going for a quick buck, but people trying to create a completely unique expression of an idea for zero profit. Whatever their individual reasons for joining the team are, who are you (whom I presume to have absolutely no experience in game development) to criticize them for the way in which they choose to develop this mod, especially when the way in which they're choosing to do so is projected to have no effect whatsoever on your experience with it?

You're complaining senselessly about a minuscule detail.

You're also still trying to make a point of development times, so:

I forgot to make a point about ESF's development time. Being hobbyists, it's easy to lose motivation to work on a project, which the team says has been the case numerous times where long periods of time would go by with almost no progress. A team of paid professionals wouldn't have this problem.

Paid professionals also know what they're going to do before they even begin. Sure, minor (and sometimes major, but not often) changes in the game's design can happen, but you have a really good idea of what you want to do from the word "go." During my time as a tester, the team jumped back and forth between ideas pretty often and probably still do, just because their actions aren't restricted by an employer.

It would probably only take the ESF team around three months (if that, probably less) to develop ESF if being paid 8 hours a day to work on it. With motivation and time not being a constraint on development, you'd be surprised at the difference in productivity. It's easy to lose your motivation when you're receiving absolutely nothing but the gratitude of adolescent kids in return for your hard work, believe me, and time is always a problem when you have work and/or school to worry about.

That's why I said you overlooked my posts. After I posted, you kept trying to make a point of theses things where there isn't one to be made. I've done all I can here to help you understand the dynamics of game development. If you still don't understand, I'm giving you up as a lost cause and hope that some day you read a bit into it.

Honestly, not to troll, but it seems to everyone here that you're just butthurt over what Raven said. Get over it.

 

[harSens]

I feel a grievous underestimation of the basic game-play code that has been in ESF for years and the amount of detail that went in that. Although 'ze Germans' have build many new things, we still build upon the same attack and weapon system I've build years ago (albeit weapons are now initialized through XML rather than hard-coded and beams are steered through physics rather than directly), we still run the same basic movement code (although now executed through the physics engine), we still run the same animation system (with Joe's and Green's update for smoother flight movement), etc etc. I run into code from 2001 that requires a minor update quite frequently. Many of the things we have now have been incremently build upon successes of the past. It's not like we threw away 1.2 to build 1.3. Porting that all to a different engine would be a massive and rather boring amount of work. That's why we work with Half-life, not solely because Raven or LoD are coding ninjas that need a challenge.

 

[Gama]

This is addressing the thing about if your trying to break into the gaming world:

Im not great with understanding coding ect but I can tell you from the games career fairs iv been to and from the coders at my Uni that If your knownledge of code was only in the HL1 engine and not in up to date engines they will just throw ur CV to one side regradless of what you have done with that engine.

Me on a personal note would be more impressed with the person who had limited resources and still managed to implant new techs into an older format.

 

[TehMuffinMan]

Spunky, your response is well written but your missing one major thing

Where have I questioned efficiency? I pointed out that the push in the past year is not unmatched as many mods have come forward just as quick. This entire discussion (in my intention) is about the flaws of the phrase "ESF>UT3" which gameplay wouldn't make a monumental difference to either

you guys have all done a brilliant job with the project and i'm by no means trying to debate that. My "beef" is with several peoples stance that pulling apart a ten year old engine is more complex and held in higher regard than pulling apart a more recent engine, that working with half life 1 is more complex than working with UT3.

The reason i've not bothered responding to your comments is because they are of no relevance. As previously stated i'm by no means critising ESF for its work efficiency, nor am i disgruntled about the use of HL1 and I hold nothing but praise in that regard having watched its development since the alpha days so stop putting words in my mouth.

I'll say that for the third time, I am NOT critising the development times. third times a charm no? as you aptly put, get over it.

my entire discussion, and the previous comments made were solely about the general feeling by a small minority that next-gen engines are easy modding in comparison to much older engines. triggered by someone throwing toys out of the pram about having crits posted on updates.

The whole aspect of codings already been covered in the past pages so i won't run a full circle, but if you think mapping/modelling/texture/animation/art/competition is easier on next-gen engines, i'd strongly advise some research.

 

[Sicron]

Let me first tell you that I greatly admire the work you have put into ESF:F , you have done a great job on the game, and what I am going to say next is not ment to 'critisize' your way of running this mod, in the end it is your choice and we are all fine with that. That, and I didn't read every post in this thread, so I am sorry if I bring up old points. But..

Everyone can see that a great deal of new code was introduced in ESF:F compared to the 1.3 OB. Sure you might have used quite a bit of code from the older game versions, noone is going to deny that. But reinventing the wheel is only something that will please yourselves, and not anyone else. Yes, you can put it on your resume, but how do you think the conversation with your future employer will go?

"Ah, I see you have made a modification for an old game and you added a lot of stuff to it, could you tell some more about it?"
"Well, we added bloom, physics yadda yadda bla bla to a 10 year old engine. And it works!"
"Well, it's great that you managed to add that, but we use pre-made engines made by [Insert big name (Square, Epic, Id, Crytek etc.)] So, although you might have quite a bit of experience with coding an engine, we don't really use that experience"

Well after that, he would probably ask you what else you did, you tell him, and he'll be happy. Problem is, is the amount of time you spent reinventing the wheel going to be profitable for you or the game later on? I am sure you will have learned quite a bit from it, but I do also believe that time could have been better spent on using a newer engine. You could have spent more time creating something 'unique' on that new engine, something that hasn't even been done in any commercial game. And for boring-ness sake, you could've ditched the entire ESF project and went a whole different route, learning many new things on the way, include a lot more important and interesting things on your resume.

What you've managed to do with HL1 is great, nobody will deny that. But then again, it's been done before. Did you learn a lot of stuff coding it on a HL1 engine? Probably yes. Will it benefit you in your later development, or future jobs? Debatable. Debatable in the sense; you may need to code some lightning effects in a future game, and there are far more things that you guys have learned over the years than just coding, modeling, mapping, animating etc. Stuff like learning how to work in a team is important as well, learning how to work with deadlines (something the guys over at DukeNukem Whenever never learned for example.)

 

[Spunky]

Sicron, this thread was never about getting a job in the game industry.

Muffin, I'll reiterate once again. Unreal Engine was designed for easy third-party development. I've already said that's not really something you can argue, it's an undeniable fact stated many times by Epic Games. Are you going to argue with them about it? Unreal Engine was designed to be ridiculously easy to develop for. With the UDK, it's really not as difficult to develop a mod as with other game development tools. It is less complicated to work with. I'm not saying the same holds true for other engines.

The fact that some UT3 mod teams have made progress at the same rate as the ESF team doesn't say much of anything about either side. Comparing the rate of progress of hobbyist game development teams is pointless, that's just another dynamic of game development because everyone has different amounts of free time on their hands between work, school, and whatever else they have going on.

I can understand trying to defend your swollen pride, but really, what the ****? Nothing bad has been said about Unreal Engine. All anybody has said is that it's not as complicated to work with, which is undeniably true. What's your problem?

 

[KarrdeKNR]

I'm pretty sure they reinvent the wheel every time someone makes a new engine. Not like they copy code from something that already exists. They may construct it in a similar way, but any new from the ground up engine is reinventing the wheel to an extent.

 

[Gama]

Sicron, this thread was never about getting a job in the game industry.

Muffin, I'll reiterate once again. Unreal Engine was designed for easy third-party development. I've already said that's not really something you can argue, it's an undeniable fact stated many times by Epic Games. Are you going to argue with them about it? Unreal Engine was designed to be ridiculously easy to develop for. With the UDK, it's really not as difficult to develop a mod as with other game development tools. It is less complicated to work with. I'm not saying the same holds true for other engines.

The fact that some UT3 mod teams have made progress at the same rate as the ESF team doesn't say much of anything about either side. Comparing the rate of progress of hobbyist game development teams is pointless, that's just another dynamic of game development because everyone has different amounts of free time on their hands between work, school, and whatever else they have going on.

I can understand trying to defend your swollen pride, but really, what the ****? Nothing bad has been said about Unreal Engine. All anybody has said is that it's not as complicated to work with, which is undeniably true. What's your problem?

I might be misreading this whole topic but from what I can tell Muffin is aruging the fact that UR engine is not easy to work with as one might think, yes it easier then the HL1 engine when it comes to bloom and so on but the reason for that is because the UR is made to handle that where HL1 isnt so if you didnt add all the extras the team is adding like the boom then the HL1 engine is in fact easier to work with therefor the team created more work for themselfs but trying to implant these things into an engine thats doing stuff it isnt ment to when they could of just moved to an engine that already has the tools to do it.

Ok that might not make any sense or be related in anyway but thats what i can make from this topic.

 

[Sicron]

Sicron, this thread was never about getting a job in the game industry.

Muffin, I'll reiterate once again. Unreal Engine was designed for easy third-party development. I've already said that's not really something you can argue, it's an undeniable fact stated many times by Epic Games. Are you going to argue with them about it? Unreal Engine was designed to be ridiculously easy to develop for. With the UDK, it's really not as difficult to develop a mod as with other game development tools. It is less complicated to work with. I'm not saying the same holds true for other engines.

The fact that some UT3 mod teams have made progress at the same rate as the ESF team doesn't say much of anything about either side. Comparing the rate of progress of hobbyist game development teams is pointless, that's just another dynamic of game development because everyone has different amounts of free time on their hands between work, school, and whatever else they have going on.

I can understand trying to defend your swollen pride, but really, what the ****? Nothing bad has been said about Unreal Engine. All anybody has said is that it's not as complicated to work with, which is undeniably true. What's your problem?

As far as I understood, this thread is about how efficient the choice was to choose for 'hacking' the HL1 engine, or moving to a different engine. I merely spoke in the perspective, that for personal growth in skills (and in time, a real job in the gaming industry), the choice for the HL1 engine might have been unefficient compared to moving to a more advanced engine. Which means less time would have to be spend on adding bloom and such ('reinventing the wheel' if you will) and more time could have been spend on other, perhaps more unique(previously unseen), features.

Then again, maybe I just misunderstood the entire topic, in which case: never mind my posts.

I might be misreading this whole topic but from what I can tell Muffin is aruging the fact that UR engine is not easy to work with as one might think, yes it easier then the HL1 engine when it comes to bloom and so on but the reason for that is because the UR is made to handle that where HL1 isnt so if you didnt add all the extras the team is adding like the boom then the HL1 engine is in fact easier to work with therefor the team created more work for themselfs but trying to implant these things into an engine thats doing stuff it isnt ment to when they could of just moved to an engine that already has the tools to do it.

Ok that might not make any sense or be related in anyway but thats what i can make from this topic.

That depends, you would have to spend a lot less time building already implemented features such as bloom. But you would have to spend extra time learning how to use new mapping techniques for example, that were previously not needed because HL1 simply didn't support them. Which in case would make it a lot more efficient in terms of personal growth, to learn to work with Unreal, as it will be a lot more likely you will need those skills if you were to continue working in the gaming industry as a full-time job rather than a hobby.

Which I suspect some of the team members will want to do.

That and from what I understand, [some of] the team members may or may not be interested in an Indy project after they finished ESF:F. If they plan to develop their own engine for that project, all experience gained from hacking the HL1 engine will probably be of great use. Then again, if they plan to license the Unreal engine for example (or any other engine for that matter), it may have been smarter if they would've already chosen for a more advanced engine than the HL1 engine, cutting down on the extra time spent developing a possible new project.

In the end, it doesn't really matter. The team will get the stuff finished, regardless of efficiency, as long as they are having fun doing it.

 

[TehMuffinMan]

Unreal Engine was designed to be ridiculously easy to develop for. With the UDK, it's really not as difficult to develop a mod as with other game development tools. It is less complicated to work with. I'm not saying the same holds true for other engines.

So UDK is easier to produce mods with than HL1? your correct in terms of the engine, since it gives you greater control over what you import, but your point is a bit strange here. You do realise that the a potential modder has to produce MUCH more complex and higher quality work to import in the first place? Did you have to create a high poly zbrush sculpt to get Goku on-par with the competition? i'm at a loss how you could argue that Next gen engines are easier to work with outside of features that have existed in moddable engines for the past 3 years, look at the big picture, 1.3 hasnt seen only code updates now has it?

The fact that some UT3 mod teams have made progress at the same rate as the ESF team doesn't say much of anything about either side. Comparing the rate of progress of hobbyist game development teams is pointless, that's just another dynamic of game development because everyone has different amounts of free time on their hands between work, school, and whatever else they have going on.

Right, so you get in a hissy about me using Borderlands as a reference, and so I apologise and give you some community mod examples, and you still have your knickers in a twist? you say that its pointless comparing? why have you been rabbiting on about it and not just drop it?

I can understand trying to defend your swollen pride, but really, what the ****? Nothing bad has been said about Unreal Engine. All anybody has said is that it's not as complicated to work with, which is undeniably true. What's your problem?

Again i ask you to please stop the personal attacks as its really starting to get annoying, its only trolling me which would only serve to steer this thread further off the rails with warnings being thrown around.

 

[Spunky]

I wasn't trying to troll you, your behavior just has people scratching their heads. That's all.

When I say it's easier to develop for UT3, I meant they offer you a nicer suite of tools than other engines, meant to streamline development for third-parties. You're right for the most part though, I have mainly been thinking about the programming aspect of everything. I would still imagine they make it easier to do everything since that's what Epic Games has been claiming for the past 10 years.

When did I get in a "hissy" about Borderlands? I merely stated why it was a bad comparison. I never once compared ESF's rate of development to any other hobbyist development team. I only pointed out the difference between hobbyist and professional work environments. Care to enlighten me on these or are you grasping at straws?