I would like to give a big shout out to UWE
slayer20
Killed a man once. Join Date: 2007-12-13 Member: 63157Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Killed a man once. Join Date: 2007-12-13 Member: 63157Members, Reinforced - Shadow
<div class="IPBDescription">About the engine</div>I started learning C++ as I want to make my own game. I've been learning it for weeks now and I'm making slow but steady progress. After messing around with some graphic packages and what not, I've only now realized how hard it must be to create something as big as a gaming engine.
So I would just like to take this minute to acknowledge the ones who helped make the Spark Engine come to life, and all the hard work that was put behind it.
So I would just like to take this minute to acknowledge the ones who helped make the Spark Engine come to life, and all the hard work that was put behind it.
Comments
So I would just like to take this minute to acknowledge the ones who helped make the Spark Engine come to life, and all the hard work that was put behind it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
seconded
+1 to the original post. Programming ain't easy.
+1 to the original post. Programming ain't easy.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wrong, once you get the language down it's just more or less learning where to input code and how to combine, etc. Also it's really just time consuming and a wide area for so many ###### ups. (In college for computer science, software engineering/development)
But ontopic, shouts to UW.
But ontopic, shouts to UW.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No.. programming ain't easy.
I read the above quote as saying "Once you know how to program, the rest is easy. It may take awhile, but it's easy work that is only complicated by screw-ups." I respectfully disagree and I think it's a little disingenuous to say that programming is easy once you learn how to do it.
Props to UWE- NS2 is shaping up to be just as awesome (looks and otherwise) as I imagined it to be.
And I must say, the maps I've seen some people make so far are positively stunning and remarkably detailed. And to be honest I am really impressed with rendering style of the engine. I mean, have you ever seen a game where players have produced content that is visually on par with that of developers, only a few days after tools are released? Not to mention the short time it took for someone to figure out how to patch the first alpha to allow multiplayer among other things.
So indeed a big shout out to UWE for your work so far!
But ontopic, shouts to UW.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Being in college for computer science as well I agree here. Once you can understand logic it is all pretty universal. The only real tough stuff comes from threading (parallel processing) and understanding some of the math behind writing shaders and physics code (done a lil of both). Otherwise it is all just really time consuming and when dealing with a huge project, neatness and organization of all the components are also extremely important.
All this said the engine is still very impressive. Clearly a tremendous amount of time has gone into it and amazing results have been produced.
I just think this engine is awesome because it's all basically designed by Max, Charlie did a ###### load too I know, but I'm guessing the actual main framework was all done by one guy. So everything is running super congruently.
All this said the engine is still very impressive. Clearly a tremendous amount of time has gone into it and amazing results have been produced.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
As another computer scientist who has left school and been working for some time, I think you are crazy for saying programming is easy...
That is a gross simplification and just makes it sound like you've never worked on a project with serious constraints or large scale. Your statement seems like it is routed inexperience, programming is all about details, and what you describing above is a first pass at any project....
In my experience, programs very very rarely fail because the core algorithm is incorrect, rather they fail due to overlooked boundary conditions, or optimization requirements.
If programming was "easy" would some one be willing to pay top dollar to have it done? Would computers crash? Would 3d gaming engines ever run under 100fps....?
A summary of your statements:
"The basics of this subject are pretty straight forward once you learn them, I have learned a little bit about more advance subjects and found them difficult"
Buddy, you are just seeing the tip of the iceberg....
PS: Keep in mind, if your school project had a one month deadline, it will be expected to be complete in 2-4 working days on the job :-D (this is my experience anyway)
Anyway, good job uwe
That is a gross simplification and just makes it sound like you've never worked on a project with serious constraints or large scale. Your statement seems like it is routed inexperience, programming is all about details, and what you describing above is a first pass at any project....
In my experience, programs very very rarely fail because the core algorithm is incorrect, rather they fail due to overlooked boundary conditions, or optimization requirements.
If programming was "easy" would some one be willing to pay top dollar to have it done? Would computers crash? Would 3d gaming engines ever run under 100fps....?
A summary of your statements:
"The basics of this subject are pretty straight forward once you learn them, I have learned a little bit about more advance subjects and found them difficult"
Buddy, you are just seeing the tip of the iceberg....
PS: Keep in mind, if your school project had a one month deadline, it will be expected to be complete in 2-4 working days on the job :-D (this is my experience anyway)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Don't appreciate people putting words in my mouth especially when that isn't what I said. Quite rude really. See I find programming (the actual <b>programming/syntax</b> as Schimmel pointed out I was saying) easy because I've been doing it since 7th/8th grade and its been my main source of income for the past 3 years. My 2 semester long college senior project was a field messaging system for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport RI. Radio ops in a command center could write out field messages with a stylus and distribute it over the network to everyone in the command center. Of course this came with all the initial requirements and constraints as well as all the class/flow/sequence/etc diagrams we had to create to demonstrate correctness before even touching a piece of code (as well as meeting with our 'client' every couple of weeks to discuss progress). This isn't even mentioning the 3d graphic design I have done before that, one of which was a game (like Descent anyone remember Descent?) that had smooth 3d collision code and full networking for deathmatch across LAN. I've taken numerous algorithm classes, AI, robotics, parallel computations, models of computations, and many other CS classes (next semester taking neural networks). I think I'm quite a bit past the tip of the iceberg 'buddy'. It isn't like I have not recognized the amount of effort that has gone into this engine, big projects are tough because they require massive planing and organization (as well as risk assessment) before any real physical development (which is very straightforward if you setup your diagrams well). I just don't find it too hard to conceptualize logic flow whether it be in parallel or not, but that is me.
Nope not me.
I do HTML / CSS for a job... I wish I did C++ like I did at uni :'(.
Oh yeah, and awesome Kudos to UWE / Max for the Spark Engine, I made an engine <a href="http://www.spoonofdeath.com/delph/zerog.html" target="_blank">once</a>, it was awful.
(http://www.spoonofdeath.com/delph/images/screenshot4.jpg)
Only reasonable explanation for how he basically coded half a game engine in his spare time.
Anyway, good job uwe<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is what I find as well. Both in engine and general design. My small C++ engine went through about two rewrites just learning the paradigms of 3D graphics, things that are obvious to the industry, but not for newcomers. I ended up with a working engine that had procedural terrain generation, imported 3DS models and collision detection, but I knew that each was done in a very unoptimized manner (for example, the terrain was stored in a matrix with many redundant elements and the collision detection was done per-vertex, very expensive).
In this manner, I'm sure Spark has stood the test of rewrites, because Max has been working on it since before 2003.
Just to prove my knowledge is utterly useless and the reading of it isn't so complex :) Thanks Delphic.
I misunderstood your post. Didn't mean to be offensive really, though reading my post I came off as a jerk. Sorry for that. I bet if you read through your post you'll see how I could misinterpret your words as sounding like an over confident first or second year student. I'm sorry for making foolish assumptions about your skill level based on your post.
I agree syntax is easily understood, I thought your post was referring computer science as a whole. To me using the word programing in reference to only knowledge of syntax is a little silly, like using the word "mathematics" to refer to only arithmetic.
Also <3 @ Thaldarin.
Only reasonable explanation for how he basically coded half a game engine in his spare time.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well as far as i remember he worked on it for a few years even before work on NS2 started, so over the years you end up with a lot of spare time ;)
Still an awesome feat, i really like the engine so far from the performance/looks side of things.
But ontopic, shouts to UW.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Perhaps we have different definitions of "ain't easy" and when I said "ain't easy" I meant something completely different from what you thought I said. I believe we agree.