Software development model

[Rising-Sun]

I been doing a lot of coding, alter games for better realism for a long time. Never charge anyone for this, even on my free time. I can understand people gotta have money to make a living. All I can say is look for players or fans that are interesting helping out, one thing is having those software that aren't cheap. A lot of debugging and testing can be pain though, just try something simple and work your way up.

If you want, its worth a shot, having a project and players/fans may donate to help out on this. Some games out there have succeeded doing this, like Path of Exiled and few others.

[Mobeer]

ORIGINAL: wdolson
...from what I have learned about game development, it is different from most business software projects. For one thing, this sort of game needs fast data access and you need to have some hardware understanding in the development team...

I'm curious about this, since you've mentioned it here and in a more recent post. Why is fast data access important for turn based game where turns can take many minutes to complete?

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Mobeer

ORIGINAL: wdolson
...from what I have learned about game development, it is different from most business software projects. For one thing, this sort of game needs fast data access and you need to have some hardware understanding in the development team...

I'm curious about this, since you've mentioned it here and in a more recent post. Why is fast data access important for turn based game where turns can take many minutes to complete?

At the very least speed is important in the orders phase. They already make compromises and approximations to speed things up there.

[robinsa]

Thanks for the reply to my question.

Writing a board game of this type as open source project is something that has crossed my mind many times but I do not have the time nor do I have the knowledge to do so.

I have been thinking that the Unity engine could be used for a project like that which would make it easy to update, enhance and maintain. Does anyone know if the unity engine would be suitable for this kind of project?

Sometimes I wish I could spend more time on this kind of stuff. I love creating and this would be the ultimate creation, too bad I wouldn't even haven time to write a module for the game as is!

[LoBaron]

From personal experience I have learned that both systems have their strengths and weaknesses (and both got a lot of em).

Waterfall approach excells on big tasks where a proper functional design / technical design can close a lot of coding and logic gaps that are easier to miss with an Agile/Scrum approach. But usually the result is less intuitive from a user perspective, progress is more difficult to track, and good ideas arriving late to the party are often ignored.

Agile on the other hand always comes along with the lurking danger of carrying your administrative overhead through the whole development process and creating a 'moving target' (a project scope that continuousely changes caused by habitually added late requirements). Also, taken the above into consideration, Agile Projects can get out of hand quickly because the big overall documentation is often missing.

If a part of a project is very abstract and complex at the same time - source code stuff for example - I would go Waterfall all the way. On the other hand, as soon as you move closer to the user centered aspects of a project, Agile has the perfect tools to define the requirements and flesh them out as you move forward.

What is true of the above obviously depends on the quality of the PM to a large ammount. If I was a PM and not a solution architect (thank god I am not a PM, much better for my nerves...) I would try and pick the best of both worlds.

But for your specific requirements Agile will most probably be the way to go.

[zuluhour]

Seems to be a project for a group of WWII buffs serving life sentences together.[:D] (Oh, yeah and they would have to be young enough!)
 
*ps Bill, Alfred, Michael, I am grateful for your sacrifices making this happen and continued support. Best bang for my buck gaming experience
I've had, and I would be truly embarrassed to reveal how many hours I pushed counters around long before I saw a computer.[&o][&o][&o]
*pss While I would of course be interested in a AE-2, I doubt I have enough time left to learn it, &*^% halfway to (..) (I'm not telling.[:D]

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: wdolson
...from what I have learned about game development, it is different from most business software projects. For one thing, this sort of game needs fast data access and you need to have some hardware understanding in the development team...

ORIGINAL: Mobeer
I'm curious about this, since you've mentioned it here and in a more recent post. Why is fast data access important for turn based game where turns can take many minutes to complete?

You may have seen a lot of people having slow down problems when they get a new computer. That's due to problems with DirectX and multiple processors, but it also illustrates how AE is still fairly graphic intensive. There is a lot of processor activity to draw the map.

Turn processing is also massive. Much of turn processing has been streamlined to be as fast as possible, but it still can take several minutes to complete.

Bill

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

ORIGINAL: Alfred

The individual wanted a particular "scenario" created. Can't recall the parameters which were not already covered by one of the existing scenarios, both official and by modders. Apparently AE is deficient in covering the PTO.

After several declarations of his serious intent to fund the development from his real estate earnings, Symon responded that he could do a bespoke custom made scenario to the requested standard of accuracy. It would entail entering into a legal relationship evidenced by a signed written agreement. IIRC, just for a single scenario the cost would be about $100,000 and take about 3 months.

These were conditions which our real estate professional considered to be unnecessarily formal. After all, anyone competent could just whip up the scenario in a fraction of that time frame for a fraction of the cost. Now how often have I heard such comments from people who have never designed any computer game but know all there is to know because they once wrote a short macro for an excel spread sheet and of course all the details (such as OOB) already "exist" on the internet.

Alfred

There is such a thing as a "go away price". When you really don't want to do a project, but someone keeps pestering, you quote an exorbitant price to make them go away. What is really crazy is when they bite. I think that's how my sister ended up working full time for over $100 an hour...

Quite correct to raise the point of "go away price". It may have been Symon's intent. But on balance I don't think that was Symon's intent because the prospective client wanted to own the IP right over the scenario. IOW what was being asked was not your typical modder's scenario where the output is not intended to be commercialised (with no remuneration expected by the scenario creators), instead it being made freely available to all and sundry. Taking into account the high standard of work which was being sought by the individual, it seemed to me that Symon viewed it as a commercial undertaking and therefore issued commercial conditions. I don't know if Symon would have been charging at lawyer or computer programmer rates. At lawyer rates, it doesn't take much to run up a $100,000 bill.[;)]

Alfred