April/May 1997
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APRIL/MAY 1997 GAME DEVELOPER MAGAZINE GAME PLAN Chapter IV: A New Hope EDITOR IN CHIEF Alex Dunne [email protected] MANAGING EDITOR Tor D. Berg hen engaged in a With this issue we also kick off our [email protected] long-term project, it’s new design, which is more dynamic EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Chris Minnick cminnick@mfi.com helpful to stop what and visual than our old look. It’s also CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Larry O’Brien W you’re doing once in a more playful, which is certainly in [email protected] while and assess your progress. Are you keeping with the spirit of our creative Chris Hecker on schedule? Will you reach your community. I hope you’ll appreciate [email protected] goals? Perhaps more importantly, are the new aspects of the design, and we David Seiks [email protected] your goals still valid, or has the market- trust you’ll give us your feedback on Ben Sawyer place changed enough to warrant a what’s working and what isn’t. [email protected] change in your plans? This issue also marks the beginning ADVISORY BOARD Hal Barwood Here at Game Developer, we decided of a new program designed to promote Noah Falstein that it was time to do just such an the talents of game artists and anima- Susan Lee-Merrow assessment of the magazine. It’s been tors. Each issue will feature custom art- Mark Miller three years since a group of editors work by artists in the industry. You can Josh White (notably Alexander Antoniades — check out a short bio about the artist 6 thanks Sander!) dreamt up a magazine and the tools they used to create the COVER IMAGE Vector Graphics aimed at game programmers. With a cover image on the contents page. If little convincing, we got the green you’re a game artist or animator and ADVERTISING SALES STAFF light to launch Game Developer. Thanks you’re interested in the opportunity to to a fantastic staff (which, incidentally, get your work on our cover, check out ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Cindy Blair (415) 905-2210 volunteered all of it’s time during the our web site for further details. cblair@mfi.com first year this magazine was published) On the back page of the magazine WESTERN REGIONAL Tony Andrade and you, our readers, the magazine has you’ll find a new column, “Soapbox.” SALES MANAGER (415) 905-2156 tandrade@mfi.com steadily grown. Now that we’ve craned This column is exactly what it’s title pro- SALES ASSISTANT Chris Cooper our necks around to see where we’ve claims: a forum for industry visionaries (415) 905-2379 been and where the industry is going, to comment on topics that they are con- ccooper@mfi.com it’s time to tweak things a bit. cerned about. In the inaugural column, Most commercially successful games Sid Meier explains why more and more these days are created by a small to successful games come from small pro- PUBLISHER/GROUP DIRECTOR KoAnn Vikoren medium team of people comprising ducers, rather than the bloated firms MARKETING MANAGER Susan McDonald programmers, designers, artists, anima- that seemed to be taking over the indus- MARKETING GRAPHIC DESIGNER Azriel Hayes tors, sound designers and composers, try as recently as a couple of years ago. AD PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Denise Temple and so on. While the programmer is a Finally, beginning with the June DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION Andrew A. Mickus pivotal role responsible for weaving all issue, the magazine will go monthly. VICE PRESIDENT/CIRCULATION Jerry M. Okabe manner of digital assets into the final It’s extremely gratifying to me to reach GROUP CIRCULATION MANGER Mike Poplardo product, none of the roles mentioned out twice as often to readers and touch ASSIST. CIRCULATION MANAGER Jamai Deuberry above operates in a vacuum. Pro- upon so many more subjects in print. SUBS. MARKETING MANAGER Melina Kaplanis grammers work with sound effects peo- Our first stab at distributing additional NEWSSTAND MANAGER Eric Alekman ple, game designers interact with ani- magazine content via our web site has REPRINTS Stella Valdez mators, and so on in a complex web of shown promise, as witnessed by our Miller Freeman communication. And due to our respec- Online Game Development special report A United News & Media publication tive fields of expertise, communicating that’s currently available for purchase across these job function boundaries and download there. We’ll likely be tak- CHAIRMAN/CEO Marshall W. Freeman can be challenging. That’s why we’re ing one or two more stabs at electronic PRESIDENT/COO Donald A. Pazour widening Game Developer’s scope of distribution projects this year, which SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT/CFO Warren “Andy” Ambrose coverage — to try to help bridge the opens even more doors for us to circu- SENIOR VICE PRESIDENTS H. Ted Bahr gaps between team members by featur- late game development information. Darrell Denny ing articles written from various func- As we take the wraps off of our new David Nussbaum tional viewpoints. Our subtitle has been design and polish it over the coming Galen A. Poss changed from Programming for Fun to months, our commitment to providing Wini D. Ragus On the Front Line of Game Innovation to the most authoritative and valuable Regina Starr Ridley underscore our belief that games information in a clear, attractive for- VICE PRESIDENT/PRODUCTION Andrew A. Mickus require more than just solid code — mat continues to guide us. Please let us VICE PRESIDENT/CIRCULATION Jerry M. Okabe SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT/ Regina Starr Ridley they require outstanding execution at a know how we’re doing. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT number of different technical and cre- DIVISION ative levels, including (but not limited to) programming. www.gdmag.com GAME DEVELOPER APRIL-MAY 1997 SAYS YOU If you solve these equations for u and v spent a lot of time developing real-time “Says You” Question about “Sez U!” you'll get two rational linear equations in P'x 3D BSP engines in the last couple years, and P'y like I had in the original mail. and this struck me as a little counter to n the "Sez U!" section of Game the whole purpose of a BSP tree. IDeveloper, June/July 1996, Chris In a true 3D environment, the cam- Hecker mentions that one can generate Please Disclose the Nondisclosable era can view the scene in any direction the gradients for perspective texture from any point in world space. Since mapping using the plane equations. In would like to see more console cov- the Z-order of polygons depends on the the equations you give, I assume the Ierage. I’m not sure how this would camera's current viewing direction, Z- second u should really be v. effect nondisclosure, but it would be order changes constantly. This is why a What are the other coefficients? Are nice. A good article would be one on static BSP tree is so useful. It requires no the a,b,c, and d you give the plane cross-platform development. Being a runtime reclassification of polygons equation coefficients? If so, what are lead PlayStation programmer on a with respect to the camera. For complex e,f,g,h, and i? soon-to-be-released title, I have structures, the BSP tree is built once, Anthony Tessier encountered (actually, the entire team then sorted by recursively classifying via e-mail has encountered) pitfalls in multiplat- the eye point with respect to a particu- form game development. lar BSP node and then drawing all poly- CHRIS HECKER REPLIES: Yes, you're right Another thing is that it would be gons at that node. This is a highly effi- about the second u being an error. As for nice if the community as a whole cient and perfect sorting algorithm for 8 the question, the a,b,c and d are not the stressed quality over quantity. It is 3D environments where the camera plane equation coefficients as you normally almost impossible now to develop a (but not the scene) is changing all the think of them. An ax+bx+cz+d=0 plane good game in a year, as opposed to time. The author, however, seems to gives no information about the orientation what you could quickly turn around present the camera as static, in which in the plane, so you can't really use that for for the 16-bit market. case there are probably much faster placing a texture. John Bryant ways to perfectly sort a 3D scene, such Instead, when I say "plane equations" in Via e-mail as building a Z-buffer of the back- the context of texture mapping, I mean you ground scene, then drawing the define the texture plane in view space (3D EDITOR ALEX DUNNE REPLIES: One of dynamic objects in ascending Z-order. space with the eye at the origin looking our goals with the relaunch of the magazine As far as BSP optimization, the author down the z axis) using three vectors, O, U, is to bring in more coverage of console didn't mention a very important tech- and V, so that a point on the texture plane titles. Stay tuned. nique: minimization of polygon split- in this space is parameterized by the texture As for your second comment, don't expect ting. When a BSP tree is built for a com- coordinates, u,v as follows: the quantity of games on the market to plex model, polygon counts can increase diminish anytime soon. Game anywhere from two to four times if par- PO=+uv** U + V (1) developers now more than titioning planes are selected blindly In this equation, the vector O points from ever have reasonably from the top of the list.