14 replies to this topic

[DracheHexe]

While reading about the Game Institutes online seminars I sat here in front of my PC wondering if I had anything worthwhile to contribute, not that I am really interesting in putting the time in, but just if I could take the time could I come up with anything worthwhile. A simple answer would be no.

I'm not a developer, I just like checking out the various 3d engines, playing with their demos and seeing what innovations are going into the entertainment of tomorrow. While I am armed well enough with quite a bit more than the basics to start my dream project it isn't a must for me to achieve anything. I am satisfied leaving it a dream.

This lead me to think strongly of my opinion on games as a player more thoughtfully. Knowing what goes into a game certainly affects my thoughts about certain grievances I may have had with games I have played. However, while certain grievances can be dismissed there are still others that cannot.

With that said I ask: What grievances do you have (or have had) with games as a player that you would like developers to eliminate or that you swore you'd eliminate when you decided to make a game? I don't mean bugs (bugs are a stone cold fact of life), but specific or common design flaws or idiotic oversights on the developers behalf.

My Answers: (I'm sure I have others, but these are the ones I recall at the moment)

1) Stop putting the save games in the My Documents folder. A lot of developers are doing this now and it annoys the hell out of me because it can't be changed. Let me decide where to save my games.

2)Don't use odd or non-native media delivery systems unless they are built into your engine. I refuse to install quicktime or realplayer or any other media player on my computer and if your game requires it, I won't buy it. (This is more for online delivered games, but I have at one timed had different games that required different media delivery systems be installed and that's just too much to ask.)

[dave_]

Those points dont really bother me. I've never had any problems with either.

As a games developer the biggest problem is the player* is always telling you the way they think it should be, which is usually the same as last game they played. If you listened to them they'd only ever play the one game.

I've actually been told off by players*, when posting questions about how they'd like it to work (anonymously) because what I was saying was wrong. I was bloody designing it.. argh

*I'm really talking about fanboys

[Nils Pipenbrinck]

DracheHexe said:

1) Stop putting the save games in the My Documents folder. A lot of developers are doing this now and it annoys the hell out of me because it can't be changed. Let me decide where to save my games.

I've been developer, and this is a issue I had long and emotional discussions over. My oppinion was exactly like yours until:

* I tried to play the game with a machine where i don't have admin rights but the game was installed as admin. BUMM! Savegames didn't worked anymore.

Also there's another reason: Putting it into the "my documents"-folder get the support calls down. No more "my little brother messed up my savegame, can you help me"-calls.


Furthermore I totally agree to your second point (video codecs should be either standard or linked into the exe).

My don't do list:

* I don't like when developers don't take the two days time to setup a virtual file system but liter half your harddrive with millions of script/texture/asset files instead. This not only takes ages to install and delete, it also takes up almost twice as much space due to sector alignment. Also adding compression to the virtual filesystem does not only saves space but also loading time.

Ease of updates/patches are no excuse. This can be done with a virtual file system as well.

This brings me to my second point:

* I really don't like if games need ages to load. If it takes longer than 10 seconds there's something wrong in the code (heck - how many megabytes can you read in 10 seconds these days??? 10 seconds should be more than enough). Anything that needs significant time (like dxt compressing tons of textures) should have be done before mastering during the asset creation process, not on the customer machines.



Btw, a funny observation I've did while doing code reviews of different games:

The longer a game needs to load, the worse is the overall code quality. A good sign of bad code is btw the size of the BSS segment. If it's larger than a couple of kilobytes you can be sure to have a big cut'n'paste codebase (there are exceptions, but...).

[DracheHexe]

Nils Pipenbrinck said:

* I tried to play the game with a machine where i don't have admin rights but the game was installed as admin. BUMM! Savegames didn't worked anymore.

Didn't think of that, as I have always been the only one who uses my computer.

Quote

Also there's another reason: Putting it into the "my documents"-folder get the support calls down. No more "my little brother messed up my savegame, can you help me"-calls.

I have been to several support pages/faqs for many a game where one of the most common problems was I can't find the save games in the installation folder.

Anyway, I put that one in because the My Documents folder is where I meticulously organize my personal data and files. I don't consider games saves as personal data and they do nothing but clutter the folder. It just annoys me a game would usurp my control of that.

I'll definately agree on loading times, as to the other stuff about virtual file systems and BSS segments I'll just take your word on it.

[ray648]

Another point about putting save games into the my documents folder is that there are a lot of people, me included, who like to keep games separate from the rest of the system. For example, on my main gaming system, i have windows installed onto drive c: and all my games installed on a separate hard disk, g: in my case. Not only does putting save games in my documents result in cluttering up the folder, but in my case it means they will be on my system disk, which im trying my best to keep separated.

Maybe the location of save files should be able to be overridden by the user as part of the install, or set in a config file?

[monjardin]

You can move your My Documents folder to the other drive.

[Methulah]

That's what I've got. One windows on one drive, with all my program files too. Then I've got Ubuntu on another with all my documents and backup DVDs and the like.

[TheNut]

As with Nils, long load times are unacceptable. I remember playing Star Wars Battlefront, I still can’t figure out what they were doing to make it load that long.

Another dislike is when I see poor network code. I am completely baffled at how a game like Battlefield can consume megabytes of information within seconds. My friends and I use to joke around thinking they sent screenshots to every player, and those who decoded it could see everyone (a developer perk).

And the biggest pet peeve I have, intro movies! Nothing better to kill the mood of playing a game where you are forced to sit through a long movie or you have to escape through several dozen clips just to get to the menu.

[ikk]

i personally dislike when i cant redefine button configuration. this is no too much trouble if this is pc game, then i can edit some config files etc. but if this is a console game, sometimes game isnt playable if i cant remap some buttons.

it should be standard in every game that player can remap buttons to whatever s/he want, this is the easiest part of game development.

further, they could just implement this into game console root menu, instead of adding there milion options for setting up the clock.

[JoeCoder]

I agree with all of these, especially on the point of saved games in My Documents--even more so when each developer makes their own folder and there's that much more clutter. How hard is it to simply have an option for it?

However, I disagree with the virtual filesystem. I enjoy having access to each and every texture, script, model, etc. for easy modability--and I ocassionally borrow some art / sound assets for playing around with in my own code (nothing redistributed). Of course, you can always go the route of Quake / Serios Sam and put them in zip files to get the best of both worlds.

[Reedbeta]

JoeCoder said:

However, I disagree with the virtual filesystem. I enjoy having access to each and every texture, script, model, etc. for easy modability--and I ocassionally borrow some art / sound assets for playing around with in my own code (nothing redistributed). Of course, you can always go the route of Quake / Serios Sam and put them in zip files to get the best of both worlds.

I set up a system where when a file is requested, if there is a physical file on the hard drive then it is used; otherwise, the system falls back to a file stored in an archive. That allows the benefits of keeping everything in a monolithic data file combined with easy modability.

[ray648]

Another thing I just remembered having read ikk's post on redefining buttons, is that some games (not so many in recent years, but still the odd one here and there) dont cope with the windows key at all, theres nothing I hate more in a game than going to press the ctrl key and hitting the windows key as well by accident, only to have the game minimised and the start menu pop up. Of course this is sometimes made a lot worse by games that dont pause when they dont have focus, or that crash if you try and return to them after they have been minimised.

[bladder]

ray648 said:

Another thing I just remembered having read ikk's post on redefining buttons, is that some games (not so many in recent years, but still the odd one here and there) dont cope with the windows key at all, theres nothing I hate more in a game than going to press the ctrl key and hitting the windows key as well by accident, only to have the game minimised and the start menu pop up. Of course this is sometimes made a lot worse by games that dont pause when they dont have focus, or that crash if you try and return to them after they have been minimised.

This is standard behavior. When you make a Windows game and want to publish, to get the "made for Windows" seal you have to go through some MS software tests. These tests include making sure your application plays nice with Windows and that includes ensuring standard behavior. What you described is sstandard behavior and unless MS takes that "test" out of their test plan, not much will change.

Saving the game data to the my documents folder also has something to do with "play nice with Windows".

[Reedbeta]

bladder said:

This is standard behavior. When you make a Windows game and want to publish, to get the "made for Windows" seal you have to go through some MS software tests.

Well, both of these things (Windows key behavior and save game location) should be configurable options anyway - so let the defaults be set how MS wants them in the build you send to MS, and let the defaults be whatever you think is best in the build you ship

[TheNut]

Quote

When you make a Windows game and want to publish, to get the "made for Windows" seal you have to go through some MS software tests.

So if someone fails one of those tests, they can say their game only runs on Windows, but it wasn't made for Windows? Totally nutty =)