[HN Gopher] "The Door Problem" (2014)
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"The Door Problem" (2014)
Author : jsnell
Score : 81 points
Date : 2024-06-12 08:56 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lizengland.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lizengland.com)
| m-a-r-c-e-l wrote:
| Ok, won't start at all then...
| Dzugaru wrote:
| Start with game jams. When you're constrained to make a
| complete game in 48/72 hours, suddenly you start to understand
| what's important and what's not. Granted, I haven't done any
| doors in my jam games yet =)
| ano-ther wrote:
| Good example of "how hard can it be?"
| benfortuna wrote:
| Good example of how hard it can be, not that it must be that
| hard.
| prerok wrote:
| What do you mean? The examples show use cases we have to
| think of. When designing worlds, or at least rooms players
| walk in freely, these questions about doors must be answered.
|
| Ideally, of course, we could just physically model them, and
| then: wooden doors can be hacked away with an axe, a steel
| door could perhaps be forced using a crowbar but not if the
| frame is reinforced, etc. But, the modelling based on actual
| physical behavior is hard, both coding wise as well as
| computationally wise. So, we accept that we must do a
| simplified model and yet we must make it not too simple so
| that it still believably acts as a door in the virtual world.
| benfortuna wrote:
| I mean surely you don't require that many "specialists" to
| address all those concerns. It's like saying I need a chef
| to salads, another to make condiments, one to work the
| grill, etc.
| prerok wrote:
| Ah, so you were referring to the second section? I
| considered that as a bit of a tounge in cheek, but
| frequently AAA titles would create tasks for most of
| these positions. In indie development, sure some or all
| of these roles would be combined into a single or several
| persons. That does not mean that all (most) of these
| would not be done, though.
| wavemode wrote:
| It's just a list of roles. On a one-man project they will
| all be done by the same person. But obviously as budget
| scales up you can also split up the roles more and more.
| gromgull wrote:
| kinda nearby "Reality has a surprising amount of detail":
| http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...
| cainxinth wrote:
| >Programming is chaotic magic. There are no rules. You ask a game
| dev "Can the player summon a giant demon that bursts from the
| ground in an explosion of lava?" and they'll say "sure, that's
| easy" and then you'll ask "can the player wear a scarf?" and
| they'll go "oof"
|
| -Alex Blechman
| KMnO4 wrote:
| Or, in XKCD form: https://xkcd.com/1425/
| istultus wrote:
| Yep, and even this comic is now out of date, "identify a bird
| in the photo? easy!"
| immibis wrote:
| Because she got her research team and five years, and
| shared the results with the world.
| the_af wrote:
| Yup. That comic is from 2014!
| anotheraccount9 wrote:
| Here's a door: [#]
| abcde777666 wrote:
| Game dev is one of the most unconstrained software domains. On
| the one hand it's what makes it exciting and endlessly
| interesting, but it's also what can make it a nightmare. Perhaps
| most simply because computers are really not up to the task of
| simulating worlds, and so much hackery and smoke and mirrors are
| required.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The Door Problem (2014)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24313607 - Aug 2020 (11
| comments)
|
| _The Door Problem (2014)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16021509 - Dec 2017 (27
| comments)
| feoren wrote:
| All of the answers to these problems are trivially easy. I
| maintain my stance that "game designer" is not a real job and is
| just a fanciful cushy position for people who were already
| privileged in life to pretend like they're doing hard work.
| Things like "do doors lock behind the player?" is not anywhere
| close to as hard as the very easiest problem faced by the actual
| programmers who are doing the actual work on your project.
|
| "SOMEONE has to solve The Door Problem, and that someone is a
| designer." -- it sounds like literally thirty minutes of work per
| week. Just admit that your job is easy and cushy and the
| programmers and artists are the only ones doing any actual work.
| They make fun of you when you're not in the room. They add ducks
| to animations just so that you can feel important by telling them
| to take them out. You're a parasitic drain on the project, not a
| "big idea man". Everyone already knew whether or not that door
| should lock before you were asked.
| wavemode wrote:
| A game designer is just a type of product designer (the
| product, in this case, being a game).
|
| If you don't understand the role of product design in making a
| successful product (and the difficulty involved in making
| correct product design decisions), that speaks only to your own
| inexperience.
| consf wrote:
| Game designers are magicians in some ways)
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