I love the series but I'm a little confused about its direction.
Is HMH supposed to result in an actual game, a prototype of a game, or just an engine? My impression from the early videos was that a game (at least in some form) would likely come out the other end. But lately the series seems somewhat lost down a path of never ending minutiae-filled digressions.
Any estimate for how much longer until HMH shifts its focus to higher-level more gameplay oriented work?
Is HMH supposed to result in an actual game, a prototype of a game, or just an engine? My impression from the early videos was that a game (at least in some form) would likely come out the other end. But lately the series seems somewhat lost down a path of never ending minutiae-filled digressions.
Any estimate for how much longer until HMH shifts its focus to higher-level more gameplay oriented work?
The next stream is scheduled to start in a minute. This could be a question to ask Casey himself during pre-stream.
There will be a game at the end of it, but the whole point of the series is to see the unfiltered process of making that game, experiments and all.
Seeing someone with Casey's experience try things out, modify and perhaps discard/replace them, all while explaining his thought process, is (in my opinion) very valuable.
I get that there's been more than one occasion in the last 3+ years where a stream has wrapped up with "well, we're nearly done with X, we should be getting into some gameplay stuff soon", but I can't complain about the sheer breadth of content we get to see.
Seeing someone with Casey's experience try things out, modify and perhaps discard/replace them, all while explaining his thought process, is (in my opinion) very valuable.
I get that there's been more than one occasion in the last 3+ years where a stream has wrapped up with "well, we're nearly done with X, we should be getting into some gameplay stuff soon", but I can't complain about the sheer breadth of content we get to see.
NelsonMandella
I love the series but I'm a little confused about its direction.
Is HMH supposed to result in an actual game, a prototype of a game, or just an engine? My impression from the early videos was that a game (at least in some form) would likely come out the other end. But lately the series seems somewhat lost down a path of never ending minutiae-filled digressions.
Any estimate for how much longer until HMH shifts its focus to higher-level more gameplay oriented work?
HMH has been off the rails for hundreds of episodes.
Doing OpenGL 4.5 core profile *voxel*-based global illumination is pretty telling where the priorities for the show lie... i think.
Especially considering that HMH was fully software rasterized 2D at one point.
Edited by pragmatic_hero
on
Every now and then I check back in on the HMH streams hoping that Casey will be moving onto game the actual game, but every time I check back it's yet another experiment, problem, improvement etc.
I get that the streams are supposed to show the unfiltered process of making a game, but I feel as though it's turned more into an unfiltered stream of Casey getting side-tracked more than anything now.
It's a shame because the game play and cross-platform parts of programming a game, in my personal opinion at least, are the parts that most people struggle with, so focusing so heavily on all of these experiments with OpenGL and changes to the way the game is rendered etc. feels like a massive waste of everyone's time.
I get that the streams are supposed to show the unfiltered process of making a game, but I feel as though it's turned more into an unfiltered stream of Casey getting side-tracked more than anything now.
It's a shame because the game play and cross-platform parts of programming a game, in my personal opinion at least, are the parts that most people struggle with, so focusing so heavily on all of these experiments with OpenGL and changes to the way the game is rendered etc. feels like a massive waste of everyone's time.
Sintex
Every now and then I check back in on the HMH streams hoping that Casey will be moving onto game the actual game, but every time I check back it's yet another experiment, problem, improvement etc.
I get that the streams are supposed to show the unfiltered process of making a game, but I feel as though it's turned more into an unfiltered stream of Casey getting side-tracked more than anything now.
It's a shame because the game play and cross-platform parts of programming a game, in my personal opinion at least, are the parts that most people struggle with, so focusing so heavily on all of these experiments with OpenGL and changes to the way the game is rendered etc. feels like a massive waste of everyone's time.
HMH is not a good source to learn game-development from.
It's more like an entertaining show, covering some highly technical details - most of which you are never-ever going to need in your game.
Crossplatform stuff is and has been trivial to do for a long time now. Unless you explicitly prohibit yourself from using external libs like SDL, GLFW and whatnot.
There's actually a very minuscule amount of technical code that you have to write, before you can start focusing solely on game-code. Without using any engines either, just plain OpenGL, GLFW and stb_image, plus some other single header kind of utility lib. Even if the game is 3D!
There are three areas where it pays off to invest some tech-time in:
1. Code hotswapping
2. Making sure that all the art / game-assets are hotswappable
3. If you're using C/C++, some sort of meta-data reflection system are in order
Casey actually touched some of these topics, but very briefly. Not in proportion to how important they are.
Everything else is a distraction unless the game you're making are explicitly technical (very few games are like this).
Edited by pragmatic_hero
on
pragmatic_hero
It's more like an entertaining show, covering some highly technical details - most of which you are never-ever going to need in your game.
This is kind of my problem with HMH now. It's still fun to watch every now and then but in the beginning I was under the impression that Casey wanted to show how to actually build a non-trivial game and show all of the code that goes into that.
He may eventually get to the actually game play code, but I've pretty much given up on ever seeing that and mostly watch it when I want to kill a bit of time every now and then, which is a shame really.
There is a lot of negativity going on here. I feel the need to say something that is actually positive, because it's how I feel. Let's not forget that there are hundreds (thousands?) of hours of *annotated* (Miblo is awesome) video that can easily be referenced for someone working on their own game engine. This is invaluable.
This will be the first time in history someone has access to live programming of problems that are rarely covered in tutorials and articles that currently exist. There are also hours and hours of Q&A. It's ridiculous how much Casey's could have an effect on future game engine programmers.
We get that this series isn't for everyone, and the vast majority of people will never watch it from beginning to end. No one is going to read Wikipedia from beginning to end either. This, like Wiki, is a massive resource that will be referenced for years.
This will be the first time in history someone has access to live programming of problems that are rarely covered in tutorials and articles that currently exist. There are also hours and hours of Q&A. It's ridiculous how much Casey's could have an effect on future game engine programmers.
We get that this series isn't for everyone, and the vast majority of people will never watch it from beginning to end. No one is going to read Wikipedia from beginning to end either. This, like Wiki, is a massive resource that will be referenced for years.
A project evolves over time. The argument that something was meant to be "originally X or Y" doesn't hold well in the real world. As CaptainKraft alludes, Handmade Hero has proved its value already, whether or not it becomes a complete game.
EDIT: Those who bought Handmade Hero will of course expect a game at the end of it all.
EDIT: Those who bought Handmade Hero will of course expect a game at the end of it all.
Edited by Abner Coimbre
on
I just want to say that I'm not trying to be negative about the project or put it down in any way. I thought that was clear but I guess reading text on the internet can never convey a person's true feelings accurately.
I still think HMH is an amazing project, and I do have fun tuning in every now and then even if it does feel pretty slow at times, but given that the OP brought up the question of where the project is heading I thought I would just throw in my opinion based on what I thought the series was going to be and what it is now.
I bought Handmade Hero at the very beginning, so yes, it's a shame to me that Casey got so side-tracked and that won't change. In this case I do believe that the argument of "it was supposed to be X" is perfectly valid, however this doesn't take away from the value of any of the current material or any of the resources other people have built around it.
I still think HMH is an amazing project, and I do have fun tuning in every now and then even if it does feel pretty slow at times, but given that the OP brought up the question of where the project is heading I thought I would just throw in my opinion based on what I thought the series was going to be and what it is now.
I bought Handmade Hero at the very beginning, so yes, it's a shame to me that Casey got so side-tracked and that won't change. In this case I do believe that the argument of "it was supposed to be X" is perfectly valid, however this doesn't take away from the value of any of the current material or any of the resources other people have built around it.
Fair enough!
The problem is more that the technical things are more useful for me to show, because they're things you can actually take away and use if you're going to be an engine programmer. When we get to the game code, there's not much I can really show you of value beyond what I've already shown with the entity system. It's just going to be piling custom stuff on to that, and I can't really offer much insight in what to pile on since I'm not a game designer.
So when we actually move to the gameplay code, that will probably be the end of the usefulness of the series, I would suspect, because that will mean we've done everything I can really teach, and we're on to just work-a-day code which will do nothing new you haven't already seen earlier in the series, and whose primary teaching value would be in if you had a great game designer showing you how to make the decisions about what to do... which I cannot help you with :)
This is just the tradeoff of the series being done by an engine programmer as opposed to a game designer, where the opposite would be true. But I would assume (hope?) that there either are, or will be at some point, educational streams by designers who can cover how to make good design decisions, which would be the interesting part of a stream dedicated primarily to the custom code that implements specific gameplay decisions.
- Casey
So when we actually move to the gameplay code, that will probably be the end of the usefulness of the series, I would suspect, because that will mean we've done everything I can really teach, and we're on to just work-a-day code which will do nothing new you haven't already seen earlier in the series, and whose primary teaching value would be in if you had a great game designer showing you how to make the decisions about what to do... which I cannot help you with :)
This is just the tradeoff of the series being done by an engine programmer as opposed to a game designer, where the opposite would be true. But I would assume (hope?) that there either are, or will be at some point, educational streams by designers who can cover how to make good design decisions, which would be the interesting part of a stream dedicated primarily to the custom code that implements specific gameplay decisions.
- Casey
Personally I think the series is a gold mine for programmers, I am more interested in knowing the technical aspects of game like how to actually handle memory, graphics, etc ourselves without using any library, not because libraries are bad but because knowing how things work under the hood helps you write better code even when using those libraries. I have tried game engines like Unity to make games before and those engines are really good but I didnt really enjoy making stuff on Unity because building systems, that make a game ,on your own is much more fun. I am still on Day 20 and seeing him upload videos about rendering, lighting, etc makes me eager to learn all these things quickly. One eg: HMH has videos on how to write a software renderer which is a huge thing as you can then understand what the hardware actually goes through to put an image on screen, and this is just one eg of many where we get to know how we program the hardware, which again is rarely taught in colleges. I mention all this because the thread has some negativity and want to say that the concepts and systems that are built in HMH are the best resources a person like me , who is interested in technical aspects of game, could ever find.
I highly doubt anyone here's love/admiration/appreciation for HMH is in question.
Casey's point about clearly delineating engine from game design, and being able to add more educational value through the former, is completely reasonable.
I'd just throw out there that perhaps there could be tremendous value in showing the entire ground-up process of making a game, even if the scope and scale do end up being very modest. I don't think people would even care if the engine were misused or abused by a "non game-designer", or even if the result was a terrible game for that matter. People love seeing tangible progress and results, especially while they're learning. Watching HMH come to life during the later stages (while reflecting on past design decisions) could really go a long way in cementing its unique status as by far and away the most educational and entertaining series of its kind.
Casey's point about clearly delineating engine from game design, and being able to add more educational value through the former, is completely reasonable.
I'd just throw out there that perhaps there could be tremendous value in showing the entire ground-up process of making a game, even if the scope and scale do end up being very modest. I don't think people would even care if the engine were misused or abused by a "non game-designer", or even if the result was a terrible game for that matter. People love seeing tangible progress and results, especially while they're learning. Watching HMH come to life during the later stages (while reflecting on past design decisions) could really go a long way in cementing its unique status as by far and away the most educational and entertaining series of its kind.
Well, don't get me wrong, we're definitely going to finish the game :) But I don't feel particularly compelled to rush there because I am more interested in teaching things that this thread considered digressions, such as lighting, largely because I'm more interested in the series inspiring engine programmers, not game programmers, if that makes sense. There's a big difference between those two things and I think we have a shortage of the former, not the latter. I also think a proper education for people who just want to make a game and don't care about the technology as much would have to include a bunch of training on things that we're definitely not doing, such as how to program C# in Unity and BluePrint in the Unreal Engine, etc., since presumably someone who only cared about making a specific game design and not about the technology behind it would be wise to consider licensing an existing engine, or something similar...
- Casey
- Casey