Quote: "the people here are not writers, nor should they be expected to be."
I know at least 3 community members who are writing for a living. And this is also reflected in their work.
Quote: " These people are usually still in school and still have the school mindset and want to fit in. What they don't understand is that you don't have to make up some kind of game studio name as your forum name in order to fit in... just be here, talk with people, and don't be a jerk"
Could we ad that to the forum rules? PLEASE! 100% agree!
Quote: "My last rant on what makes a game "viral" was for those people who wanted to make a game that sold well without a giant team behind them,"
yeah, and you were perfectly right on that. However, we are drifting more and more off-topic. The question was why people don`t make more games that look like the latest eye-candy-flooded EA stuff. If you reduce it to the question, the answer is pretty simple:
1. FPSC doesn`t support that out-of-the-box. If you want highest visual quality, you have a lot of work to do. There is no "cry 3 Tree Forest demo level", no "UDK ToD Ancent Temple Map" with all the fancy assets to play aorund with. If you want eye-candy, do it yourself.
2. To do that, most people lack the time, knowledge, experience, tools or talent.
Quote: "Sorry Ertlov I have to disagree.
GTKRadient being the prime example was and is still one of the best map editors around... it enabled developers to create massive levels with pin-point accuracy and it was flawlessly efficient and that's an OLD editor!"
Guess what, I did commercial work with GTK as it was the mandatory tool for some companies producing Iphone Games. For Layout / architecture / Gemoetry it`s great, but it`s NOT an all-in-one Game Engine Packet like FPSC or UDK.
Quote: "With FPSC (and every other engine) you can make you're own game. Tell you're own story and get in what ever you want...kinda like writing a book or painting a picture."
That`s it. Perfectly. AndI find the comparsion with a painting interesting when it comes from you. I`ve sometimes asked myself why your games look always better than mine (I have no problem in admitting that) allthough I`ve been working now in games business for almsot 8 years. The point is, you are an artist, your approach is artistic. Every single piece of your work in the WIP or Showcase reflects that. You design and create untill you are satisfied, and as an artist this level is very high.
In the beginning with FPSC (including Anderson) I gamedesigned and leveldesigned something that worked with the basic storyline. All the people who claimed that the visuals were thrown together and the gameplay sucked on several points, were right. The game was vehicle for the story.
Later on, I tried to work out something that looks acceptable while working with the intended gameplay and of course telling the story. Sleeper Agent (which made it at least to some beta testing) was a good example.
Now I try to make something that looks "believable" in terms of Design, good in terms of technical quality while putting gameplay and atmosphere over all and still carrying the games story. that`s a methodological approach and I hope it works. but it`s not "Art" per se.
I´m pretty sure I could make a game that has more motivating gameplay and addiction potential than yours. I for sure can sell a game better if we would both put up a game on steam or smth like that. Hell, that was my job, and I was pretty good at it. I guess I could perhaps come up with modells with higher polycount, more sophiscated shaders, perhaps even better textures.
But in the end, if you try to look at the game as a piece of art, I`ll allways have to step behind and bow.
This is not a boot-licking, simply a fact that I`ve accepted because if I don`t accept that other people have other strenghts and in many fields mroe skills than me, I´d become insane. And it leads directly to the point I want to make.
FPSC USER, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
1. If you want to make something that looks fancy and provokes "AWESOME!!!!" posts every time you post a new screenshot, you will have to invest a lot of work on the assets, and you have to master other tools than FPSC, too.
2. If you want to create something that has a very good and motivating gameplay, you can do that out of the box with the latest updates installed.
Almost ALL people here don`t make a living out of the work they do with FPSC. You don`t have endless time and money. And aiming for something that is fun to play while looking outdated is easier than creating an eye-candy bomb.
Creating an eye-candy bomb that has very good gameplay and the full lenghts of a modern game created by a studio of 50+ people in two or three years is not totally out of the question, but a pretty insane task.
