Game Developer - FebMar_1996.pdf

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february/march 1996
G A M E
D E V E L O P E R
M A G A Z I N E
G A ME
G A ME
G A M E
P L A N
Editor
Larry O’Brien
76702.706@compuserve.com
gdmag@mfi.com
Senior Editor
Nicole Freeman
Legitimate Concerns
recently spent some time in southern
Arizona, an area with dark skies, low
humidity, and still air. Throw in
some high desert and mountains to
give a few thousand feet more eleva-
tion and it’s understandable that the
area is a hotbed for astronomy, both
professional and amateur.
As with many of you, science fiction
was the staple of my literary diet from third
grade on, until it seemed that I’d read
everything from Asimov to Zelazny (Poul
Anderson may come before Asimov in the
alphabet, but not in my heart). Those sto-
ries of starship troopers, Bene Gesserit,
lensmen, K’Zinti, and their like, became
part of what I saw when I looked at the
night sky.
Since I grew up in pretty much urban
areas, I was mostly confined to stars of the
first few magnitudes, the moon, and the
more obvious planets. Nevertheless, it was
always my conviction that if I could just see
well enough, I would see a universe filled
with ships flying on solar sails, generation
ships carved from asteroids, fleets of inter-
stellar transports picking their way through
foggy nebulas, and stars winking out as the
last section of their Dyson spheres were
nailed into place.
Recent photos from the Hubble
Space Telescope reminded me of those
dreams. Recent images from the Great
Nebula of Orion show “cosmic eggs,”
their three-dimensional structure perfectly
lit by conveniently placed protostars. The
most spectacular space effects from Pixar
and Industrial Light and Magic have
nothing on these photos for sheer beauty.
So when I was in Arizona, I made sure
that I was introduced to someone with an
“amateur” telescope, an 11-inch Schmidt-
Cassegrain with worm-gear corrected
equatorial mount and a computerized
tracker containing virtually the entire
Messier catalog of deep-space objects. Of
course, I knew I was not going to see any-
Managing Editor
Production Editor
Nicole Claro
nclaro@mfi.com
Diane Anderson
dianderson@mfi.com
I
thing similar to the HST photos, but I
did hope that on a clear night with no
moon, I would see my first nebula.
The photos in
Sky & Telescope
maga-
zine don’t do modern amateur telescopes
justice. Ed, the scope’s owner, has a special
indoor/outdoor room to house his equip-
ment. He moves the 11-inch scope with a
hand-truck out onto his patio. Tucson is a
town remarkably conscious of light pollu-
tion due to its proximity to the Kitt’s Peak
observatory, and excellent viewing can be
had in the suburbs. After setting up the
telescope in rough approximation with
Polaris, Ed centered Deneb in the tracking
scope and punched a button or two on the
mount’s control panel.
A few minutes later, the computer
had seen enough to do three-dimensional
transformations worthy of Chris Hecker to
calculate its exact orientation relative to the
Earth’s axis. At that point, the computer
and precision motors kept objects only a
few arcseconds wide locked in the center of
the view, despite the Earth’s rotation. A
charge-coupled device (CCD) can give the
even more precise control necessary for
long-exposure photography.
The computer handles one more
task. Ed types in a Messier number and
rotates the tube until the LED display
indicates precise alignment. Without
looking through the spotting scope, he
invites me to take a look. “That’s the Crab
Nebula,” he says. Chinese astronomers
have precise records of the appearance of
the nova that created the nebula, an
explosion so epochal that it could be seen
in daylight. I look out and back into time.
The nebula appears as a faint puff of
smoke, gray against black. Not even a
thousand years after the explosion, the
remains of the star are spread over light
years. Roughly 6 trillion miles in a light
year, cubed is 256 times 10 to the 12th to
the 3rd, so the volume of a single light
year is roughly, uh, really, really big. But
Editorial Assistant
Jana Outlaw
joutlaw@mfi.com
Contributing Editors
Alex Dunne
76702.1142@compuserve.com
Barbara Hanscome
bhanscome@mfi.com
Chris Hecker
checker@bix.com
Mike Michaels
mike@irvine.com
David Sieks
dsieks@arnarb.harvard.edu
Editor-at-Large
Alexander Antoniades
sander@mfi.com
Cover Photography
Charles Ingram Photography
Publisher
Veronica Costanza
Regina Starr Ridley
Group Director
Advertising Sales Staff
Western Regional Sales Manager
Steve Nikkola (415) 905-2256
snikkola@mfi.com
Promotions Manager/Eastern Regional Sales Manager
Holly Meintzer (212) 615-2275
hmeintzer@mfi.com
Susan McDonald
Marketing Graphic Designer
Azriel Hayes
Marketing Manager
Denise Temple
Director of Production
Andrew A. Mickus
Vice President/Circulation
Jerry M. Okabe
Advertising Production Coordinator
Gina Oh
Group Circulation Manager
Kathy Henry
Circulation Manager
Mike Poplardo
Group Circulation Director
Newsstand Manager
Reprints
Debra Caris
Stella Valdez (916) 729-3633
Graham J.S. Wilson
Marshall W. Freeman
Chairman of the Board
President/CEO
Thomas L. Kemp
Senior Vice President/CFO
Warren “Andy” Ambrose
Senior Vice Presidents
David Nussbaum, H. Verne
Executive Vice President/COO
Packer, Donald A. Pazour, Wini D. Ragus
Vice President/Production
Andrew A. Mickus
Vice President/Circulation
Jerry Okabe
Regina Starr Ridley
Vice President/
Software Development Division
Miller
& Media publication
Freeman
A United News
4
GAME DEVELOPER • FEBRUARY/MARCH 1996
G A M E
there it is, rock steady in the eyepiece, a
structure so vast I can’t even tame it with
exponents.
Ed has a flare for the dramatic and
turns to the other extreme, the Great
Nebula of Orion, and shows me another
faint puff of smoke. He makes sure I note
some of the stars embedded in the nebula
and tells me I’m seeing the birth flares of
stars newborn just a million years ago.
The HST photos were of this area and a
thousand times more detailed and color-
ful, but there is something far more pow-
erful about the ancient light falling
directly on my retina.
Finally, Ed shows me the Androme-
da Galaxy. It’s 250,000,000 light years
away, but it’s so large that it doesn’t even
fit in the field of view. The extended
shape of the galaxy is apparent, but no
structure—like the nebulas, it appears as a
blob of grey that otherwise might be
taken for a lens smudge. But to me, it
instantly brings back those childhood
dreams of worlds like grains of sand. An
P L A N
over on the frontage road to avoid traffic.
So we must create our legitimacy from
game play. We must never smirk at the
universe we create (unless our universe
does nothing but smirk), we must never
wink at the player and say, “We both
know this couldn’t happen, but you’ll for-
give me because we both know this is just
a computer game.”
Too many games rely on just such
tactics, relying on either AI that cheats or
stories with very limited branching. Game
design, AI, and story-telling will be major
themes of
Game Developer
in 1996, and
we’re excited to kick off our third year of
publication with a major article on genetic
algorithms, beginning on page 26.
When we are done, Ed trundles his
telescope back into its private room. As I
walk away, I wonder what chip powered
its computer. A Z-80? An 8086? Who
says you need 32 bits to have fun?
s
Larry O’Brien
Editor
entire galaxy glowing as a homogenous
whole from its stars.
The point I’m trying to get at is that
many of the most powerful experiences
available to us are not inherently
grandiose. If there are two experiences
and one is somehow felt as “more legiti-
mate,” it won’t matter if the other is more
detailed, longer lasting, or more comfort-
able. Human eyes will never see the col-
ors and details of an astronomical photo-
graph. But looking through a telescope is
better. Any night on The Discovery
Channel, I can see better images of
sharks and whales than I’ve ever seen
underwater. But I’d never trade a single
dive for all the film in the world.
As designers of digital entertain-
ment, we have to always remind ourselves
that we will never create experiences as
physically legitimate as the simplest activ-
ity. There is not a fighting game that
compares to capture the flag, not a sports
game that compares to dodge ball, not a
strategy game that compares to cutting
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GAME DEVELOPER • FEBRUARY/MARCH 1996
C R O S S F I R E
Go On!
(Line, That Is)
Alex Dunne
You need to stay on
top of things to make
it as a game develop-
er. Here, Alex Dunne
gives you some
research assis-
tance—he‘s hunted
down some URLs you
simply cannot afford
to miss.
f you’ve been scanning the book-
shelves and magazine racks,
you’ve noticed that the number
of words devoted to game pro-
gramming isn’t quite on par with
the demand generated by devel-
opers. Information on developing
games is sparse. There is more
information available to developers of
web sites, general business applica-
tions, and the like. If you’re like many
others in this industry, you’ve either
begun to scan web sites and ftp
archives and online services such as
CompuServe, America Online, and
Microsoft Network for programming
information or you’re about to.
Unfortunately, the wired world
moves in mysterious ways, and trying
to locate current, pertinent informa-
tion on the World Wide Web and
online services can be a time-consum-
ing experience. It’s nice to have direc-
tions before setting out on this road.
I’ve pieced together my favorite sites
from long hours of browsing, which
will hopefully save your eyes and your
telephone bill from ruin. We’ll be
transferring this information to the
Game Developer
web site shortly (prob-
ably by the time you read this), so
don’t worry about copying down the
long URLs.
If you come across some new web
or ftp sites that you’d like to let other
developers in on, let us know. Our goal
is to turn our own web site into a launch-
ing point for other information on the
Internet, and we’ll need your help to
keep our links hot and fresh. Send your
recommendations to gdmag@mfi.com
with the subject line “Hot URL.”
I
The World
Wide Web
As
evidenced
by
Netscape’s ridiculous
stock price, the web is
growing so fast we can’t keep up with it.
For this reason, the information you find
on the net is both fresh as this morning’s
Starbucks and as old as that tin of Folger’s
Crystals in the back of your pantry. As
many web pages went up yesterday as the
number of pages that haven’t been updat-
ed in the past year. So the web can be an
extremely efficient means of getting the
information you want, or a time-consum-
ing chase across the world that terminates
at an antiquated site. Here are some good
sites to visit for game development topics.
•
3D Graphics Engines page (http://
www.cs.tu-berlin.de/~ki/engines.html)
A
fairly fleshed-out list of texture map-
ping engines, Gouraud shading
engines, landscape rendering engines,
flat-shading engines, and more. A bit
like a buyers guide, with links to ven-
dor home pages.
•
Algorithm’s Graphics Hotlist (http://
www.algorithm.com/graphics/graph
hot.html)
This contains links to all
sorts of graphics-related pages and,
like the Virtual Library, is a good
launching point.
•
Computer Game Developers Conference
(CGDC) (http://www.mfi.com/sd
confs/cgdc)
Information about the
West Coast version of the game
developer’s conference. Conference
schedule, location, and more.
•
Computer Graphics Miscellaneous FAQ
(http://www.algorithm.com/
graphics/graphhot.html)
A list of fre-
quently asked questions (“How do
GAME DEVELOPER • FEBRUARY/MARCH 1996
9
C R O S S F I R E
I..”; “Where can I find...”) about
graphics as well as pointers to other
sites. Updated fairly regularly.
Denthor of Asphyxia and the Asphyxia
Trainers (http://goth.vironix.co.za/
~denthor/)
Don’t ask me about the
name, but this site offers about 20
downloadable tutorials, such as “wid-
gets and gismos,” “crossfading,” “full-
screen scrolling,” “starfields,” “pixel
morphs,” “scaling bitmaps,” and more.
Egerter Software (http://peace.wit.
com/~kosmic/gooroo/software.html)
A
small Canadian software company
posting three graphics programming
tutorials and two rendering engines.
Ethan Brodsky’s page. (http://www.
xraylith.wisc.edu/~ebrodsky/)
A source
of information for programming
Sound Blaster audio cards.
Game Resource Page (http://www.cs.
umu.se/~christer/GR/)
A directory of
game programming sites divided into
algorithms, graphics, FAQs, book
publishers, and more.
Game Developers Contact List (http://
www.gamesdomain.co.uk/gamedev/
reslist.html)
Conceptually a great idea,
but it could be updated more frequently
(it’s two months old as I write this). A
clearing house of people interested in
various areas of game development
(writers, programmers, musicians) who
want to get matched up with others in
the field. A bit like the personals sec-
tion of your local newspaper.
Knut’s Homepage (http://www.
oslonett.no/home/oruud/homepage.htm)
This page contains information about
game programming and graphics. It
also contains links to shareware and
freeware graphics and sound libraries
available on the Internet.
Game Developer
magazine (http://
www.mfi.com/gdmag)
I’ll be immodest
and recommend that you check out
our site. Up to this point, we’ve been
tentative about making a big splash on
the web because our resources are fairly
stretched just producing a print version
of the magazine. But we’re revamping
our web site and will be relaunching it
with a new interface and new content.
Game Development Tools Listing
(http://www.cs.umu.se/~christer/GR/
game_company_page.html)
This page
lists company web sites broken down
by product category, such as “Enter-
tainment Producers,” “Hardware
Manufacturers,” and “Multimedia
Software Manufacturers.” Listed
alphabetically. Very handy.
Nexus Game Programming Links Page
(http://www.gamesdomain.co.uk/
gamedev/gprog.html)
Based out of the
U.K., a well-maintained site for “all
things game-related on the Internet.”
Searching: DejaNews (http://www.
dejanews.com)
This is an incredible site
that searches for Usenet newsgroups
based on keywords you enter. Looking
for every mention of the term “texture
mapping” in rec.games.programmer?
Alternatively, check to see if anyone’s
been talking about you online.
Searching: Savvy Search (http://www.
cs.colostate.edu/~dreiling/smartform.
html)
A search engine that sends your
query in parallel to other search
engines including Yahoo, Lycos, Web
Crawler, and NIKOS (about 15 in all)
and displays the results in a single list.
Searching: Yahoo’s Search Engine Master
List (http://www.yahoo. com/Comput-
ers_and_Internet/Internet/World_
Wide_Web/Searching_the_Web/)
This
lists most of the search engines avail-
able on the web. Take your pick.
Watcom Corporation (http://www.wat-
com.on.ca/c/c.html)
Information about C
and C++. Watcom has downloadable
tutorials for those learning the lan-
guage, links to other C/C++ resources,
and a library of source code.
WWW Virtual Library of Computer
Graphics (http://www.dataspace.
com/WWW/vlib/comp-graphics.html)
If
you want a comprehensive list of
papers, organizations, and commercial
sites dedicated to graphics, this is a
good place to start.
and cut and paste (careful with the copy-
rights though).
•
Borland’s FTP Site (ftp://ftp.borland.
com/pub/techinfo/index.html)
Whether
you’re looking for C, C++, or Pascal
source code or support, Borland’s put
together a comprehensive site that’s
logically organized.
•
Creative Labs’s FTP site (ftp://ftp.
creaf.com)
Sound files, utilities, and
the like.
•
DEC’s FTP Site (http://ftp.digital.
com/cgi-bin/grep-index)
Digital’s has a
large library of source code for a num-
ber of games. Most of the code isn’t
that fresh, but nevertheless it’s inter-
esting to browse.
•
Fastgraph FTP Site (ftp://ftp.accessnv.
com/fg/)
This is where you can find
the shareware version of the Fast-
graph graphics library (for PC). There
are also articles and chapters from
Action Arcade Adventure Set
(Coriolis
Group, 1994).
• Game Developer
magazine (ftp://ftp.
mfi.com/pub/gamedev/src/)
You can
find the source code from our back
issues at this location.
•
Game Programming Archives at Oulu
University, Finland. (ftp://x2ftp.
oulu.fi/pub/msdos/programming/)
This
is a huge site with many different files
for downloading, ranging in topic
from graphics to AI, game program-
ming theory, sound, and much more.
Many web directories have links to
this source, as it’s very comprehensive.
Word has it that it’s not being updat-
ed anymore, however.
•
Microsoft FTP site (ftp://ftp.microsoft.
com/dirmap.htm)
This page helps you
navigate through the myriad files
found at Microsoft.
•
Mode X Introduction (ftp:// x2ftp.oulu.
fi/pub/msdos/programming/docs/xin-
tro18.zip)
Self-explanatory, eh?
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File Transfer
Protocol (FTP)
Sites
These sites allow you to
download files (usually
zipped—make sure you’ve got PKunzip
handy) for offline viewing, inspection,
Online Service:
CompuServe!
I admit I’m heavily
biased toward Com-
puServe. I’ve tried
America Online and the Microsoft
Network, and found both of them
•
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