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Socoder -> Question of the Day -> QOTD : Whilst playing...

Mon, 13 Jul 2009, 16:20
Jayenkai
A simple short question, today..
As a coder, do you ever find yourself thinking about the way that games have been made, as you're playing them?
This came up recently for me, when a friend showed me his latest Lord of the Rings game. (can't remember the name of it, some RTS thing) As the menu appeared, it faded in, from black, with a video playing in the background.. On the very left hand side of this gradually fading screen was a pixel-wide strip of the full-bright animated menu and video, clear as day, and unfaded.
It occured to me, that they'd achieved this fade by drawing the whole thing, then dumping a black object over it, and slowly fading out the black object.. I assumed it was probably done in 3D, since that'd be the easiest, and most logical way to do it.
Then I thought... How could they not have noticed that? And then started to moan about EA being useless again..


Am I really sad, in that I thought all of this in the time it took the menu to fade in, or have you had any similar experiences?

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''Load, Next List!''
Mon, 13 Jul 2009, 21:14
Nolan
Quite often I find myself wondering how to program certain menus or GUI elements -- cool health gadgets, gun icons, equip screens, etc.. Pretty much every AAA game has at least one cool widget.

I love a good graphical interface.

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nolandc.com
Tue, 14 Jul 2009, 06:57
JL235
I do similar. Like I had tonnes to say about how primitive the optional missions were in Mass Effect are after completing it, my room mate however hadn't noticed any of it.
Tue, 14 Jul 2009, 14:16
shroom_monk
I often think 'how is this done' when playing games - sometimes just on the logical front (as in the basic tasks), and sometimes thinking into the actual coding for said tasks.

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A mushroom a day keeps the doctor away...

Keep It Simple, Shroom!
Wed, 15 Jul 2009, 17:41
Scherererer
I do that, and I also will upon seeing something cool outside (like the way light reflects off of something or something), and then think about how to recreate that effect.

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Wed, 15 Jul 2009, 18:06
HoboBen
Wondering how games worked when I was a kid is probably why I became a programmer.

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Fri, 17 Jul 2009, 10:29
dna
I use to do that when zork was big.

Now I mostly notice the graphics and wonder how I can do this thing or that thing.



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DNA
Fri, 17 Jul 2009, 21:02
mindstorm8191
I used to think about how games were made. Now most games seem so simple I don't even worry about it anymore. There are thousands of individual ways to make any given game, but most programmers choose the easiest that gets the job done.

Yeah, that was a lame mistake by EA - they could've simply made the black box a bit bigger and there wouldn't be a problem.

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