What is this recent obsession on the SDL list with cramming more
crap
into your application? WHAT FOR?
It makes things easier for the customer. That’s all. And, that is
more
than enough! Game programming isn’t a primarily technical pursuit.
Therefore, not every decision is made for technical reasons. Many, if
not most, major decisions are made for human and business reasons.
The
decision to lump everything together into one file is a business
decision arising from a human need.
Two arguments.
First, I will argue against whether or not this fact is even relevant.
Case and point: have you EVER seen a big name computer game that comes
as a single binary?
Ahhh, a strawman argument. We are not talking about big name games, we
are talking about smaller games written by a single person or a small
group of people that are distributed over the Internet. Big name games
have big name budgets to support end users who have trouble installing
them. Small name games have to “just work”.
Your declaration that big name games are not more knowledgeable than
amateur developers when it comes to supporting your customer base is a
laughable one. Yes they can afford to support their customers. One of
the ways they do that is by eliminating foreseeable confusions, or
explaining them to their users within the game.
Succinctly: do you honestly believe that a company who might end up
deducting another quarter million dollars from their game’s bottom line
by paying the workers performing support services, would overlook a
potential technical support problem within their game?
I was using big name game companies as an example in my argument
because, as far as technical support goes, they have more money at
risk, and more resources and experience with which to save that money.
They simply seemed like bigger better organizations when it comes to
support. I do understand though that you might think people are willing
to put up with technical problems to play the most cutting-edge FPS
game. However I think my point still stands that where independent
developers can largely only speculate on what might confuse their
customers (like the ever-confusing subject of this thread - the DLL
file) large companies have millions of customers, and millions of
logged technical support sessions, with which they can and do
anticipate future technical support issues, and in their next game will
nip them in the bud.
Second, I will argue against this philosophy. Considering ease of use
(a purely human aspect) OVER system performance (a purely technical
aspect) is what has led us to things Windows and automatic
transmissions!
Bull… The only thing that matters is the “purely human aspect”. If
people have to work too hard to use something they will find something
that is easier to use. That is reality. Putting system performance over
human convenience is so… '1960ish. Back then, and I remember back
then, a 1 MOP/1 MB computer cost millions of dollars so it was worth a
huge amount human discomfort to get the most out of the computer.
Now days computers with a hundred to a thousand times that performance
can be picked up in flea markets for less than $100. I spent a large
part of yesterday in a flea market and saw just that.
Putting the computer ahead of the person using the computer is just
plain wrong. It is what is wrong with the majority of developers I
meet.
They somehow think the customer is less important than the computer.
As one guy on this list already pointed out, you can have a balance. I
don’t think loading all your game resources into memory in two separate
places is a balance.
Consider that if it takes you two years to develop a game, a reasonable
time for a complex game, by the time you are done computers will have
twice the performance and dropped in price by roughly 25%.
I don’t know about you, but as a computer user, I hate it when my
system slows to a crawl. When this happens, it is largely due to a
running a lot of software that is running at much less than its
potential performance, wasting clock cycles, and forcing more frequent
virtual memory paging. Sufficiently bogged down systems will even cause
badly written applications to crash, which isn’t good for the user.
Windows used to (and maybe still does - I don’t know) under low memory
conditions, kill seemingly random applications. That is not exactly
good for the user.
When I was in highschool I made a lot of software. Instead of making
it
easy to use - I made it educational. It TEACHES the user about the
underlying technology. Not more than is necessary, but not less
either.
In my opinion this is one of multiple approaches to the ease-of-use
problem that is much better than sacrificing performance or
functionality.
I have no idea what kind of programs you wrote in high school, nor do I
care. I am talking about writing games in a market where there are many
many game developers all trying to make a buck, or even get noticed.
Anything the developer can do to make the game more attractive to the
customer is a good thing to do.
You’re right. It would be terrible if the Readme or something contained
help regarding the DLLs in the folder for people who didn’t know what
they were.
Personally I wouldn’t do that. But, if this guy thinks the DLL is going
to confuse or offend his target audience, then it’s a pretty good idea
if you ask me.
There is also the slight benefit that it keeps the less technically
inclined from lifting your art and music resources. Some people do
worry
about that.
Technically inclined or not, if you know the name of the media you’re
looking for, you’ll find it on a file sharing network ten times faster
than you’ll rip it out of any sort of proprietary or otherwise
difficult to access archive.
Case and point - I am technically inclined, but if I wanted to get
megaman sprites (and at one point I did want just that) I didn’t
download the ROM and start the laborious process of extracting them -
I
searched the internet and downloaded hundreds of them in minutes.
Personally, I think if someone is making money off of your media it
will be relatively easy to find them (or at least the ease of finding
out will be proportional to their ill-gotten success.) And if they’re
using them for personal purposes who gives a damn?
Very, very personally, I know a LOT of people disagree with this - but
even if they used them in an open source project I wouldn’t mind one
bit. Though I’d definitely come down on them for using it without my
permission if that was the case.
And another thing: if they aren’t technically inclined, WHAT are they
going to with your precious media that you wouldn’t want them to do?
Change them and post them to the Internet. Like I said, this is a minor
point. I notice you spent more time on it than on the rest of the
discussion combined.
I feel almost bad even responding to this, however… the fact that
it’s longer doesn’t mean I spent more time on it. AAMOF, the only thing
illustrated by that is that it probably took you longer to read.
And then there is the other point… The author wants to do it. It is
his decision to make. He believes there is value in doing it. And you
have 0 (zero) reason or right to object. The fact that you would not
do
it that way is not relevant to the discussion.
Oh come on Bob, this is just silly. The nature of an argumentative
objection is not to steal another’s will power from them and force
them
to do what you say! It’s totally my right to make this sort of
objection, I’m not forcing anybody to do anything!
As a matter of fact, that is exactly what an argumentative objection is
for. Its only purpose is to try to bully someone into your point of
view. Constructive criticism is always OK. Bullying is not.
I’m not the only one on the list who disagrees and says so. In a
concise gesture to prove you wrong, have you ever heard the phrase
"devil’s advocate?" Would this phrase even exist if the only point of
argument was to "bully someone into your point of view?"On Sep 27, 2004, at 10:02 AM, Bob Pendleton wrote:
On Sun, 2004-09-26 at 20:40, Donny Viszneki wrote:
On Sep 26, 2004, at 8:36 PM, Bob Pendleton wrote:
On Sun, 2004-09-26 at 16:11, Donny Viszneki wrote:
You have posted some good stuff on the list, you have also posted a lot
of bullying and belittling stuff. If you want to be respected you need
to drop the bulling and belittling else you wind up in peoples kill
files.
Bob Pendleton
SDL mailing list
SDL at libsdl.org
http://www.libsdl.org/mailman/listinfo/sdl
–
±-------------------------------------+
SDL mailing list
SDL at libsdl.org
http://www.libsdl.org/mailman/listinfo/sdl
