I started my game development journey here and it has come such a far far way in 6 years. To anyone that this might help, I have created a game development DVD and I'm working on a second one to be put out immediately.

Thanks for taking a look. Sorry for not sticking around but I don't user allegro anymore.

http://www.ultimategamedevelopment.com/

My other work. Currently working on a very large scale game after these dvd's launch.
http://dpadam450.deviantart.com/
http://adampawlowski.uphero.com/

Looks cool.

How have your ambitions as a game designer changed over the years?

Not sure what you mean, since you mention ambitions I'm assuming: have I changed the type of games or scale of games I want to work. In that case, no. I always started game development to make the best tech, best big scale games that I always liked playing. I still have not released my own game yet, but I definitely have something more solid brewing. I have done plenty of demos in the past though.

I've seen a bunch of guys here go off to take different paths and their views and opinions on the industry/art change, etc. I was wondering how your views and motivations have changed over time as you've acquired better experience, training, and skills.

What's the running time on the video? And, since it's download only, what's the format? I'm interested to see what directions you take and priorities you choose.

Still updating the website a little bit. Offering this in WMV(working on DVD), the WMV will be higher quality 1024x768 vs DVD 720x480. But I want to make sure that the text still shows up good enough since you will have to be able to see the code.

Run-time is 8.5 hours. This one is aimed at first time coders, so I cover some things like pointers and vectors that take some of the time to explain but again the goal is only to teach minimal coding and not trying to optimize/organize on DVD1 as it would be a 20 hour DVD to try and teach every C++ in/out, bad design etc. So your looking at 4 hours a piece for each game, which if it were a book would take a while to read as well as having to decipher what the author is saying and physically doing because you cant see them do it.

The entire game industry in my opinion is pretty low. I started game dev to do whatever it takes. So I learned everything, art animation coding. And I see that most people dont have any ambition, most people have never created their own game in 3D from scratch, and thats why a lot of people fight my opinions, because they have never done it for themselves. They hang this 3 million lines of code needed for a game, and 50 people team above their heads.

In short: More coders = more time for me to code. At work I code/fix bugs at about 1 bug an hour, sometimes more and code slow because I have to look through so many c++ files to figure out execution paths. So if I own 100% of the code, I code about 100x faster (fix a 1 line bug at home I know the exact line # and why my code is broke, vs at work I have to find it and fiddle because I dont know why its broke).
My other opinion is that every game right now solves the same exact problems, thousands of games each year, then why are we solving the same problems.
How many games shoot bullets? Have terrain? etc etc and my game engine was meant to abstract all of this and essentially back up each of those things in the editor, so that you wouldn't need to code gameplay EVER. Unfortunately I don't get to work on that full time, but I can prototype just about any game you can thing of it my engine within a day and without writing any code.

A lot of people argue this idea but they just dont get it from my perspective: You shipped Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 3 is coming out. You should be able to make all new art and drop it in the engine and ship Modern Warfare 3. So if it took you 30 programmers to from scratch create MW2, then you shouldn't need 30 to carry on small work in MW3. Essentially from pure money standpoint, EA should be able to say: sorry we are just going to pay for artists to make this game using the existing engine, after all they do technically look about the same. "Well what if they want to have a helicopter spin into a building and it collapses." That to me, should already be an abstracted event class that would allow the artist to create that. Every game probably has been solved before.

And given that I can tell you that I am working on one of the biggest solo projects ever in game development. 1 to prove a point that it can be done (and has radioactive software = 1 guy, wolfire = 2 guys, frictional games = 3 guys) but I want the bar a bit higher still, and I'm doing all the art. And 2, without money, you can only get free workers which is basically young modders that are not very skilled, and not going to be as dedicated to my game, so it would hinder my work.

http://www.facebook.com/GettysburgArmoredWarfare

1 Man, Publishing Deal with a major publisher, has help from the lead designer of Battlefield. Time in development less than 1 year.

I know it sounds dumb, why wouldnt people do what I say, but they are starting to. I'm glad I met that guy at Radioactive cuz we do all of our own coding and he inspires me that I'm on the right path and my ideas are correct. And when hes done/ I'm done with my next game, then making the next one will be easier. You have to fail over and over and over, but I fail at big things, so that each time I learn that much more. And it is because of this that I want to teach people how to make big things so they don't have to fail or pick the brains of hundreds of people through books and tutorials, and just have the information given to them upfront.

I'll take the harassment, it has been typical, but I'll never give up the fight and I want people to be able to learn game development and make the most awesome game they can imagine in their head. Not everyone has a million dollars, so I'm teaching how to do it alone.

DVD 1: PONG and Tanks
DVD 2: Air Comat/Sim (Apache Air Assault, HAWX)
DVD 3: Online FPS

Wait! So you are charging $20 per DVD for things people could learn for free from gamedev help sites like GameDev.net. If you want to make money then there is XNA and then you can publish them on PC/360. Not seeing the benefit to blowing $60 on 3 DVDs when I can spend nothing and learn to do all that for free.

[quote]people could learn for free from gamedev help sites like GameDev.net.[/quote]
I spent over 7 years as a member there, it's nice if you know what to ask, but nobody there is going to give you an hour long video explanation reply on how to do everything needed to make x,y,z games. You might find some basic XNA game tutorials but nothing really covering a full scale 3D game. I did actually learn alomst everything I know from reading nvidia stuff and gamdev.net by asking questions but that takes time, I don't want to try and fail, I want someone to show me how to succeed and make something exactly as I play it.

[quote]and learn to do all that for free.[/quote]
You can research for 4-5 years for free stuff and a mess of tutorials all written by separate authors. Thats what I did and its not fun believe me. Most people actually end up spending 30 bucks on a c++ book, 40 bucks on a shaders book. Not that all books are bad, I'd rather pay 30 bucks anyday on a book or dvd, then try and learn from online tutorials that go "ok here how you do the basics, see ya"..you are left not knowing what to read next. Whose tutorial should I read after that?

I always only cared about next-gen stuff year after year as those are the only games I play. I just wish someone would have been like "here step by step what you should learn in what order to make that game you just played."

You have been doing this 7+ years and think people waste money on books? Every book I have my wife bought me. Every thing I learned I got from torrent books. I don't know many people that actually waste any money on it, everyone I know get movies, books, games, etc through torrent or other free means. Honestly, after you make them, if you do sell any they will end up being distributed on a torrent before long anyways.

Sorry that you have no faith in humanity and steal everything you own. I don't torrent and I just bought another book actually the other day. Gnomon apparently has success making DVDs, book publishers still print books, EA still makes videogames.

Humanity? I don't know very many people on this forum who don't torrent everything. Any time I mention wanting something the first replies are always "*cough* torrent cough". They still make those, but I'm willing to bet that someone has ripped and made available on torrent already.

Watched the 1/4 you have from your site for free. The 'um' and 'uh' were really distracting because I went from paying attention to the point of the videos to seeing how many times you said them. One tip I get from a lot of video makers is to make a script to follow in order to try and keep yourself from doing that. Your voice is fine, but that does distract from the video. Makes me think of when a teacher had to quit calling on a girl because she couldn't stop saying 'like' every other word due to it distracting from the point of what she was saying.

Also, our economy shows humanity wants everything for less. Building projects go to the lowest bidder, cheaper priced food gets sold, cheapest gas is bought.

Noted. I'm just saying man BF just sold how many million copies? Not everyone torrents and small things like this will not be on the #1 rip and torrent list.

May not be #1 but I just did a search for Gnomon and found 12 bundles for it (several gigs each). If your DVDs are as useful as I'm seeing someone will rip them. You aren't taking into account all the Open Source fanatics out there they think you should offer everything for free and torrent them to do so. My books I torrented were the $50 books, and I wasted money on a CS book for C++ (first and only time I spent $100+ on it, but that is because tutorials have the problem of being only partially accurate due to dropping important things that should be mentioned or misstating things about the language or libraries).

BF? COD4MW sold millions and was torrented within the first week. BF is also already torrented. You are comparing popular company sales to yours though (apples and oranges). The fact remains that even the free NeHe tutorials are torrented. If they are helpful they will be torrented by someone.

I realize I seem like I'm being down on it, but I don't mean to be. I hope you have great success with them. I try to be realistic after 14 years of doing C++ and seeing what is torrented.

Well me personally, I have a salary job. I buy and support anything I like, whether it is games movies whatever. But to not even have the ambition to do something because some people will steal it would just mean I should give up on everything. I can just as easily put out fake torrents to fight those if it comes to that. I talked to a guy that wrote Game Programming for Teens and his book sold 50K copies over 5+ years (not sure when it was published), that's pretty big.

It sounds like an alright idea... but I was not at all inspired by the 10 min video pitch on the website. That was as boring as all hell. You say it's about getting the information quicker and better, but that 10 min video meanders from one topic to another, slowly slowly trying to make the point that learning from books is slow. . The video is not at all sharp or concise - and yet you seem to be saying that the main strength of your DVDs is that they'll offer a streamlined learning process. ...

At the start of that video, you seem to be saying that you want to make a DVD rather than a book because it will be less work for you. (less editing, less typing, etc.). What I'm saying is that your 10 min video is in dire need of some planning and editing. (Perhaps this stuff requires more work than you think?) One can only assume that the DVDs will be of similar style and quality to the video on the website; and if that's the case, I'm not sure who would want to buy the DVDs.

I get all my games and movies legally (going November 1st to pre-order and pay for Skyrim). I just don't waste $50+ on books if I don't know if they will help. I have 80 PS3 games and 60 PSN games, about 20 or 30 PC games. Sold my xbox and all my other systems years ago. Plan to get a 360 eventually and plan to get the XNA license one of these days. When it comes to learning it is better to find free ways as you are already spending your time to learn it (Nothing is ever truly free, you Always give up the time you could use for something else) so if the user has a choice of spending $20 on videos or spelunking through tutorials and such online for free, they will usually chose the cheaper path.

[quote]It sounds like an alright idea... but I was not at all inspired by the 10 min video pitch on the website. That was as boring as all hell.[/quote]

Also noted. Good point, that I will actual make a new one thats more fancy and short.

Some people would say its kind of early, but this is the reason I did this part first, because PONG and Tanks DVD is not separating me from any other stuff out there, its the stuff that is coming in the near future. So I want to get everything in place.

Open source isn't about price. It's about the freedom to use, modify, and distribute software. Free software refers to the freedom, not the price.

Blah blah blah. That's such a stupid line. "Hey, I think it's fair if you charge me $20 for your source code as long as I have the freedom to give it away to anybody I want to at no cost." Free software, as the zealots describe it, is about transferring all freedom and rights from the person who produces content to the person who consumes it.

If somebody wants to create a book or DVD about programming and try to make a buck, then more power to him. Of course if he wants to be successful, then it better be a professional product at a reasonable price.

(quote)If somebody wants to create a book or DVD about programming and try to make a buck, then more power to him. Of course if he wants to be successful, then it better be a professional product at a reasonable price.
(/quote)
no idea how to quote on here. I would like to make them as professional as possible which is why I'm taking critiques serious. It's not too much about the money, but there is a serious lake of condensed knowledge as far as game dev goes. Of course the more pro it is, the more people will at least reach, whether I make a couple bucks or not.

Quotes can be done in a few ways:
1. <quote name="person" src="http://allegro.cc"> This is a quote!</quote>
Where name and src are optional. It ends up like this:

2.
> This is a top level quote.
>> This is a nested quote.

Which turns into:

For the syntax of additional formatting options, click the formatting help button at the top of the text entry area when making your reply.

With GPL is kind of the opposite. If you in some way make a "derivative work" of some GPL code, it is now GPL compatible and can be slurped up into the original product at any time. It's really about keeping the code open, to now allow anyone to "subvert" it like you can do with projects licensed under much laxer licenses. Also though there is a little bit of the "anyone can fork it" at any time and you're allowed to distribute it as much as you like. But that only applies to the source itself. Feel free to distribute your binaries on a CD/download and charge for that, all you have to do is provide a link to the source with the license.

I don't disagree with what you are saying. It's hard to give a good brief explanation.

I'm really only commenting on the ridiculous claim that it has nothing to do with cost. I understand at the surface the movement isn't about money, but in practice it is. You cannot have "free" software without severely limiting the practical ways of making money writing it.

Edit:

To provide an example.

Say Adobe releases Photoshop as free software that costs $500. So you pay for a legal copy, compile your own version, and rebrand it as "Photoshorp" and give it away for free. You then set up a company to provide support at a cheap rate.

Adobe is now in a position where they can no longer sell their product because companies can legally obtain it from you for free. Nor can they make money supporting it because obviously you can do it cheaper since you aren't paying the development cost.

So the end result is Adobe goes out of business, and there is no more Photoshop. Everybody gets to use The GIMP instead ... which is as good as you get with free software.

cool story bro

Now lets make RedHat our example. Company makes Linux distro, which it provides for free, with optional support contracts. Company makes millions, buys up other software and companies and open sources much of the closed source software it bought. Company then goes on to have a market cap of 10 billion dollars, no debt, and plenty of cash.

The problem I think most people have, is that opensource business and closed source business is completely different. One is completely foreign to the other.

I wouldn't really consider RedHat a counter example. In fact, they are an example of what I'm talking about: somebody running a software services company based on other people's free software. Now one single company is making all the money and in control of the software ecosystem. Everybody else needs to find another day job. That decreases the amount of people hacking away at code.

I'm not saying that free software doesn't work; there's obviously a lot of good free software. But I don't believe that free software can always achieve the best user experience or the lowest total cost of ownership.

And likewise, I think for-profit books/DVDs and freely available resources complement each other.

You don't even have to do that. IIRC, from actually reading the GPL, the source just has to be made available. That is, it has to be possible to contact you and get the source. It can even be a business arrangement, if you want. I think that you could charge $1 billion for a copy of the source code if you wanted to. And if somebody ever paid that they would have the right to use, modify, and redistribute the code or binaries (and be required to make any modifications available under the terms of the GPL). You could also dual-license the software, I think. Perhaps selling it with a proprietary license for cheap, but selling a GPL'd version at a much higher price. I don't necessarily agree with that, but I don't think the GPL prohibits it.

It certainly doesn't work as well with the existing business model used by one-size-fits-all commercial vendors. I think that's a good thing. If you think about it, most proprietary software does meet the definition of malware. It usually has a backdoor for the original vendor to push forced updates to it at their will, and against yours. It's also often the target of malicious software through exploits. This is software that you don't have the right to know what it does, yet you're running it on your computer! In other words, you're paying company X to give company X (and potentially hackers A, B, and C) control of your computer. It doesn't make any sense. There are existing business models that do work with free/libre software and there are probably business models not even discovered/explored yet.

Adobe is likely in a much better position to support it. The source code for large applications is usually a brainfuck. You don't just turn around and provide support for it overnight. The third party that wanted to provide support would likely need to invest heavily in developers exploring and hacking on the code before they are prepared to provide support for it.

FTFY.

I've heard that The GIMP is actually quite powerful once you learn how to use it. Just because it's different doesn't mean it isn't powerful. It might not have all of the bells and whistles of Photoshop yet, but there are too many variables at play to shrug it off as being "because it's free software". There are a whole lot of proprietary graphics editing programs that are nowhere near as powerful as Photoshop. It's a bullshit argument.

Redhat isn't the only vendor doing that ... There's also Canonical and Novell, for example. There are quite a few INCs, LTDs, and LLCs shown as the producer on Wikipedia's Comparison of Linux distributions.

Last I heard, there are over 8000 active kernel hackers now (many are paid to do it by their employer)... How many people do you think "hack" on Windows? Probably zero. There is probably way fewer than 8000 developers too (probably in its entire lifetime, let alone at once).

I never said there was anything wrong with for-profit books/DVDs (though there are potentially things wrong with the license to use them; increasingly so in recent years). I laughed at this thread because the video seems completely unprofessional, the OP's site doesn't actually demo any of his work to show that he's somebody to actually teach what he claims he can, he openly admitted to never actually developing a Halo-clone before, yet in 3 easy payments of $20 he can teach you to go from not knowing how to program into building Halo all by yourself! I think it's a ridiculously amateur scam and considering he keeps claiming it's not about money $20 per DVD seems pretty steep too given what I've just said.

I'm not saying not to do it. I'm saying that I expect it to fail and I expect anybody that does pay for one of the OP's DVDs will feel ripped off.

Except that's not what they make the money on. If you really want RedHat without the cost, just go CentOS. Its RHEL without the support contracts. Clearly that hasn't worked out as you claim it would, otherwise RedHat would be either failing, or bankrupt by now.

I never checked the videos or content, but based on the website, I wouldn't purchase anything from it.

You're confusing 2 different things here. One think is what the copyright owner can do, and that's what you're describing, and another thing is what a user of the GPL software can do (not being the copyright owner). If you're redistributing a GPL software (you're not the copyright holder) you must distribute it along the sources (obtaining the sources must be as easy/hard as obtaining the binaries. If you distribute the binaries in a DVD, that DVD must also include the sources, just including a link isn't enough). Only the copyright-owner can dual-liecense or actually do whatever he wants (he may for example use a modified version of the GPL to license its software, like Nokia does with Qt).

Examples? All sowftware I have allows you to configure if you want automatic updates or not. Of course there are exceptions like online games, because the game must be updated in order to work with the server.

I've used it and believe me it's miles away from Photoshop. It cannot even compete with (very) old versions of Photoshop. And I'm not talking only about what things can be done, but about usability too. Something as simple as adding a shadow to a layer can be a PITA with Gimp (and the result looks like crap, too), there's not even a preview of what you're doing. And after you've added it, it cannot be modified or erased (and of course, changes to the layer don't retroactively affect the shadow).

Since when quantity is more important than quality (by quality here I mean amount of time dedicated to do the job)? 500 people working on a project 40 hours/week is much better than 8000 people working on a project 3 hours/week.

When I said OS fanatics buy it and feel release it for free I didn't mean price wise. The use it and think that it is useful and consider it theirs to own so they release it for others to use according to open source. That is why I used the word 'fanatic' because most fanatics don't care how the rules apply they just apply them to everything. The fanatics buy something and think it is now theirs to do what they want with (including distributing it elsewhere). Whether I used the proper terminology or not makes no difference, still remains that someone will buy them and decide it is within his/her rights to release it to torrents.

I don't mean to jab but I was just wondering how do you teach programming with a movie? It seems like books would be better. Maybe it's just because I've been programming a long time. However, code is text, and to make a useful program you need a lot of it... How do you convey that over a dvd? dvd resolution allows for a few lines of text that is actually visible on screen at once. And then there's the fact that to learn a piece of code you often have to go over it again and again to understand it. I'm not knocking your product, just curious about this. I'd like to see it do well.

On the plus side, the modelling and animation parts to me seem like they would be taught better with video.

It seems to me that if he put the wmv files on a data DVD along with some text files for source examples it'd be fine. It wouldn't work without a computer, but then they can't program games without a computer anyway.

@Oscar Giner: What version of The Gimp did you use?

I am a gimp user. The gui has improved over the years, you now have drop down menu, not right clicking on the image, or that strange arrow thing. (This was the big change at version 2) It does the job for something that you get for free, but could do with a lot of work. It is not really useable on a single monitor. When you can have all your toolbars on another window, and have memorised the basic keyboard short cuts, its quite useable.

Photoshop costing $699usd prices the average home person out. I can not afford that cost to resize images and have a fiddle occasionally. For the price I would hope photoshop is better than anything available and comes with free <insert prefered sexual act here>. Even if you pay the huge start cost, they want another $199 out of you for every new version.

I have used photoshop as a legitimate user, (we had a licence at work,) and its not $699 better than the gimp to me.

There are several utilities such as an image resizer you can knock out with Allegro 4.x in a few minutes each. If they're not a monolithic blob, then you can use them in scripts/batch files for extra functionality.

I was wrong about one thing: if you distribute the source code separately from the binaries then you must give the source code away for free. If it's one package you are free to charge whatever you want (and I think that goes for anyone; not just the copyright holder).

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

You know what all proprietary software that you have doesn't allow you to do? Review the code to spot any backdoors. Just because nobody knows it is there or because nobody has found it yet doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The whole point of withholding the source code is to make it very difficult to find these kinds of malicious features.

I've heard of backdoors in Microsoft products and Adobe products, but of course it's difficult to say for sure unless you catch them being exploited. We know there are backdoors in Apple products because Apple controls what you can install on your device and has even shown that they can forcibly remove software from your device at will.^[1]

You're really missing the point.

I was speaking specifically to ML's claim that somehow open sourcing an application decreases the amount of people hacking on the code (not really sure how that can ever be true). That said, the quality of the Linux kernel speaks for itself, and the lack thereof in Windows does the same.

"I never checked the videos or content, but based on the website, I wouldn't purchase anything from it."

New site is coming, others said that as well.

"And then there's the fact that to learn a piece of code you often have to go over it again and again to understand it."
Have you taken a CS course? Would you rather someone draw you a diagram of a pointer with a couple pieces of memory and an explanation or read it from a book. Or any CS lecture you have ever had with slides. I'll take the lecture vs the book.

"It seems to me that if he put the wmv files on a data DVD along with some text files for source examples it'd be fine."

For each chapter I go "ok if you want to sync up with the code then open up the Chapter 3 project". So there is the entire code at the last chapter and there is code for each sub-chapter as a go along.

"I don't mean to jab but I was just wondering how do you teach programming with a movie?"

Because its so visual. How do I truly explain shadow mapping and dot products and what a rotation matrix does without showing you it rotating. Or building a particle system. I also cover some fundamentals of 3D art going up to intermediate models. So think of this: If I'm having you build a level editor, how can I write it in a book, ok now click this button, load this, ok rotate it, apply this, now go back to the code. It would actually be impossible. After the next line I've been like ok it didn't work. I must have done something wrong. Couldn't you just show me? Don't know how many posts I have on gamedev.net asking for further help on SO many topics that I read from online or in a book. This is not all about coding, but even if it were, I've had plenty of books when I started that left me going "I have no idea what is going on". For instance I read 2D Game Something with Allegro years back and it was ok that he showed how to load images, but can you just show me how to make a game and connect the dots for me so I can go and actually create my own game? And not just PONG, but cool 3D stuff.

You cannot teach programming through visual means. Like Trent pointed out it is text. Games are visual, graphics are visual, but coding is text (again like Trent pointed out). With programming, unless you are a professor in CS you can't truly teach or do a tutorial because every tutorial is written to where there is key points that are always dropped out. Programming is always better learned from a book (more preferably a CS book if possible). This is one of the key reasons that tutorials for programming are always text based because it is easier to show chunks of code on a site rather than have to scroll it in a video and wonder if the viewer can read it or if you are scrolling too fast. Not to mention that it is actually distracting to hear a person talking and telling you because it is human nature to start blocking out what is being said while listening to it especially if you lose interest in what is being said.

I tried the last version available just a few months ago. But of course if you only want to resize images and maybe apply some filter, you don't need Photoshop, nor Gimp actually. There's specialized software for that that does the job, and probably better.

Yes, as long as you distribute the source with the binaries, and under the GPL (you cannot dual license, or distribute under any other license, if you're not the copyright holder), there're no more limitations.

I have a software firewall that pop ups a window informing me when any program not in the whitelist tries to access the internet, and I haven't spotted any unwanted updating yet. Of course there's malware software like... quicktime, but I don't install those . If Microsoft had ways to force updates, they would have forced the WGA (spell?) updates, for example.

That's not what I said or meant to imply. The absence of any proprietary software (as the FSF wants) would lead to fewer people being able to hold full time jobs as programmers in a structured environment, particularly in the case where the software itself is the value of the company.

Even if free software is superior (and in many cases, I think it is), it's delusional to try to force that platform on everybody. Let the markets decide what is best. That's the fair, objective way. If Windows continues to be more popular than Linux, perhaps instead of crying about Microsoft doing something "immoral," maybe you ought to focus on making Linux better.

The major thing I have against this cry for free software is that they think it's imperative to allow somebody to redistribute the source code to unlicensed users. I think the whole movement would be a bit easier to accept if they respected the software producer's right to charge license fees as its method of supporting itself. i.e., Here's the source code, feel free to make changes to it, but only people who have paid the original license fee to us are entitled to use it.

"unless you are a professor in CS you can't truly teach or do a tutorial because every tutorial is written to where there is key points that are always dropped out."
Which is why this covers every step. I wont be stopping the record button and then drop my physics engine in.

I disagree with text though. That's just your opinion vs mine. I personally would have loved to have visual tutorials on coding, from setting up to compiling to debugging. Which is what you get for the most part from college. A lot of people I have talked to like the idea. I love watching GDC slides on terrain/shadows what not much better than a ShaderX book. Everything you program is actually visual as you pointed out. I'm covering shooting missiles, moving a helicopter, adding a particle system. Everything you will program translates to something visual. And hopefully no-one needs to re-read (re-watch) a chapter because you should be developing the game along with me.

You still have the text of the source code, and I always hated seeing source code in a book because it gives you like 20 lines of code and then tries to explain it instead of typing line by line and explaining anything new. Was very hard for me to get to making a professional engine from these scattered topic books. Imagine trying to put a full game demo of a flight sim in a book. You wouldn't even be physically able to print all the source code.

Again, it's a good idea to me, wish I had this to learn from. If you already know how to do everything discussed in the DVD, or hate videos, then it wouldn't be for you. Cant please everyone in politics, guess I can't please everyone with this. That's fine though, what can I do. Not going to just throw in the towel.

A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.

I downloaded the first 1/4 to see if it would be appropriate for my (young) nephews. Not a knock on you, but I don't think it is. Due to their age I think winapi is going to be too much to swallow. For them I think an XNA video would be a lot more suitable. I think even Allegro or SDL is too much for kids their age (8-10.) Anyway, they were asking a while back "how'd you do that" and that's why I took a look. I didn't even watch the video, just went straight to the code. Looks well structured. I can see why you'd go with raw winapi but to me that seems like a good way to cut yourself off from other platforms. But as I said, I can see why you'd do it in a beginners guide, and someone who can grasp this stuff should have no problem expanding into multi-platform development once they've finished the DVDs.

Target is 13+. Teaching games to an 8 year old is going to be pretty hard any way you cut it. I mean trigonometry to shoot a weapon in tanks would be very difficult to teach to kids.

Problem with multiplatform is that you need to use a MP API such as SDL. I want to stick as much to the core (openGL) as possible. But I don't even cover windows really, that's just the blank program, no-one is supposed to know any of what is in start. The DVD explains that you shouldn't know what any of that windows stuff it. Most games don't even hit Mac/Linux, well they partly do now but picking up mobile stuff or another language, or porting to Mac/Linux isn't so hard once you know the theory/implementation of variables and solving game related problems.

Well you obviously haven't met my kids.

You mother... Anyway, I think I made my point of view clear. I gotta keep working like a slave. New website is almost done all looks cool. Going to make a better overview video.

And a hex editor can be used to do anything as well. That doesn't mean you should ditch your higher level language and compiler.

No, text being better than visual is more fact than opinion. There have been studies that have appeared that says just what I said. Visual teaching videos lose the attention of the viewer if they aren't fun or interactive. You sitting there droning on about the topics isn't very interesting nor entertaining. To be completely honest I watched the intro (which was between 1 or 2 minutes) and went in the first minute I quit caring what you said and started counting the 'ums' and 'uhs'. I sent the 1/4 files via email to my father-in-law who is a maintenance supervisor so he sits through boring lectures and meetings all day, my wife's best friend's husband Eddie who is a computer/game fan, and a professor I talk to regularly to get their opinions on it. So far I've not heard back form the professor (but he lives in Florida and is busy with teaching the courses).

Father-in-law said his meetings were more stimulating while Eddie said he too started counting the 'ums' and 'uhs'.

I do love how he posts it for our opinions and then when we give them his reply is to basically say he is sticking to his opinion (so what was the point of this thread?). I'll post what my professor friend says as soon as I get the email back since his is more important since he is a professor of the Game and Simulation Programming course.

No you just are acting all macho right now. "I sent it to 2 people cuz I'm right an you are wrong." What you are trying to do is say: "Well if this guy says its dumb then apparently you are dumb."

I said that I would have loved visual DVDs, I love presentations from GDC. Books are ok, but books also don't cover exactly what I am. Opinions are fine, I am redoing my video, redid my website, I'm checking into silencing the Uh and Uhms, I think there might be more in the first intro video as I did it last. But your basically saying, "your an idiot for doing a DVD who the hell wants one of those". Well I would have liked one, I think people WILL like these that are getting into game development and I do think people pay thousands of dollars to go to see visual slides and lectures at GDC. So again my opinion is I like that stuff more. There are 2,000 books on C++/C#/Android/Java/Shaders what is the point in writing another one. I think trying to teach how to make a full game in a book is going to be hard to get across lots of points, especially when I'm manipulating models, placing vertices, placing AABB's for physics, generating normals maps, showing off a particle system. How do you know if your particle system is working correctly without seeing mine?

I wouldn't worry much about the naysayers. It's the same people basically who moan about any and every topic on these forums. It's also the same people who have basically never made a game in their lives but have very strong opinions on how you're supposed to make them .

I can think of countless game-programming related concepts where instructional video/motion-graphics could make a world of difference.

Opinions are fine, as I know uh and uhms are annoying and I'm going to revise and silence those out when I come across them, but I'm doing a DVD. If your opinion is "a DVD is dumb, you should right a book". Then I can't note your opinion because I'm doing a DVD, there's not much more to say. I'm in a different market than books. Then saying all your crap will get torrented, I can note that it may happen, but I'm not going to give up because you said so. There is a difference between constructive crit, opinion, and forcing opinion. Write Ultimate Game Development books if you want to teach people this stuff then. Watch my dvd, copy the dialogue and print a book and torrent it. Don't hate you for it, but you have to realize this is my goal with UGD training.

Somebody criticized you for saying uhm?* That's about the dumbest thing I've heard all day. Congrats for having a plan and vision and sticking to it. A lot of people can't say they've done that.

• I skip every post by bamccaig on here, and started skipping Spector Phoenix's as well, so I may have missed it due to that.

Over use of uhms is taught early in middle school and high school presentations so that is partly true and definitely true that it can be distracting. I think its just more excessive in my 2 minute intro/setup clip than the actual whole DVD.

Only reason I post back here is I started my game dev journey here about 6 years ago after learning a bit of C++.

Pretty much said about all I can say and got enough feedback. Anyone interested can sign up for updates when the "good/cool" DVD comes out.

I think people say "uhm" so much is because they don't want someone else butting in before they've finished the statement they're trying to make. The "uhm" means "Let me think a second". Maybe a few rehearsals would help.

Also, some people have better reading comprehension than audio, and vice versa. I'm in the "reading seems better" camp, partly because I'm rather hard of hearing.

Dude, I didn't even notice the uhms.

I wanna hear what you have to say! Where do I signup for updates?

I didn't notice them either. It's pretty normal for people to do that, and not just in videos.

We used to get dinged for "um"s and "ah"s doing oral book reports in English class.

Only have an update on DVD 2 page, there is an email notification link next to the dvd. Probably going to do a making of the DVD as well to just post 30 second to 1 minute clips every day or every other to show the progress of the game. Still haven't started yet, just finished the website today and Resistance 3 needs to be played.

Feel free to post on the boards here when you have updates!

I would recommend you increase the font size ... 7pt and 9px are way too tiny for this kind of document and nobody wants to have to squint when they come to your Web site.

cool story bro

So your videos aren't aimed at those who are just starting out learning a language? They are geared at guys that are quite experienced before they even consider game development?

From nothing, to PONG, to Halo. So PONG is aimed at the starting level.

Yeah, he only paid attention to me when I was beta testing his game .

Calm down, he said he's started skipping yours. You did the testing, which was great, now be quiet until your needed again.

Yes, but he didn't say when he started skipping mine. I have been around here for 10 years .

As to adam, good luck with your DVDs but that last post has sealed my decision. I just don't think it is possible to learn to make games without learning a language and some library for graphics at least. Your DVDs is using C++/WinAPI/OpenGL and those aren't the easiest to just jump into and start programming games without having an understanding of them before hand. Taking someone who has never programmed and in 3 DVDs teaching them how to make a game like Halo is an ambitious project.

Also, I really did email the three I said. I already knew how the first two would reply to it (mainly emailed them so I could get their remarks cause they normally come up with dumb saying that make me laugh). The professor (sorry assistant professor replied just a few minutes ago. Anyways, good luck with the DVDs again.

Uhh you beta tested my game for about 5 minutes, literally. You gave no feedback whatsoever. Do I owe you my life or something? I started skipping your posts because you're a very negative, pessimistic person, and I don't enjoy reading sob stories or pleas for help that you do nothing with.

EDIT: Oh wait, I remember now. You did only test for like 5 minutes, but you gave me one bit of feedback: I should "roll over" from bottom to top and vice versa when moving the cursor on menus. Thanks for that.

And I didn't start ignoring your posts until this very thread.

Actually I had to quit after 5 minutes because you made the player controlled opening part of the game to where you had to run from battles for a screen or two. The run kept failing for me so I was constantly dying before I had a chance. When I mentioned this you pointed me to the walk through that told me to do what I had been doing. Hard to get into beta testing a game when I keep dying .

Of course I'm pessimistic for 3 DVDs that claim to take a person with no previous programming experience to making a game like Halo. From what I saw it used C++/WinAPI/OpenGL which aren't really the simplest to jump head long into making games with at no experience what so ever.

Or the actual reason, you just didn't want to do it. I play the game up to 10-15 times per release and I never run from battles .

I thought you were ignoring him.

I share the pessimism too for many of the same reasons, but I'm not going to sit here and continually moan about it like I'm a depressed loser who hates the idea of somebody being successful.

You've told him why you don't think it's going to work; you don't need to prove your point to him or anybody else. Just let it go.

Alright points taken. That was meant for Trent.

Matthew, on the contrary, I'm not depressed. You can ask my wife on that fact. I bitch and complain because it is what I'm good at. Somebody being successful don't bother me a bit in all honesty if he finds an audience for the DVDs and does good then great. I already know he is successful before the DVDs as he is a programmer at Edge of Reality and was UI Programmer on Sims 3 Pets (did research into him after reading his page). If I was concerned about success I would be working towards success rather than hanging around on forums day in and day out .

You say that like it is a badge of honor. There is no pride to be taken in mastering a bad habit.

In other news, I am a bit skeptical of the idea, simply because of the scope it implies.
From no experience to pong: Great. There are plenty of resources like this, but more never hurt.
To a game like halo: Wait... what? Are you implying in three DVD's (or, more aptly, the next two), you'll be teaching high-end physics, engine architecture, high-end graphics, etc, etc?

I know you don't mean that in the slightest, but I think it is a bit misleading which will probably lead to a few disgruntled customers.

On another note, you've only been programming for six years. What's the largest scale project you've ever taken on? That is to say, assuming these lessons go over large scale projects and architectures behind them.

"Noob to pro" things always seem like a scam to me. I'm not saying what you're doing is, but it does come off a bit that way.

However, you're iterating and heading in the right direction, it seems, so keep up the good work.

"I would be working towards success rather than hanging around on forums day in and day out"
EA killed killed our next project after already signing for it. So this is my 10-12 job right now. Checking a forum takes a few minutes. On the other hand Uncharted 3 takes a lot of time.

"Are you implying in three DVD's (or, more aptly, the next two), you'll be teaching high-end physics, engine architecture, high-end graphics, etc, etc?

I know you don't mean that in the slightest"

Think I stated my goal for the DVDs already. Also hate posting on forums like gamedev.net to try and explain the same concepts to people over and over. Point is hard to get across in a paragraph and people ask the same stuff. I'd rather bulk teach people.

^ I learn a lot from youtube videos, I dont like to read manuals anymore, so making a development video as opposed to writing a book is the way to go.

Keep it up. There's a growing market for this kind of training.

Adam450: Yeah EA is notorious for that. I was reading about Cipher Complex that just vanished into thin air that EoR had been working on for 10 years, think it was Sega instead of EA on that one though. Don't know how much truth is behind the details as I got it from a wiki.

relpatseht: It isn't something to be proud of in a world where people take pride in getting more money back for things than they should. Take pride out of speeding and not getting pulled over. I don't take pride in it at all, I just simply was pointing out I'm good at it. Pride and honor meant something in the 1920s and before, but now I don't think they have the same meaning to people they once did. Only thing I take pride in is my wife and son.

http://www.youtube.com/user/UltimateGameDev?feature=mhee

Subscribe if you are interested. I will be doing a daily(hopefully every day) blog consisting of 1 minute or less updates to the for the next 3 or so weeks until DVD launches. Right now I'm in the paper planning phase of topic order,visuals,methods of explanation. Of course it depends what happens in my job search that might put a small week or two setback. Also going to redo the website overview video to shorten it significantly.

Already subscribed. Though I was curious about something. Why put your resources into making DVDs, why not use YouTube and reach a larger audience? I mean not all people interested in game dev go to sites. A lot of them use YT for videos. One C++ set of videos I have noticed coming up quite a bit is Anti-RTFM's C++ tutorials. It is your choice of course as it is your project. Just was thinking about the money and time to make them and the risk being run of not selling the ones produced.

There is no risk. I have 1 dvd out, and 2 is coming within a month. If literally none sold, then I would have no loss. I assume you are talking about making money off of youtube ads? You make ~$3,000 of of 1 million youtube plays. Thats not going to happen. Epic meal time only gets 2 million views per video, so TY is just not profitable for this.

I'm using youtube by doing the video blog. More marketing will come when I show of something that's actually cool and not PONG. There are thousands of people wanting to do game development as a career.

Maybe you could have some "teaser" YouTube videos to whet peoples appetite, like a demo or something. They might easily stumble across those while googling.

You must not be planning on doing anything major for packaging. I thought since you were releasing DVDs that you were have a set number of the DVDs printed up with related packaging. From that reply I assume you are waiting for the purchase to be made then burning it and shipping a simple burn DVD to the buyer. In that case you are right you won't lose any money as you are doing them as ordered. Then again you could still save money on supplies and just release them as purchasable downloads. Almost everyone has Cable/DSL/etc. so it would rely on your web host.

Yup on the website it, well it used to say digital download. I need to change that. I did a massive overhaul on my website.

"Maybe you could have some "teaser" YouTube videos to whet peoples appetite"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XO4zmThl7U