I came across an interesting video a bit ago.
It is heavily focused on The Game Creators products but you could basically substitute Unity for the latter products shown.
Just thought it was interesting to see what the person is able to accomplish in each language / game engine in the same amount of time. Massive difference between the first case (Assembly language) and the last case.
With a time limit like that though, it becomes “which software has the best example project”.
I had the impression he actually used each one from scratch to see what could be accomplished in that amount of time. The guy has been developing a long time and uses many different languages, engines and even different computers (he still writes programs on his ZX Spectrum regularly as well from what I can tell).
Of course, he is not actually making the 3D assets and so forth. Those he is using what came in the samples I am sure. Looking at the video I can see why I have a disconnect with these modern tools. Showing what basically looks like an image to me and calling it the “source code” seems crazy. But I guess in those products you literally just drag and drop stuff and it comes to life. Well basically like the Unity Editor.
He should be able to get a lot more done than just displaying a letter on screen in Assembler though. Could have at least set up an Interrupt handler and had a border or background flash going on. Or moved a sprite across the screen. But still it is a good comparison overall.
It seems his point is that skills don’t matter, just premade assets/gameplay.
The problem is that he learned nothing from the last example, and nobody would buy that product. There’s no gain there.
Disclaimer: The video was kinda fun, BUT…
But… I’m not sure what it was supposed to show us and if any conclusions can be drawn.
I mean, if his goal was to make an “A” appear on the screen, assembly had the best output. If he wanted to make a 3d game, assembly was the wrong choice.
I mean, he could also add physically cooking an egg within a minute, with skill low and result a cooked egg. How does it compare to the rest?
I think the dude didn’t have actual stopwatch in front of him and his task took longer than a minute. Every single one of them.
Ha ha ha! 
I don’t doubt it wasn’t to the second. But within reason I’d guess. I guess it stood out to me because I am thinking what he is trying to illustrate is true for most people. Yet for me I find just programming to be much faster than working in these game engine editors.
I think the biggest thing here is showing how much output as far as just showing a scene has changed. Yet has it really changed as far as doing the actual work of making the game… as in actually programming everything?
It would be interesting to see such a comparison. Something like making Breakout/Arkanoid in 6510 assembly on a C64 vs making it in Blitz Basic on PC vs AGK vs GMS vs Unity. The reason I chose that game is because graphics are very simplistic.
However, showing a 3D game from C & Allegro in DOS to Windows with C++ & Direct3D to Blitz3D to Unity3D I think there really has been a huge amount of progress.
Arcanoid clone can be done in under 4 hours in C++, pretty much regardless of platform, as long as there’s framebuffer access and basic skeleton.
This comparison in this video is very misleading. There’s not much point in it, if it wasn’t exactly a minute (to display cahracter A on spectrum I’d need a reference manual to remember which of spectrum interrupts handled that, or where this character can be copied from… and while I’m looking it up, the minute will be already over)… and the comparison is missing long-term benefits.
Basically… by working much longer than a minute you may end up with something completely different, while in a “constructor” you might realize that you can only create differently colored castle, due to framework limitations.
wow holy crap i work SLOOOOOOOOWWW i guess lool
but yeah those comparisons kinda suck…
at the end there, he might as well just be modding games … like skyrim’s mod tools level editor for example…
“check it out! I made skyrim in a minute!”
but yeah, like unity gives us ALOT
Yep I think that was the whole point of it. Just to show the progression. It’s something we already knew but I thought actually seeing it was pretty good.
At the very end I’d guess Game Guru would be about like using Unity and one of the FPS assets from the store. Shows how crazy simple it has become to make a very basic FPS game with a character running out an environment that is populated with enemies.
guess so… i cant stand for using assets though, personally…
makes everything alot slower, but more personally rewarding… skill building
It’s non sense discussion.
Your experience and skills matters when it comes to beeing able to make interesting level design , some good game and characters design. Skills does not matter if you want to make a poor looking game using the same assets as other users.
I think the whole idea there is just to illustrate how much difference development tools really do make to throw up a bunch of stuff quickly.
Like which is more efficient for most people around here…
Designing their levels on graph paper then programming it all or drag n dropping in the Unity Editor? For most people I think the latter will be much more productive. And same for many other things.
Is it more efficient from a development perspective to have to do everything you need yourself or buy it from the Asset store?
Is it more efficient to buy what a person needs on the Asset store or for the game engine to simply have everything needed already built in?
Of course, skills do make a difference. That is true. But there are other things that make as much or more difference. Who could make a more impressive looking game? The highly experienced & skilled person who does everything in Assembly on a C64 or the person who has been Unity for 1 month doing everything in the Editor making use of the Asset store? This is a clear example of how the tools you are using do indeed make a huge difference in the outcome.
words have no rules, words is art,
when people chose to teach you that words have rules, their intent was to teach you how to think…
only a fool allows others to tell them how to think.
BOOM!
some guy sometime, he was kinda famous i guess since its a quote thing…
the dude man said somecraps like
“control people’s language, and you control their minds”
true stuff and imma speakin like a this cause why not, almost ALL speech is jokes,
even when people are talking in the for reals ways.
,> lol i put a little effort into that … i think
also,
“alot” is like “allot” , i can see the similarity there…
oh its George Orwell said it
Sure, if you use Gaia, you build up a terrain level quickly to get started, or if you use some level generator. Or if you use a character generator like mmo games to get populated your game quickly. More and better tools will speed up concepting and building your base level map. But this is tools only, the quality and style will come from your textures and 3D models you use with your tools, or your ability to customize the level design and make it better, this is what you will see in game, so you come back to skills.
I think that “being able to throw bunch of stuff together quickly” is not necessarily related to productivity.
A project will have multiple phases, starting with prototyping one. Fast level construction can help you in the initial prototype, and then 3 month later you may run into issue in it that will slow down your entire development process to crawl.
Basically, this kind of video would be MUCH more useful, if it compared development of several different projects from start to finish.
yes, tools are important
but tools usually limit you, its usually a tradeoff, speed for a limited result
so in a sense, skills matter if you want to overcome these limits
also, knowing what the tool is doing behind its fancy ui is always good
if you are using these tools without skills/knowledge you will only be a able to create something thats in the scope of the tools and it will propably suck, because you know nothing about the processes running in the background and things to look out for
You arent thinking broad enough. Tools are the way to shortcut the skill level and can significantly contribute not just to time spare (more time you spare there, more you can spend elsewhere) but also to finnal asset/game quallity and that by no means is related to click and go MMO character creators. It is tied into straight “from ground up” asset development just as much on art side as it is on coding side. Perhaps you are making too much asumptions without actually using diversified of softwares enough, becouse if you did its clear to see the point. Industry is moving strongly into pop up “blob” features that would decade ago take ages to make but artist or coder (but relates more to artist since you specified that more), now you have tool in Zbrush that plows out whole blobed shape or base within minutes which takes hours on traditional poly modeling, its tool that allows that and at the end the quallity of that custom made asset is going to be improved since its more artist/flow suited and not that technical anymore. It significantly cuts required skill to put that blase shape out compared to previous older technical methods. Or you have PBR hardsurface tool that plows out high quallity texture with very little skill required or lets not even mention experiance. Decade ago that would have taken ages which now takes half hour and this isnt random seed assets, its proper custom asset that would and can be defined as AAA asset if done correctly. From coding perspective you could argue that visual languages are able to achieve similar things, yes they arent perfect fit for every feature/project, but nor are some artist tools/sofwares. In the end its if you fit to it, you can achieve significant cuts, which also create skill cut.
The argument about level design doesnt hold any water either. A strong tool for level design can have significant skill cut impact not for concepting but for actual final production. A well rounded vertex painter and shader or decal system can cut lot of time and skill needed to produce such textures individually and plot them on same spaces. This is just as much part of level design as it is placing the asset on desired location.
However just becouse tools progress and help designs on both ends a lot it doesnt mean games are easy go to make, the whole size of recreated scenes is expanding symetrically as well as criticism of users. Tools skill cuts arent just for conceptualizing they actually play major role on final assets.
