gamedesignteam

The Computer Game Industry
The computer game industry is somewhat different from other high-tech fields.With properties, producers, artists, and distributors, as well as its own celebrities,the computer game business operates more like Hollywood than the traditional commercial or industrial software development company. It is quite a bit more
informal and relaxed than other high-tech fields in many ways but is quicker paced with a higher burnout rate. There are independent game developers, or indies, and big-name studios, but the computer game industry tends to be more entrepreneurial in spirit.

Just as is true of indies in the motion picture industry, an indie game developer is not beholden to other businesses in the industry that can direct their efforts.Indies fund their own efforts, although they sometimes can get funding from outside sources, like a venture capitalist (good luck finding one, however). The key factor that makes them independent is that the funding does not come from downstream industry sources that would receive the developer’s product, like a major game development house, publisher, or distributor.

Indies sell their product to distributors and publishers after the product is complete, or nearly so. If a developer creates a product under the direction of another company, they are no longer independent.
A good measure of the ‘‘indie-ness’’ of a developer is found in the answer to the following two questions:
 Can the developer make any game he wants, in whatever fashion he wants?
 Can the developer sell the game to whomever he wants?
If the answer is yes in both cases, then the developer is an indie.Of course, another strong similarity with movies is that, as I pointed out earlier,games are typically classified as belonging to different genres.

Game Platforms:

There are three dominant operating systems: Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Macintosh.
For some of these systems there are quite a few different flavors, but the differences within each system are usually negligible, or at least manageable.
Another obvious game platform type is the home game console, such as the Sony PlayStation or the Nintendo GameCube.

Other game platforms include Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), such as Palm based computers, and cell phones that support protocols that permit games to be played on them.


Microsoft Windows
Windows has various historical versions, but the current flavors are Windows 2000, Windows XP, and the specialized Windows CE. In this book the expectation will be that you are developing on or for a Windows XP target system, because that is the version that Microsoft is now selling to the home computer
market.
Within Windows XP we will be using OpenGL and Direct3D (a component of DirectX) as our low-level graphics Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
These APIs provide a means for our engine to access the features of the video adapters in our computers. Both OpenGL and Direct3D provide basically the same services, but each has its own strengths and weaknesses. With Torque you will have the choice of letting your end users use either API.
OpenGL’s greatest strength lies in its availability with different computer systems.An obvious benefit is that the developer can create a game that will work on most computers. OpenGL is an open-source product. In a nutshell this means that if there is a particular capability you want that OpenGL lacks, you can get access to the OpenGL source code and rebuild it the way you want. This assumes you have the skills, time, and tools necessary to get the job done, but you can do it.
DirectX is proprietary—it is the creation and intellectual property of Microsoft Corporation. Its biggest advantage is that it tends to support more features than OpenGL, and the 3D video adapter manufacturers tend to design their hardware to work with DirectX as much as they can. With DirectX you get a much more
complete and the most advanced feature set. Unfortunately, you are limited to Windows-based systems if you put all your eggs in the DirectX basket.


The Torque Game Engine uses both APIs and gives you a rather straightforward
set of techniques to set up your game with either API. This means that in a
Windows version of your game, you can offer your users the option of using the
API that best suits their video adapter.
Linux
For most people the single most important reason to use Linux is the price—it’s free. You may have to pay to get a distribution of Linux on CD with manuals at a store, but you are paying for the cost of burning the CD, writing and printing the manuals, and distributing the end product. You don’t have to pay for the
operating system itself. In fact, you can download Linux from many different locations on the Internet.
As a game developer, you will have a threefold interest in targeting Linux:
 Linux is a growing marketplace, and any market that is growing is a good target. Although the market is growing, it is still smaller than the Windows market. The place where Linux is growing is in universities, colleges, and other postsecondary institutions—and this is probably where your best
computer gaming audience is.
n Few computer games are available for Linux desktops; most developers focus on Windows because it is the biggest market. If you ship a game for Linux, you will be a bigger fish in a smaller ocean. That gets you
exposure and a reputation that you can build on. And that’s nothing to sneeze at.
n Linux offers a more configurable and secure environment for unattended Internet game servers. Linux servers can be run in a console mode that requires no fancy graphics, buttons, or mice. This allows you to utilize slower computers with less memory for servers and still get the computing
power you need for your game server.
Unlike other operating systems, Linux comes in a variety of flavors known as distributions. There are many ongoing arguments about the merits of one distribution or another. Some of the more popular distributions are Red Hat, SuSE,Mandrake, Turbolinux, Debian, and Slackware. Although they may be organized differently in some cases and each has its own unique graphical look and feel, they are all based on the same kernel. It is the kernel that defines it as Linux.




Macintosh
The Macintosh is used a great deal in art-related fields and in the art departments of many businesses. Although the price point might not be as good as Linux (where the OS and most software is free), the Macintosh operating system is typically more accessible to the less tech-savvy users among us.
As with Linux, there has also traditionally been a dearth of computer games available for the Mac. So the big fish–small ocean factor applies here as well. Go ahead and make a splash!