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uh... how old are you becouse i lived through that gen, typicaly it was single screens with no ai aka everything was programed to do what it did by hand, and mostly beeps and boops.
the 90's was when all the tech you mentioned started to become common place.
But my main point is that B size games in Mad Games Tycoon have their feature set limited arbitrarily. Some of the core features should be possible within B size games already.
As far as your complaints about RAM, I want you to consider something: the NES had only 2kb to work with. That's because, unlike the ZX Spectrum, it only had to do one thing - play the games coded for its hardware, and even then it still had lag and flashing sprites if too much went on at once - some games even ended up using these limitations and 'glitches' intentionally.
Furthermore remember, your company does start from behind in many ways.
I play with heavy randomization on harder difficulties, so I still use smaller games to get some information on what qualities and subgenres will work on an unfamiliar genre without spending too much time and money on games that could go very wrong.
You can do fine with lesser hardware, but like in real life the games that end up on that underpowered hardware have to make the most of it. The gameboy was underpowered even compared to other handhelds at the time, but it had great battery life, a tough design (console build quality in this game corresponds to these two)), and a large library of well made games (basically, applying the polish).
I find as long as you can get there quickly enough (and that's gonna depend largely on your settings, management and luck), getting a B+ handheld will serve you extremely well not simply as a normal moneymaker but as a good testing ground, even if you step back to a B class game for that testing. Put those simple games out for cheap and they'll cover themselves easily. If you have multiple dev teams, it's even better to help boost the consoles game library by having more skilled teams on larger games and less skilled teams on smaller games. Because the customers also crave variety, this also basically takes care of that for you as you figure out what works best.
Now as far as having to choose between things like scrolling and the like, this is actually fair for the era. There's plenty of games that were basically tile based for each area, or had enemies following a pre-programmed pattern or even just doing things arbitarily.
Once you have the ropes down, I highly advise unlocking everything from the start rather than being forced to churn out a game with so many bugs you suddenly realize you should have a QA department. That will let you actually get those earlier games polished (or at least bug free and reported), which goes a long way into playing the early console dev game.
As a side note, you'll also probably want to invest in a developer or two to make games exclusively for your console... and eventually more. Since they get access to your dev kit and engines once you own them, they'll be able to produce higher quality games for your console than they would others.
I mean, don't get me wrong, that's all optional - there's many ways to play this out.
I just don't like developing for B consoles that much, because by the time you can make them, you can already move on to B+ games. And then selecting features for a B game feels kind of arbitrary and for the tv consoles at that time, also wrong. You have to leave out a feature that feels like a real core feature for the earliest of games. All the early 80's tv consoles that worked with cartridges had music, joystick(there is no feature for gamepad, but programming wise it is the same as the early digital joysticks, just the hardware is different), sound, 4bit graphics at least. Also scripted AI, which is basically any enemy object that moves along a pattern and has hit detection. (Pac Man ghost for example).
Anyway, my point is they could have more then 5 features already.
That handhelds lag behind in game size that is for sure. But the stationary consoles are weirdly limited in features in MGT.
Anyway, I just make sure I research 3MHz chip right away and then focus on B+. In the game, those are big money already for that period. B consoles are just not worth the hassle.
Joystick feature is also a weird feature, because they have been part of stationary consoles from the start. It only makes sense to talk about joystick as feature (software) as drivers for non consoles. Or as 8 directions as improvement over 4 directions, but not joystick in general.
Unless it is meant as analogue joystick, but then it is kind of useless for consoles at that time.
But that is my other nitpicking, the game doesnt seem to care which features you chose if you have more available. So you can chose mouse feature for a B+ console game or other nonsensical choices. Same goes for the Graphics, Sound, QA improvements. But maybe that would otherwise make the game too complicated.
The ghosts in pacman have a simple script that follows certain rules - ie in chase mode follow shortest line to player at that moment (or for another example, to target the space the player will be), if in scatter mode move to a specific point, or fear mode, which is pseudorandom turns at intersections. It's not AI - AI in actuality is one that can on a basic level 'perceive' the environment within which it exists and try to take actions to maximize its goals. A better example of early AI would be chess or monopoly, or some of the more complex sports games of the era.
There isn't any sort of decision process or true reactivity to pacman ghosts. A lack of AI doesn't mean a lack of activity.
http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior
Have a read about it there.
Nor are hitboxes bound to AI; that's a game engine property.
Only if we start using extremely loose concepts rather than critically looking at what happened at the time.
I sincerely think you're both overestimating the capabilities of those earlier consoles and underestimating the techniques used to create certain illusions in programming.
I want you to consider a joystick that simply registers up, down, left, right versus one that measures -how far- in those directions it's moved.
You are not the video game historian you think you are. There was one for the Atari 5200 (it was also crap). There was also the Interton and its many clones back in 76. In 1989 there was an analogue thumbstick in Japan called the XE-1 AP. This is just from a cursory glance at wiki.
[quote[But that is my other nitpicking, the game doesnt seem to care which features you chose if you have more available. So you can chose mouse feature for a B+ console game or other nonsensical choices. Same goes for the Graphics, Sound, QA improvements. But maybe that would otherwise make the game too complicated. [/quote]
Oh Christ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTech_Socrates
Hit detection can certainly be part of AI. Game engine? Not sure how you place that term in those years, because games back then were written from scratch.Maybe some routines would be used again, but I don't think there was an actual game engine back then. This is also a weird concept in the game so early on thanks for bringing that to my attention. (I doubt there were any in the 80s, but go ahead wikifu some).
2. You may call it loose concepts, but thats what the reality was in early game development. There are no inventors of scripted AI, it evolved gradually over multiple games. Those concepts were named in hindsight. But any so called start of when it first was used, will be some kind of compromise.
3. You just described the difference between a digital joystick and a analogue joystick. Just as I did and wondered what type the MGT dev actually meant, because the digital joystick would make no sense as seperate software feature. All those stationary consoles came with joypad or other types of controllers.
Your link of some exotic console that actually used an analogue joystick, proves what? I never claimed to be a video game historian, I just wondered what some of the early 'features' are about in MGT and why I have to chose between core ones for consoles that clearly could do more at that time.
I dont see what the VTech has anything to do with my comment about the QA, graphics and sound improvements and how weirdly MGT factors them into game rating? Especially if some of those improvements or engine features make no sense whatsoever for that game you are developing.
Anyway, B size games are too limited to be realistic for that time period. I get why the dev turned it into those steps. But it is easily fixed. Either change the feature limit, or don't make it cpu speed dependant (which is plain odd from a realistic pov, but understandable from a gameplay pov). Or start creating a game engine later on, starting with B+ and until then you just write from scratch,without needing to develop a game engine. Which is also how most games were written then.
Maybe I am only one of the few, but I love the early years in MGT, way more then 2000+. This is why I probably get so hung up about the early days in MGT.
Another reason why I don't bother with B consoles, is because releasing a next new console takes your old one of the market. B+ arrives fast and stays way longer.
An AI can react to its circumstances. Ghosts do not as they switch patterns at predetermined phases. You're confusing a script with scripted AI.
No, that's what the AI is operating on to determine if it can hit.
Are you really so stupid you think a hitbox is generated by the AI?
Do you ever get tired of being wrong? Christopher Strachey and Dietrich Prinz wrote the first AIs for checkers and chess respectively. Clearly in this game AI is referring to AI more complex than that era, such as the use of finite state machines in the 90s.
Why are you limiting this to consoles? Does the PC market escape you?
That some people did indeed try to crank out analogue joysticks for home consoles during that era, obviously.
Dude, play some Atari 2800 games.
You still don't get it? I'm showing you those earlier formats using those features.
Again, I highly advise you go back and play some games of that era.
How is it odd and why do you think that's the only factor? RAM comes into play.
There were plenty of engines in the 80s. From wiki: "While third-party game engines were not common up until the rise of 3D computer graphics in the 1990s, there were several 2D game creation systems produced in the 1980s for independent video game development. These include Pinball Construction Set (1983), ASCII's War Game Construction Kit (1983),[5] Thunder Force Construction (1984),[6] Adventure Construction Set (1984), Garry Kitchen's GameMaker (1985), Wargame Construction Set (1986), Shoot'Em-Up Construction Kit (1987), Arcade Game Construction Kit (1988), and most popularly ASCII's RPG Maker engines from 1988 onwards"
I think you need to sincerely stop and consider. You admit you don't know video game history. Then you continue to make assertions about what could have happened and why, instead of perhaps researching why certain elements arrive when they do.
And they definately were not aimed at consoles.
2. What MGT determines to be B size, is not realistic. It is too limited for most stationary console games in that period. The fact that you name a console that MGT almost start with, is just telling.
3. Funny that you should mention RAM, because that is the main reason why there were not really game engines for consoles. You can't abstract game development, using a software framework if you are so limited with memory.
4. My point about the requirements (in MGT) for a game high score in relation to the graphics, sound and gameplay improvements had nothing to do with that. It has to do that some type of games just don't use certain engine features or improvements. (Simple example : mouse driver for some old handheld console game that only uses joypad). It is an unrealistic way of determining game quality.You missed my point here.
You clearly know nothing about early game development. Game engine lol. If some developing company had some set of libraries or a kernel to work with for a console, thats not a game engine, thats a dev kit. It doesn't come close to a game engine. Game engines are something from the 90s for computers that had the actual RAM to work with abstraction.
Now you can ofc just argue that even a kernel is a game engine, which you probably would do, but that doesn't actually mean it is a game engine according to modern meaning.
I just don't get it that you keep acting as if MGT is so accurate. The dev clearly went for easy to understand game mechanics. A format that doesn't change through the decades (which is not accurate). Hence developing 3rd party game engines already in the 80s (which is not historically accurate by a long shot), hence naming features that are not actually software features for a game engine, hence a weird way of adding up sound/graphics/gameplay improvements to determine min score for a game.
But I don't really care about that. Just that it leads to games size measured in features that especially in the beginning makes no sense. You keep coming up with consoles examples for which it is accurate. But in the game if I chose to develop for a console (or simply the PC) that could do more, and are still restricted to B, it just doesnt make sense.
Well, that and the fact that consoles replace each other.
Also, Atara 2600, joystick, paddles, driving controller, trackball, keypad support. It ran pac man (scripted AI, if a pattern changes because of player behaviour, it is AI, whether you like it or not). Music, sound(had its own sound chip), sprites, 128colours.
That console you start with in MGT is already more advanced then you probably expected. Just because the games look and sounded like ♥♥♥♥ because of limited ram and cpu speed, doesnt mean the console lacks the features. Don't confuse features with performance.
Keep your wikifu strong man, but I am tired to discuss this with someone who just doesn't understand old school game development.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_(Atari_2600)
like at this point i'm not even bothering with the rest of your post, it's you sitting there and pouting because you don't understand how things worked
edit: you even think the atari was using all 128 of those colours at once (it especially wasn't in PAL or under SECAM). do you know what a palette is and what palette changing is?
edit the second: Wait, you think there were no third party devs in the 80s? ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you're helpless
why i gave up. ive legit worked in the games industry as a animator. this guy has NO clue how things work.
yeah, i mean if we even needed to pull up a legitimate engine from the 80s all we need to do is look at AGI, SCI, SCUMM, Freescape or the Gold Box engine. They might not have been called engines specifically, but that's what they were - a framework used to build games.