Commercial game using Fmod

King Harold · Post by **King Harold** » Sun 10 Sep, 2006 6:47 am

Kinghts and Merchants the peasnts rebellion uses FMOD!!
lol I knew they couldn't do anything themselves

they dont even write their own sound player..
and they use direct draw and gouraud shading instead of proper 3d..

Post by **tr1p1ea** » Sun 10 Sep, 2006 7:38 am

It is actually quite common for game studios to license tools instead of spending the time writing them themselves. It saves a lot of time, especially if there is nothing overly unique about your game, why re-invent the whel right?

.

threefingeredguy · Post by **threefingeredguy** » Sun 10 Sep, 2006 9:27 am

TI bought the company that made the parsing system, didn't they?

Arcane WIzard · Post by **Arcane WIzard** » Sun 10 Sep, 2006 11:56 am

This is like laughing at someone for using OpenGL.

King Harold · Post by **King Harold** » Sun 10 Sep, 2006 12:39 pm

not really, commercial programs which use FMOD have to pay dont they, no one pays for OpenGL..
besides, there are plenty of things "out there" which tell you how to play a sound..

Arcane WIzard · Post by **Arcane WIzard** » Sun 10 Sep, 2006 2:50 pm

If they pay for it that makes them more credible as developers since they then obviously have the funding, which isn't pulled out of nowhere.

There are also plenty of things out there which tell you how to display graphics.

Furthermore, your argument thus far only involved knowledge and technical ability, not funding.

Therefor, my comparison is solid.

King Harold · Post by **King Harold** » Sun 10 Sep, 2006 2:59 pm

what are you going on about man..

why would FMOD care whether you have funding or not, anyone could make a game without funding, it would just take forever..

by the way, most games dont use FMOD in such an obvious way (K&M has Fmod.dll right beside the game engine)

Jim e · Post by **Jim e** » Sun 10 Sep, 2006 3:41 pm

But it was meant to be used by other coders, thats the whole point of it. Using a libs like that would make porting much easier, and would mean less can go wrong since its already tried and tested.

Really theres nothing wrong with revealing what libs a program is using (actually advertising that you are using them isn't legit in some cases), but I believe they have to make some note they are using it somewhere.(probably in the credits)

Opengl is still good compraison.

Arcane WIzard · Post by **Arcane WIzard** » Sun 10 Sep, 2006 6:04 pm

King Harold wrote:why would FMOD care whether you have funding or not, anyone could make a game without funding, it would just take forever..

...

King Harold wrote:not really, commercial programs which use FMOD have to pay dont they

[themoreyouknow]
Also, there are OpenGL licenses, they just apply to a different aspect of commercial software. Ie. if you sell OpenGL drivers with your hardware like Dell does for example or distribute OpenGL versions/adaptations then you do need a license. 3DLabs and Microsoft need (and have) OpenGL licenses, for example.

http://www.opengl.org/about/licensing/
http://www.sgi.com/products/software/op ... cense.html
[/themoreyouknow]

Really theres nothing wrong with revealing what libs a program is using (actually advertising that you are using them isn't legit in some cases), but I believe they have to make some note they are using it somewhere.(probably in the credits)

It can even make the product more appealing. Eg. D3D, OpenGL, Bink Video, Miles Audio, etc.

King Harold · Post by **King Harold** » Sun 10 Sep, 2006 7:15 pm

i think k&m also uses bink video..
anyway, i think its totaly lazy of them not to have written their own sound and video routines..
the rest of the game is quite crappy aswell, spelling mistakes and bugs in the game-logic and all..
and they use gouraud and direct draw for the terrains.. not that it's bad but they could have used real 3d, back in 1997 the computers were certainly good enough allready (they use directx 8.0 anyway) the minimum requirements were (still are)

Pentium 300 Mhz, Windows 95/98/Me/2000 with 64 MB RAM, 4MB grafic card, 16 bit soundcard, 90MB free harddisk, 4x CD drive, mouse, directx 8.0

so laugh at this game for any reason you like. But I still find they should have writting their own sound and video stuff.

Knights and Merchants "The Peasants Rebellion" copyright Zuxxez Entertainment AG. Joymania Entertainment also has something to do with it but they're not clear about it.

Arcane WIzard · Post by **Arcane WIzard** » Sun 10 Sep, 2006 8:24 pm

spelling mistakes and bugs in the game-logic and all..

I could name a game with a 7million large player base that has those.

Not using 3D graphics for an RTS in 1997 seems like a wise choice to me. They haven't been fully 3D untill much more recently, with 2D RTSes becoming succesfull for several years after 2000 even. Not to mention 3D graphics in 1997 looked like this and thus would've been a large step beckwards.

Post by **tr1p1ea** » Sun 10 Sep, 2006 8:32 pm

I still think that the old 2D RTS games were the best, C&C, Red Alert are still awesome, even today

.

coelurus · Post by **coelurus** » Sun 10 Sep, 2006 9:27 pm

I guess soon people will expect games to be run off of bootable media such as in consoles to get rid of any interfering processes in the background; only raw and pure game technology...

What's the point of writing custom sound and video libraries? For hobby developers, custom libs can be a learning experience, but when it comes to actually working, it's a different story. If there's a good lib out there doing what you need, just grab it, game development is hairy enough already.

Get working on a serious project and you'll see what I mean, if you write your own libs for sound/video/net, you'll never finish (trust me, I know

).

CompWiz · Post by **CompWiz** » Mon 11 Sep, 2006 1:19 am

I've noticed that a lot of games use some video program, like blink video or something. I've noticed it on one of the screens in a few games. There's nothing wrong with that, as it allows the programmers to concentrate on making the rest of the program(the more important part) and not have to waste time reinventing the wheel. In fact, just look at calculator programming. Many people use X-lib to display graphics, among other things. Timendus's API simplifies common tasks often done on a calculator so you can make a program in less time and with less effort. Is that a bad thing?

Post by **benryves** » Mon 11 Sep, 2006 8:54 am

There is absolutely no reason why they shouldn't use FMOD. Why should they write their own library? That's a stupid waste of time. FMOD offers an extremely powerful sound library that runs on anything from your PC to your PS2 to your GameCube.