Honestly back when I was a kid this is how I thought games were made, every possible image of a game was already saved and according to your input it just loaded the next image.
It does work like that a little bit, like with sprites they’ve often hard-coded the frames of animation, so when you push a button it loads the correct image, like Mario’s jumping frame with his hand in the air. But there are such things as tilesets, and sprite positions, and all that good stuff.
I thought that they were managing that stuff on a per-pixel basis, no engine, assets, or other abstractions, just raw-dogging pixel colors.
And before I even played video games at all I was watching somebody play some assassin’s creed game I think and I thought the player had to control every single limb qwop-style.
In the first few Assassin’s Creed games, they did use the idea of a Puppeteer system for the control scheme, although it wasn’t physics-based or anywhere near as hard as QWOP. Each of the controllers face buttons performed actions associated with each limb, and the right trigger would swap between low profile actions and high profile actions.
In the top right of the screen, there was always a UI element showing what the buttons did at that moment in that context, which might’ve been why you thought it was a QWOP style system. It’s not exactly what you were thinking of at the time, but you were closer than you realise.
I remember having a thought one day as a young kid while interacting with a DVD main menu (the kind that had clips from the movie playing in the background, and would play a specific clip depending on what menu you went in to).
“This is basically how video games work, there’s a bunch of options you can choose from and depending on what you do it shows you something. Videogames are just DVD menus with way more options.”
I remember speculating as a (small) kid that the AI soldiers in Battlefront II’s local multiplayer might be real people employed by the developer. Not the brightest child was I.
Honestly back when I was a kid this is how I thought games were made, every possible image of a game was already saved and according to your input it just loaded the next image.
I stopped thinking that with 3d games
It does work like that a little bit, like with sprites they’ve often hard-coded the frames of animation, so when you push a button it loads the correct image, like Mario’s jumping frame with his hand in the air. But there are such things as tilesets, and sprite positions, and all that good stuff.
I thought that they were managing that stuff on a per-pixel basis, no engine, assets, or other abstractions, just raw-dogging pixel colors.
And before I even played video games at all I was watching somebody play some assassin’s creed game I think and I thought the player had to control every single limb qwop-style.
Apparently ai is learning to do that first thing you said about pure pixel management. It’s crazy that it works at all
In the first few Assassin’s Creed games, they did use the idea of a Puppeteer system for the control scheme, although it wasn’t physics-based or anywhere near as hard as QWOP. Each of the controllers face buttons performed actions associated with each limb, and the right trigger would swap between low profile actions and high profile actions.
In the top right of the screen, there was always a UI element showing what the buttons did at that moment in that context, which might’ve been why you thought it was a QWOP style system. It’s not exactly what you were thinking of at the time, but you were closer than you realise.
Even with 2D games that’s basically impossible. Only time it could work is with turn based games and then…you end up with this post lol.
I see you’ve never played “Dragon’s Lair”, where every scene was cell animated and the player “chose” the path that the animation would take.
I remember having a thought one day as a young kid while interacting with a DVD main menu (the kind that had clips from the movie playing in the background, and would play a specific clip depending on what menu you went in to).
“This is basically how video games work, there’s a bunch of options you can choose from and depending on what you do it shows you something. Videogames are just DVD menus with way more options.”
I grew up to not be a programmer.
The game Myst actually worked kind of like a DVD menu with more options.
Instead you are a choose-your-own-adventure author
Close, I DM’ed a short-lived DnD campaign a year ago.
Its not terribly far off from pre rendered or FMV games like Myst are doing it.
I remember speculating as a (small) kid that the AI soldiers in Battlefront II’s local multiplayer might be real people employed by the developer. Not the brightest child was I.
I remember as a kid seeing my older brother talk to people on a mic and thought he was talking to the characters in the game
I grew up mostly with the PS2 and above and I thought the same thing 😅. I did think there had to be a better way though