At 3/5/10 10:14 PM, Starogre wrote: Nah man like i said, you can be original and creative in the process of 'art' but with programming there's really a limited amount of things you can do to create any one outcome.

Limited yes, but depending on what you are aiming to do programming can be done in many different ways and still generate the same outcome.

And how many ways are there to create any one outcome as an artist? ;) If you are just being told by someone exactly what you should do, whether that being a program with this and that feature or a painting, programming probably takes more creativity. Figuring out what to paint is what really takes creativity, but coming up with what to program also does.

It's all a matter of how free you are to shape whatever it is you're doing with your own ideas.

At 3/5/10 10:14 PM, Starogre wrote: Nah man like i said, you can be original and creative in the process of 'art' but with programming there's really a limited amount of things you can do to create any one outcome. being good at an art and being good at a science are two different categories. thats why we have a left side of our brain and a right. sometimes they help each other out but really it's like comparing a stylized painting to a solved math equation

I would have to agree with knugen on this i think. In my Java class there is always several different ways of going about a single question. Then again, this disparity could also be caused by varying levels of skill by the many students in the class. Maybe there is 1 single best way to write a program, but not everyone is at a level where they can write such code, so they write something on varying levels of efficiency. Which might be why code ends of being different from person to person. Not that there there is more then one way to do it, but simply lack of skill.

But I still like to think its at least a bit creative. Just not nearly as much as art.

Yeah I understand what you guys mean. I just think it's more like solving a math problem - there's always an easier or harder way to solve any given problem. Easier or harder - shorter or longer (rofl cock joke)...

You are right, there's only one way to make an exact replica of an art piece and there could be more than one way of recreating a program, however, I can't really imagine too many different 'styles' of programming - just how fast and good you are. Of course the outcome could be unique and creative but I just can't wrap my head around it.

I think it just comes down to efficiency. In the work place when there is a programming team, I can imagine people being able to tell who programmed what but I think that's more efficiency than creativity. There is creativity but only to be more efficient, not to intentionally stand out from the other programmers behind the scenes. Please correct me again if I'm horribly misunderstanding something...

Also, I have always thought of myself as above average in math and logical thinking as well as art. That's why I like animation, because I too get to use creativity to become more efficient in that craft, as well as using creativity to have a style.

I'm sorry Starogre, your last few posts made my headhurt D:

At 3/5/10 10:53 PM, Farza wrote: I'm sorry Starogre, your last few posts made my headhurt D:

It hurts my head too

At 3/5/10 10:49 PM, Starogre wrote: I think it just comes down to efficiency. In the work place when there is a programming team, I can imagine people being able to tell who programmed what but I think that's more efficiency than creativity. There is creativity but only to be more efficient, not to intentionally stand out from the other programmers behind the scenes. Please correct me again if I'm horribly misunderstanding something...

Yeah that is in large true I would say. Programming isn't completely a science though, there can always be different opinions about which approach is best regarding stuff like efficiency, scalability, etc.

Btw, please note that I don't doubt the average artist job beats the average programmer job when it creativity. It boils down to what I said above though; I think artists generally are given more freedom to come with their own ideas.

At 3/5/10 11:15 PM, knugen wrote: Btw, please note that I don't doubt the average artist job beats the average programmer job when it creativity. It boils down to what I said above though; I think artists generally are given more freedom to come with their own ideas.

Oh yeah I agree, programming is science, logic, and creativity. Art can be also if you're designing architecture, for example.

The definition of 'art' is just so vague it's hard to argue either way.

At 1/16/08 08:12 PM, BoMToons wrote: Past the point of no return
Have any of you ever gotten so deep into something that you had to finish it, even though you knew it wasn't going to end up being worth it?

I clicked the middle page number in the range at the top left of each thread and found this post by random. I was looking to see if we ever talked about interesting things.

At 3/3/10 11:49 PM, BoMToons wrote: You guys ever have those projects that you just can't seem to finish nor make good progress on?
Curse you Abobo!

If you want to have discussions like this, you need to actually define what it is you're arguing about.

Art, in the general sense, is an end. Programming is a means, or a tool. Programming can be a means for art - creating beautiful programs or games or powerful design tools.

Programming is not *equivalent* to art.

If you're talking about graphics design, it's a skill just like programming. You use both and others together to create a game.

But what makes a game is game design. It's not programming in the sense of implementing technical functions, but using programming or a game design tool to design the interactions that the player sees and feels. That's what a game is about.
In this community it's usually the 'programmer' (because there's little actual programming to be done with Flash) that is responsible for the design, with the artist indeed only providing pretty pictures.
So the 'programmer' makes the game.

Programming > art, if that's what you were talking about with those words.

But when you're looking at a different meaning of 'programming', don't just leave it unsaid and then forget you were talking about something else. The corporate programmers that get paid for the hours they spend slowly working codebases are a different discipline from creative programming and game design.

Starogre:
Programming is not science. It is related to fields of discrete mathematics, but who knows what that means now.

And it might just be a silly use of the word, but science is not the same as mathematics - it's about observing and explaining various nature: anatomy, animals, ecologies, societies - various natural systems -, substance, geography, astronomy - formations.

And describing any part of it and its developments, even in mathematics, as linear is insulting and ignorant.

Mathematics is a formal science, but science in general is exciting and awesome.

So what's linear?
When you want to draw something, have take a paper and you incrementally apply color to it and then it looks like stuff. Whoo.
Sculpting is incremental, composing music is incremental.

Sounds pretty synonymous to 'linear'. Is 'linear' supposed to be some kind of opposite to 'creative'?

Drawing is a skill and programming is a skill. They can both be creative and artistic - you can use colors to create an image that leaves an impression on the viewer, and you can use programming to create an interactive world that leaves an impression on the player - this is game design.

Requiring formal understanding does not disqualify programming, and the process is certainly not 'linear' in some way that other creative processes aren't.

At 3/6/10 12:15 AM, GustTheASGuy wrote: Starogre:
Programming is not science. It is related to fields of discrete mathematics, but who knows what that means now.

And it might just be a silly use of the word, but science is not the same as mathematics - it's about observing and explaining various nature: anatomy, animals, ecologies, societies - various natural systems -, substance, geography, astronomy - formations.

And describing any part of it and its developments, even in mathematics, as linear is insulting and ignorant.

Mathematics is a formal science, but science in general is exciting and awesome.

Ok Thank you for clearing this up. The thought process that goes into solving problems is totally individualistic and I overlooked that.

So what's linear?
When you want to draw something, have take a paper and you incrementally apply color to it and then it looks like stuff. Whoo.
Sculpting is incremental, composing music is incremental.

Sounds pretty synonymous to 'linear'. Is 'linear' supposed to be some kind of opposite to 'creative'?

Well not exactly. What I mean by linear is more constricted to certain boundaries in the process of creating the final product. You can certainly be creative but it's more like what knugen said, not being able to be as free with technical constrictions. But your point below is a good one. Tools are limited for artists as well. I still think that all the different media out there that can be used in a game (since we're talking game design, for example) is more 'boundless' compared to programming. This is only the process however.

If we're saying the final product is the only thing that should be considered as the art, I agree with you. I think I was talking more about the process though - about how Toast was saying programming was drudge work. Maybe visual art or music is flashier while working on it so it masks any of the drudge to those processes?...

Drawing is a skill and programming is a skill. They can both be creative and artistic - you can use colors to create an image that leaves an impression on the viewer, and you can use programming to create an interactive world that leaves an impression on the player - this is game design.

Requiring formal understanding does not disqualify programming, and the process is certainly not 'linear' in some way that other creative processes aren't.

You think so? I just don't understand what makes a way of programming something more creative than another for any other purpose than efficiency. Writing music is more linear than programming to me by the way.

I guess visual art has its increments like you say. It just feels like more freedom in the process to me because of the immediate 'feedback' i get when i make each pencil mark or whatever...

Programming is not mechanically performing a given activity, if that's what you think (if it was, we'd, you know, write a program to do it). The problem solving is about intuition. Also the reason why mathematics is not 'linear'.

If it's about the amount of work you have to do before seeing feedback, animation is much worse drudge work.

*How* you program is certainly nothing about creativity, neither is how you draw. You can use paints or pencils, as long as the result has the effect you wanted to create.
But programming has more factors than how it looks, of course.

Programming as art:
http://processing.org/exhibition/

Artsy people like using this to make art. It's straight programming.

Why does Flash always crash at the absolute worst time possible?

At 3/6/10 08:45 AM, Archon68 wrote: Why does Flash always crash at the absolute worst time possible?

To annoy you.

At 3/6/10 03:19 AM, GustTheASGuy wrote: *How* you program is certainly nothing about creativity, neither is how you draw. You can use paints or pencils, as long as the result has the effect you wanted to create.
But programming has more factors than how it looks, of course.

Hmm I'd say you can get creative in certain ways, like using textures behind a paper to get shaded textures on the front. Some people draw with needles and shine light through for the lines...I donno, stuff like that. I don't know if you'd categorize that in process or finished piece.... I'll take your word for the programming side of things - how many different ways there are to complete a desired result.

At 3/5/10 11:17 PM, Starogre wrote: Oh yeah I agree, programming is science, logic, and creativity. Art can be also if you're designing architecture, for example.

I think it can be in just about any situation. Whenever I build, draw, paint or create anything, I generally take pieces of things I've seen and dissect and combine them into something meaningful. The final outcome looks like art, but the process feels like a logic problem.

Many great artists study all forms of medical and scientific subjects to enhance their art.

Science: How gravity and momentum affect the body.
Math: Composition, spacing.
ect.. ect..

They're both important to the process of game creation.
They're both important to our modern world.
I want bacon for breakfast.
< /topic>

As a quick PS: Everyone knows how to make shapes with a medium because we need that to evolve and survive. Not everyone needs to know programming syntax. Ask anyone in the world who can hold a pen and understand/process speech to draw a human and they'll be able to draw their representation of a human.

As them to output text to a computer screen... and they'll need to study that topic first.

At 3/6/10 10:18 AM, Starogre wrote:

how many different ways there are to complete a desired result.

I'm pretty sure there are loads of ways to do things from both sides of the ....table? I mean like for artists, we can do a certain animation or art piece in a crapload of different ways and still obtain the desired result. I'm sure that for programmers its the same sorta thing. There can't be JUST one way of doing things.

So here's a task for anyone who wants, do a REALLY simple animation or bit of code in a completely different way than you normally would, but visually achieve the same thing, who knows, you might learn something about how you work :P

Making flash games

I always get an urge to make flash games, but it never goes from the game concept to the actual game making. It's like in the art classes I had to take when I was younger, I always had epic ideas but I could never transfer them from my head to my paper (epic in its traditional definition, not internet definition). For me the atmosphere of a piece of work is very important. A game where you shoot spaceships can be fun, but it's not awesome until you got a great soundtrack, explosions in the background, or if it's on earth then heavy winds, maybe rain, etc. Also I love action games that have great plots. That's one of the reason I liked Freelancer so much - it's not just about completing missions and killing bad guys; there's a whole epic storyline behind it, with great cut scenes which make you value the fights all the more.

But I can never get that stuff done. I can program games, that's not the problem, but I can never manage to create the atmosphere that I'd have envisioned in my head. Maybe I need Fartza to organise my projects :)

what do you guys think?

I'm not much a fan of the whole programming as art thing, but it annoys me when artists argue that programming isn't art, for some reason. You can definitely code beautifully, and of course you can't argue that programming can't be used to create beautiful things.. but whether the former is art or not is a matter of opinion, and I don't think an artist who has not programmed can express a proper opinion on that matter. Still, opinions is as opinions do. Or something :)

At 3/6/10 06:50 PM, Toast wrote:

what do you guys think?

Maybe if you just had a concept art screenshot of the game and list down on paper the individual layers of effects and objects on screen, you could more easily take each step at a time?

For example,

top down shooting game:

Panoramic Background
Rain splashes on ground
Background Specific Effects (smokestacks, lights, etc)
Stationary Enemies
Dust Clouds
Flying Enemies
Enemy Effects and explosions, lights, etc
Player & effects
Clouds wisping by
Top down radial rain
Screen Flashes, lightning, explosions, etc
UI

and just add them one at a time?

At 3/6/10 10:18 AM, Starogre wrote: I'll take your word for the programming side of things - how many different ways there are to complete a desired result.

Just chunking out algorithms is one thing, if you know the input you need and the desired output, there's on the order of hundreds of ways to do it, taking into consideration how accurate you need it, how fast it needs to be, what data structures you need to work with / choose to work with, how much memory you need to use, can you assume things and make it less generic in exchange for making it faster, etc.

Then there's the grand result, in which there are billions of ways to hook up all the smaller chunks of code together. Can you change some of the smaller parts to make the full program work better? Perhaps these types of objects would be better off managed by something else in the code, when to use a thread, and lots of larger general things you come up with later on.

Hell, when you get to doing threaded stuff, you code doesn't even execute linearly anymore! If you have 4 piece of code being executed at the same time, there's a ton of different ways to structure it so they don't conflict with each other, and there's no good general solution for it.

Jon you should know this too. I changed how Closure's graphics worked like 4 times in the beginning of the project, and we're going to change it again. The graphics engine itself was refactored and organized, as was file loading stuff, music, and practically every other major system in the game. Physics went through 2 versions before I integrated Box2D.

Even without doing games, there's still a ton of ways to do a coding task. I've coded a bunch of various expandable array and linked list data structures, different every time. Choosing which one is right for a task is non trivial in and of itself. I've been sketching out some designs for an efficient string-indexed map class because I need it for some stuff in the game. It's a bunch of diagrams and flow charts on a piece of paper right now. I have a folder of flow charts and UML diagrams (scattered on the floor of my apartment) detailing some things I want to do in Glaiel Game Engine v.2 for the game after Closure.

Computer science is only ~150 years old really. it's young compared to math (3000+ yrs) and physics (600+ years), so nobody's really found the "right" way to do things yet, except in a few very specific cases.

At 3/6/10 08:45 AM, Archon68 wrote: Why does Flash always crash at the absolute worst time possible?

Because god hates you.

Usually for me it crashes if I'm drawing a HUGE picture with alot of detail, which really sucks because it crashes around the very end of the drawing too.

At 3/5/10 11:43 PM, Coaly wrote:

At 1/16/08 08:12 PM, BoMToons wrote: Past the point of no return

At 3/3/10 11:49 PM, BoMToons wrote: You guys ever have those projects that you just can't seem to finish nor make good progress on?
Curse you Abobo!

Wow, I guess I'm a broken record.

No one comiserated with me back then either.

At 3/5/10 11:43 PM, Coaly wrote:

At 1/16/08 08:12 PM, BoMToons wrote: Past the point of no return

At 3/3/10 11:49 PM, BoMToons wrote: You guys ever have those projects that you just can't seem to finish nor make good progress on?
Curse you Abobo!

Wow, I guess I'm a broken record.

No one comiserated with me back then either.

At 3/6/10 09:15 PM, BoMToons wrote: Wow, I guess I'm a broken record.

Wow, I guess you really are a broken record.

At 3/6/10 09:15 PM, BoMToons wrote:

Wow, I guess I'm a broken record.

No one comiserated with me back then either.

ICwutudidthar

At 3/6/10 08:16 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:
Computer science is only ~150 years old really. it's young compared to math (3000+ yrs) and physics (600+ years), so nobody's really found the "right" way to do things yet, except in a few very specific cases.

Yea you made a lot of good points. The original argument was more about being creative vs being efficient in the process or if theres even a difference...I think we can conclude there are trillions of different choices possible while programming and doing art though!

also Bomtoons I didn't know if that screenshot was your game or what

OFFTOPIC

I always thought of chess as the boring old people game.

Then I found it in my garage, with all the pieces. I decided to learn it. It took me 10 minutes.

I've been playing it with my brother for about 4 hours now.

ALSO OFF TOPIC

I made a rhyme

Fuck yeah portal 2.