Why should 'How was the technique in X done' be considered off-topic?

Question

We get a lot of people asking about a certain technique in a game.

eg:

• https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/49813/how-did-oldschool-dungeon-crawlers-ie-dungeon-master-eye-of-the-beholder-render
• https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/49769/how-to-make-spacedown-ninja-jump-game-mechnism-in-box2d

etc. And sometimes they get closed because "How to make X is off-topic". It's fine that asking about a whole game is both too broad and too specific, but why apply this to individual techniques that were used in one or more games?

A previous discussion was here: Is "How was entire game X made?" off-topic?

And the top reasons given there are:

• Nobody can know how it was done
• Asking about a whole game is overly broad
• They're 'trivia' questions

Yet we're closing things where none of these really apply. For example:

• we may not know exactly how Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder was rendered, but it's easy to supply a useful and practical guess as to how games of that type were rendered;
• the rendering technique is quite a specific area and not too broad to be covered in a single focused answer;
• a correct answer is more than just trivia - it's a useful resource for people making retro games and remakes.

I would argue that we are wrong to close such topics - my full explanation is in my answer below.

Answer 1

"How did game X implement technique Y" is historical trivia. It has nothing to do with developing a game, and is therefore off-topic. Even if the author of game X happens to be on-hand and is legally and ethically able to give an objectively correct answer to the question, while such an answer would undoubtedly be interesting and probably entertaining, it is still off-topic, because the question is fundamentally not about developing a game.

"How can I do thing X, so that it looks like game Y?" on the other hand, is a relevant, completely on-topic question, and can be correctly answered by anyone with relevant experience, in a way which is practically useful in the future.

Answer 2

At Byte56's request:

I would argue that we are wrong to close such topics, and equally wrong to dogmatically insist in the comments that the original asker edits their question to fit some arbitrary rule. If specifically focused on a certain technique, the fact that the asker used the phrase "how did X do Y" instead of "how can I do Y like X" should not be our cue to close the question. It's not our job to be the secret police dedicated to flushing out miscreants who never intend to implement the algorithm they ask about - if the answer will be useful to the world, then the question is surely useful also.

EDIT:

I think the criteria we judge the question on should be:

• Is the technique relevant to modern developers (bearing in mind that many are working with restricted resources, eg. limited to 2D, small amounts of RAM, etc).
• Is the technique possibly documented somewhere, or is it one that experienced developers will be able to comment on with authority?
• Is the technique notable, whether for being innovative (eg. the rewind mechanic in Braid) or widely used (eg. the faux-3D rendering in Dungeon Master etc)

If these are true, or mostly true, I think it would be disingenuous to argue that the question and good answers to it would not benefit the community, meaning that closing the question is a net loss for the site.

Answer 3

The two examples in your question, if they were closed, would be closed for different reasons.

The first one is just trivia. It isn't really a question that needs an answer. If you (the question asker) were trying to create that look, then you should do your research and come up with a solution that works with your constraints instead of asking how somebody else did something. See also Are "why did game X do Y questions" not constructive?

The second one was closed by me because I felt that it has two problems with it. 1) It basically asks "how to make entire game x", along with the recent discussion presented here: How can I do X? My idea is to use plan Y. Would that work?

Answer 4

From the FAQ:

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.

You say

we may not know exactly how Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder was rendered, but it's easy to supply a useful and practical guess as to how games of that type were rendered;

Bolding mine. I think it's pretty clear from the FAQ that these questions are off-topic.

Answer 5

Considering the FAQ and considering the value such question may pose to someone who is either attempting to recreate a look or just learn how to accomplish a task it seems like our FAQ should change.

"Practical" is a term that is very subjective to the task at hand. Depending on what I wished to do examining how a game did a specific feature could put me on the right track, or it could be completely off base. "Practical" seems like it is too open to interpretation.

"Answerable" is dependent on the people in the community as a whole. If a question is about a specific implementation we can't make the assumption that a person who had a part in the implementation is not a member of this site. Furthermore many companies release production details about components of games. We can't make the assumption that the data is not out there.

Along with a question being answerable, it seems that many individuals with closed questions are looking more for a point in the right direction than a specific answer.

I agree that a "How do I implement entire game X?" question is too broad, but questions about specific features that are narrow enough should be allowed.

Answers to questions such as these don't seem to be trivia as they have real practical use to people who are looking to develop something similar.

Answer 6

How about taking a real example, where such a question leads to insights?

How did Castle Master show so many colors on 16-color systems?

Answer: With the Color Graphics Adapter they could address each pixel individually so they could use dithering to give the illusion of more colors. They had to restrict themselves to using only 4 of the 16 available colors at the same time, though, and only one color could be selected freely, the others were fixed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#Standard_graphics_modes

New insight: That’s why they had so distinctly colored scenes! They had to assemble the scene from only 4 colors - that’s almost like todays designers who build websites from only 3 to 4 matching colors to make them recognizable. If I restrict my scene design to only 3 base colors plus one scene-specific color, I might get a similar effect.

So I think asking how a specific game realized a given effect is relevant, because it can have a big influence on other aspects of the game - which might have been misjudged as intentional design decisions instead of simply the result of choosing a specific approach to solve an unrelated problem.

Answer 7

The criteria by which a question is deemed off topic should be changed such that these types of questions, provided they are specific enough and the implication is "How does X do Y, so that I may do something simliar in my game, which I may or may not be currently developing," are considered on-topic.

I have two primary reasons:

First: These questions are not trivia and are absolutely relevant for developers seeking out knowledge on how to develop their game.

StackExchange is a great thing because you can google for a specific question and get a specific answer. But sometimes your question wording doesn't quite work out, and you really meant something entirely different which may come up based on search terms in another question or answer framed in the context of asking how a specific game works.

Second: This site has a problem in that it overlaps significantly with StackOverflow.

It was pointed out in chat recently that a question on StackOverflow that would clearly fit extremely well in GameDev.StackExchange was found, but moderators on StackOverflow refused to migrate it. These "how did game X accomplish specific effect Y" would help differentiate GDSE. And if we encourage a culture of focusing on games that had a unique effect they can be a really valuable part of this site.

But isn't that hard to moderate?

Not any harder than filtering out all the redundant questions we currently get anyway that aren't in violation of this rule. and it would actually add explicit value to this community over StackOverflow, as these kinds of questions would definitely not fit on SO but that is not clearly the case for GDSE.

Of course, we could end up with a bunch of "How did Call of Duty 1 implement Physics? How did Call of Duty 2 implement Physics?" and such. But that problem comes with any question asker who thinks their particular problem is special. The community standard is that the effect Y in game X should be unique enough to be exclusively associated with game X as a GDSE question. Everyone who asks, answers, or reviews one of these questions should have an obligation to search for preexisting questions that already provide an answer out of the context of the game, closing the question if it is asked and is found to be redundant.

But proprietary knowledge, breaking contracts!

Who gives a shit?

Don't answer if you can't legally do so. Askers won't care about how it was actually implemented. They want how it was probably implemented. Out of all arguments against allowing these, this is the weakest one.

What about effects that are just painfully out of date?

It's not entirely bad to have trivia like that on here, in my opinion, but I understand why we'd want to keep it out.

One reason to have it is that old approaches can often inspire modern solutions both from a technical and design perspective. "Game Development" is supposed to include design, right? This information is valuable for design, or possibly people experimenting with weird platforms. And if you're experimenting on a weird platform, nobody's going to have a real answer for you, so it's much more useful to ask about older games that were on older platforms with similar but different peculiarities.