Re: Question about development of prototyping tools.

Hi Juan,

Game engines usually have a specialized editor that designers/artists can
use. Unreal <http://www.udk.com/> is an industry-proven and freely-available
example of what you can expect. Source engine (used in Half-Life and Left 4
Dead... among many more) is another. All the projects I've worked on have
been this way... but I have heard some games have managed to get by with
plugins to existing 3D packages too.

You usually block out the levels first (using CSG's for example - big &
simple shapes), and then add in the sugar later (like the real 3D art). You
will hear this a lot in the industry... iteration! Start with something
simple and functional... and polish it until your eyes bleed. :)

Features implemented by programmers will usually expose some parameters that
designers/artists can tweak and fine-tune. There is usually an existing
framework in the engine that allows programmers to do this in a standard
way. One way is to 'tag' member variables as configurable and the engine
will automatically do the rest of the work of presenting and saving/loading
(serialization) it in the editor.

At the end of the day, it's just a lot of back & forth between
programmers/designers/artists.... working together to make something
beautiful. :)

I agree with you on tools being undervalued. A robust tool that allows
designers and artists to iterate quickly is a god-send. However, time
constraints and needing to get stuff done (i.e., working on the final
product rather than the tool to make the product) make it a challenge...
even more so with the increasing size of today's projects.

Hope that answers some of your questions. :)

--
Steven Kah Hien Wong ([email protected])



On 20 April 2011 01:26, Juan Linietsky <[email protected]> wrote:

> I'm not sure if this is a common quesiton in the list, but I think tool
> programming is a very overlooked issue of software engineering in game
> development.
> So my question is, since many here have tremendous experience in the game
> industry and worked on huge projects, what kind of tools do software
> engineers supply to game or level designers so they can, for example,
> prototype a game stage before, say, 3D artists start working on a final
> version?
>
> In more depth, games like Halo, God of War or Mario Galaxy for example have
> really complex scenarios, so complex that a height map or grid map editors
> do not suffice for prototyping. I can imagine that before 3D artists can
> start working on the final art, a simpler looking prototype must be created.
> I also can imagine that creating such prototypes need constant adjusting on
> the fly (a cliff may be too high, a room to small to fit the enemies, a
> target out of shooting range), so either special tools for editing stages
> are created or special plugins for integrating with, say, maya are needed?
> Also, is it common that game or level designers know how to work with 3D
> apps for stage design? or do engineers have to create special tools for
> them? If so what kind of tools?
>
> Cheers!
>
> Juan Linietsky
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Sweng-Gamedev mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.midnightryder.com/listinfo.cgi/sweng-gamedev-midnightryder.com
>
>

_______________________________________________
Sweng-Gamedev mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.midnightryder.com/listinfo.cgi/sweng-gamedev-midnightryder.com