Re: Question about development of prototyping tools.

I would classify tools this way:
 
1. External/Internal:
 
Is the tool external to the game or embedded in the game?
 
2. Cycle-time:
 
How long does it take from the moment you make a change until you can play
it in the game?
 
In other words, if you make a change using the tool do you then have to
reboot the game or restart the level to see the change in the game? Or can
you (say) play a level, notice something that needs changing, pause, edit,
save and then continue playing without having to reboot the game/level?
 
I have seen tools done in a lot of different ways. With some tools having a
cycle times of seconds and others needing literally hours. I can not
overstate how important it is to have very short cycle times. You need to
get it as close to 0 secs as you can basically.
 
A simple example is a use case where an artist makes a change to a texture
using (say) Photoshop. If the artist has to exit and restart the game and
then restart the level to see the texture changed then the cycle time is
very high (bad!). If the artist can just press (say) F8 and the game will
automatically reload all changed textures, the cycle time will be a few secs
(much much better!).
 
Another example would be a level designer pausing a level, editing a number
of scripts and then continue playing the level with the game using the new
scripts when spawning new characters. You could even have the script editor
embedded in the game. However editing the scripts with an external tool is
fine as long as you don't have to reboot the game to test the edits. The
game should automatically (or triggered by a button press) reload changed
scripts.
 
And here is the dirty secret:
 
In my experience it is a lot easier and faster to build the tools into the
game. You already have the scene being rendered etc. All you need is to
switch the game to "Edit Mode" and your tool(s) can take over, making the
artist/designer make changes right there in the game, save and continue.
 
Even back in the old days when I was working on Banjo Kazooie for the N64 we
could stop the game at any point, move spawnpoints around, add/remove
objects etc., save and the restart the level with the player character
starting right next to what you edited. In other words, the cycle time was a
few secs. And that was using the (by todays standard) very limited N64
hardware. So no excuse today when we have access to hardware that is
literally 100+ times more powerful :-)
 
The key thing to keep in mind (from an architectural point of view) is to
put a clear wall between "level definition" data and "level running" data.
That allows you to edit the "level definition" data without touching the
"level running" data => you can continue playing the game after you edit it.
 
Morten
 
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Juan
Linietsky
Sent: Wednesday, 20 April 2011 3:26 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Sweng-Gamedev] Question about development of prototyping tools.



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

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