I have a co-worker, Darius, who is creating a game for a small game system called the Meggy Jr. Watching him work on this, I was impressed with the tools that he came up with. He’s not a (really) a programmer, but still somehow can make tools that serve his needs pretty well. I’ll let [...]
02.20Tools SIG, Web 2.0
Besides our discussion list, the Tools SIG has many other ways for you to stay connected with other tools devotees, including a Facebook group, a Facebook blog network group and now the new LinkedIn group. If you are a member of any of these sites, please feel free to join and connect with everyone else! [...]
The C++ STL is pervasive in tools development. C++ STL coupled with memory heaps backed by paging files will take one pretty far. However, there are some aspects to C++ STL that make sharing code between tools and runtime challenging. In my mind it would be awesome if there was a container library like C++ [...]
The IGDA Tools SIG has opened voting for the new SIG chair! The new chair will replace the wonderful and talented Raquel Bujans, who’s been heading up the SIG for the past 2 years and has recently elected to step down. We have three “sets” of candidates looking at taking the roll of chair: Jeff [...]
02.17Middleware Survey
Mark DeLoura, probably known most famously as the creator of the excellent book series Game Programming Gems, is conducting a survey on game industry middleware. And what is middleware than one giant tool right? From his blog post: After some discussions with game engine middleware manufacturers, I decided to post a couple of surveys to [...]
It’s time again to highlight the people that keep us authors on our toes and instigate the excellent discussion that we really want as part of this blog. I know I said I wanted this to be a weekly feature, but it looks as if we’ll be doing them a bit less frequent than that, [...]
In these trying economic times, companies are finding ways to cut back on development costs. This often means job losses. When one or more games need to be finished and the tools are relatively stable, it’s hard to sell cutting anyone on gameplay or content. The tools team often bears the brunt of layoffs, especially among the [...]
02.03A Preview of GDC
GDC has several tools centered talks this year, and I wanted to give everyone a heads up about a few of them (especially because searching for “tool’ or “tools” brings up every session that wants to give you the tools to succeed). First, as happens every year, John Walker will be hosting his usual Technical [...]
Regardless of what they think and regardless of whether it’s formalized, I think every game company has a tools team in some form or another. Every field of game development needs tools, and every field very frequently needs custom tools to get their jobs done more efficiently. Certainly, designers, programmers, and artists have the most [...]
02.02Best of Comments
Quite often in the world of blogging, comments get ignored by the general readership. And that’s a damn shame, because often the comments are just as insightful, if not more insightful, than the actual post. To combat this, and in an attempt to open up dialog about the problems we all face as tools developers, [...]