Comments on: The Dependency Question http://thetoolsmiths.org/2009/09/01/the-dependency-question/ Tue, 27 Jul 2010 02:46:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: sam http://thetoolsmiths.org/2009/09/01/the-dependency-question/comment-page-1/#comment-536 sam Wed, 02 Sep 2009 04:11:33 +0000 http://toolssig.wordpress.com/?p=358#comment-536 We have an offline editor which artists and LDs use to create the level, place enemies, etc. They export to platform-specific data files, and the export process is sped up via dependency checking and a distributed system (which involves lightmapping, packing models into formats optimised for specific platforms, etc). Then they run their exported level in the game. While the game is running there are certain things that can be "hot swapped" - textures, materials, and positions of objects in game can be modified in the appropriate editor tool. A monitor program detects changes in these files and performs an appropriate action depending on what was changed (e.g. if a texture was changed, it is exported and patched in to the running game). We find that this is a fairly good mix. The offline tools don't depend on the game, so you have to go through an export process to see your changes, but we try to keep this as fast as possible, and provide realtime editing for things that we can. We have an offline editor which artists and LDs use to create the level, place enemies, etc. They export to platform-specific data files, and the export process is sped up via dependency checking and a distributed system (which involves lightmapping, packing models into formats optimised for specific platforms, etc). Then they run their exported level in the game. While the game is running there are certain things that can be “hot swapped” – textures, materials, and positions of objects in game can be modified in the appropriate editor tool. A monitor program detects changes in these files and performs an appropriate action depending on what was changed (e.g. if a texture was changed, it is exported and patched in to the running game).

We find that this is a fairly good mix. The offline tools don’t depend on the game, so you have to go through an export process to see your changes, but we try to keep this as fast as possible, and provide realtime editing for things that we can.

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