A while back, after a talk I gave at our local IGDA chapter meeting, I got an email from a recruiter at a local game development company. He was looking to fill a position for a tools engineer and wanted to know what he needed to look for. I never got back to him (sorry!) [...]
Recently Insomniac Games has expanded to include a second studio in Durham, NC. Durham has their own Perforce server instance to support engineering and asset production for their titles. While the Core Team (engine and tools engineering) is still located in Burbank, Durham has a small group that add features and improvements to help get [...]
07.22Doing The Math
In response to Dan’s post on when to rewrite vs. refactor existing tools, I wanted to point out what I felt was a key section: Now comes the real decision point though. Does a rewrite make sense for the current project or should it be put off for a later time? If you’re in beta, rewriting a [...]
Today, we have out first guest post! Today’s post is from Jay Taoko the founder of inalogic inc, a software company specialized in game development tools for artists and programmers. Before inalogic, Jay was a programmer at Ubisoft where he worked on Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and Rainbow Six Vegas. Before that, he worked for [...]
03.03Scheduling Tools
Scheduling tools is tricky business. Most tools aren’t even started until they’re needed, unless you’ve got some very forward thinking management (an unlikely scenario at many game companies). The time constraints are impossible since they’re in sync with an equally impossible game production schedule, and budget constraints can be equally constricting. So, how do we [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]