This ongoing series delves more deeply into each of the “six reasons your game development tools suck” as argued in my very first post. A lot of clutter in a tool’s user interface can be very confusing. When a user needs to scan the toolbar for a specific button to do something very routine, that’s [...]
11.11Implementing Undo
One of the most basic of usability features, undo/redo is also fairly straightforward to implement. Most engineers will tell you that undo functionality needs to be planned for from the beginning of a project. So why is it still just an afterthought for most game development tools? We recently had to implement an undo solution [...]
This ongoing series delves more deeply into each of the “six reasons your game development tools suck” as argued in my very first post. At one company I worked for, we wrote our level design tool, as well as a cinematic tool on top of Maya. The idea was that Maya already had an interface [...]
This ongoing series delves more deeply into each of the “six reasons your game development tools suck” as argued in my very first post. Two of the most important concepts in software engineering are abstraction and modularity. Abstraction allows us to categorize problems and write general code to handle all problems within a group, while modularity [...]
Some of you may have read my recent Gamasutra article, Game Tools Tune-Up: Optimize Your Pipeline Through Usability but I wanted to discuss something that writing that article has really brought to the forefront of my mind. As an industry, we aren’t very reflective on the methodologies we use regarding the development of tools. This blog [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
There are many reasons game development tools fail. Perhaps not all of these apply to you, but every game studio I’ve seen has had one or more of the following problems. 1. Design as you go All too often, game companies are in too much of a hurry to allow proper upfront design of tools. [...]