"Technical Issues in Tools Development" Roundtable Notes

Notes by Jeff Ward

What tools do you use to automate builds or common tasks?
- Check out from source control
- Time date stamping / comparison
- Deploy to multiple QA machines
WPS (Windows Power Shell) was suggested as a potential, using comandlets to manage large systems
For use testing on multiple machines, someone suggested making an easily deployable clean OS mirror and deploying that to all machines (Anyone know what tools can accomplish this?)
Most people had problems with long build times, and wondered what tools were being used to mitigate that:
- Incredibuild
- Ccmake
- Scons (sconstruct)
  - This is a dependency manager, but some people seemed to be having some problems using it.
- MSBuild
  - No one really had any experience with MSBuild as a build system.

Think open source rather than sell, because you have to support your tools if you try to sell them.
Insomniac is actually doing just that. They are releasing much of their internal tools set to open source (on a BSD-like license)
- More info here: http://nocturnal.insomniacgames.com

Somehow here we got onto source control usage, and the question was asked “Who is using Microsoft Team Suite?”

Not many people for 3 reasons:
- Established process with current systems;
- Costs too much for people without current process;
- A few people that were using it complained that it did not offer the flexibility / scriptability / customizability they’ve come to expect from other products.

How do you handle data?
Push data quickly on rebuilds.
- Most people have continuous watches / continuous integration on their assets watching for a rebuild.
How can you distribute the data efficiently?
- Protocols (here we went a little off topic talking about using UDP over TCP, but it didn’t really go anywhere);
- BitTorrent for internal distribution was suggested, but no one had done it (I thought it was an awesome idea).
Tracking Dependencies between assets:
- Use of versions and signatures;
- Metadata for a given asset stores version info and generates a signature based on that info;
- Signatures are compared to assess whether a base asset or its dependencies have changed (This was Insomniac’s system, so may be available as nocturne gets released).

How do you create something that everyone can use and have a consistent UI
- Across all disciplines and
- Across all editors
Break the system into reusable widgets;
Have the tools have similar themes;
- Use an open source icon library to achieve consistent theme;
Use perspectives for each person/role;
- WPF allows templates and data binding, which can make things easier when attempting to create perspectives;
- Basically perspectives are an implementation of the MVC (Model View Controller pattern);
Consistency is key, more than a good UI (make sure the tool behaves in ways people understand and are comfortable with).

Most people are using external with some hybrid
By doing internal it immediately gives players the possibility of changing things;
“Piping it over” stream to the engine from external tools is very common.
How’s QA in tools:
- Not much QA, the users are QA;
- Co-location can help, since programmers will hear the actual frustrations of the people using their tools.
- As a tools programmer, look at yourself as being wrong, the users are always correct;
  - Sometimes, users are unwilling to come forward w/ problems, so it’s up to use to find them and address them.

How many people have an Engine & Tools team
How many have an engine team that is separate from a tools team
- Found that separate tools teams are not starved for resources, whereas when they’re on a shared team they tend to be
Do you have a manager lead or a non-manager lead?
How do you convince management to have a separate tools team?
- Expense it. Show the benefit of having a separate tools team (examples of this would be great).

This was pulled from IGDA’s web archive :

And full credit goes to the author of that article.

–JeffWard Mar 2008

"Technical Issues in Tools Development" Roundtable Notes - Thursday