Part 6 (final part) of “Building World-class Art Tools” from Develop 08
The more you’ve invested in a tool, the more projects you want to use it on, to recover that investment. This means in turn that it’s harder to anticipate everything the tool must do: each project will be different. You want to try and [...]
Archive for the ‘Develop 08’ Category
Extensible tools
Posted in Develop 08, Software development, Tools on September 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Model View Controller is Extinct
Posted in Develop 08, Software development, Tools on August 30, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Part 5 of “Building World-class Art Tools” from Develop 08
Today’s post has been a particular pleasure: one of those special times when writing changed my mind. At my original talk at Develop, I said “use Model View Controller”, loud and clear. I even made it key message number 8:
In the talk, I was short of [...]
The case against C++
Posted in Develop 08, Software development, Tools on August 10, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Part 4 of “Building World-class Art Tools” from Develop 08
This post boils down to one simple headline: don’t use C++ for game tools development. But nothing is ever quite that simple – so if you have time, read on
Think
That headline is deliberately provocative, but all I really want you to do is think. [...]
Procedural content generation
Posted in Develop 08, Tools on August 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Part 3 of “Building World-class Art Tools” from Develop 08
Last time round I argued that it’s increasingly worth investing in content creation, and before that I pointed out that your first solution should always be to buy the best that money can buy (and secondly to extend an existing commercial product). Today, however, I want [...]
Optimising content creation
Posted in Develop 08, Tools on August 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Part 2 of “Building World-class Art Tools” from Develop 08
I’d like to take you back in time momentarily, to older games. The further back you go, the less significance content creation held – far enough, and the very term “content creation” presumably didn’t exist. Limited storage space on the hardware must have played a role, [...]
Why not to build in-house tools
Posted in Develop 08, Software development, Tools on August 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Part 1 of “Building World-class Art Tools” from Develop 08
Before I talk about how to build great in-house tools, I want to talk about why to build in-house tools, or looked at another way, why not! Understanding the motivation and reasons behind doing your work, whatever that work may be, is always of critical importance. [...]
Develop 2008 diary
Posted in Develop 08 on August 2, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Here follows my Develop 08 diary. It wasn’t a bad conference overall, although I think there’s huge room for improvement before it can be considered a must-attend event. The location was great, and there was a selection of outstanding sessions, but the attendance numbers felt slightly low and the quantity of sessions provided barely enough [...]
My, um, presentation about, er, tools
Posted in Develop 08 on July 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
So I’m off to Brighton today to give a talk at Develop entitled “Building World-class Art Tools”. As my first conference presentation, it’s equal parts exciting and scary, although the scary part probably hasn’t hit home fully yet. I’ll not say too much about the contents of the talk itself just now, but I will [...]
