Game Development

John McDonald

00:00

#mollydeux

Mana

it's only #mollydeux if every time you hit the ball, you feel the recoil in real life

John McDonald

heh

true

hah!

What if doing your child's homework upgraded your weapons?

Tweeted by PeterMolydeux on May 21, 2013 at 4:49 AM

Code Assassin

Homework would be fairly crappy :P

John McDonald

I donno... those weapons could be worth it

PythonInProgress

hey guys!

John McDonald

00:12

hey

PythonInProgress

@CodeAssassin i has not enough rep * sadface *

John McDonald

hmm, you need rep to up vote?

Alex M.

@CodeAssassin going to bed in a bit

it's almost 4 AM

gotta be up at 11AM

John McDonald

oh fun

PythonInProgress

@AlexM. lols

@AlexM. its about 8:15 pm for me :D

Alex M.

00:19

I'm trying REALLY hard to like the design of the new Xbox

I just can't

it's plain ugly

user4704

yup

user4704

its okay because it's not really a "gamer" product

Alex M.

and you could always hide it on a shelf somewhere near the TV

so that only part of it is visible

lol

it reminds me of those old video tape players

which would be cool

but this one's as if it was made of two different pieces

can't say there's any top design out there anymore though

Apple was cool for a while but I kind of had enough of the same

w/e I'm out

cya

Code Assassin

@PythonInProgress Oh hey PiP!

^_^ long time no see

@JoshPetrie how do you become a good tools programmer. Reason I'm asking is because I know you are one(right?) and I'm trying to get an internship for this position.

Is it just knowing what the development team needs? Wearing many hats sort of things and then building tools from there?

Interested to hear a professionals opinion. Thanks ^_^b

user4704

Don't suck.

user4704

00:30

:D

Code Assassin

LOL

I'll try my best :P

Thanks man

user4704

So, obviously you have to be a good programmer in general.

user4704

You also need to be good at people, and good at understanding and analyzing process.

user4704

15

Q: What is "tools development?"

I have been looking at different jobs in the games industry and a lot of the jobs that I have seen advertised are for a "Tool Developer" position. I do not know what this actually is. Could someone explain what this is to me please? And if anyone has any links to material that would help me unde...

Code Assassin

Oh god... seeems very demanding :-(

user4704

00:33

Can be.

Code Assassin

You have my upvote, sir!

user4704

In many places it's just grunt work if you aren't careful.

user4704

What studios are around you?

Code Assassin

Riot Games.... thatgamecompany.... sony santa monica, and then EA

EA is probably really low on my list. I don't like em lol.

but if it means getting experience. I'll roll with it

DaleyPaley

Sorry to interrupt, but I want to say one thing about tools development. You need to wear many hats. You need to know what the programmers need, in term of formats (standard and custom), but you also need to know what artists and designers need. You have to be a kind of translator

user4704

00:35

I know a few people at Riot.

Code Assassin

@JoshPetrie O: oh wow. =[ lol, I'm still working on networking with others

user4704

Most places build tools really poorly.

Code Assassin

Let me guess - rushing to get development up and running? Or just the way they feel about building tools?

user4704

You get this silly "whisper-down-the-lane" problem where, for example, gameplay programmers build a feature and then describe to you how it works and what the inputs and outputs should be, what the value ranges are, et cetera.

user4704

Then the tools programmers go off and build a thing and everybody hopes they get it right.

user4704

00:37

Rushing is a problem everywhere and in every discipline.

Code Assassin

@DaleyPaley Thanks for the input :-)

DaleyPaley

no probs. Last place I worked at thought tool development was a waste of time. I think tools are incredibly important for fast iterations

user4704

That's very typical, especially of non-live games.

Code Assassin

@JoshPetrie I've got a lot of work to do lol. Seriously need to do my research on in-house game dev enviornments. I've also got to network. I swear I've seen Jenova Chen walking in Santa Monica somewhere before. Maybe it was someone who liked him, but again it looked like him. I was in a car so I couldn't confirm.

I only know C#,C++,and a bit of UnityScript... but that's not enough for tools programming. I also have a feeling I'll need to know about network programming. I think I can learn API's pretty fast too.

user4704

To get an internship? You're overthinking it.

user4704

00:42

You just need to know how to program decently, have a somewhat-more-than-basic grasp of how a machine and the software you run or write on it works, and demonstrate the ability to write interesting code.

user4704

(for example by having a decent portfolio of projects)

Code Assassin

Hmm... I'm working on that one :P(my resume)

John McDonald

If you have any complete projects, a portfolio is not the same as a resume entry

Code Assassin

Oh. So a portfolio is just a list of projects?

user4704

Yes. Finished projects are important. Write games.

John McDonald

00:45

Career portfolio

Career portfolios are used to plan, organize and document education, work samples and skills. People use career portfolios to apply to jobs, apply to college or training programs, get a higher salary, show transferable skills, and to track personal development. They are more in-depth than a resume, which is used to summarize the above in one or two pages. Career portfolios serve as proof of one's skills, abilities, and potential in the future. Career portfolios are becoming common in high schools, college, and workforce development. Many school programs will have students create, update,...

or

Artist's portfolio

An artist's portfolio is an edited collection of their best artwork intended to showcase an artist's style or method of work. A portfolio is used by artists to show employers how versatile they can be by showing different samples of current work. Typically, the work reflects an artist's best work or a depth in one area of work. Historically, Portfolios were printed out and placed into a book. With the increased use of the internet and email however, there are now websites that host online portfolios such as Pippa They are also available to a wider audience. A key component is the editin...

Code Assassin

@JoshPetrie lol I've got to work on that XD

user4704

From a Reddit AMA I did a while back:

Code Assassin

@JohnMcDonald I think I mean Career Portfolio

John McDonald

So... a resume is effectively a list of your skills, and a written representation of what you've done and what you can do. A portfolio (as I imagine it), is stuff that you can look at and gives the interviewers a sense of what you've made

user4704

"If you want to be a game programmer, the most important advice I can give you is to just make games. Learning and experimenting with new technologies is certainly important, but at the end of the day, a game programmer will be making games, and I think you'll learn the most from the experience of completing projects."

6

Code Assassin

00:48

@JoshPetrie haha haven't done enough. Will try to work on it though. Summer is coming and I will be partially free to develop games.

:-( I would love to stay and chat but I've got to go D:

@JoshPetrie @JohnMcDonald bye ^^

John McDonald

ttyl

Code Assassin

Thanks again for the helpful advice/answers

I appreciate it :)

John McDonald

How does tool development change as a project (GW2) ages @JoshPetrie?

user4704

It follows, generally, an offset cycle from the rest of the game (in that we can start developing newer things earlier).

user4704

But mostly it's more about adapting to the evolving development paradigm than the project itself. Building a game is very different, workflow-wise, than maintaining one.

John McDonald

00:52

Right

user4704

So you have to shift your focus to supporting and anticipating those needs.

user4704

Since we aren't really set up to make the actual tools for new features (that's done by the consumers of the tools), we focus almost entirely on architectural issues.

user4704

Or optimizations.

John McDonald

hmm, ok

user4704

For example, we've built a system for managing "future packages" of content in a fashion that allows those packages to be inserted and rearranged inside a release schedule at-will.

user4704

00:56

Which helps support our need to have multiple, independent teams working concurrently on releases with disparate ship dates.

John McDonald

Interesting

user4704

And also tools to support a branching model, because branching in reality is a lot more complex than "p4 copy"

user4704

All the quaint, almost academic discussion you find online and in SCM "best practices" documents tends to be oriented around a lone developer (often a programmer) working on a branched feature or topic in relative isolation.

John McDonald

Really?

That seems a little unusual

user4704

Well, you have a ton of things to branch, to start with, so there's simply coping with that kind of volume. Then you have to have tools to support the automation of branch setup, mapping branches to a user machine, switching around between them appropriately.

user4704

01:01

Then you have to interface with all the tools you don't control, especially those used by non-technical people (typically artists) and make sure any workflows are adjusted to deal with problems there.

user4704

Then you have the task of managing the Perforce (or whatever) syncs of all mapped branches and accounting for which branches need to be the "fast branch" (the one the user works on the most) versus reference branches or branches need occasional bug fixes.

user4704

Then you have "service team" challenges: groups like UI art or technical art (or tools!) that tend to provide functionality across all features.

user4704

Then you have the sort-of opposite of a service team, a consumer like localization or audio, which must be able to consume all pending content well in advance of the actual ship date for that content in order to apply appropriate transforms to that content

John McDonald

Man, I kinda wish I was in a larger team

user4704

And then push the transformed content back into the respective branches (or not)

user4704

01:03

And then you have the killer:

user4704

Online worlds require online tests.

user4704

You can't have a feature built in isolation in a branch and tested only by a handful of people, most of the time. Especially for an MMO, you need to be able to test many features at scale, and you need a combination of both bot and human testing.

John McDonald

Yeah

user4704

So you need a completely server deployment for the game in the branch (you need this anyway since you'll potentially need to make game server changes).

user4704

Plus a deployment of all the build servers and build systems to allow the branch to build, or have its build altered, by the developers of that feature.

user4704

01:05

Non-trivial problem is non-trivial.

user4704

:D

John McDonald

.. yeah

And my co-workers are confused by a single branch in SVN

lol

:(

user4704

hehe

user4704

There's also, I guess I didn't mention that, the re-education problem.

user4704

When you work on a non-branching workflow, as we did before, there's a lot of "well okay, but when I do my change how do I push it right to the other branches since I want them to see it right away?"

user4704

01:09

When you say "you don't, you go through QA and get it into mainline, then it can be pulled by anybody else who wants it," there's a lot of O_O

John McDonald

heh, nice

Sounds like it can be quite a bit of fun being a tool developer

user4704

01:41

It's awesome.

Stack Exchange

08:39

0

Q: Shouldn't [audio] and [sound] be merged together?

I'm talking about sound and audio here. sound has the following description: Audio (heard) output of a game. audio has this: The audio component of a game, representing what the player will hear. Comprised of dialogue, music, and sound effects. From my point of view, I see them col...

feature-request tag-synonyms

0

Q: In-content [tag]'s have a CSS, margin issue

Through out the whole site, where [tag:something] is used, or where framework inherits the same behavior, there is a problem with CSS. Check thismechanics (before the tag, the letter s is hid, but the spacing after the tag is enormous). I see in CSS, it lacks margin-left property: margin: 2px ...

bug css styling

Alex M.

10:29

oh man, there's a new NFS title coming

don't we already have enough?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Of course not. As long as it sells there will be new versions.

Alex M.

it's a new hot pursuit apparently

well, the good part is that it's probably being developed by Criterion

so you can always close your eyes and imagine it's a new Burnout

or just one eye, so you can see the road ahead

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Sounds like how I drive my cab.

Alex M.

this is a classic

<3

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Poor cat. Gets attached through it's butt.

Alex M.

10:37

I'd say it would be even more cruel to attach it through its mouth lol

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

At least it'd die faster that way. :P

Alex M.

nah it's cool, the cat can rotate and still live

you can feed her by throwing food at her mouth, and give her water with this

cheapaschips.com.au/user/images/84591.jpg?t=20121219165707

it's kind of sad to think that if you did this to a dog and let him go after one day

he'd still be your best friend :(

or to be more exact

you'd still be his best friend

smartus

11:11

@AlexM. There's a new Fast and Furious movie coming too :)

Alex M.

yeah, saw the cinema ad when I went to see Oblivion

the other movie seemed more interesting though...

I forgot its name

I think it was starring Jason Statham

hummingbird yeah :D

ToddersLegrande

12:06

@CodeAssassin I've been telling you that for how long now? :P

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

12:46

@AlexM. Is it any good?

ToddersLegrande

@William'MindWorX'Mariager you ask too many questions

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@ToddersLegrande, You answer too few.

ToddersLegrande

It's true...

Honestly... my favorite thing to do at work is to help other people do their work instead of working on my own stuff xD

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Hehe. Sounds like me in math. I help others and get behind on my own assignments. :P

ToddersLegrande

That was me throughout all of college. Especially my Java class. There were like 3 people who just didn't get it (yet somehow passed C++) and so I basically tutored them during lab time and then finished my lab after everyone else had already left.

Gajoo

13:07

@ToddersLegrande I don't understand java either, not that I can't write code, but I can't understand what was the designer thinking to force me write it that way.

Shotgun Ninja

13:28

Agreed. So much boilerplate crap in Java.

ToddersLegrande

13:39

Yeah Java has its problems that are pretty noticable to a developer who knows what they are doing... but these guys just didn't really get programming :P

smartus

@ShotgunNinja Java is like a hammer. It might take some time to get what you want and sometimes you break it. But everyone can use it.

Shotgun Ninja

@smartus Unfortunately, I work for a Java shop.

smartus

@ShotgunNinja Starbucks? :P

(I work with Java for about 10 years now)

Shotgun Ninja

No. I work for a particular sheet music company out of Milwaukee, WI.

We're known for, among other things, ownership of the rights to produce Disney sheet music, and our Essential Elements line of instrument learning books.

Now, I'm not going to say the name in the Google-able transcript of this chat.

But you could figure it out from that.

Almo

figured it out I think. pretty interesting, dude. :)

Shotgun Ninja

13:51

Yeah, it's a fun company to work for, but they really need to reform their tools and development practices.

Plus they give Summerfest ticket discounts.

summerfest.com

Summerfest

Summerfest (also known as "The Big Gig") is a yearly music festival held at the Henry Maier Festival Park along the lakefront in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the United States. The festival lasts for 11 days, is made up of 11 stages with performances from over 700 bands, and since the mid-1970s has run from late June through early July, usually including the 4th of July holiday. Summerfest attracts between 800,000 and 1,000,000 people each year, promoting itself as "The World's Largest Music Festival", a title certified by the Guinness World Records since 1999. Summerfest is run by the...

800k to 1M people a year.

Almo

:D

Shotgun Ninja

700 bands.

Almo

I remember Summerfest. I used to live 50 miles from Milwaukee.

Shotgun Ninja

Oh yeah. The entire city transforms; all the buses are rerouted, parking signs go up everywhere, and all of the hotels, restaurants, and parking structures make some serious bank.

Living downtown during Summerfest the past few years has been an experience in and of itself.

Almo

woa... they still have the same logo.

Shotgun Ninja

13:57

Yep.

Why fix what isn't broken?

Almo

bingo

:)

I'm bad with Zac. :(

but I had to get him cause my pal designed him

Shotgun Ninja

Oh yeah? Cool.

Also, lots of people are bad with Zac.

Almo

:D

Shotgun Ninja

He's a hard champ to get right.

Almo

He said Zac started as the concept art for a blob guy, then he started playing with mechanics to fit a blob guy.

Shotgun Ninja

13:59

Also, Zac = Flubber.

Almo

had a tribunal case of a guy yelling "FLOBBED" at the enemies whenever he got a kill

"Flobinated" at the end when they won.

was pretty funny

Shotgun Ninja

He stretches, he bounces, and he breaks apart and rejoins. Sounds like a blob guy to me.

Almo

yup :)

Shotgun Ninja

Oh, btw, played my first ranked solo match yesterday.

Almo

cool

Shotgun Ninja

14:00

As sona, won 6/6/23

Almo

good record

I can't get outta bronze 5

just no good at carrying bad players

Shotgun Ninja

Well, it's only 1 match

that was my KDA for the match

Almo

yeah that's a good record

Shotgun Ninja

I still need to get 9 more wins.

;P

Almo

was soraka last night supporting a maining ezreal

he had tons of mana. did reasonably well

Shotgun Ninja

14:02

and I also redid my Sona item page through the new customization menu.

Almo

Diana went alone too much, as did Darius. so we just couldn't win

Shotgun Ninja

Buhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Almo

yeah I want to start messing with the item menus

Shotgun Ninja

Also, I KS a LOT with sona.

Almo

surprised we don't have to pay for pages like with runes

Shotgun Ninja

14:03

All 6 kills were KSes.

Almo

haha

Shotgun Ninja

everyone was laughing their asses off.

Almo

question

Shotgun Ninja

Yeah?

Almo

working on a card game ipad

should I make a card class that attaches to other cards

or should I make a slot that takes multiple cards

Shotgun Ninja

14:03

What's the use case?

Almo

have the slot manage the cards in it

well, you can only add cards to the ends of lists

you can pull cards out of the middle in once case

Shotgun Ninja

Hmmm. How is the user supposed to use the system, and which one would be easier for them to understand?

Almo

well, I'm the only developer

and the user will have no clue what's going on underneath

Shotgun Ninja

Right. So this is a backend manipulation strategy, or does this directly affect the user?

Almo

so for me, it's about ease of use and maintainability

backend manipulation

Shotgun Ninja

14:06

What do you mean by "slot"?

Just a holder for a list of cards?

Almo

Class CardSlot
{
NSMutableArray* Cards;
}

Shotgun Ninja

Okay, that's what I figured.

Almo

so the card slot would know if it displays only the top, face up, face down, or fanned out

Shotgun Ninja

Does the slot provide display functionality?

Almo

I guess it would also know its bounding box, and allow other cards to be dropped onto it

I think I would have the slot do the display work yes

well

layout

Shotgun Ninja

14:08

Do you need to display the cards while you're doing this backend stuff?

Almo

cards display themselves

and the slot would know where to put the cards

imagine 5 cards fanned out so you can see them but they overlap. You have 5 cards in your hand. You drag one to the fan, and drop it. It pops on to the end as the 6th card in the fan.

Shotgun Ninja

If you need to show the cards to the user while doing this manipulation, then I'd use a slot. If not, then I'd make the card class that attaches to other cards instead, to avoid needing extra details for display.

Classes should be divided based on raison d'etre.

Almo

Can you clarify why you say that the attaching card avoids extra display details?

Shotgun Ninja

Because you control what goes into that class definition, and can choose not to add layout information like you'd have with a CardSlot?

Almo

ok

Shotgun Ninja

14:12

Yeah, sorry for the hit-or-miss explanation.

Almo

heh not a problem :)

does it make sense to have the discard pile, draw deck and fan be the same cardslot class with flags to say how tyhey behave?

or should they just be different objects?

or inherit from a base class

Shotgun Ninja

If there's a lot of difference, then an abstract base class CardSlot with some subclasses (HandSlot, DeckSlot, DiscardPileSlot) might be a good way to go.

It'll keep you from having to look at all of the CardSlot code when only one of them is misbehaving.

Almo

that makes sense

get the list code shared, and just the behavioral differences in the subclasses.

Shotgun Ninja

Oh, and a default implementation for other slots.

Code Assassin

14:29

I NEED MOAR UPVOTES

NEED MOAR REP

What irks me is that people will not upvote my answers that they pick is the correct answer.

#rude

John McDonald

I think some people may not know that they can accept and up-vote the same answer

Almo

That's how you get Unsung Hero. I need one more of those answers to get it.

at StackOverflow

John McDonald

heh. upvotes >:D

Code Assassin

plsss

I NEED DEM

oh yay

I got upvoted ^_^b

The amount of Farseer XNA questions on GD.SE is ridiculous. Including the ones I have asked. Most of the questions just show lack of research.

Shotgun Ninja

14:49

@CodeAssassin Do the ones you have asked show lack of research?

Code Assassin

@ShotgunNinja Some. One of my farseer questions(I think it was something to do with terrain) - just required me to understand how the ConvertUnits class worked.

Shotgun Ninja

Remember the helpdesk formula though:
Scarcity of available documentation + Popularity of system -> Lack of research.

Code Assassin

Farseer doesn't really have their own documentation

They are lazy and just refer you to Box2D's documentation

because Farseer is very similar to Box2D

Shotgun Ninja

Yikes

What API doesn't have their own documentation?

What if the libraries diverge in their design?

Fuck that noise, man.

2

Code Assassin

farseerphysics.codeplex.com/documentation

Does this even qualify as documentation?

They call it a "Manual" when it's just a little Getting Started pages

It's nothing like Microsofts Documentation for XNA

That's what they need

Almo

14:55

I thought that would get a star :)

wasn't me :D

Code Assassin

it was I

now star it

Almo

hey user2135083 is back!

that's an awesome name. how did you come up with it?

Code Assassin

@Almo lol

Gajoo made me find out about Tuples

and they are awesome

Transcript for