Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
3 “Build It Once”
Optimizing Your Design Worklow
The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
Arnold J. Toynbee
3.1 OVERVIEW: REDUCING REPETITIVE BUILDING
AND INCREASING CREATIVE DESIGN TIME
Design worklow for creative ideas is the circulatory system of your project. It must be kept unobstructed
by the blockage of incompatible software formats, inconsistent work standards, and lack of proper plan-
ning. In this chapter, you will be introduced to standards and practices that enable your team to function
more eficiently, scale up more effectively, and optimize your content creation practices. This is called the
“Build It Once” system. As a designer for virtual spaces, you will eventually work in all sorts of environ-
ments and will need to repurpose content, as well as reine it in the more advanced systems. No one likes
to waste time rebuilding something because it will not load properly into a 3D modeler or a virtual world.
The pitfalls are many and can catch the unaware or unprepared designer. By planning your project within the
“Build It Once” framework, you create a set of work standards, and you save your team the headaches and lost
time of backtracking and redoing work because something got lost or was made incorrectly. Let's get started.
3.2 FIVE BASIC STEPS TO SET YOUR STANDARDS AND PRACTICES
There are ive basic steps to help you overcome worklow blockage from inconsistent work standards and
lack of planning.
3.2.1 o rganize y our f ile s TruCTure
To drastically cut down on the time spent looking for a previously built item, set up a logical ile structure for
your project in your computer and duplicate that structure in your virtual world inventory. When you upload
a mesh or texture to Second Life or OpenSim, it lands on the top of a pile of items in your avatar's inventory.
After a day of iterative design uploads, things can get messy. The irst thing to do is to make a “named”
project folder for your avatar's inventory, which includes subfolders for all of the components you will be
using. The “name” can be an acronym for the whole project. For instance, if you were working on a project
called “Our Virtual Schoolhouse,” each folder and each item you upload would start with “OVS.” Here is
how your ile structures would look:
OVS Project Folder (contains subfolders)
OVS Animations (contains subfolders)
OVS—Animation iles and the like
21
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search