Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
18.3 Principles for Efficient Asset Creation
Genetica easily doubled the speed with which seamless textures and other bitmap
assets were created for
Aaaaa!
As with any art tool, there are countless ways to
achieve any one result, many of which differ dramatically in production eciency.
This section covers key design principles that allowed Dejobaan Games to realize
their considerable productivity gains, as well as some additional tips of relevance
to game projects in general.
18.3.1 Group Nodes into Logical Units
A node tree should tell a story. By making use of Genetica's ability to group nodes
into logical units, the overall process involved in constructing an asset can be made
apparentfromthefirstglance.Considerthetwovariationsshownin
Figure18.6
.
If an artist were asked to look at the left half of the figure for a few moments
and describe what they saw, their answer would likely be along the lines of “various
shapes are combined to form a hazard-striped wall with a biohazard sticker on
it.” While technically accurate, that's about as informative as asking someone
to describe a housing construction site and learning that “various materials are
combined to form a house.”
Repeat the experiment with the other half of the figure and the response will
more likely sound like this: “A hazard-striped wall and a biohazard sticker are
created. The sticker is placed onto the wall.” The three essential elements of the
construction process have been made apparent by organizing the nodes into three
groups. The node tree now tells a story that can be understood at once.
Figure 18.6.
“Noodle-soup networks” lack organization (left). Disciplined node trees tell
a story from the first glance (right).
