Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
3.5 Automating In-Game Search with the BugViewer
As production on
Red Faction: Armageddon
continued, the need arose to extend the
MATT tool's capability to instantly search all asset data outside the game-content
hierarchy, specifically by cataloging assets and locations in the game world itself.
The need for this functionality was twofold: artists, directors, leads, and producers
needed a way to rapidly search, locate, and associate metadata with assets at their
in-game locations as well as in isolation. The quality-assurance team needed to
eciently test the game during all stages of production and expressed interest in
similar functionality. Initially, the capability to perform a search through the game
level data for specific asset information such as location or density was planned
as an extension of already existing MATT modules. However, upon investigation,
we soon discovered that for this specific request, incorporation into the full MATT
tool developer feature set was not ideal. We had no need to expose all the content
creation and alteration features of the MATT tool to the quality-assurance team, so
the BugViewer remained a stand-alone utility, used by both the quality-assurance
and the development team.
We remained with Python as the development scripting language of choice, and
Figure 3.5.
In-game location search and annotation using the BugViewer.