Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
between the self-taught hackers and the programmer with formal training is that
hackers tend to design and code things before they realize that someone has already
solved the problem. Sometimes, you
'
ll catch them describing a cool data structure
they just came up with, and you
ll realize they are talking about a B+ tree. Their
strength comes from their amazing ability to see right to the heart of a problem
and fearlessly begin to solve it. One of the most brilliant programmers I ever met
never graduated high school.
The creative insight that artists conjure up makes working with them so fantastic.
Probably the weirdest thing about working with artists on computer games is that
you realize that artists and programmers are the same kind of people working with
different sides of their brain. Artists can push you hard to achieve the look they are
going for. Sometimes on a busy day, your first reaction to them asking crazy things
of you is to brush them off. Instead, take a moment to visualize their goal and see if
there
'
s a way to make it happen. At Red Fly Studio, artists ruled the roost (the CEO
was an artist), and our games always benefited from programmers trying hard to
make the artists happy. One bit of advice, though
'
artists find it very difficult to
remember that not every texture needs to be 2048 × 2048, and they will sometimes
create assets that couldn
—
t run on an army of computers, much less one that a normal
person owns. When that happens, try to be patient and give them gentle reminders.
Animators have intense relationships with programmers, because getting a character
to act in the game as the animator intends can be pretty tricky. The programmer
working with a character animator has to constantly balance how good the character
looks with how responsive the character feels. Take jumping, for example. When
players press the jump button, they want the character to jump immediately, but in
practice that looks a little goofy, since there
'
'
s no time for the character to
“
wind up
”
to the jump as a real person would. Detecting the character
s surroundings and ani-
mating to make him react properly to it can also be a challenge. Finally, animators
love to change animations to make them better, but the problems of changing some-
thing critical, like jump distance, can have a drastic effect on level design
'
making
easy things impossible or vice versa. Again, gentle corrections and good communica-
tion are key.
Game designers are a truly special breed of people. Almost every other discipline in
game development has easy access to work in other industries
—
programmers, artists,
composers, even producers can work using the same tools and thought processes as
they do making games. Game designers, however, tend to transform into writers,
playwrights, movie directors, historians, teachers, philosophers, poets, and any num-
ber of other things. Great game designers bring an amazing understanding of what
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