Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Crunch Mode (and Crunch Meals)
Every now and then you end up at a technological dead-end and have to start
completely over. I was brought into the late stages of a Mattel project that was sup-
posed to be in the test phase in about two weeks. I took one look at the code and
realized, to my horror, that the entire graphics engine was using Windows GDI.
Unless someone out there knew something I didn ' t, the GDI in 1999 couldn ' t texture
map polygons. In less than five weeks, the entire project was rebuilt from scratch,
including a basic 2D vector animation tool.
Those five weeks were really more like fifteen weeks. The tiny development team
worked late into each night and dragged themselves back each morning. There were
no weekends. There were no days off. I
d estimate that we worked 90-hour work-
weeks on that project. You might think that unreasonable, and that nobody should
have to work like that. That project was only five weeks. It was nothing compared
to the pixel mines of Origin Systems circa 1992. Back then, Origin had something
called the
'
The price of entry was working 100 hours in a single work-
week. The last time I counted, there were only 168 hours in seven days, so the folks
in the 100 Club were either working or sleeping.
100 Club.
The Infamous Origin Hostel
To facilitate a grueling schedule, the teams built bunk beds in the kitchen.
Company kitchens are no place for bedding. My office was unfortunately
located right across the hall, and I observed the kitchen/bedroom getting
higher occupancy than the homeless shelter in downtown Austin. After
about a week, I began to detect an odor emanating from across the hall. It
seemed that the brilliant organizers of Hotel Origin never hired a maid
service, and that an unplanned biology experiment was reporting its initial
results via colorless but odorous gasses. Origin management soon liquidated
the experiment.
It
s not uncommon for companies insisting on long hours from salaried employees to
provide meals. These
'
are usually ordered out and delivered to the team.
Origin was able to get a local deli to bill them instead of requiring a credit card, so they
began to order from them almost every night. Months went by, and everyone on the
development team knew every item on the menu by heart and knew exactly which bits of
food were most likely to survive delivery intact. Fifteen years later, I can still tell you
what ' s on the menu at Jason ' s Deli, and even though the food is good, I rarely eat there.
At the ripe old age of 38, I signed on to full-fledged crunch mode at Ion Storm to
help finish Thief: Deadly Shadows. Let me tell you something
crunch meals
the older you get,
 
 
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