Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Fast Iteration Makes Games More Fun
In a commercial game editor, rather than using a stripped-down version of the
game, many editors completely surround and extend the game. This enables
content developers like level designers and artists to run the game inside the
editor so they can test their work. Editors that don
t work this way force
content developers to change something in the editor, save the level, load
the game, find the spot they changed, see the change in the game, and
decide whether they like what they did. If they don
'
'
t like it, and I guarantee
they won
t, they exit the game, load the editor, find the spot they changed
again, and start the whole process over.
'
tuning.reload
On The Sims, we have a magic console command called
tuning.reload
,
which allows us to make a change in the tuning editor, save out the data
files, and run this command to reload the tuning files while the game is
running. A common path when iterating on a gameplay feature is to make a
tuning change, reload the tuning, and test the feature. This process is repeated
until the feature is working as expected without having to reload the game.
There are similar console commands to reload parts of the world and other
data. We even have one to reload any scripts that were changed.
Being able to modify the game while it is running is a huge benefit to the
gameplay engineers and designers. It means that they can theoretically work
on their feature without ever having to spend time waiting for the game to
load, and it makes developing features extremely fast.
When the editor is complete, it should look like Figure 22.1.
Many commercial game editors look fairly similar to this design. The window on the
left side is what you created at the beginning of this chapter, a panel that forms the
surface for DirectX to render the game world. The panel on the right side has an
upper and a lower part. The upper part is a tabbed view, showing either all the assets
in the editor
s Assets folder or a list of all the actors in the scene. The lower panel
displays all of the components of any selected actor. This particular design was
inspired somewhat by the Unity 3 editor, which is rapidly increasing in popularity,
even among professional game developers.
'
