Individuals and Interactions
Today wraps up my first week with the talented folk here at Shenandoah. There’s so much to do, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. My first priority is setting up a development environment that everyone is comfortable with. Before a single line of code is written I want time spent learning the rest of the team’s approach to problems.
No designer wants to scroll through memory management code
Jeff (Game Designer) has been tweaking and building some cool systems that make Bulge a blast to play and a real thinker. He has a great hands on testing philosophy that could benefit from automation and visualization. With a system where he can live tweak values he’ll be able to focus on solving and generalizing problems.
How a game is developed affects everyone. Having a robust and powerful language is great, but no designer wants to scroll through memory management code. On the business side, being able to raise the capitol needed for development is no easy task, especially if you get stuck with programmer arm flailing. Additionally, biz can’t be limited by whatever last build is on their device as they travel. The development environment needs to be simple enough so they can receive and show asset updates anywhere, anytime.
To that end, I reviewed the current landscape for our launching platforms, and while the Lua Powered “Corona” was a strong contender, I firmly believe Unity3D is the answer. The visual, “Drag and Drop” style interface decouples code and art. Running the game is as easy as pressing “Play”, and values can even be changed during runtime. Even with all these “non-techy” features, the backend is robust enough to allow extension and fast enough that we can reach 60fps without any “heroic” coding. It has more features than we need, but in game dev you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.
Related Posts
