Development Tools CIS 487 587 Bruce R Maxim UM Dearborn 01 14 19 1 Planning Games are not meant to have a 20 year life span so people are tempted to cheat on software planning Games have an artistic element which makes this type of planning more like the movie industry Risk management both proactive and reactive are at the heart of this planning 01 14 19 2 Reactive Risk Management Problems not addressed until they surface Why are problems overlooked Developer is overly familiar with the project and the product day to day grind prevents seeing mounting problems Managers often try to shoot the messenger rather than deal with the message 01 14 19 3 Contingency Planning Most delayed games are victims of reactive risk planning Correctly implemented contingency planning adds very little work to project Goal of contingency planning is to save time and money Every project has problems the question is the effectiveness with which they are dealt with 01 14 19 4 Design Architectural Problems Changes to base lined requirements Poorly defined requirements often causes project scope extension Unfamiliar methodologies tools libraries Architectural integration problems 01 14 19 5 Schedule Threats Too tight schedules Incomplete schedules Unavailable resources Overestimation of schedule savings Inaccurate schedule estimates Schedule adjustment errors 01 14 19 6 Organizational Problems Unwilling to deal with subordinate criticism Management induced difficulties Vested interests OEM products Insisting on right of veto Lack of disciplined development process 01 14 19 7 Contractor Problems Late delivery Insist on penalties for late delivery Poor quality Allow for time in schedule to review products and correct quality problems Provide solid requirements statement to contractors Lack of skill or motivation 01 14 19 8 Personnel Problems Failure to work as a team Poor communications skills Low motivation or morale Skills shortages Allow extra time to come to speed Encourage knowledge sharing Hire outside contractors 01 14 19 9 Development Problems Inadequate office facilities not enough or not available when needed Poor quality development tools or third party libraries Misinterpretation of design documents Failure to meet requirements You have to stop researching at some point in time and start developing product 01 14 19 10 Process Problems Excessive red tape and bureaucracy Failure to apply procedures correctly Failure to make use of data used to compute metrics in risk management Getting the level of formality to the right level games are not life and death products 01 14 19 11 State of Industry First era Talented amateurs Tie in licenses introduced e g Disney Second era Mass market consoles Many similar games sold Third era current Rise of the 3D polygon market Controversy heralds release of hot games 01 14 19 12 Celebrities Can be virtual Laura Croft or real Movies and merchandise follow release of several games and make more money than the game You can t create likable characters and sidekicks by formula Recognizable likenesses must be distinguishable from other games 01 14 19 13 Violence Ratings are used to market games Players are disappointed when violence is not realistic Games do not cause violence in the real world they don t prevent it either In the long run games will need to do what television does and show the consequences of violent behavior 01 14 19 14 New Developer Model Leveraging intellectual properties Games based on existing character licenses out sell in house characters Developing several projects simultaneously is a better way to reuse technology than serial reuse of old technology 01 14 19 15 Commercial Alliances Technological resources and management can be shared to allow for economies of scale Umbrella of studio allows nutruing of newcomers Studio can maintain a talent pool inventory Super developer can raise capital for development more easily enabling higher royalties for participants 01 14 19 16 Managing Outscourcing Creative core must maintain ownership through out project There must be standardization of design methods libraries and tools for this to work Current trend is for developers to pay development costs publishers only want to pay for completed games 01 14 19 17 Delivering Games Online The cost of the first level of a game might represent 50 of the total cost If the game were released on a pay for play basis over broad band the remaining levels could be released like chapters every few weeks The entire game could be released as a stand alone greatest hits as market is saturated 01 14 19 18 Playing Game On line People would rather pay 5 for 2 hours of entertainment than pay 35 for 40 hours In 2 hour chunks a 40 hour game can net 50 to 100 Massively multiplayer games have the potential to make a lot of money as well 01 14 19 19 Object Oriented Design Programs written in procedural languages become impossible to maintain at 25 000 lines of code Programs written using object oriented programming don t become hard to maintain until 100 000 lines of code Supporting the creation and reuse of subsystems is the main reason this is so 01 14 19 20 Pressure to Produce Games are sensory experiences so there is a lot of pressure to produce pictures and audio quickly This may make the development of coherent underlying architecture difficult and the prototype becomes the product As always the sooner you start coding the longer the development time once you start tracking maintenance time and costs 01 14 19 21 Object Oriented Design OOD is successful because it allows developers to partition and package functionality more easily OOD allows developers to package components into reusable modules OOD has the promise of supporting the practice of component based game development 01 14 19 22 Code Reuse It requires more time and resources to write truly reusable code There is a lot of informal code reuse in the game industry DirectX virtually every PC game Quake engines Specialized engines physics 3D AI 01 14 19 23 Design Reuse Patterns Design patterns are generic solutions to frequently encountered problems These solutions have worked well in the past and do not need to be reinvented each time they are needed Ultimately developers need ways to store and retrieve design patterns based on the problem attributes 01 14 19 24 Object Factory Pattern Allows the creation of a family of objects Each object has a serial number and is easily imported into new game levels 01 14 19 25
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