GDC Notes Day 1 Part 2

SCRAP METAL: Pushing the Envelope With a Team of Two

Scrap Metal (top down 3D racing game with nice visuals / lighting / etc.) developer talked about his experiences working on scrap metal.  They attempted to write the game using C# / XNA but the performance was “terrible”, they claimed.  It’s a shame that they didn’t dive deeper into the causes of these perf issues.  I’d be really curious to know if managed code optimizations would have fixed this.  Anyway, they switched to C++.

They made a physics engine specific to the game and their general sentiment was that using a one-size-fits-all physics engine “took away the personality” of the game. 

They focused a lot on tools which verified game assets (and even behaviors) in real-time.  Changing AI behaviors, shaders, and even car physics and testing in real time.

They really stressed iteration, focusing on a basic mechanic and creating “vertical slices” and iterating on them.  They said that 80% of the art in the game was created in the last 3 months; it took a long time to get the game to “feel” right.

From Big Studio to Small Indie: Guerilla Tactics from Hello Games (Sean Murray):

(Sadly, my notes became exceptionally crappy as the day went on, so here’s my summary)

- They used an application called Procrastitracker which runs on your PC and tells you how much time you spend doing each activity on your computer, so you get a good idea about how much time is wasted.

- They were very data-driven… I have no idea what this means exactly but I just wrote “very data-driven”, so apparently their game was written in a data-driven way, following the theme of cutting the time needed to test changes.  I am personally horribly lazy, and will all-too-often gladly wait the long time necessary to test changes.

Ugh, worst blog entry ever.  I think I’ll just post highlights from talks I liked rather than pretending to offer full coverage of all the talks I attended.