Game Development
- Early games:
- 1 or 2 developers
- mostly designing & coding
Game Development
Modern games:
- Large teams of developers
- gigabytes of "assets"
- 2-3 years of development
- multi-million dollar budgets
Game Development
Game design:
- Concept
- Gameplay
- Concept art
- Storyboards
- Script
Game Development
Game assets (art):
- images
- textures
- 3D models
- sound effects
- music
- motion data
- videos
Game Development
Software:
- graphics engine
- sound
- database
- physics
- AI
- networking
- scripting
Game Development
Some typical tools:
- Photoshop - images / textures
- Maya, 3DS Max - 3D models
- ProTools, SoundForge - audio
Game Development
Software:
- Typically C / C++
- Custom scripting language
- Graphics engines - commercial middleware
- Physics becoming commercialized
- Other elements vary
Sly Cooper
- developers: 14 - 24
- contractors: 4
- development time: 3 years
- assets: 3,000 Maya files (1.5 GB)
4,300 textures (800 MB)
1,000 source files (9 MB)
Rise of Nations
- developers: 26
- contractors: 16
- development time: 3 years
- code size: 837,000 lines (1,721 files)
Call of Duty 2
- people: 25 - 75 designers, developers, & artists
- development time: 2 years
- budget: $14.5 million
Document of Metal Gear Solid
Alternative Development Tools
Dark Basic
- Commercial product
- BASIC language + Microsoft DirectX
- Sample models etc
- Less power, but easier for inexperienced programmers
Macromedia Flash
- Platform-independent
- Easy, cheap distribution
- Many "retro" games
Open Source Tools
- PyGame
- Python modules - graphics, sound, joystick, etc
- WorldForge
- for online RPGs
- software + art assets
Mods
Player-created assets for existing games
Can just change art
Can develop entire new game
Mods
The text and layout of this document is by Dave Pape, and is released under a Creative Commons License.