5 ms·

As a software engineer, I wonder how accurate they stuck to their said schedule at the last page.

Cheezmeister 3y ago
As a gamer, I am pretty sure they didn't ;)
Reason077 3y ago
Well, it's a 12-month development schedule. This pitch was dated 1994. Diablo was released in 1997... doesn't seem too bad.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  I wrote the isometric engine for this game in about 1996: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abomination:_The_Nemesis_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abomination:_The_Nemesis_Proje... It was planned to be a totally 2D game in the vein of Diablo, but as this brief lays out, the amount of 2D assets required for all the rotations of the characters gets out of hand extremely quickly. After we started development we figured this out and decided to switch the characters to 3D and keep the backgrounds 2D. So I had to write a whole 3D engine and toolchain from scratch in two weeks. Those were the days. Still, took three years to get that pig out of the door.
  - low_tech_love 3y ago
    Just a quick note, but cross-checking that article with your profile here makes it quite obvious who you are… I hope you’re ok with it?
  - Salgat 3y ago
    I like the way Diablo 2 did it, where they created 3D models then had a script render to create the animation frames at all the different angles. I did something similar for my very amateurish attempt at a game, and it saved a massive amount of time. http://salgat.blogspot.com/2014/12/new-2d-sprite-model.html http://salgat.blogspot.com/2014/12/new-2d-sprite-model.html
    - nlawalker 3y ago
      Ah, that reminds me of this post about Hades: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1145360/discussions/0/1864993755183591660/#c1864993755185620425 https://steamcommunity.com/app/1145360/discussions/0/1864993... Just insane amounts of work and data. There's a cool video they did about the part of the process that comes before that - creating the models from the character artist's 2D art. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYJ6d1ifSqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYJ6d1ifSqA
    - qingcharles 3y ago
      We actually had it set up like that to start as we had some creatures built in Max, but the sheer amount of graphic data was far too much for the available RAM once you started added more beasties and some of them were the size of the screen. Switching to 3D gave us unlimited movement but bought us multiple other problems like low poly count, lack of solid integration with 2D backgrounds, and difficulties in combining huge 2D and 3D rendering pipelines.
sakd 3y ago
The schedule looks very waterfall to me. I wonder if games are developed more iteratively/agile these days.
- parasubvert 3y ago
  Game development once you have the core technology in place is mostly iterative with content and play testing .. but requires a lot of waterfall foundational work - production design, sound , engine , core gameplay and graphical design ideas aren't really something that evolves from requirements discovered from a customer or PM that come at you gradually. It's more like lean product development of a car or other product: you have design targets and may do concurrent engineering / spikes to explore the design space iteratively, but eventually you converge on what will be achievable (or you get stuck in game development hell), which point its a matter of bug fix triage and endless tweaks from game testing feedback. It's iterative but not what one would call "agile"
green_man_lives 3y ago
Yeah the Gantt chart almost feels amateurish with how simple and optimistic it is. I would love to know how development actually went. I can't imagine building an entire game from scratch in just a year like that with such a small team.

As a gamer, I am pretty sure they didn't ;)

Well, it's a 12-month development schedule. This pitch was dated 1994. Diablo was released in 1997... doesn't seem too bad.

qingcharles 3y ago
I wrote the isometric engine for this game in about 1996: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abomination:_The_Nemesis_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abomination:_The_Nemesis_Proje... It was planned to be a totally 2D game in the vein of Diablo, but as this brief lays out, the amount of 2D assets required for all the rotations of the characters gets out of hand extremely quickly. After we started development we figured this out and decided to switch the characters to 3D and keep the backgrounds 2D. So I had to write a whole 3D engine and toolchain from scratch in two weeks. Those were the days. Still, took three years to get that pig out of the door.
- low_tech_love 3y ago
  Just a quick note, but cross-checking that article with your profile here makes it quite obvious who you are… I hope you’re ok with it?
- Salgat 3y ago
  I like the way Diablo 2 did it, where they created 3D models then had a script render to create the animation frames at all the different angles. I did something similar for my very amateurish attempt at a game, and it saved a massive amount of time. http://salgat.blogspot.com/2014/12/new-2d-sprite-model.html http://salgat.blogspot.com/2014/12/new-2d-sprite-model.html
  - nlawalker 3y ago
    Ah, that reminds me of this post about Hades: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1145360/discussions/0/1864993755183591660/#c1864993755185620425 https://steamcommunity.com/app/1145360/discussions/0/1864993... Just insane amounts of work and data. There's a cool video they did about the part of the process that comes before that - creating the models from the character artist's 2D art. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYJ6d1ifSqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYJ6d1ifSqA
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    We actually had it set up like that to start as we had some creatures built in Max, but the sheer amount of graphic data was far too much for the available RAM once you started added more beasties and some of them were the size of the screen. Switching to 3D gave us unlimited movement but bought us multiple other problems like low poly count, lack of solid integration with 2D backgrounds, and difficulties in combining huge 2D and 3D rendering pipelines.

sakd 3y ago

The schedule looks very waterfall to me. I wonder if games are developed more iteratively/agile these days.

parasubvert 3y ago
Game development once you have the core technology in place is mostly iterative with content and play testing .. but requires a lot of waterfall foundational work - production design, sound , engine , core gameplay and graphical design ideas aren't really something that evolves from requirements discovered from a customer or PM that come at you gradually. It's more like lean product development of a car or other product: you have design targets and may do concurrent engineering / spikes to explore the design space iteratively, but eventually you converge on what will be achievable (or you get stuck in game development hell), which point its a matter of bug fix triage and endless tweaks from game testing feedback. It's iterative but not what one would call "agile"

green_man_lives 3y ago

Yeah the Gantt chart almost feels amateurish with how simple and optimistic it is. I would love to know how development actually went. I can't imagine building an entire game from scratch in just a year like that with such a small team.