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Ask a professional Game Dev any development or design questions that bother you
- Thread starter Farlander
- Start date
OP
OP
You would be correct, actually! When that is done it is usually for that purpose.
Thanks for the answer. Forza Horizon is a pretty good example of your mp photo mode point.
How do you feel about the hardware and your future games? Is there anything you're really excited to push as we move forward with new gen?
Thanks again for answering my last question. This one's a bit more straightforward.
What kind of costs are there when it comes to releasing and patching console games? Renting dev kits, cost to release on their platform, cost to patch on their platform? I've heard it can cost $10,000 to release one patch on a Playstation title?
What kind of costs are there when it comes to releasing and patching console games? Renting dev kits, cost to release on their platform, cost to patch on their platform? I've heard it can cost $10,000 to release one patch on a Playstation title?
OP
OP
The act of adding an option to change the font size usually is not difficult on its own.
The problems come from.... well, everything that it might affect.
Do subtitles fit on the screen or they have to be shifted up when the font is larger?
Do subtitles start intersecting with UI elements that were on the side (so additional wrapping has to be implemented).
Does inventory text fit in the UI or go out of screen or intersects with UI visuals?
If there are UI tabs do they still fit where they are?
etc. etc. etc.
EDIT: Oh, there is another tricky one, in what format the font is and if scaling up will keep the quality intact or some additional work has to be done to make sure it keeps being sharp!
Just want to tell the OP that this is a great idea of a thread and its been the most interesting to read in quite some time.
The amount of times I have had to explain this to people blows my mind. Developing something after the game goes gold and be accused of cutting it from the game just to sell it separately is so extremely far from the truth for a majority of games.
In terms of cutting something from a game...its never fun, but its almost always either to meet a deadline or because it just wasn't working out.
The amount of times I have had to explain this to people blows my mind. Developing something after the game goes gold and be accused of cutting it from the game just to sell it separately is so extremely far from the truth for a majority of games.
In terms of cutting something from a game...its never fun, but its almost always either to meet a deadline or because it just wasn't working out.
OP
OP
Would you be able to be more specific? That is a very big question!
In general though, both are important and I wouldn't say one is better than the other and they cover different needs of different players, and sometimes the needs of players change over time as well, which is especially prominent for MP games where very often the intrinsic motivation of going through enjoyable gameplay gets eventually if not replaced, then greatly supported by extrinsic motivations.
Not a fan of battle passes though, on a personal level. Obviously understand why they work, but I just don't like on a personal level anything that puts time pressure onto people, not just to make a purchase but also to make sure you keep playing enough so that purchase would get full value.
An incredibly specific question. I've played games all my life and off the top of my head only 1 game has had this feature.
So in Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories (Gameboy Advance). For whatever season if you save in say slot 4 > save later > it will default to slot 4 to save again.
It completely eliminates mashing the button and oversaving by accident. It's kinda incredible this design hasn't been mass adopted. Is there a specific reason in the GUI games can't auto point to which slot you loaded from/last saved?
So in Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories (Gameboy Advance). For whatever season if you save in say slot 4 > save later > it will default to slot 4 to save again.
It completely eliminates mashing the button and oversaving by accident. It's kinda incredible this design hasn't been mass adopted. Is there a specific reason in the GUI games can't auto point to which slot you loaded from/last saved?
First of all, I'm talking from my point of view, I'm no programmer but an audio guy which also does integration.
Regarding the engines discussion, I think people don't realise how adaptable they are and that they aren't a closed set of tools which you can't modify, so you have to decide on a specific engine because of that.
I worked on a game in Unreal engine and the devs modified the engine itself so gravity worked on several directions as they intended for their game.
Also I worked on several games on Unity and the devs created specific audio tools and scripts which they shared amongst all their games and I used them and even created new ones using their existing toolset and adapted them to specific audio situations overlooked from their programmers.
I also used middleware options like FMOD so you can create the exact same sound sets and use them on either engine, because both of them support it.
Regarding the engines discussion, I think people don't realise how adaptable they are and that they aren't a closed set of tools which you can't modify, so you have to decide on a specific engine because of that.
I worked on a game in Unreal engine and the devs modified the engine itself so gravity worked on several directions as they intended for their game.
Also I worked on several games on Unity and the devs created specific audio tools and scripts which they shared amongst all their games and I used them and even created new ones using their existing toolset and adapted them to specific audio situations overlooked from their programmers.
I also used middleware options like FMOD so you can create the exact same sound sets and use them on either engine, because both of them support it.
You're right, I wrote that question in much less time than it deserved.
The main thing that's been bugging me for a while is the stopping power of extrinsic motivators. They have a tendency to kill someone's interest in continuing to do something once the extrinsic reward is received, even if they weren't originally in it for the reward. I've experienced it myself, as I'm sure many have. Based on this, you'd think that when a game needs to keep its players around, it would steer toward intrinsic motivators and away from the extrinsic.
So I'm a little bit puzzled by the modern design standards for playerbase retention, which usually seem to revolve around giving players a constant stream of new extrinsic motivators so that they don't stop playing due to the fulfillment of the previous extrinsic motivators, and so on and so on. It strikes me as a high-effort solution that perpetuates the very problem it solves.
So that's what I'm wondering about. Is there some pressing need to do things this way? Older games were able to sustain communities without these methods. Is that not viable anymore for some reason?
These are more specifically questions about your time working on WD:L, as I'm assuming you weren't working at Ubi Toronto but either the Kyiv or Bucharest office...
How was responsibility over different parts of the game split across remote studios that weren't Toronto to ensure everyone was able to work effectively?
How was communication and task delegation between teams that were remote from each other handled, particularly for unplanned tasks or day-to-day info (e.g. "This particular feature doesn't work the way I expected, someone in another office is responsible for it and I don't know exactly who")?
Were there dependencies on other teams that were remote from you, and if so how did you deal with them? What sort of problems did you face?
How was responsibility over different parts of the game split across remote studios that weren't Toronto to ensure everyone was able to work effectively?
How was communication and task delegation between teams that were remote from each other handled, particularly for unplanned tasks or day-to-day info (e.g. "This particular feature doesn't work the way I expected, someone in another office is responsible for it and I don't know exactly who")?
Were there dependencies on other teams that were remote from you, and if so how did you deal with them? What sort of problems did you face?
You say you're in the mobile space now. What do you think about the recent furore with Diablo Immortal's monetisation model, and is there ever a point when you're designing a F2P mobile game when ethical considerations are seriously discussed? I'm thinking of a video that was posted in one of the Diablo threads where a designer outlined ways to squeeze as much money from consumers as possible, using all sorts of psychological tricks.
I don't want to imply that you are working on a game like that, or to call into question your integrity or ethics, but I am curious if that side of things is ever considered during the development of games, and what impact it might have on how it is designed.
I don't want to imply that you are working on a game like that, or to call into question your integrity or ethics, but I am curious if that side of things is ever considered during the development of games, and what impact it might have on how it is designed.
I just wanted to say thank you again for this response, i really appreciate it and it helps me understand things a bit better. :)
Jumping is mostly a contextual action and there are often very few reasons to jump, especially when playing MP FPS games, as jumping is a disruptive character state that has negative attributes associated with it. Lower accuracy, higher bullet spread, slower aiming down sight, inability to do in-air movement (on most games), and similar.
The likelihood of jumping is far lower than many other more important actions a game may have, which is why those actions instead tend to be placed on the back buttons of a controller.
For Battlefield specifically: aiming, firing, throwing explosives, and communicating with squadmates.
yeah, I've worked on heaps of projects where a chunk of the Art and design team starts on DLC once the main game is content complete because theres months of testing and refinements before release and the majority of that relies on other disciplines.
Roughly speaking, there are 3 main ones, which each of these split into multiple smaller ones that differ per company / studio / organisation. The time spent in each is very different for each game and studio.
1. Preproduction
- The phase during which you define what you want to build and how to build it.
- Lots of tech exploration, direction exploration, feature prototyping, workflow improvements and similar.
2. Production
- The phase during which you build your game.
* Alpha / feature complete - hitting this milestone usually means all of the features you would like to ship now exist in software - before hitting this you mostly prioritise tasks.
* Beta / content complete - hitting this milestone means you have created the content you would like to create (different from features) - before hitting this you balance between tasks and bugs.
* Final / content lock - hitting this milestone means you have something that can be shipped, and only certification work remains - before hitting this milestone you exclusively focus on bugs.
3. Live service / post launch / sustain (different names for the same thing)
- The phase during which you support your game after it has released.
How do you guys go about not having the player break the game and being stuck to the point where they have to start the whole game over?
For example:
A survival horror game like Resident evil where items are scarce. What if I use up all my ammo, health, etc. Will this trigger the engine to drop more items or temporarily make the enemies weaker to balance things out until you gain a certain amount of items back?
For example:
A survival horror game like Resident evil where items are scarce. What if I use up all my ammo, health, etc. Will this trigger the engine to drop more items or temporarily make the enemies weaker to balance things out until you gain a certain amount of items back?
Now that's awesome because that's actually the exact creation I was thinking of haha. Didn't know it they eventually ended up working there to!
A very minor question but I always wondered how developers test or decide on the size/type of fonts in the UI of games. My working assumption is that there's probably some set of established design standards about the ideal ratios relative to screen space. But I'd be curious to know if this actually changes very much during development and play-testing or if its just tweaked a little here and there.
A lot of games nowadays tend to provide more accessibility options in terms of being able to scale or modify the default values, but I find they tend to be more 'all or nothing' in terms of being global settings. As I get older it's getting a bit more frustrating when only a few individual elements of the HUD or menus are too small but I can't make them readable without blowing up everything else too.
A lot of games nowadays tend to provide more accessibility options in terms of being able to scale or modify the default values, but I find they tend to be more 'all or nothing' in terms of being global settings. As I get older it's getting a bit more frustrating when only a few individual elements of the HUD or menus are too small but I can't make them readable without blowing up everything else too.
Thanks for the response.
I really do sympathize with devs, as I can imagine how ridiculous the workload is. I am a hobbyist artist, and I know how janky my work lookalike when its not finished and no matter how good it comes out looking, I know what I could have done better.
I asked my question because I am also keenly aware of how high the stakes are these days. The amount of money that gets sunk into a project, and how entitled and unforgiving gamers have become these days. I would think a delay until its right approach would be better. And while understanding that may to be an option for foremost devs, its nice to have some insight on how they feel about it.
As weird as this may be to say... it's nice knowing that when there is something broken or not quite right in a game I am laying and I am fuming over it, there's probably a dev somewhere losing sleep about the very same thing lol. Makes me feel better as opposed to the alternative feeling of the dev going "just give me you fuking money and deal with it" lol.
I can kind of answer this, at least from my experiences as I am sure it may be done differently in other places. Typically, game text/fonts are decided on by a combination of the UI/UX/Localization teams. Usually those teams are all about readability, especially for localization. A lot of thought is put into it (like if the screen goes white how do you make the white text stand out? Even small things like that are thought about). Its especially important if you give the player the ability to choose their language of choice in terms of VO.
Now in terms of changing text size settings, its kind of a nightmare as it can affect UI and text "overflowing" off-screen. Even in games where you have auto line breaks it doesn't fix every instance or even look necessarily good. There is usually a balance that has to be struck within the allotted time, budget, and QA bandwidth to be able to account for.
Now its something development teams work hard at to give a variety of options if they can, but remember this is just one element that takes so much time to implement and test among a sea of other things that need to be implemented and tested.
That makes a lot of sense, I can see why the global scaling would be an ideal compromise point in terms of safely balancing the cost/benefit side of things. It would take an excessive amount of investment to allow the user to tweak everything individually without breaking the UI which was designed around a a very fixed scale/proportion in the first place.
Thinking about it more, I realize I've experienced the issue in microcosm with setting up custom UIs in games like WoW. You size up your action bar, but then it's overlapping on your player frames, so you move those, but then it covers up part of your chat screen. And by the time you move everything and re-size it, suddenly you realize you're taking up way more of the screen with your HUD than you wanted to.
I think the Miles Morales game had some individualized size settings, but I think it was specific to icons as opposed to text. I'd have to boot it up to doublecheck.
I feel like any question that comes to my mind would basically turn into a rant about some popular, recurring feature in modern game design that I don't like.
Minimaps/omniscient GPS navigators, unlimited/unrestricted fast travel available at any point anywhere, excessive amount of loot littering the game world at every two steps... That sort of thing.
I guess a way to summarize it in the most generalized form could be "Why system designers can't accept that not everything that is immediately convenient for the player is necessarily an improvement to the game experience?
Is this stuff even discussed/debated internally or everyone just accepts that the "typical triple A" template set by the usual big franchises is simply the way to go?
Minimaps/omniscient GPS navigators, unlimited/unrestricted fast travel available at any point anywhere, excessive amount of loot littering the game world at every two steps... That sort of thing.
I guess a way to summarize it in the most generalized form could be "Why system designers can't accept that not everything that is immediately convenient for the player is necessarily an improvement to the game experience?
Is this stuff even discussed/debated internally or everyone just accepts that the "typical triple A" template set by the usual big franchises is simply the way to go?
Are there times when you are surprised critic reviews didn't pick up on a flaw in a game that personally bothered you? Like an aspect of game design reviewing well initially only to be criticized by the players after release?
Also, how solid are the feature lists for patches and how far out are they usually scheduled before a game even comes out?
Also, how solid are the feature lists for patches and how far out are they usually scheduled before a game even comes out?
For someone with 0 programming skills, but would like to fiddle around with some game developing engines, what do you as a professional recommend?
Also, this is for the staff of ERA. Please encourage more devs to do stuff like this here. It would be fucking amazing to make these regular events on the forums.
Also, this is for the staff of ERA. Please encourage more devs to do stuff like this here. It would be fucking amazing to make these regular events on the forums.
How easy is it to steer the design direction of a game once a project starts? (Things like movement speed, traversal elements, combat) I ask this, because I am curious if a game-changing title like Breath of the Wild came out, how quickly could you take influence from a game like that? Would that cause everything to break and take too much time?
Most of the time that's exactly what it is. That's why a lot of the time when you take an older PC or emulated console game and make it run at a resolution or aspect ratio it wasn't intended to run at, you'll see these overlay effects break and only cover part of the screen.
That would be a question that depends entirely on the game in question, budget and timescale flexibilities, development progress, how practial adjustment is, etc.
It definitely happens that a big hit drops that might lead other studios to review their in-development products and adapt rapidly.
Generally, smaller studios are often able to react more quickly and adapt to change, but larger studios, while slower to move and have more logistical hurdles to overcome, have more money if they really want to do something.
So, I would answer that it absolutely happens but it probably isn't that common; at least where more substsntial change is concerned.
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As someone solely looking from the outside in. I hear that making rope physics in games is by far the most PAINFUL and difficult experience from a development standpoint. Why do you think that is?
You take the Sniper Elite 5 approach where the invader can go into photo mode and essentially drone around at max FOV to find the sniper with the exploit LOL
that'll surely get patched out asap
How labyrinthine is the process to fix small errors, like typos, or say, music loop point errors? Because some games, there will be a few pretty egregious ones that just never get fixed even after a year or more. Have you ever been blocked from fixing simple things by higher-ups?
Edit: I should clarify that when I say egregious, I mean things like large text on an in-game billboard or such. Not, say, a random sentence in a visual novel somewhere.
Edit: I should clarify that when I say egregious, I mean things like large text on an in-game billboard or such. Not, say, a random sentence in a visual novel somewhere.
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I've been thinking about this since the other thread earlier. While sometimes leaks happen due to malicious staff, and thats an easy conclusion to jump to but sometimes it isn't.
I've learned things a few times from other people in the industry. Typically stuff thats unimportant and wouldn't affect anyone.
However, one time I "learned" some big news before the official announcement. Not because this person outright told me - they didn't explicitly say. But while talking about work they innocently said enough that I was able to put 2 and 2 together a few hours later and thought "what were you thinking?!?". People are human at the end of the day and info or hints at stuff can make their way out there.
Then, its entirely on the integrity of the other person to keep their mouths shut.
I personally place the blame entirely with the person who publishes the leak. Whether the leak was intentional or accidental, explicit or you're just told something that allows you to figure something else out, the moment someone takes that information public you're putting peoples careers at risk. So its those who make it public that piss me off.
While it shouldn't happen its much easier for typos or grammar errors to occur in text heavy games than people give credit for. When you're in the flow of reading, the brain tends to auto correct errors which can make typos invisible.
Testing is hard and I have the upmost of respect for testers, even when they miss stuff. They get a lot of flack and little recognition for the labourous work they do.
Note: I'm an independent game developer, so my words can be taken with a grain of salt.
The developer who handled the saving system UX thought to implement it, that's it. Octopath Traveler, for example, also does this.
Heheh
EDIT: Oh, and thank you for the thread, as well, to the other developers in this thread. It's very interesting to read up on professional developers' experiences and take some of your knowledge, haha.
The developer who handled the saving system UX thought to implement it, that's it. Octopath Traveler, for example, also does this.
Heheh
EDIT: Oh, and thank you for the thread, as well, to the other developers in this thread. It's very interesting to read up on professional developers' experiences and take some of your knowledge, haha.
Unity was what I used for most of my projects in college and I still find it to be my favorite for personal projects as well. It's very easy to get up and running with some basic functionality.
With that said, it sort of depends what you want to be doing. If you don't want to do any programming Unreal has Blueprint which lets you build game logic in a way that's a bit easier to pick up and run with. If you DO want to start going down the path of game programming I think Unity is great start as it uses C# which I would say is a perfect programming language to jump in with.
I have two questions - one very specific and one more related to process.
The specific question is about clipping. What is typically done to resolve clipping issues? Is it a matter of assigning a "hard" border on a polygon to make sure other objects collide properly? It feels like it happens a lot on custom models like gear that changes while a character is wearing it. Where is the line typically between "this is fixable" and "this isn't with fixing"?
The other question is - in your experience how often is peer review done?
The specific question is about clipping. What is typically done to resolve clipping issues? Is it a matter of assigning a "hard" border on a polygon to make sure other objects collide properly? It feels like it happens a lot on custom models like gear that changes while a character is wearing it. Where is the line typically between "this is fixable" and "this isn't with fixing"?
The other question is - in your experience how often is peer review done?
Why does no game simply boot at the title screen? I don't want to look at crappy logos for a minute until I can load my save. Like, I get it the first time you boot, but after the game detects a save file, it should just skip to the title screen.
Absolutely amazing response. I'll still swear by bumper jumper for life, but I'll never again wonder why it isn't default. Thanks for taking the time to share the insight.
We've recently seen games like Halo Infinite and Battlefield 2042, to name a few, crash and burn after going through a very tough development cycle.
What does it actually take as a team to convince those in power to delay a major release so a game can avoid these types of issues?
It just seems this continues to happen over and over again which ultimately hurts the staff that worked so hard on making these games a reality.
What does it actually take as a team to convince those in power to delay a major release so a game can avoid these types of issues?
It just seems this continues to happen over and over again which ultimately hurts the staff that worked so hard on making these games a reality.
Having worked projects that got shoved out the door, tanked on reception, got decent by the first update but by then everybody stopped playing, there is a multitude of reasons games can get shoved out in a broken state.
One particular project went off the rails because the lead engineer grossly underestimated the work it would take. Estimating projects is basically like trying to predict the exact price of the S&P 500 6 months in the future, but even taking that into account they were way off. When it became clear that no amount of crunching was going to make this thing ship on time, they did delay it and added more people on the team. Adding more people to the team does not necessarily make things go faster because those new people need to be brought up to speed with the code base and asset pipelines, which takes away time from the current team could be spending on shipping features.
As expected, the project was still way off the rails despite the crunching so we got another delay. The biggest problem we had in terms of getting yet another delay was that the second delay required a contract negotiation with a third party to push back the agreed upon timeline which they were very much not happy about. There was no way they would agree to another delay.
Even without that contract, getting a delay isn't easy because delays are not free. Even if you only delay things one quarter, 3 months of a single mid level engineer's salary + benefits is tens of thousands of dollars. Imagine how much a team of engineers, artists, designers, QA, etc costs for just 3 months.
At a certain point the cost of delaying it (because you don't know how many times the project has already been delayed by the time you heard about it) outweighs the potential benefit.
are you actively trying to brick the thread lol
edit: wanted to chip in that despite my nice, long rant a couple days ago about being burnt out w.r.t. game dev and explaining game dev stuff being a special kind of hell, if there's any questions people have specifically with music and audio pipelines for games i'll try to answer best i can. tag me specifically so i see it
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I agree. I should clarify that when I say egregious, I mean things like large text on an in-game billboard or such. Not, say, a random sentence in a visual novel somewhere.
For touch game devs: the best active action experiences on iPads have by far been Bastion, Geometry Wars 3 and the most intuitive controlling one was Wayward Souls. Broken down it's left pane for movement and right pane for taps and slides, using one or two fingers.
Barring the question of accessibility and dexterous movement with two hands:
Why didn't we get the Halo console FPS paradigm shift in touch games with, I guess, something like Wayward Souls? Move, attack, fire projectiles, open doors and other environmental actions and interactions without having to move ones eyes to look at the screen controls for the required action button or hope blind tapping hits the correct action button.
Why are we still met with a ridiculous number of action icons which will never feel intuitive, and actually may be a different form of gaming input prowess and ability significantly/entirely until some incredible microhaptic feedback is invented for consumer products?
Barring the question of accessibility and dexterous movement with two hands:
Why didn't we get the Halo console FPS paradigm shift in touch games with, I guess, something like Wayward Souls? Move, attack, fire projectiles, open doors and other environmental actions and interactions without having to move ones eyes to look at the screen controls for the required action button or hope blind tapping hits the correct action button.
Why are we still met with a ridiculous number of action icons which will never feel intuitive, and actually may be a different form of gaming input prowess and ability significantly/entirely until some incredible microhaptic feedback is invented for consumer products?
I can tell you how I did it in Alien: Isolation - part of the script when you opened a container to look for loot would look at your ammunition and health levels. If it noticed that you had low health, and no medkits, and not all of the necessary components for a medkit, it would start a timer (I think a minute or two?) and if that timer had expired and you were still in that state, the script would force-spawn some medkit components into the container before anything else had the chance to spawn. Similarly for pistol ammo (but not other types of ammo) - there was a bit of script where if you had no ammo for a period of time it'd force spawn a little bit beyond the normal item system.
So yeah, if you want to avoid situations like the player really screwing their gamestate because they run out of ammo, you can do it with some relatively simple scripting. But that depends on what kind of game you are looking to make.