|
September 27, 2002 - Before we begin, we'd like to note that this
game was called Project Ego up until just a few days ago. As such, you
will still see it referred to as Project Ego instead of it's true, final
name, Fable.
Developing a computer game is a tricky business. On the one hand, it's a fantastically
liberating art form, in many senses devoid of physical limitations, and the only
form of creative expression that can truly interact with the viewer. Then again,
it's a mammoth engineering effort, with hundreds of thousands of lines of code,
tens of thousands of pieces of art work, sounds, etc that not only need to be implemented,
but also all need organising and testing. If just one of these 'resources' is put
into the game wrongly, it may well cause problems with the entire game.
In the perfect world of our brotherly collective-consciousness, organising all of
this is marvellously simple. We're from a programming background, of course, and
hence we pride ourselves on our ability to break things down to their logical components
and come up with perfect, theoretical solutions to problems. When thinking in this
way, Big Blue Box is a hive of Borg drones, each one working in perfect harmony
with the next.
Art Drone 1 creates a piece of artwork, or a 'game resource' as the Carter Borg
prefers to call it. Art Drone 1 tests the resources in game to make sure they work,
before handing them over to Lead Artist Drone 1, who checks them to make sure they
fit in with the style of the game. He then passes them over to the Resource Integrator
Drone. He's in charge of turning these meshes, textures, etc into an object which
can actually do stuff in game. Once he has done his bit, he adds everything to the
central game database, from which a dedicated computer continually churns out new
versions of the game.
This is an elegant, foolproof system, a conveyor belt process where artistic talent
goes in at one end, and creatures, landscapes, buildings, etc pop in to the game
the other. It's a serene, beautiful picture of efficiency.
|
|
However, if you'd popped your head into our office yesterday you'd have found Simon
chain-smoking menthol cigarettes, Matt's body convulsing with a thousand simultaneous
nervous twitches, Julian and Adam shrieking at each other about how the other one
shouldn't bother looking the next time he crossed the road, while our lead artist,
Ian, was falling on his knees screaming 'Why the rubbery &%*# isn't the &*#%ing
Balverine still not working you useless bunch of monkeys', in front of a whiteboard
listing the odds on which member of the team was going to 'crack' next.
|
We're currently working on the E3 demo of our game which, this year (2002), not
only involves a working, playable version of the software, but also a presentation
video which quite a few people are going to see. Being your typical overly proud
and protective developers, we get insanely precious about what people see from our
game, and we want everything to look absolutely perfect. What this generally means
is that we try and cram in several months worth of stuff into the game in about
a week, right up until (and frequently beyond) the last minute. 21 separate people
putting new stuff into the game simultaneously has an interesting effect on our
lovely, foolproof processes.
But we wouldn't have it any other way. There's nothing in the world like the sense
of achievement you get when you've come through an intense, ulcerating experience
like this, and you've delivered something you're happy with. In addition, sickening
though it sounds, it's also a great way for a team to pull together, and do the
whole bonding thing. We now know more about Gianni's sex life than we ever wanted
to.
So far we've had no casualties to stress. Although Kaspar's unwavering, piercing
stare is beginning to scare me. No, put the angle-poise lamp down Kaspar. Put it
down, I don't want a halogen bulb stuck there...
|