4 ms·

>Then the game was canned by Eidos. I've seen this pattern so many times in my time doing development (although I haven't done game development professionally)

>Then the game was canned by Eidos. I've seen this pattern so many times in my time doing development (although I haven't done game development professionally), and why I tell people to avoid early development optimization. Trying to get things working correct and fast at the same time is an insane ammount of work, by the time you're done the requirements probably changed or the project flops, you'd be better off just getting something to satisfy minimum requirements first then make it fast.

louthy 4y ago
To a certain extent I agree with you. But when the game doesn't even fit in the RAM of a development system (4mb), never mind the 2mb of a real Playstation, or movement is 5 frames a second rather than 30/60 it's still very hard to get gameplay aspects right. And when the graphics engine, level editors, etc. don't even exist yet, you're not making any game! In the 10 years I was in the industry (pre the era of off the shelf engines) I never saw a single title in a playable state until the last 6 months of the project, and sometimes later. My era was PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, original Xbox, Gamecube. I left as the PS3 was in its pre-release period. I think for most games the dynamics are quite well known, and so it's less problematic if it's started later. But, in this case none of the dynamics of the game were worked out at any point, so it was doomed to fail. On Lunatik I wasn't responsible for the game dynamics, I had one job: make the engine, and make it as fast as humanly possible so that the game and level designers can make a decent game. So, it's not either or, but it does take time to have the initial version that the team can work with (my C reference engine mentioned before). One final point is that it's less about early optimisation and more about poor management, short timescales, and the balance of cash given to a team when signing with a publisher. When the money runs out, then you're in the lap of the publisher gods - it can go either way for many different reasons, some of which might have nothing to do with the game. I suspect it's more professional now (and with better tooling), back then it was still pretty much a cottage industry: quite a large cottage industry, sure, but still pretty amateurish in terms of project management and planning. There wasn't a title I worked on that didn't overrun.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  You ever develop games for the Dreamcast? What was that like?
  - louthy 4y ago
    Yes, although not a full title. It was the period between PS1 and PS2 and no publishers were committing until they knew what was happening with PS2 (because of the outrageous success of the PS1). I built a bezier-patch based engine for it and physics system, and we produced two fun little game demos to try and get publisher funding, but it didn't come. It was super easy and fun to develop for (which after the pain of the Saturn was a relief). It's a real shame it didn't get more support, it just arrived at the wrong time.
    - bennysomething 4y ago
      That's interesting. Would it have been better if sega had wait until post PS2? The Dreamcast was the last console I loved. I bought one on launch day. But I think looking back it was always doomed. I can't recall properly but I think it was someone in EA or high up in sega America who tried to persuade sega Japan that they wouldn't survive with the type of games they were planning for the Dreamcast. Oh well in those two years the Dreamcast had some of my favourite games.
      - louthy 4y ago
        I'm not sure if delaying it would have made any difference. PS1 was a zeitgeist machine, especially with titles like wipEout. I remember going to underground nightclubs in London and there'd be a chillout room with Playstations in. The Dreamcast just wasn't cool enough I guess. I think Sega also seriously fucked up with the Saturn. There were lots of claims of it being more powerful than the PS1, but nobody could extract that power really. A Saturn dev at a studio I worked at had a complete breakdown just trying to keep up with what I was doing on the PS1. I feel they burned a lot of industry bridges with that machine. I'd have loved to see the Dreamcast succeed because I'd always been a big fan of Sega, but I think a lot of things just went awry for them.
AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
I see engine re-use quite alot in game development, though, so there's always the chance that if you make a really bang-up engine, it might eventually see the light of day in another project, even if the original one was canned. In the context of Eidos, for example, I seem to recall that Gex 3's game engine (which was a mediocre game at best) ended up being re-used/tweaked for Soul Reaver (which was an amazing game).
- louthy 4y ago
  Now for sure, but back then any generalisation would potentially cost clock cycles or memory, so an engine would be fine tuned for the game in front of us. It would be entirely possible to take that engine and use it for a similar game, but then you hit the problem of needing to extend it for the new game - which is hard when you've optimised it to the nth degree and you can't see the wood for the trees. One thing I saw after I'd worked on 'Fireblade' for PS2 & XBox [1], we took its engine and tooling (which had also been used for 'Reign of Fire' [2] in parallel) for our next title 'Battalion Wars' for Nintendo. After 6 months of fighting the system we downed tools for 3 months just to refactor everything. It was the first time I'd seen a real aggressive, whole team, refactor - and it worked, but really the engine & tooling just weren't right for the game and shouldn't have been taken without a commitment to making it fit-for-purpose for the game we were about to build. It cost us time at the end of the project, and for a while we weren't sure if Nintendo would keep funding it - luckily it worked out (and is actually the game I'm most proud of working on). But yeah, once the consoles got more powerful and had more memory it was possible to start building core tech for multiple games, which is what I did for the last 4 or 5 years of my time in games. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Blade_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Blade_(video_game) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Fire_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Fire_(video_game) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion_Wars
  - AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
    Oh, wow, Battalion Wars! I never managed to beat it (surprisingly hard, IIRC), but I remember being blown away that a developer had actually tried to implement both the top-down RTS mechanic and the grunt-on-the-ground 3PS mechanic in the same game. I don't think anyone had really tried that since Dungeon Keeper, and rarely since. Off the beaten path here, but just for my own curiosity: did Nintendo seek you guys out when they wanted a third party to try their hand at the license, or did you go to them with the pitch for "3D Advance Wars in real time"?
jayd16 4y ago
>correct and fast And usually you only need 'mostly correct.'
djmips 4y ago
It's too difficult to try and re-engineer at the end to make it fast. Imagine if we used this approach for making airplanes or bridges. You have to engineer to a spec from the start.

louthy 4y ago

To a certain extent I agree with you. But when the game doesn't even fit in the RAM of a development system (4mb), never mind the 2mb of a real Playstation, or movement is 5 frames a second rather than 30/60 it's still very hard to get gameplay aspects right. And when the graphics engine, level editors, etc. don't even exist yet, you're not making any game! In the 10 years I was in the industry (pre the era of off the shelf engines) I never saw a single title in a playable state until the last 6 months of the project, and sometimes later. My era was PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, original Xbox, Gamecube. I left as the PS3 was in its pre-release period. I think for most games the dynamics are quite well known, and so it's less problematic if it's started later. But, in this case none of the dynamics of the game were worked out at any point, so it was doomed to fail. On Lunatik I wasn't responsible for the game dynamics, I had one job: make the engine, and make it as fast as humanly possible so that the game and level designers can make a decent game. So, it's not either or, but it does take time to have the initial version that the team can work with (my C reference engine mentioned before). One final point is that it's less about early optimisation and more about poor management, short timescales, and the balance of cash given to a team when signing with a publisher. When the money runs out, then you're in the lap of the publisher gods - it can go either way for many different reasons, some of which might have nothing to do with the game. I suspect it's more professional now (and with better tooling), back then it was still pretty much a cottage industry: quite a large cottage industry, sure, but still pretty amateurish in terms of project management and planning. There wasn't a title I worked on that didn't overrun.

Melatonic 4y ago
You ever develop games for the Dreamcast? What was that like?
- louthy 4y ago
  Yes, although not a full title. It was the period between PS1 and PS2 and no publishers were committing until they knew what was happening with PS2 (because of the outrageous success of the PS1). I built a bezier-patch based engine for it and physics system, and we produced two fun little game demos to try and get publisher funding, but it didn't come. It was super easy and fun to develop for (which after the pain of the Saturn was a relief). It's a real shame it didn't get more support, it just arrived at the wrong time.
  - bennysomething 4y ago
    That's interesting. Would it have been better if sega had wait until post PS2? The Dreamcast was the last console I loved. I bought one on launch day. But I think looking back it was always doomed. I can't recall properly but I think it was someone in EA or high up in sega America who tried to persuade sega Japan that they wouldn't survive with the type of games they were planning for the Dreamcast. Oh well in those two years the Dreamcast had some of my favourite games.
    - louthy 4y ago
      I'm not sure if delaying it would have made any difference. PS1 was a zeitgeist machine, especially with titles like wipEout. I remember going to underground nightclubs in London and there'd be a chillout room with Playstations in. The Dreamcast just wasn't cool enough I guess. I think Sega also seriously fucked up with the Saturn. There were lots of claims of it being more powerful than the PS1, but nobody could extract that power really. A Saturn dev at a studio I worked at had a complete breakdown just trying to keep up with what I was doing on the PS1. I feel they burned a lot of industry bridges with that machine. I'd have loved to see the Dreamcast succeed because I'd always been a big fan of Sega, but I think a lot of things just went awry for them.

AdmiralAsshat 4y ago

I see engine re-use quite alot in game development, though, so there's always the chance that if you make a really bang-up engine, it might eventually see the light of day in another project, even if the original one was canned. In the context of Eidos, for example, I seem to recall that Gex 3's game engine (which was a mediocre game at best) ended up being re-used/tweaked for Soul Reaver (which was an amazing game).

louthy 4y ago
Now for sure, but back then any generalisation would potentially cost clock cycles or memory, so an engine would be fine tuned for the game in front of us. It would be entirely possible to take that engine and use it for a similar game, but then you hit the problem of needing to extend it for the new game - which is hard when you've optimised it to the nth degree and you can't see the wood for the trees. One thing I saw after I'd worked on 'Fireblade' for PS2 & XBox [1], we took its engine and tooling (which had also been used for 'Reign of Fire' [2] in parallel) for our next title 'Battalion Wars' for Nintendo. After 6 months of fighting the system we downed tools for 3 months just to refactor everything. It was the first time I'd seen a real aggressive, whole team, refactor - and it worked, but really the engine & tooling just weren't right for the game and shouldn't have been taken without a commitment to making it fit-for-purpose for the game we were about to build. It cost us time at the end of the project, and for a while we weren't sure if Nintendo would keep funding it - luckily it worked out (and is actually the game I'm most proud of working on). But yeah, once the consoles got more powerful and had more memory it was possible to start building core tech for multiple games, which is what I did for the last 4 or 5 years of my time in games. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Blade_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Blade_(video_game) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Fire_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Fire_(video_game) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion_Wars
- AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
  Oh, wow, Battalion Wars! I never managed to beat it (surprisingly hard, IIRC), but I remember being blown away that a developer had actually tried to implement both the top-down RTS mechanic and the grunt-on-the-ground 3PS mechanic in the same game. I don't think anyone had really tried that since Dungeon Keeper, and rarely since. Off the beaten path here, but just for my own curiosity: did Nintendo seek you guys out when they wanted a third party to try their hand at the license, or did you go to them with the pitch for "3D Advance Wars in real time"?

jayd16 4y ago

>correct and fast And usually you only need 'mostly correct.'

djmips 4y ago

It's too difficult to try and re-engineer at the end to make it fast. Imagine if we used this approach for making airplanes or bridges. You have to engineer to a spec from the start.