4 ms·
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
by 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 agoYou ever develop games for the Dreamcast? What was that like?
- louthy 4y agoYes, 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 agoThat'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 agoI'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.
- bennysomething 4y agoHa! I'm still playing wipeout (on retro arch though). I only bought a PS1 around 2010 as I'd been an N64 fanboy. I really had missed out. I heard the Saturn was originally designed as a 2d machine, sega saw what the PS1 was going to be capable of and bolted on 3d. Hence it was a mess. Is it true it could only use quads not triangles for polygons?
- louthy 4y ago> Is it true it could only use quads not triangles for polygons? Yep, but obviously a quad could become a triangle with two shared vertices. I never worked on the machine myself, and my memory is definitely fuzzy on this, but I seem to remember one of the things stressing out my colleagues was the poor transfer rate of getting textures into the video hardware, and the space being quite limited. So, all textures ended up being down-res'd by 50%, which just made everything look terrible. I'm sure there were other issues, that's just the one I can vaguely remember.
- moonchrome 4y agoWasn't trying to suggest it was premature (especially if you couldn't have more powerful devkit/device to prototype on) just envisioning someone burning long hours and stress to meet deadlines and then the work gets wasted because of various reasons. I've done that so often during early career - nowadays I'm much happier doing bare minimum untill it's absolutely necessary - I just don't have the 12 hours a day energy in me :)