4 ms·
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
by 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 agoOh, 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"?
- louthy 4y ago> surprisingly hard, IIRC It was much harder pre-release, we had to tone it down! Although that's relatively normal when you get a room full of hardcore gamers making games :) > both the top-down RTS mechanic and the grunt-on-the-ground 3PS mechanic in the same game Yeah, that was something I particularly liked - it took a loooooooong time to get the squad control right, but I think it worked nicely. One interesting artefact is the sweeping camera movements (when switching units) and the follow camera algorithm was something I originally invented (probably reinvented) for Lunatik and I built it into Battalion Wars - so it bookended my time in games! > 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"? I thought I remembered this, and I thought they came to us, but the more I think about it the less sure I am of that fact! I'm now semi-thinking that we pitched the idea (not as Advance Wars) and they said "Let's make it Advance Wars 3D". But, yeah, passage of time, makes me question that. Sorry!