3 ms·
This is a very good article. The bit at the end was especially strong: ----------------------- "Be disciplined about your build processes and what you put in
by lkrubner 4y ago
This is a very good article. The bit at the end was especially strong:
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"Be disciplined about your build processes and what you put in your source tree, so there is at least the possibility of making the project open source," said Carmack. "Think twice before adding dependencies that you can’t redistribute, and consider testing with stubbed out versions of the things you do use. Don’t do things in your code that wouldn’t be acceptable for the whole world to see.
"Most of game development is a panicky rush to make things stop falling apart long enough to ship, so it can be hard to dedicate time to fundamental software engineering, but there is a satisfaction to it, and it can pay off with less problematic late stage development."
The last phrase is quite the euphemism for "the game disappearing entirely, forever" and through Carmack's repeated exhortations and examples you get a sense of someone who's very frustrated at seeing things built on foundations that can ultimately prove self-defeating. We've entered an era where even many singleplayer games require some sort of server ping, while other games don't work at all if you're offline (which outside of MMOs has sometimes felt like industry overreach).
- jwmcq 4y agoI'd say it even makes a difference for single player games that don't "phone home" - I was actually thinking about this the other day in relation to the recent (and mostly welcome) trend of remastering older games, and how these releases seem to vary so widely in quality. Obviously I don't know for sure, and there will be other factors like money / time spent on remastering, but I'd still wager that e.g. the fact that the Metroid Prime remaster was able to add in a (seemingly) whole new lighting system and control scheme whereas the the GTA trilogy remaster couldn't even get half of its weather effects working probably speaks volumes to the respective code quality of their originals. Either way, I'm certain that I'd much rather work on porting / patching / remastering a game from a studio that's following the advice Carmack gives here.