{{
`${userDetail.user.displayName}${userDetail.user.cachedBungieGlobalDisplayNameCode ? `#${standardizeBungieGlobalCode(userDetail.user.cachedBungieGlobalDisplayNameCode)}` : ""}`}}
{{getUserClans()}}
2/5/2015 12:59:04 AM
5
Can anyone give any insight to game development? I'm obviously biased, but it seems level design is most of the work.
If character models, guns, animations, and all mechanics are already developed, what is left for design in new content?
Voice acting, all graphic interfaces for quests, a cutscene or two is all that is left no?
Once a landscape is created, and once everything is already developed, its a matter of setting up triggers. For example, spawn point here, here and here. Enemies spawn when you cross this line. Dinklebot says this line when X happens. Setting up triggers seems like a straightforward task.
Level creation on the other hand takes a huuuuuuge amount of time. All landscapes need to be created by hand by artists and take the most time.
Think about it, every FPS game ever created does not run out of spawn points, it runs out of landscape. ANY HALO gameplay time could be doubled by adding twice the maps, and adding spawn points. Do you think anyone said 'Nooooo, larger maps would harm the game and upset the players."? Nope, it probably came down to development time didn't allow creation of larger maps.
My point is, Bungie sold out to Activision with a huge contract. Unfortunately, the contract put the asinine requirement of all these DLCs for activision to suck us dry. Bungie scrambled to meet the contract by chopping off TDB and HoW and selling as DLC. Chopping off DLC created a huge disconnect to the story so the head writer left. Read the contract, Bonuses given to Bungie are based on playerbase, sales, and review scores. rather than making a great game, they are doing everything to meet the contract bonuses.
English
-
Made content for wow back when I was fully sighted it really is that easy, place x, what would you like x to do, what if z y c happens, do J. The fact that you could push atheon off was testament to the sheer lack of skill the devs had, the fact you could unlimited kneel crota, the sheer amount of clipping and mob activation errors still in the game. Yes, yes I could make a much better game, 99% of us could, we all as gamers have the ideas we just lack and OK art design department and a crap coding team.
-
Level design, and especially art testing, can be done by anyone with a brainstem. Art is the cheapest and easiest part of the game, because it's fungible. If you can draw a rock for Skyrim, you can draw a rock for Destiny. Art testing is so simple it could be done by children: "look around this thing and see if there's anything that looks stupid or broken"*. Because it's fungible, this means it can be outsourced to places where labour is cheap, like Eastern Europe. Actually making the game, on the other hand, is difficult, expensive, and must be done in-house. * they missed a few: you can see out the level just inside the first bunker on Mars, and there's a flying mushroom near where you spawn on Venus.
-
With the amount of sophistication game development is at right now. Don't you think it would be easy for them to populate the maps with enemies? I mean I used to make multiplayer maps for Half Life. I could also make single player maps, and pupulate them with enemies. Assign them a area to patrol. And even add a little bit of scripting. Me as a single person could do that. Do you think a huge team of developers like Bungie could not?
-
I get what you are saying, why aren't all the maps populated? I would (pulled from my butt) say they just left that stuff out because it doesn't really take up that much memory (compared to graphical maps), and easy to add the code later. Maybe the enemies would just be chillin taking up server capacity or something. Funny - my roommate created our college dorm in a HL MP map. Watching him sort of game me the idea that I had a rough idea how games were made.
-
Edited by Unforgiven: 2/5/2015 1:28:43 AMYea it really is made that way. Only the tools developers have vs the modders and map makers is a lot more complex and advanced level. Obviously it isn't that simple, but for a talented developer that has a single person assigned to a different task, it isn't that difficult to populate an area with enemies and assign them some level of scripting. The AI has already been programmed into the game, so that doesn't need any changing. Enemies will duck in and out of cover, try to flank you, etc. That's already in the game.
