Agile Game Development

"Stede Troisi" <stede@verizon.net> wrote in message news:<IUbmd.4539$k%4.3981@trndny07>...
> You need to understand Phlip that Game development is by far the most
> complicated form of programming there is! Period. Most of the games out
> there today are at the cutting-edge and do well compared to the lame crap
> business developers write.

Heh, I love this attitude. This is exactly why game development is
mired in the shit that it is right now. "Game development isn't
rocket science, it's /way/ harder than rocket science." LOL. Fuck
yeah!

> Maybe we should be learning something from them? Also, are you coming from
> the philosophy that XP and agile development is the "right" way to program?
> If so, I think game developers show it is at least not the only way.

Actually, what we can learn is how to make software better. The state
of the software in games is miserable, in general. Game studios
regularly ignore the masters; Brooks told us that adding more people
to a late project is death, yet we still do it. We all know that
developers' efficiency goes down the longer they go without rest, yet
we (as an industry) still "mandate" seven-day work weeks.

Game development is NOT rocket science. Game development is easy.
That's the only reason why we're able to do it with the hackery that
we did. If game development were actually hard, we wouldn't be able
to hack through it like we do, and either a sustainable process would
have come to us earlier, or we wouldn't be making games.

-tom!

> Game development is NOT rocket science. Game development is easy.
> That's the only reason why we're able to do it with the hackery that
> we did. If game development were actually hard, we wouldn't be able
> to hack through it like we do, and either a sustainable process would
> have come to us earlier, or we wouldn't be making games.

Tom, Easy? Can you at least say unique or specialized? I mean game
programmers have to know Physics and a heavy, heavy dose of math. That
doesn't even touch on the optimization wizardry they produce?

Maybe programming is hard when the field you are working in is hard.
Maybe a complex stock market simulator would also be hard. It just
seems to me that game programming requires a much deeper understanding
of the machine then a client/server application.


> Actually, what we can learn is how to make software better.

How when you cannot see that game development and traditional business
development is different?

> Are you a game developer? If so what commercial games have you
produced?

Stede

Paul Sinnett responding to Phlip:
> > (A studio simultaneously shipping two games generates trade
> > literature headlines.)
>
> I'm not sure where you got this impression. It does happen. (And
> probably more than you realise precisely because it does not
> generate trade literature headlines when it does?)

November 2004 issue of Game Developer.

-tom!

stedetro wrote:
> You have a good point but I still feel game development is in a field
> of its own. First, almost anyone can write a payroll system (think C3) but
> inventing cutting-edge game graphics and sounds that have never been done
> before is tough.

Show me a game that has done some sort of programming "cutting-edge"
graphics work that has never been done before. Maybe something from
id or Epic, but other than that, everyone's reinventing the wheel but
it's not exactly an unsolved problem anymore. (Please note that I
don't consider reinventing the wheel to be doing something that has
never been done before. Despite the fact that NotInventedHere is
rampant in the game industry, we're still all building on the work of
those who have come before us.)

What are some examples of cutting-edge game sounds that have never
been done before? How does the implementation of these sounds
illustrate technology that has never been done?

> Add all the other factors that go into game design and I think it would be
> almost impossible to do XP at companies like EA, Activision and Blizzard.

He's talking programming, not game design. BTW, Blizzard says they're
doing XP. Do we not believe them?

> It would be interesting to see a AAA title done with XP though.

The company that I work for will be starting down this path very soon.
We've already moved toward many agile processes, and each switch we
flip makes development go that much faster.

> Working 90 hour weeks minimum and enough teenagers to make 1 game a day
> for the next 500 years I don't think it will happen any time soon.

???

Anyway, it's not hard to think of systems that have much more
stringent requirements than game development. Consider the back-ends
for credit card companies. Despite perhaps billions of dollars in
transactions a day, I have never bought something on my credit card
and not ended up getting the bill for it. I can go to my credit
card's website and see my transaction history without waiting for more
than a couple of seconds. Consider the software behind any
spacecraft; sure, the tech isn't super-advanced, but the requirements
of not killing people make the software's functionality that much more
important.

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004, Tom Plunket wrote:

> never been done before. Despite the fact that NotInventedHere is

When WikiWords attack! :-)

> What are some examples of cutting-edge game sounds that have never
> been done before? How does the implementation of these sounds
> illustrate technology that has never been done?
>

*Hah*. That said, I'd love to see better reference material available on
the sort of stuff that goes into eg the average Lexicon or TC effects
unit. And one of these days I'll learn enough DSP to write a half-decent
softsynth, honest...

> Anyway, it's not hard to think of systems that have much more
> stringent requirements than game development.

Quite. Games might be a step above typical business code, but so're 101
other things.

--
flippa@flippac.org

Hi Tom,

You win this argument. I must agree. Blizard doing XP makes sense. Their
games are always better designed and contain less bugs then most of their
competitors.

Can I assume if Blizzard is doing XP they can't have programming sweatshops
like EA?

Would anything in your opinion need to be changed/amended to XP to make it
easier to fit into the game development lifecycle?

Stede

"Tom Plunket" <plunket@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:7d209056.0411161335.6442bb2f@posting.google.c om...
> stedetro wrote:
> > You have a good point but I still feel game development is in a field
> > of its own. First, almost anyone can write a payroll system (think C3)
but
> > inventing cutting-edge game graphics and sounds that have never been
done
> > before is tough.
>
> Show me a game that has done some sort of programming "cutting-edge"
> graphics work that has never been done before. Maybe something from
> id or Epic, but other than that, everyone's reinventing the wheel but
> it's not exactly an unsolved problem anymore. (Please note that I
> don't consider reinventing the wheel to be doing something that has
> never been done before. Despite the fact that NotInventedHere is
> rampant in the game industry, we're still all building on the work of
> those who have come before us.)
>
> What are some examples of cutting-edge game sounds that have never
> been done before? How does the implementation of these sounds
> illustrate technology that has never been done?
>
> > Add all the other factors that go into game design and I think it would
be
> > almost impossible to do XP at companies like EA, Activision and
Blizzard.
>
> He's talking programming, not game design. BTW, Blizzard says they're
> doing XP. Do we not believe them?
>
> > It would be interesting to see a AAA title done with XP though.
>
> The company that I work for will be starting down this path very soon.
> We've already moved toward many agile processes, and each switch we
> flip makes development go that much faster.
>
> > Working 90 hour weeks minimum and enough teenagers to make 1 game a day
> > for the next 500 years I don't think it will happen any time soon.
>
> ???
>
> Anyway, it's not hard to think of systems that have much more
> stringent requirements than game development. Consider the back-ends
> for credit card companies. Despite perhaps billions of dollars in
> transactions a day, I have never bought something on my credit card
> and not ended up getting the bill for it. I can go to my credit
> card's website and see my transaction history without waiting for more
> than a couple of seconds. Consider the software behind any
> spacecraft; sure, the tech isn't super-advanced, but the requirements
> of not killing people make the software's functionality that much more
> important.

In article <tjwmd.11685$tI3.5087@trndny01>,
Stede Troisi <stede@verizon.net> wrote:
>Can I assume if Blizzard is doing XP they can't have programming sweatshops
>like EA?

Reading some of the recent postings, it seems that the sweatshop
mentality at EA comes from a management attitude of "you will work
long hours." [I can't comment on the validity of those assumptions,
just presenting my limited understanding of them.] The number of hours
worked seems to be irrelevant to XP-- it can be combined with few or
many hours. A manager of a company using XP could very easily turn it
into a sweatshop. Or, the employees could do it to themselves-- giving
dirty looks to people who leave early.

Don't use hours worked as a plus/minus for XP. It's tangential, and
irrelevant. Silver bullets are usually tarnished.

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates - personal webpage http://www.visi.com/~nathan/
# Programmer at Pandemic Studios -- http://www.pandemicstudios.com/
# NOT speaking for Pandemic Studios. "Care not what the neighbors
# think. What are the facts, and to how many decimal places?" -R.A. Heinlein

Did you really work on Star Wars: Battlefront? If so, it is an amazing game.
I can't stop playing it! I wish it had its own level editor though and
worked with a joystick.

Stede

"Nathan Mates" <nathan@visi.com> wrote in message
news:419aa140$0$218$a1866201@visi.com...
> In article <tjwmd.11685$tI3.5087@trndny01>,
> Stede Troisi <stede@verizon.net> wrote:
> >Can I assume if Blizzard is doing XP they can't have programming
sweatshops
> >like EA?
>
> Reading some of the recent postings, it seems that the sweatshop
> mentality at EA comes from a management attitude of "you will work
> long hours." [I can't comment on the validity of those assumptions,
> just presenting my limited understanding of them.] The number of hours
> worked seems to be irrelevant to XP-- it can be combined with few or
> many hours. A manager of a company using XP could very easily turn it
> into a sweatshop. Or, the employees could do it to themselves-- giving
> dirty looks to people who leave early.
>
> Don't use hours worked as a plus/minus for XP. It's tangential, and
> irrelevant. Silver bullets are usually tarnished.
>
> Nathan Mates
> --
> <*> Nathan Mates - personal webpage http://www.visi.com/~nathan/
> # Programmer at Pandemic Studios -- http://www.pandemicstudios.com/
> # NOT speaking for Pandemic Studios. "Care not what the neighbors
> # think. What are the facts, and to how many decimal places?" -R.A.
Heinlein

Nathan Mates wrote:

> Reading some of the recent postings, it seems that the sweatshop
> mentality at EA comes from a management attitude of "you will work
> long hours." [I can't comment on the validity of those assumptions,
> just presenting my limited understanding of them.] The number of hours
> worked seems to be irrelevant to XP-- it can be combined with few or
> many hours. A manager of a company using XP could very easily turn it
> into a sweatshop. Or, the employees could do it to themselves-- giving
> dirty looks to people who leave early.
>
> Don't use hours worked as a plus/minus for XP. It's tangential, and
> irrelevant. Silver bullets are usually tarnished.

Suppose, instead of rescuing those meek programmers from their tyrant
bosses, or proving XP is good for everything, we instead set a goal of
"rapidly produce awesome games, and kick our competition's butt."

How would you (plural) target that goal?

--
Phlip
http://industrialxp.org/community/bi...UserInterfaces

"Nathan Mates" <nathan@visi.com> wrote in message
news:419aa140$0$218$a1866201@visi.com...

> The number of hours
> worked seems to be irrelevant to XP-- it can be combined with few or
> many hours. A manager of a company using XP could very easily turn it
> into a sweatshop. Or, the employees could do it to themselves-- giving
> dirty looks to people who leave early.
>
> Don't use hours worked as a plus/minus for XP. It's tangential, and
> irrelevant. Silver bullets are usually tarnished.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. There's quite a bit of evidence
that you can't work more than about six hours doing straight-out
TDD and pairing. If you try to, you start making so many many
mistakes from mental fatigue that it isn't worth it.

In other words, trying to get more than six hours a day out of
your developers with XP is going to send your velocity plumeting
toward zero.

The other two hours, of course, are e-mail, meetings and other
stuff that has to be done but isn't development work.

John Roth

>
> Nathan Mates
> --
> <*> Nathan Mates - personal webpage http://www.visi.com/~nathan/
> # Programmer at Pandemic Studios -- http://www.pandemicstudios.com/
> # NOT speaking for Pandemic Studios. "Care not what the neighbors
> # think. What are the facts, and to how many decimal places?" -R.A.
> Heinlein