SvennoJ said:
potato_hamster said:
Well unlike the film industry, not every problem is solvable with time and money. Sometimes a game feature is too ambititious and too innovative, and there's just no way to make it work within the hardware constraints if they can make it work at all. Sometimes a gameplay mechanic that the game was based around is plain isn't fun no matter how much is tweaked. There are unsolvable problems where the only real solution is to not do them, and to fundamentally replace them with something else that may or may not solve the problem as well. Sometimes it's a very cuttable feature like an extra game mode or an optional setting, or weapon. Sometimes its super critical and then you're fucked, and your whole project is fucked, and there is no saving it.
The only time the film industry really faces such similar problems like that is when actors die, and even then they can get around it most of the time, especially with CGI - even terrible CGI is a solution no matter how bad it is.. There's no "CGI bandaid" that can fix, say, a climbing pathfinding mechanic that doesn't actually bring the player where they intend on going 80% of the time because of a fundamental flaw in its design. You can't "good enough" that without your game still looking like a buggy, unpolished piece of shit.
There's only so much planning you can do before a project quite literally
|
True. The last guardian still made it though, but that's the exception, 99.9% of developers don't have that luxury. Everquest Next simply got cancelled for example. The film industry has those problems too yet they're better at predicting what can and can't be done. Rendezvous with Rama movie was waiting for tech to advance far enough (since 2003), although last news was problems with the script.
Don't developers make mock ups anymore of gameplay before production? Just like animated story boards for movies, I would think games can benefit from sketch like gameplay testing? Unforseen things always happen, plan for it to be ready well in advance to have a buffer. It seems game development nowadays is relying on the day 1 patch to keep going right up until release date.
|
Yes they do. The do do concept work called a "vertical slice". But that reallt depends on the game. Some games require months, if not years of work to get a point before you'll truly know whether a concept will work or not, or whether or not a gameplay feature is actually fun. Sometimes the best ideas on paper simply aren't fun to play. You can't really plan for "having to completely redesign a critical gameplay feature because it isn't any fun".
