Comments on: GDC – It’s a wrap!

By: Robert Blum

Robert Blum — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 04:43:32 +0000

My biggest problem with the unit-testing is – it’s becoming a pain in the neck. This is partially due to the fact that we have mixed .NET and native code. But even though – 30 seconds to rebuild the tests is long enough to at least move you away from TDD.

They’re still classical unit tests, but TDD doesn’t work well enough for me. Any hints/suggestions?

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 12:49:58 +0000

Man, every time I read about agile development being used in games, I kind of smile. I thought I had really discovered something on my own when I declared we were going to use "agile development" for our project (Raist can testify for me). People gave me the "OK, crazy man" shrug for a short while... until it started producing results. I guess other people in the industry caught on.

I never could get the unit test flow to work across the whole team despite spending some effort to make it as easy as possible- I wrapped CppUnit and the build system would automatically build and run tests it found.

By: Administrator

Administrator — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 16:04:29 +0000

OK. Fine. Nitpicker. I’m a foreigner, I’m entitled to funny constructs in my english

We had to become part of the pipeline, since everybody is specializing. The skill sets necessary for each facet of game development are too difficult to master them all – at least for most of us.

Game programmers still polish, yes – but the majority of the content is not theirs any more. It’s just data passing through their lovingly crafted routines.

By: Raist3d

Raist3d — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 04:04:40 +0000

“Of course, there were lots of other, smaller ideas and trends – but database based tools is where the game development industry is heading. We have to face it sooner or later – it’s not the programmers who make games, it’s the people who create the content. It’s our task as programmers to enable them to do the best they can do.”

I am glad you just have clarified, by implication, that programmers are not people. I had this hunch for a while but… ok ok joking.. but that’s what is up there!

Anyhow, I find this in a way kind of sad as the games industry did start with programmers that had a knack for art or design, and told that computer to draw the pixels. We have become part of the pipeline. Though I believe in a certain company, game programmers still add polish/design choices at the very end.

Raist