Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

C H A P T E R 4
Camera problems, among many others, are why constant communication between
designers and technical leads is so very important. If you’re going to start
building environmental assets (like the wall pieces that form the deep corners), you
need to agree on camera implementation early rather than late.
CASE STUDY COMMENTS ON ACTOR
LOADING AND CAMERA TUNING
You now understand that actor loading (the process of importing characters, props,
and effects into your game) is the pathway for constructing your games. As such, it’s
a vital part of the game assembly process. Most developers, as we’ve seen, build their
low polygon characters, props, and items in Maya or 3ds max. We’ve taken a look at
texturing, animation, and applicable lighting too. Now we have to export these out
of a 3-D package and into our game engine (either licensed or custom-developed
in-house at a game studio—also called proprietary).
The software exporter (from Maya or 3ds max to our game engine) is a piece of
tool code that reconfigures our assets to be set up appropriately to be “understood”
by the game engine we’re using. Maybe our engine requires us to set up polygon
faces a certain way, or orient animation joints a certain way. The software exporter
will have to account for this fact, and sometimes try to adjust for this fact (with
mixed results!).
Frequently, our export tools are under development in parallel with the game
we’re making. This means that the software exporter may itself be undergoing a rigorous
debugging phase while we’re attempting to build things using it. It shouldn’t be
a surprise that this fact alone creates considerable challenges. Designers need to provide
quick and useful feedback to the tools programmer(s) to get the exporter working well
enough to serve the game. Often, game-ready assets constructed using these tools are
due to your game’s publisher at the same time the tools are under development.
During many game development cycles in my personal history (and I won’t single
any out; they share common factors), it wasn’t necessarily building game engine functionality
that slowed game development and affected gameplay development goals—it
was the tools. To be precise, it was the lack of tools. How do you start building up exciting
play if you can’t get reliable assets into the game scene? You can’t.
Many times, these software exporters fail. What looks perfect and functions correctly
in your 3-D package of choice is destroyed in translation to the game engine.
Consequently, you find that, for example, polygon faces are flipped, texturing information
is lost, lighting information is missing or severely altered, animation data is
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Actors, Props, Items, and Camera Details