All right, here’s the third editor release.

Download link: vtool (3)

I managed to add three basic functionalities to this editor that I wanted. The first is the ability to move freelly through it’s space, without any scope restrictions. In the Solis editor when you create a new map you set it’s width and height and it remains static. It didn’t really bother me at first, but it’s something that every now and then reduced my design.

The second was the ability to zoom-in/zoom-out freely in each window without any restrictions. Using the mouse wheel you can easily do that. I still need to make the editor center on where the mouse is as it zooms though.

The third is the ability to easily scroll through the map. That’s something I did have in the Solis editor and wanted to have in this one too. Just press and hold the right mouse button and you can move around the map.

To add walls to the world just left click and move the mouse. Left click again and the wall is set. On the next release I hope to have some basic editing functionalities like selecting walls, editing and deleting them, copying and pasting.

Again, this project is open to community feedback!

Try it out, what did you like and dislike?

Tell me what you think!

Until then!

I have thus decided to start a new project. I’m aiming to do something 3D again, since my last project, Train Royale, was a 2D casual game. I’m gearing towards a 3D shooter for now, so lets see how it goes.

However I do intend to make things different this time. You see all my other projects I would only talk about them once they were done. This time though, I intend to talk openly about it through out it’s development.

It’s not that I like to keep things secret. It’s that I always worried about becoming something I usually criticized: talking more about a game than developing it, and in the end have tons of rambling about a never finished project.

But now I think I can go beyond that point since I at least proved to myself I can get a project done, regardless of how much I talk about it or not. So my intention with this new project is to do at least a weekly post about it, displaying how it’s current development is going. And it doesn’t matter how simple or stupid the project is going thus far, the point is talking about it. Don’t really know why, I guess I’m trying to make a social experiment out of this thing,  just to see what happens in the end.

Anyway here is a picture of how the “editor” is going.

To download:  vtool (10)

Basically I intend to do something where you can have multiple windows showing multipler things about whatever you’re editing. I’ll start focusing on that once I get the gist of the toolbars and rebars going.

Today I’ll review another book I read, Software Engineering for Game Developers.

As a book that concerns itself with software engineering I say it does the job. It’s an 800 page beast covering topics from UML, resource management, project risks, stipulations and damage control. More interestingly enough it tries to tie that with actual game development. It goes quite in-depth in each of it’s topics and gives plenty of further references if any particular one interests you. Overall it’s a good book.

But that’s not really what I want to discuss about.

You see, the book comes with a game a small team of developers made using a variety of software engineering techniques. This serves to show how one can apply them into game development. The game is quite stable, performing well given the myriad of things attached to it (3d mesh loading, textures, events, GUI, scripts, etc). However there”s just one problem with it:

It’s not really any fun.

Now I’m sure the goal of the book  is to teach software developers techniques they can use in their own development, with the game being fun not a pre-requisite in this scenario. It had to be functional, not fun.

That’s one of the things game development as a software differs from others. If a program manager assumes that a project will take:

• w hours of development
• take y developers to develop it
• cost z dollars
• have k use cases

And it ends up taking exactly that, most likely that was a successful project.

The problem with game development is that even if you manage to make a game with all your estimates correct, if the game in the end is not fun than you still have an unsuccessful project. Sure it can still sell well, but it’ll probably take tons of marketing to make up for it.

Some could say that fun is a non-functional requirement, which is true. However it undermines it’s importance into the actual game development process. Sucesfull game companies have long realized this and build entire systems of software enginnering whose sole goal is to enhance and facilitate adding ‘fun’ to a game.

Valve software uses their CABAL system, ID software with their endless internal engine prototypes, Blizzard with their QA tests, and so on.

Which leads me to conclude:

Sometimes the most important aspect of a project cannot be expressed in a process or in a form. That is still not a justification to leave it out off processes and forms.