Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh: (cassidy@mastodon.blaede.family)'s status on Saturday, 14-Dec-2024 03:31:07 JST Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh:

   Game development smells a lot like other software development (and *can* be done that way), but it’s an entirely different world with decades of industry norms and expectations. Oftentimes, trying to apply the same approach as other software will seem baffling to game developers at best—and actively antagonistic at worst.

   #GameDev #OpenSource

   • alcinnz repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh: (cassidy@mastodon.blaede.family)'s status on Saturday, 14-Dec-2024 03:36:51 JST Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh:

     in reply to

     Example: devs often see their game as a work of art, similar to a movie. They worked on it, crunched during development to get it done, and finally released it. It's done. They've moved on to their next project!

     Sure, they might drop a patch release here or there to fix a bug in the game, but in many cases, games are effectively “unmaintained software” the moment they’re released. You can balk at that, or you can try to understand why some assumptions about software development might not apply.

     alcinnz repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh: (cassidy@mastodon.blaede.family)'s status on Saturday, 14-Dec-2024 03:47:23 JST Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh:

     in reply to

     Another is in approach to cleverness: I was taught that being clever was not actually a good thing in software development; it's more important to do things clearly and in a maintainable fashion—even if there are mild performance downsides.

     In game development, it skews much further in the other direction: the player’s experience is *all* that matters. Take as many clever shortcuts along the way to eke out as many frames as possible—after all, you don’t have to maintain it once it’s shipped!

     alcinnz repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh: (cassidy@mastodon.blaede.family)'s status on Saturday, 14-Dec-2024 03:47:24 JST Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh:

     in reply to

     Tooling is another big one: devs are not writing their games line-by-line. Or, they are for game logic, but their game engine’s editor is also making a bunch of changes to their project files behind the scenes. This makes it particularly hard to apply literal line-by-line text-based patches, for example. It also makes “proper” version control difficult. As a result, game devs might not follow what we see as best practices in the open source world because the tooling is not set up for it at all.

     alcinnz repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh: (cassidy@mastodon.blaede.family)'s status on Saturday, 14-Dec-2024 03:48:24 JST Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh:

     in reply to

     Of course these are sweeping generalizations; I know not every game dev thinks/works in these ways. My point, though, is that “game development” in many ways is a *parallel* field to “software development,” and expecting them to be the same is going to give you a bad time.

     We’re trying to instill good software dev practices when teaching game-making at Endless due to the upsides (like easier collaboration and maintenance), but this disconnect is something I think we’ll always come up against.