(November 5th, 2013, 19:37)antisocialmunky Wrote: I dunno, if I ran my studio, I would prefer multi-disciplinary people.
There's an industry term popularized in part by Valve, "T-shaped people". The crossbar refers to basic capabilities in a broad range of areas, and the vertical shaft denotes world-class expertise in one specific area.
On a game team, you want your best experts doing things like modeling and music and multithreaded engine programming. But it makes the whole project run so much smoother when everybody can do essential things like tweak a Photoshop file or rescale a Maya object or compile and deploy the code base. Soren is that kind of guy, able to hack a broad range of tools on top of his world-class development and programming credentials.
Side topic, man I wish I had the game industry cred to drop my day job and go join Soren...
(November 5th, 2013, 19:12)Dhalphir Wrote: I'm not sure about that whole designer/programmer thing
I'm not in the games industry, but typically when all businesses do something a certain way, it's because it's the best way to do it.
Sorry for derailing thread, but I know of not one single large (>50 employee) company that comes remotely close to following best practise.
Large companies are run for the behest of the senior management, which means "maximise profit over the next 3-12 months, and be damned to long term viability". That's why we get banking crashes and severe accidents like the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico on a periodic basis, because those running the company are not thinking about whats good for the company but what best pads out their boni, and they'll be gone in a few years anyway.
It's also a reason why so many big companies moved offshore in the last thirty years to evade their tax obligations. They don't understand the reasons why its good for companies to pay taxes (better educated and healthy employees, better infrastructure, governments better able to fund technological growth, &c.), yet see that if taxes are not paid through labyrinthine corporate structures the margin is bigger meaning fatter boni, and bigger profit on share options.
Travelling on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
(November 5th, 2013, 19:12)Dhalphir Wrote: I'm not sure about that whole designer/programmer thing
He got the idea from Sid. Soren's as close to Sid 2.0 as it gets.
In my first contacts with Soren, while he was working on patching Civ3 in the wake of its release, I shared several suggestions about improving the maps. Those ideas didn't reach fruition until I was able to code them into Civ4 and Civ5 myself. There really is something to be said for obtaining more of a design vision when the person with the vision can code it, too. Then you can skip the stages of having not only to communicate the details of the vision to a coder, but also having to persuade them of the worth of the vision as well, of why that coder should do the work the way you're describing, instead of shortcutting it. Code it yourself, and the innovation demonstrates its own worth, visually.
There are some innovations that won't be realized unless the designer knows what's really possible or not in the details of the code, and the coder has enough design talent to know when to push the boundaries instead of just doing what's conventional or code-efficient. You also avoid problems of design elements that are impossible to pull off even by the best coders, and coding mistakes where the coder thought they were doing what the designer asked for, but weren't. A designer-programmer is about the synergy of finding what's possible when the whole transcends the sum of its component parts.
(November 11th, 2013, 20:45)SevenSpirits Wrote: Nice retrospective blog post from Soren about his post-CIV endeavors: http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=697
This was a really great post. I don't have much else to add than that, but I really hope things go well for Mohawk Games. Will be watching with interest.
Thanks for the heads up, Seven. I had forgotten all about his blog because he updated it so infrequently but both this post and the post on Spore were pretty fascinating.
I've got some dirt on my shoulder, can you brush it off for me?
Yeah, thanks for the link. I can't wait to see what they produce.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
I'd point blank ask him if he's looking for people but I wouldn't want to move towards Baltimore.
In Soviet Russia, Civilization Micros You!
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
