The Black Box Industry - Blog

Posted By: Rhuarc

The Black Box Industry - Blog - 09/02/06 14:20

Hey guys,

Just directing y'all to my new blog I've started, where I'll be posting industry-related blogs about the business (and technical side) of the game design industry. Feel free to drop by:

The Black Box Industry
Posted By: Straight_Heart

Re: The Black Box Industry - Blog - 09/06/06 15:01

booooooring.

Actually its a little too early to say that since there seems to be only 2 posts but

"I was working on getting my iPAQ to sync wirelessly to the server, and had some issues"

Im glad it isnt some pretentious political crap that most bloggers seem they must put out there, but it dosent sound very interesting to read.

I will check your blog again, because I like the semi developer diary blogs.
Posted By: Rhuarc

Re: The Black Box Industry - Blog - 09/07/06 02:41

Yeah.. that was just something I threw in there since I had some issues- figuring there were plenty of others that had the same issue.

I have a few articles that I am working on, one on working within memory constraints on limited platforms (i.e. XBOX), and another on a small business model for independant developers.

It will fill out eventually... I'm not just posting random crap, which is why it's still pretty sparse in posts. I've been working on these for about a week now.

--Rhuarc
Posted By: agreenknight

Re: The Black Box Industry - Blog - 10/30/06 05:55

Interesting... gamedev.net has blogs you might want to try out.

I see your using blogger. I guess I was expecting something...flashier.. One thing is content is important to get people to link to you. I'm sure though, you could get people to link to you. You could check out my blogs, I think you might like to read my martial arts blog. The best way to get traffic is to comment on other blogs.

Another blog, which will bring the number of my blogs up to seven. I'm going to put my comments of playing games on there. Why so many blogs? To keep my keywords focused. Right now it's just a hobby. But who knows in the future.
Posted By: Damocles

Re: The Black Box Industry - Blog - 10/31/06 23:06

looks like the developer did not think about the limitations of the hardwhare
at the beginning of development enough,
funny....
And a very good example how important planning and setting restrictions is
at the start of the development.

And come on, a fishing game.... the XBox can handle such a type of
game of course.
Posted By: Rhuarc

Re: The Black Box Industry - Blog - 11/03/06 17:26

Quote:

looks like the developer did not think about the limitations of the hardwhare
at the beginning of development enough,
funny....
And a very good example how important planning and setting restrictions is
at the start of the development.

And come on, a fishing game.... the XBox can handle such a type of
game of course.



Oh, you'd be surprised.

Handling a lush lake with vegetation, an pretty advanced water shader, and needing to be rendering a variety of fish, all high poly with varying textures. Our texture memory overhead was nearly 35mb when we went gold. BSP takes approx 12mb of memory on the largest lake. Atop of that you need to stream audio and sound effects, as well as store vital game information. A lot more goes into a fishing game than you think. The title has been called by the director of Vivendi Casual Games as their "flagship product" during a meeting we had with Nintendo at E3, as it's basically a AAA looking title at a value game price. It's more than a few little cheap looking models standing around with a fishing line hanging straight down into cheap looking water with blocky fish .

A small update on the game, we got through Microsoft Final Certification on our first pass- something that rarely happens. It's been deemed "Green" by Microsoft and Vivendi, and is on it's way to store shelves now.

EDIT: I'll post some screenshots after release .

-Rhuarc
Posted By: Damocles

Re: The Black Box Industry - Blog - 11/04/06 01:08

I dont know the memory-requirements of your game, nor the XBox Limitations.
I just want to point out, (If you knew that the game will also run on the X-Box at the beginning)
that before stuffing the levels and creating the content, there should be a strict guideline
for how big the content is allowed to grow.

The optimal choice is to use the limits out to the max, so that it still works, and
not overshoot the limits.
I also dont know, how hard it is to calculate the limits beforehand.
But the easiest way to to this, is to create a test-prototype and stuffing more and
more models, sounds, BSP and slow-loopfuntions into it, to see what the XBox can handle.
(the models can be just some random-highpoly stuff)
With this knowledge, you can estimate how much the game can handle good.
Also the XBox is a fixed system, with little surprises (in contrast to
the many different PC configs)

Given that other very nice looking games can be realized with the XBox,
I have to say, that a Fishing game can be realized for shure too.
Posted By: Rhuarc

Re: The Black Box Industry - Blog - 11/04/06 03:23

Quote:

I dont know the memory-requirements of your game, nor the XBox Limitations.
I just want to point out, (If you knew that the game will also run on the X-Box at the beginning)
that before stuffing the levels and creating the content, there should be a strict guideline
for how big the content is allowed to grow.

The optimal choice is to use the limits out to the max, so that it still works, and
not overshoot the limits.
I also dont know, how hard it is to calculate the limits beforehand.
But the easiest way to to this, is to create a test-prototype and stuffing more and
more models, sounds, BSP and slow-loopfuntions into it, to see what the XBox can handle.
(the models can be just some random-highpoly stuff)
With this knowledge, you can estimate how much the game can handle good.
Also the XBox is a fixed system, with little surprises (in contrast to
the many different PC configs)

Given that other very nice looking games can be realized with the XBox,
I have to say, that a Fishing game can be realized for shure too.



The simple fact is that the game in its original design changed vastly. The publishing partners wanted more out of it than was shown at a point about a year ago, and they said they wanted more out of it. At that point, a port would have been pretty reasonable to the XBOX. After that point, the PC product had to be rolled up very quickly since it was already over it's projected completion date. The XBOX project was not addressed until PC was near to beta. It's a matter of time and person allocation. Being done for the size of budget that the game was, it needed to have the full team dedication on the PC product until it was at a further stage of completion. We also were limited to only one devkit for a number of months until we got two more to work with.

It's a matter of how things had to roll, and how we had to adapt with the publishers demands.

-Rhuarc
Posted By: William

Re: The Black Box Industry - Blog - 11/06/06 04:32

What days it releasing? Wouldn't mind checking it out.
Posted By: Rhuarc

Re: The Black Box Industry - Blog - 11/06/06 04:40

Quote:

What days it releasing? Wouldn't mind checking it out.



Not positive if that date is technically public yet, but I'll let you all know when it's out . It will indeed be quite soon, I can say that

-Rhuarc
Posted By: agreenknight

Re: The Black Box Industry - Blog - 11/15/06 15:16

By the way, I put up a link to your blog. I hope the release goes well.
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