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View Full Version : Re:Mr Dev - Who does what..........and Thanks



Newsfiend
09-29-2009, 10:44 PM
I usually use "developer" in the catch-all sense, where it could refer to anyone who works on the game, whether they're a programmer, artist, or designer.

Most of the forum interaction, and most of the decisions that affect gameplay, are from designers. We're the ones who decide what goes in a zone and what classes can do. Programmers are the engineers who implement our crazy ideas and make the game run. Artists (who you almost never see posting) are the ones who actually make the 3-D geometry that makes up the world (zone geometry), NPCs (character art/animation), and objects (attachments) such as weapons, banners, or teleporters.

Zones run through a lot of hands before they get to you. As a team, designers will hash out a rough concept and an overall theme for the zone first, before it gets assigned to a single designer to write out all the details. The zone document contains information about overall size, layout, Points of Interest (PoIs), inhabitants, and themes involved with the zone. At this point our concept artist works with the art lead to define the "look" of the zone (pallette, architectural styles, geography, plants) and gives us some awesome images to use as desktops. This is then given to a 3D artist to translate into zone geo, and while designers will provide input and answer questions, the zone artist is ultimately the most responsible for how a zone looks. Once a zone is mostly built, QA will begin testing the zone geometry, looking for holes, seams, texture errors, and places to get stuck. Including testing time, individual zones take around 4-5 months from concept to timestamp.

At the same time as testing is going on, a designer (sometimes the one who wrote the doc, but usually not) will place the ambient NPC population in the zone. This is called basepop, and involves creating the base NPC files, placing them as static NPCs or roamers, writing the Death/Aggro/Victory text they say, writing any generic hails or ambient events, and otherwise making the zone come alive. After that, rare NPCs ("named") are created and given abilities, while quests and missions are implemented. Again, this can be done by one designer or as many as six, depending on how schedules work out. Once all of the content is implemented, the item designers assign loot tables with unnamed items and the rest of the designers decide on their names and appearances in a gigantic spreadsheet.

QA will unit-test what designers put in as it's implemented (Design says it should do 5000 damage. Does it do 5000 damage?) and then beta players will work with us on tuning (Is 5000 damage too much?) and tweaking (do we NEED that many mephits?).

That's not everything involved in the production of a zone, but hopefully it gives you some idea of what has to happen before it's a game.



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