94 réponses à ce sujet

[Vicex]

...[F]our years isn't really a lot of development time. 

 

Yeah it is. 

 

 

"Generally speaking, if you require more than three years to make a game, you need to reboot the project." Patrick Bach (DICE General Manager)

 

 

The context on this was Battlefront, but the point he was trying to make is that new methods and techs become available rapidly and if you spend too much time on a project, then you need to restart and take advantage of new technologies/standards or risk your game being 'dated' at launch.

[mickey111]

you can produce one good game yearly if you throw enough people and talent at it.

[mickey111]

Yearly? Nope not possible especially not in the case of RPG's

AC shows what happens if you go annual

 

yeah, it does. Black flag, AC: brotherhood, two of the best in the series. I guess that was two teams, one less talented than the other because unity and AC 3 were both not very good.

[Vicex]

Yearly? Nope not possible especially not in the case of RPG's

AC shows what happens if you go annual

 

You must have missed the qualifying:

 

if you throw enough people and talent at it.

[Tela_Vasir]

"Generally speaking, if you require more than three years to make a game, you need to reboot the project." Patrick Bach (DICE General Manager)

 

And no, I said it earlier : 4 years is not uncommon when you're developing an A-RPG like Mass Effect. Horizon Zero Dawn is a good example (development began in 2011 and its release date is in 2016). Developing an RPG is quite a challenge, even if you have experienced teams working on it.

 

[Vicex]

And no, I said it earlier : 4 years is not uncommon when you're developing an A-RPG like Mass Effect. Horizon Zero Dawn is a good example (development began in 2011 and planned release date is in 2016). 

 

Ah yes! Clearly you are more in the know than some ranking guy who works in the industry. The quote never asserted that it wasn't common to take such a long period of time either, instead staying that often time the projected must be rebooted... and we have nothing to suggest that reboots (however small) did not happen in the games you mention. 

[bondari reloads.]

"Generally speaking, if you require more than three years to make a game, you need to reboot the project." Patrick Bach (DICE General Manager)

I wonder if that need for speed-mentality has anything to do with the broken releases these past few months. Generally speaking, of course

[Vicex]

I wonder if that need for speed-mentality has anything to do with the broken releases these past few months. Generally speaking, of course

 

I'd wager it has more to do with development periods for these titles beginning prior to the release of the next generation consoles, and thus certain assumptions about the consoles and the capabilities of the consoles/associated networks were made thus leading to these issues.

 

 

Yeah its a rather silly statement

 

Wow, I must not have noticed all the developers on here who are qualified to evaluate that statement for validity.

[rashie]

you can produce one good game yearly if you throw enough people and talent at it.

In the case of game development, simply throwing more people and money at something is often not a good option, or else you risk ending up with games like Assassin's Creed 3.

 

it isn't so much about talent as far too many people being involved on the same project making it an incoherent mess.

[shepskisaac]

In the case of game development, simply throwing more people and money at something is often not a good option, or else you risk ending up with games like Assassin's Creed 3.

 

it isn't so much about talent as far too many people being involved on the same project making it an incoherent mess.

Yet AC3 tried a LOT of new things and actualy took risks. Everything Black Flag had came from AC3 and finer tuning. Very often new ideas/features within a franchise will produce messy first-attempt result, but would you rather have that (and polished version in the sequel) or nothing but stale old "tested" formulas?

[bondari reloads.]

I'd wager it has more to do with development periods for these titles beginning prior to the release of the next generation consoles, and thus certain assumptions about the consoles and the capabilities of the consoles/associated networks were made thus leading to these issues.

Hope you're right to assume it's a statement to be taken historically, as making stuff gets easier further into the new console's lifecycle afaik.

To me it's rather obvious when a game took one year to develop by five or so studios.

You could have cloned Caravaggio five times and pointed them at a canvas, the result would not come close to the real thing because he preferred painting in low lighting. Some things can't be rushed by quantity alone. /takes off rose coloured glasses

Also, blah blah games art blah

[Tela_Vasir]

Ah yes! Clearly you are more in the know than some ranking guy who works in the industry. The quote never asserted that it wasn't common to take such a long period of time either, instead staying that often time the projected must be rebooted... and we have nothing to suggest that reboots (however small) did not happen in the games you mention. 

 

 

The context on this was Battlefront, but the point he was trying to make is that new methods and techs become available rapidly and if you spend too much time on a project, then you need to restart and take advantage of new technologies/standards or risk your game being 'dated' at launch.

 

 

I'm only an indie developer mainly working in my spare time but when I see a game developer (DICE, with more than 300 employees) reusing several assets, code from BF3 (which is not a problem per se) and still making the same mistakes (buggiest netcode I've ever seen, et cetera), yep they should try to give more time to their employees. 

 

And with the current tech (let's say Unreal Engine 4), it allows you to keep developing your game for a very long period of time while still being able to include new features with no or minimal code iteration. When Guerrilla games began the development of Horizon Zero Dawn, the team working on the project was very small (+/- 20 people) and upon the completion of Killzone Shadow Fall, more staff from Guerrilla Games were moved to develop and design Horizon. Smart move with minimal risks.  That is what I expect from an experienced team. 

When you're forced to reboot a project that has been on going for a year or more, that means you've made a/several mistake(s) (eg. during the preproduction stage (most likely)). So, it did not happen in their case, at least not after the preprod (when they moved more staff to develop their new IP). 

 

Having a 4 years development time is a pretty good news, and I'm pretty sure they learned from the previous ME games. 

[L. Han]

4 years is not a lot of time. It's somewhere in the average for today's technology. Considering how much they invested in graphics and effects in DA:I, rendering assets and cutscenes alone is going to take months.

 

Here's a small list of things that takes a lot of time and only multiplies as the quality rises

 

>High-res textures (2048, 4096)

>High-Poly models (less segmentation on models, smoother edges, so on)*

>Particle Effects (includes omni-lighting triggered by objects like gun fire)

>Shadows. One of the biggest technical hurdle game developers had to face previous generation. Shadow maps take up a tonne of rendering time and tanks framerates in games. Similar to textures, shadows have their own mapping. (games on XBOX360 and PS3 tend to use 512 or lower texture maps)

>Ambient Occlusion. Adds soft shadows and adds nice depth to everything. This nearly doubles the rendering time.

 

Just to give you some perspective. Pixar has two floors of it's skyscraper dedicated to rendering alone. We are talking about a floor with nothing but motherboards and CPUs to make sure they can render out scenes frame-by-frame with multiple passes to make sure they finish it in reasonable time (4-6 months). If any of them crash or the studio has some power hiccups, then all of that can potentially be lost.

 

Of course, a lot of this will depend on BioWare/EA. What equipment they will be using, how many render farms, how much fidelity will they aim for, how many characters in a given scene, and so on.

 

This isn't even including the possibility of entire segments of a game production being halt because another team has somehow screwed up or has an issue. (EG: the audio team has not finished blocking in sound effects and temp dialog for the animators).

[L. Han]

I'd like to add that time itself does not necessarily mean 'good game'. It certainly helps, but developers can also end up with too much time. Daikatana, Duke Nukem, are just a few examples.

[rashie]

Yet AC3 tried a LOT of new things and actualy took risks. Everything Black Flag had came from AC3 and finer tuning. Very often new ideas/features within a franchise will produce messy first-attempt result, but would you rather have that (and polished version in the sequel) or nothing but stale old "tested" formulas?

No doubt about that, however I haven't argued against trying new things but more the way overly large teams can effect games. They had allegedly according to leaks roughly 600 people working on it spread out across 4 studios in different time zones.

 

TL;DR: development hell.

 

Throwing more manpower at something isn't always the answer.

[shepskisaac]

No doubt about that, however I haven't argued against trying new things but more the way overly large teams can effect games. They had allegedly according to leaks roughly 600 people working on it spread out across 4 studios in different time zones.

 

TL;DR: development hell.

 

Throwing more manpower at something isn't always the answer.

Every AC game has teams like that tho. Seems to me that it just comes down to better lead management that can keep the production going in a more cohesive way despite multiple studios etc. Or better focus.

[Tela_Vasir]

Probably both, actually. 

 

 

 

Every AC game has teams like that tho

 

Not the first and second one if I'm correct. 

[MarchWaltz]

Mark my words: There's going to be a HUGE bug that the devs could have easily found and fixed if they actually knew how to QA. Mark 'em.

[bondari reloads.]

I'm always amazed how much time and manpower it takes to render a scene in a cartoon or comic. Having that process translated into a game that is alao an interactive experience is insane.

Nobody is talking about TW3's delays anymore aside from postmortemsand stuff. Why? Because it seems to have paid off. What would have a ME franchise looked like with double the amount of games? Makes me shudder just to think about it.

[Tela_Vasir]

 

 

I'm always amazed how much time and manpower it takes to render a scene in a cartoon or comic. Having that process translated into a game that is alao an interactive experience is insane.

 

It's not the same process. ;-) 

[The Night Haunter]

Pretty much all games have 3 year development cycles, usually rushed games like COD and ME3 have 2 year cycles. How is 4 years not enough?

Tell that to:

Star Craft

Diablo

Any Blizzard game....

The original DA had 5 years or so

Every Elder Scrolls game has many, many years of development (As soon as Skyrim was released I'm sure work began on concepts for ES 6)

 

Different games take different amounts of time, but in general good games (especially RPGS) take 3+ years min to develop (DAI was only 3 years and look at it)

 

And are you really saying that because COD takes 2 years MEA should only take 3? I don't really think we can use CoD as a metric for anything except greediness by a publisher.

[Master Warder Z_]

Black ops 2 wasn't horrible...