I had dinner with an old colleague last week, and he made and excellent point that I want to discuss.
Over the last few months I have been doing some relatively low-level stuff. Source-control integration with 3dsmax, asset tracking, wrapping XML/SQL and such commands for our specific use.
I must say, even though I enjoy learning these things, I’m starting to see how specializing in it would really reap some awesome benefits. The sad thing is I’m pretty sure there are better ways to do what I’m doing, I just simply dont have the time.
Now on to my point…
Perhaps the role of the programming dept should be to wrap the pertinent parts of the game engine and low level pipeline in a clean, and easily consumable way for the tech art side. They can massage the hell out of it and make it small, streamlined, and organized.
Today (well, yesturday) the SQL Guru of Turn10 talked to me about how he can do exactly what I’m talking about above for all the developers in the building. I think that’s great.
Perhaps folks like us should keep to what we specialize in: interaction design, massaging workflows, shaders, rigging, ect. I sometimes feel like I’m spreading myself too thin.
Where is the line?
Side-note: what I really wanted to do was bitch-up a storm. Can we have a passworded-only board away from the lurking eyes of upper management. I’ll moderate if I have to.
I know how you feel, we seem to be spending more and more time here just managing the code base that ultimately manages the pipeline and toolset. We’re all getting spread way too thin, .net, python, pymel, mel… where the hell is the syntax meant to be now!
One issue is that we’re always wanting/being pushed for tighter integration with the rest of the studio tools, but that just ends up with more sql database’s talking to eachother, and you get further away from actually doing the stuff you were employed for in the first place.
[QUOTE=PaK;5319]
Perhaps the role of the programming dept should be to wrap the pertinent parts of the game engine and low level pipeline in a clean, and easily consumable way for the tech art side. They can massage the hell out of it and make it small, streamlined, and organized.
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I want to grab what you said, engrave it in two stone slabs, and present to the engine programmers with a big fake beard and a burning bush on my side.
When I was working side-to-side with the engine programmers, it did take some effort to convince them, but eventually I got to the point where I would need some new feature on the engine side, we would settle on a good interface, and they would code away their part (which involved all the low-level engine tidbits), and I would code mine (usually whichever scripting language or some very simple c#).
That worked wonders when the engine programmers were right there, and they knew me and knew what we were trying to do.
Now the engine programmers are a hemisphere away from me, and …
[QUOTE=PaK;5319]
Side-note: what I really wanted to do was bitch-up a storm. Can we have a passworded-only board away from the lurking eyes of upper management. I’ll moderate if I have to.
[/QUOTE]
… I guess the rest of what I’d like to say requests the need of said passworded-only board. :rolleyes:
I think it’s a function of the artist:TA ratio. We tend to assign various TAs to different sub-disciplines. For instance, we have one on this project that is the shader guy. He also does vehicle pipeline currently, but that is because we are understaffed in TAs. I’m currently dedicated to world editor functionality. After that pipeline is going I’ll probably hand it off and focus on environment art.
Volition is lucky, though, in that we staff a significant number of TAs on each project. That gives us the ability to let TAs focus on more discrete areas.
