Gabriel Knight III
06/04/98
Last time I wrote, we were having an animation panic - trying to pare down our animation count, because it was the "critical path" on our schedule. I'm happy to report that that issue has been resolved. We now have eight animators on the team, and, in fact, they are almost done with the bulk of the regular gameplay animations. The only items left are the big story scenes and a few of the end-game puzzle animations. The backgrounds too (now called "environments") are nearly all completed. In other words, the art side of the project is well over the hump and actually ahead of schedule.
About a month or so ago, we had another, even larger bulge suddenly erupt in our orderly production schedule. Of course, I'm speaking of programming, the other large head on this multi-headed hydra we call product development.
GK3 is the first project I've worked on that we created a game engine from scratch. The closest I've come to doing this before was with GK1, when Sierra's traditional "SCI" engine moved to a new version, SCI 32. We made the commitment to move to the new system and fought bugs and snafus for six months. Despite this, we made our Christmas date - it just made what had been a very smooth project a bear.
Stable engines are wonderful for game development teams - it allows you to concentrate on gameplay and style issues and to get to market quickly. But gamers get bored if a company uses the same engine too often - particularly adventure game engines. Sierra's SCI and LucasArts' SCUMM come to mind. Also, new technology (like 3D) often doesn't work with old engines.
Next: Adventuring in 3D land
|
