PGR3 Post-Mortem

[bapenguin]

What's this? A gaming post-mortem before the game is released and finished? Apparantly so. (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050906/gillen_01.shtml)

On the coding side, specific attention must be paid to user-interface issues. With the increased importance of online and multi-media aspects for the Xbox 360, the ability for these to be easily adjustable on the fly is absolutely paramount. To that end, extensive use of high-level scripting language was used to link together the front end, with the backend in C. Similarly, game-logic issues. With so much to worry about elsewhere in terms of coding, it's important to gain time and flexibility here. Other coding issues centered around good practice – sensible variable naming, not hard coding variables, commenting code, etc - which have been always important but are even more so with the increasing size of projects.
Next-Gen is so close......

[Royal Fool]

Hmm... I guess this puts an end to the "EA sez PGR3 is not finished lol" rumours?

EDIT: Stupid me... but I do think it'll make it in time for the 'launch window'.

[Morratut]

Reading the article makes you think just how complex it is to create a game.

I love how much work,care goes into a game. I find it very impressive.

[Justin_McElroy]

::Sobbing in a corner::

I thought I was smart, but I can't understand any of the posts today.

[Demo_Boy]

You can write a postmortem in the final stages of finishing a game without being done yet.

Frequently at the end of a project you know where the problems lie, but there is too much danger of regressions or rework for changing it at this point.

[dr_wily]

pretty nifty, cant wait to play someone elses system

[Demo_Boy]

After reading it, the only thing they say they did wrong was have a bug in the game for 2 months where cars spawned 30 meters in the air facing the wrong direction. Basically their max pivots were in the wrong place.

Assessment: Art sez we did the car its fixed, code says car looks good to me, design says other than the spawning the car drives right.... so noone owned the problem that it didnt work in the game...

What, do they not have internal QA evaluating the builds, to go nuclear when that type of stuff persists more than one build? Maybe that's what they need???

[mister_slim]

Well, they do say they have two builds, the pretty one, which all the pictures come from, and the fast one, which has the fps they are targeting. They expect to merge them by release. Hopefully they succeed.

[KDups]

Frequently at the end of a project you know where the problems lie, but there is too much danger of regressions or rework for changing it at this point.

Yeah but usually we don't see these post-mortems until at least the "gone gold" announcement, or it's already on store shelves. I smell free launch title hype.

[roboflavinoid]

What, do they not have internal QA evaluating the builds, to go nuclear when that type of stuff persists more than one build? Maybe that's what they need???
It was probably pretty early in the dev cycle, like pre-alpha, and they didn't have any QA onboard yet. They might have only been making real "builds" once every couple weeks.

I agree with them though, the reality is that huge stuff like that will get overlooked because everyone has their heads down just trying to create their little section, and no one steps up to the plate to actually fix things. Huge mistake, but so easy to make.

[roboflavinoid]

Yeah but usually we don't see these post-mortems until at least the "gone gold" announcement, or it's already on store shelves. I smell free launch title hype.I would agree if it was posted on IGN or something, but Gamasutra is really a developer forum, so I don't think it's so much of a marketing thing.

The point they are at now is actually the best time to post-mortem, because all the lessons are still fresh. You'd be surprised how much you will forget about what you've done for the last 2 years after just a couple weeks of comp time in Maui. :)