Peter Langston Describes the Development Process for Ballblazer

[UNIXcoffee928]

An in-depth paper that describes the development process that was created to be able to produce the games: "Ballblazer" and "Rescue on Fractalus!".

 

"The concept often called ‘‘fail fast’’ seemed particularly relevant to games development. Much of the decision making in game design comes down to making a yes-or-no decision about a potential approach. Such choices vary from ‘‘is this idea interesting enough?’’ to ‘‘can it be done at all?’’ We found it immensely effective to try solving the hardest parts first in deciding any of these questions, allowing us to discard doomed approaches quickly and devote our energies to potentially successful ones."

-Peter Langston

vidgam.pdf

Source: http://www.langston.com/Papers/vidgam.pdf

[popmilo]

Thank you for this afternoon coffee read !

[+slx]

Very interesting read and interesting 'summary' of programming being a cottage industry in many cases.

 

 

Gesendet von iPhone mit Tapatalk

[Heaven/TQA]

Yeah esp use modern tools cross dev for a8 dev... in 1984....

[+Cafeman]

Thanks. Sometimes it is stated that homebrewere have tools that weren't available BITD. But even now we don't typically have Pixar workstations as mentioned in the article.

[+slx]

Thanks. Sometimes it is stated that homebrewere have tools that weren't available BITD. But even now we don't typically have Pixar workstations as mentioned in the article.

 

A Pixar Workstation from 1985 probably had less oomph than a Raspi has today (although they probably had cool software even then).