Bringing Engineering Discipline to Game Development
By
Gordon Walton
Gamasutra
December 18, 1998
Vol. 2: Issue 49
Originally
Published in Game Developer Magazine, December 1998.
| Bringing Engineering Discipline to Game Development |
Introduction
How
We Approached an Engineering Discipline
Design, Implementation &
Maintenance
Problems,
Benefits and Future Expectations |
Design. The design of the product flows from the requirements definition. The design is made up of a series of stages that are contained in four main documents under our definition of this phase (Figure 5). These documents are the Software Design Specification, the Software Project Plan, the External Resource Specification, and an initial Software Testing Plan. The Software Design Specification, in turn, is composed of three subphases: creative design, technical design, and resource analysis.
 [zoom] |
|
Figure 5. Design process flow.
|
The creative design subphase is made up of a series of four documents, titled Overview, Thematic Content, Interface Storyboards and Prototypes, and Game Mechanics. The combination of these documents describes how the game will look, feel, and play. In addition, the initial External Resource Specification is created during the creative design phase, which lists all the art, sounds, and other externally created elements necessary for the product.
The technical design subphase is made up of a series of three documents: Requirements Analysis, System Architecture, and Module Specification.
Finally, the resource analysis subphase is where The Schedule, the final External Resource Specification, and the initial Software Test Plan are all created. The Software Project Plan is simply our schedule for the game's design and implementation, and it's a fairly common document to most projects. The Schedule is based upon the detail provided by the combination of the Software Design Specification and the External Resource Specification. The Software Testing Plan, which is initially created in this phase, is a roadmap for our product testing group to use to validate the functionality of the product.
Implementation. Once the design phase is complete and approved, the project moves into the implementation phase. The implementation phase is divided into the construction subphase and the release-and-refine subphase. Most of our larger products use a staged delivery process, so we construct multiple stages and then move the final stage into a release-and-refine subphase. The Software Testing Plan, which began in the Design phase, is completed during the construction subphase. This is a complete testing plan for the product describing the methodology and elements of a proper test of the product.
The majority of the construction subphase is spent doing the traditional programming, integrating, and testing of the product's modules as it moves towards completion. In each stage of the construction subphase, the Software Testing Plan is being incrementally completed.
 [zoom] |
|
Figure 6. Implementation flow.
|
1. Alpha Release
2. Closed Beta Release
3. Open Beta Release
4. Production Release
Maintenance. Once a game achieves good stability and it's at the gold-master stage, it moves out of development and into maintenance and enhancement. The project has been completed, and although work will likely continue throughout the life of our massively multiplayer games, it will be at a maintenance level. Most likely, maintenance will be handled by different personnel than the original development team.
