This is a very informative video behind one of the best FPS games ever made (my opinion).
They discuss some of the challenges, etc.
It’s very interesting to see how everything was when they made this game, so many things you never would have thought otherwise, such as having free reign to just build what they wanted so long as it was cool with no production managers, etc.
Makes me wonder if having a solid plan that must be followed to the T is always needed today. I mean Perfect Dark was genres changing for it’s time, there were no set standards to how things must and must not be. From what they said, they were just having fun and building a great game, I mean I’m sure they had an obvious plan - obviously, but they from what I could gather weren’t restricted and were able to try to innovate things without being locked into what a piece of paper says.
I don’t know, it’s just exciting for me to see my favorite game, was created by people just trying new things.
What’s your take on this type of work flow for today’s indie field?
I hear all the time you got to know what you want to do and how you want to do it, but me on the other hand I just build and build, I have a seeming type of Plan in my head I stick with, but I always have left wiggle room to play with to try new features, etc.
Well just look at the long term results. They made a game that was too large for the cartridge and then had to cut out massive amounts of data everywhere they could, weren’t able to follow the game up with anything else comparable and have ceased to exist in any relevant capacity.
The fact that a (now) classic N64 title came out of that project is more a credit to the immense talent, experience and work ethic they held at that company than anything, and in that regard, I think there is much to be learned from the way they did things, freedom of creativity and not stifling innovation, but also constantly producing stuff.
I think the major caveat with their project management to consider is that the game was technologically a sequel, so there wasn’t a lot of groundwork needed. Most of the new programming work was just spent on new features, it seems.
The more I hear about it’s development, the more it seems like the game that came out of pre-production was the exact game that shipped. There are a bunch half finished and/or pulled features, but otherwise there never sounded like there were ever massive issues in development (that the ram pack didn’t fix at least).
@Master-Frog : Yeah that is true… I just think it’s amazing what they could pull off with a traditional 4 MB of ram, that’s wicked crazy to even conceive for even an empty scene in Unity haha.
I always looked up to how the devs back then worked through limitations they had faced, it’s amazing what a little ingenuity can do.
@RockoDyne : I hear ya, I’m sure they re-used a lot of stuff from 007, but in a technical aspect - it truly is different in almost every way from 007, so I’m sure there were tons of extra features from Golden Eye, them extra features completely if you ask me, revolutionized the way FPS games went. I mean I’m sure at one point it would have happened by some other company eventually, but they were the first that I’ve seen that had such technical aspects that changed the whole genre by raising the bar.
I just love how they had creative freedom, whenever it got done is when it was done, no deadlines… I wish more companies today would to the same approach, like they used too - don’t release a game until it’s completely bug free, well - within reason. I’m sure there were tons of scripting bugs back then we just didn’t really notice it or if we did, we knew there wasn’t anything they could do about it then as there wasn’t patching systems. Or at least I’ve never heard of an N64, PS1, etc game being pulled from the shelf because of a bug before.
This is what all indie game developers have every day, and the majority of us don’t finish anything. I wonder what people could make if there actually were deadlines.
We’ll there’s a difference between free-reign to do what you want and discipline. Some people may not need deadlines, but have the discipline to finish through what they are working on.
It takes tons of it, it’s not easy. You gotta really love it or you’ll give up or just never finish anything from tinkering lol.
Tinkering never finishes because if you’re like a lot of people we get caught up in this ‘It’s not perfect’ mentality, and to be truthful I’ve been there so many times, but now I’m getting to the point that I realize it’s never going to be perfect, nothing in life is, but so long as I truly put my heart into it and give it the best I can do, that’s all I can ask for. I mean I’m not a team of 350 people, I’m but only 1 person.
“but so long as I truly put my heart into it and give it the best I can do, that’s all I can ask for.”
That’s all i long for in game development which is why i think i have strived (i guess is the word) and put my heart deeply into this (Game Development) i mean i’m no coder after four years and i’m not even considering myself to be a perfect game dev but all i can say is that i FINALLY after four and a half years i’m now on indieDB!!!
This was a HUMUNGUS step for me (i think).
