@ - Yes, bullet points are most awesome. Now, if only I could write a bullet point that produced other self-replicating bullet-points…
On AAA - You’re absolutely right that the name has to do with the studio and less what they produce. That being said, to the audience, and less experienced developers like me, there’s the additional point that “AAA” is synonymous with certain expectations of visual fidelity and length. Visual fidelity is hard, and costly to produce. Length always sucks, because you’re either making content, which is hard and expensive, or you’re exploiting filler, which overdone comes off as lazy. Just see Dragon Age Inquisition for an example of both in action at the same time. It’s beautiful, and long, and you know it took a bunch of people a long time to make with blood, sweat, and tears, all of which are probably 90%+ Mountain Dew. I suspect that Lyrium in the Dragon Age universe might be inspired by it, but that’s a personal guess.
Back on topic - in my lengthy post/pseudo-rant above, I don’t mean to “attack AAA”, I hold that segment of the industry in the best regard - I want to match and find ways to surpass your skills and output within my professional lifetime, and I’m already finding ways to do just that. I just fail to see how the current expectations of, and methods of delivering on, a AAA title can possibly be sustained on the current scale, let alone that of the ‘console golden age’ of the 1990s to mid 2000s, even five years into the future. One way or another, “The AAA Way” is crushing itself under its own weight, and that’s something no amount of spin can undo; it’s already started and progressed to a decent degree. For the sake of professionals like you - let alone my own business aspirations going forward - I hope means of averting this can be found, and a renaissance of top-notch, high-value games created by seasoned veterans of the industry can come about. Devaluement of games bodes ill for all of us who want to participate in this industry. That’s all I’m trying to say with that.
Anyways, on my current project, I’m seeing many of your bullet points in action. What I’ve done for both performance, and ease of development, is taking a ‘large’ scene (it could be my continent, or something smaller like a forest), and segmenting it certain ways that lends itself well to mesh/texture batching - especially mesh batching, because I’m using pretty much UV unwrapped cubes to define the geometry of my levels, similar to what I did in The Hero’s Journey but with fewer vertices, and a more consistent art style. Working on multi-floor maps, like Nuuria Castle and the Generic Church scene, it’s also a blessing because it lets me organize geometry, doodads, triggers, and other stuff on a floor-by-floor level. It seems to my unstudied eye like a generally good idea, that I berate myself for not realizing sooner.
On content density I have only this to say: if your scene can compete with Mr. T’s neck chains for a random passerby’s attention, you’ve overloaded your scene a bit. Where’s that machete?
Finally, something I did this week that’s helping is using existing things to speed up the process. I’d all but forgotten that I’d bought the First Fantasy asset pack on the asset store…it’s loaded with useful particle effects and doodads. I’m way too fond of rolling my own; sometimes shelling out a bit of money for a speed advantage is a very good thing. I need to do that more often, I’d be selling more games that way.
See if anyone points out similarities to crossy road.