What's the game development/production
pipeline?
How is a game created? Certainly the developers must follow
something like a plan in order to create the game they want, which is the
pipeline. The pipeline is used to produce a game (in this case) following a
structured procedure executed step-by-step.
Good but how does it all start?
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| (geralt, 2018) |
It all starts with the pre-production phase, getting
something to start with, such as ideas. The ideas can then be added and mixed
up with stuff included like story, concepts, characters, genre, platform, gameplay
mechanics, and the design document which contains almost all game designs in
one folder or document according to (Tsekhansky, 2016, para. 2) and (Marco,
n.d., para. 6).
I think these combined complete mostly of the necessities to
create a flow in the later pipeline productions. Since the pre-production stage
heavily affects the production and post production pipeline, pre-production is
the most important step because that’s where issues is best resolved before
causing trouble later on in the pipeline.
When the pre-production is finished and the whole design for
the game is ready, the production starts. This is where the larger part of the
teams as designers, engineers, producers, artists, and more will cooperate together
in building the desired game (Edwards, 2016, para. 1) and (Tsekhansky, 2016,
para. 3). Edwards (2016) writes in his article while following the production
that “the artists during the production phase will be working on building all
of the animations and art which you’ll see in the game” (para. 4). Continued by
Edwards:
“The art will take care of
creating all of the texture maps that are added to the 3D objects to give them
more life and character and will also take care of animating any characters or
objects that move in the game” (Edwards, 2016, para. 4).
While in production, the programmers are the ones building
the game through programming and scripting so that the art assets in the game
work as they should (noesisinteractive, 2010). Edwards (2006) states that
the programmers are also coding the game’s engine, library and artificial intelligence.
The engine is an application that is there to initiate, usually delivered by
the art teams, creations in different forms which you see in the game (para. 6).
The library is where the first creations are put for possible later reuse,
available for updates and changeable for future games (para. 5). Last but not
least, the artificial intelligence is programmed into how interactions,
physics, movement, and movements of all characters and objects in game (para.
7).
 |
| (Ku, n.d.) |
Tsekhanksy (2016) states that “when the game is considered “feature
complete” and all of the code has been written and art is completed, it’s moved
to the post-production stage.” (para. 4), but Marco (n.d.) states also that post
production phase is where the developer can continue to improve the game if new
bugs would occur and to add new features for the sake of the game’s retention
(para.18), so this makes it believable that different point of views are
explained to what actually goes on in post-production phase.
As a conclusion, the game production pipeline is based on
three stages: pre-production, production, and post production. Each one
indicates the process or phases in game creation going from concept to
completion.
Reference list:
Edwards, R. (2006, March 16). The Game Production Pipeline:
Concept to Completion. Retrieved November 21, 2018, from https://www.ign.com/articles/2006/03/16/the-game-production-pipeline-concept-to-completion?page=2
geralt. (2018). [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/en/bulletin-board-stickies-post-it-3127287/
Ku, K. (n.d.). Black
Farmed Eyeglasses in Front of Laptop Computer [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://www.pexels.com/photo/coding-computer-data-depth-of-field-577585/
Marco. (n.d.). Game development pipeline: From concept to
store – GameDev [Blog Post]. Retrieved November 20, 2018, from http://gamedevelopertips.com/game-development-pipeline/
noesisinteractive. (2010, December 15). design3 - Game Development Overview. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJYkMT1q8KU
Tsekhansky, A. (2016, November 14). Infographic: The Game
Production Pipeline - The Knights of Unity Blog [Blog post]. Retrieved November
20, 2018, from https://blog.theknightsofunity.com/game-production-pipeline/
