Database Roundtable (Saturday) Josh's Notes

In engine vs. Access or other prepackaged
Problem with in-game: what if game is broken, still want to make levels/art
To keep version information: backups, cumulative task databases
Solves concurrency issue: two people working on same file
Track changes: ex. localization! X changed to Y, but only X has been translated to german
Always add to the database instead of update. Include comments why changes were made.
Nice to be able to detect missing textures, and textures not being used in the game
Daily builds for art assets
Source Safe does not work with binary data: corruption of resources
Button to reload data in game, button to export data to game, button to play game
Handout made with Filemaker Pro, easy enough to be used by artists
Others used Oracle 9i, found SQL to be powerful
Access initially good, but has problems
One person found MS Project crucial during the first 6 months of a 12 month project. Once there was less prediction needed, became more trouble than it was worth. At the end of the project, a to do list was better.
Forrest for the trees: nice to be able to get an overview of the progress
Smooth introduction of assets improved the rate that artists introduce content into the game. Before added in batches once a month, after smooth added 4 times a day
Monolithic approach seems to rarely work, instead lots of little databases, with connections as needed. Later make a launch screen to jump into the appropriate database.
Good for distributed teams, though dropping picture previews reduced bandwidth needs
Wouldn't have tried until had the database: preload the data for a level, keeping assets from previous level used in this level
Another: able to quickly change texture detail in a level
Also used to specify animation transitions