Tools Roundtable -- Saturday

Make programmer use tool and watch tool user

Management
----------
Recommended: Fred Brooke's Keynote, or get the new edition of The Mythical Man Month, PeopleWare, etc.

"Critical stage analysis" = post-mortem after every milestone, recommended

Spiral process/model works well for game development

Give the feedback from tool users to management.

Provide references (Game Developer Magazine, Gamasutra, Rapid Development) to less experienced managers

Design issues of engine and tools
---------------------------------
Proper factoring of graphics tools: want to share game engine and tools code; but may have different optimizations in each case

Define the target hardware for shipped tools (id's new tools requires 64-bit processor and tons of memory)

Think of tools as a mini-game: a real project worthy of design, preproduction, QA, etc.

Tool programmers as part of the team, especially for smaller studios

Don't borrow tool programmers

Art/programming/design Leads involved in intial tool design

After the artist makes a script, then maintained by programmers (can use artist's version as a prototype if not well structured)

Budget for tools!

Three levels of game abstraction:
	Stuff for every game (strings, memory management, etc.)
	Stuff for every similar game (platform genre: tile-based maps)
	Stuff for this game
Tools tend to apply to the middle level: don't try and generalize beyond this

First step: make a UI library => ensures a consistent look and feel.
Then artists/users don't have to relearn as much every project.

Content creation loop
---------------------
Automatically back-propogate changes to source data (if info is in two places, it is wrong in  one)

On consoles, can have debug versions of program read level data (or lighting or whatever) off of the network; console can apply edits directly to remote file.

Look at how RenderWare Studio gets instant response to art changes on a console.

"Tech Artists" are valuable -- help you know which things are hard

Peer support is good: try IGDA message forums.
High End 3D has a Maya forum

Read IGDA whitepaper; "best practice" info good for making a business case for tools.

Will setup a tools forum on IGDA; moderator's notes will appear there