Production, Page Two
The following contains more information for prospective producers. Why not check out the developer diaries section for videos on production?
Naming Conventions
Production deals with ensuring that asset use is as made as easy as possible for the rest of the team. Part of this is using naming conventions. Without naming conventions then artists and sound artists could produce work with bland names such as "model1" or "track2". These don't describe anything and make it difficult for the programmer to implement into the game. As such, using naming conventions such as "ART_Model_LushTree" gives the reader a bigger understanding of what exactly that asset is. As such, all projects I have worked on have used naming conventions.
Project Management tools
It is important to have tools to help you manage your project, as it isn't smooth sailing. Things will go wrong. You need something to back you up. There are plenty of tools out there to allow you to plan for these things and create contingency plans. A popular tool for agile development is SeeNowDo. You can mark what tasks are the most urgent, and pass it around to your team so they can instantly see what needs doing first. For waterfall methods, then Microsoft Project is a very powerful and professional tool, however, it is not free.
Developer Diaries
Three Stage Studios have produced a set of developer diaries. Click the above image to find out more.
Testing
Projects need to be tested before they can be released and so test plans should be created for the project. There are three types of test plans that can be created. White Box, Black Box and Gray Box. White Box testing tests the working of an application rather than it's functionality and is generally tested by the team who know what to expect. Black Box is the opposite, and tests the functionality and is done by users who do not know what to expect. Gray Box is a combination of the two, and the tester knows the internal structure of the project and tests the game from the perspective of the user and the designer.
Art on this page has been created by Ali Malik and James Campbell. Visit Ali's portfolio!