What are the Dev's doing?

[StittsvilleJame]

What are they doing today?

I am not a game developer, so I don't know what the development cycle for a game is. I read that Civ 5 has been in development for 2 years now, which I would assume is the majority of the programming etc.

If the game is due to be released in about 6 months, what do you think they have left to do? Are they able to make major changes? Or is it all balancing and tweaking the numbers now, maybe updating and adding artwork, fixing the AI, or just testing for glitches and bugs?

I would assume that most developers wait until they are pretty far along the development cycle before announcing it to the masses, but again, I have absolutely no experience in this kind of thing, and I'm just curious.

 

[nzk13]

I also have no experience in this field, but I read game magazines and game news websites so I figured that, since no one else answered you yet, I might as well do it.

So what would a developer do during the last quarter of the development cycle after the game has been announced? It depends. What they're mainly doing is what you think they are, tweaks, ai fixes that sort of thing. However, sometimes they make last-minute decisions (sorry if that's a typo) that sends 'em into crunch time (meaning working weekends, overtime, that sort of thing). Since they have already released a great deal of information about the game, I think it's just tweaks, since any major changes would not be good now. They might to graphics fixes, just because they already have screenshots out doesn't mean that they can't change 'em (see: StarCraft).

 

[...behind you!]

It is most likely they are currently sitting at an assembly line in a sweatshop in someone's basement assembling pixels and whatnot while trying to avoid the whip.

 

[duckstab]

I wonder if they have forgotten Firaxis' cruel oppression yet?

 

[Roald Amundsen]

They have pop-corn, pizzas and playing Civ 5... bastards...

 

[luchofeio]

They have pop-corn, pizzas and playing Civ 5... bastards...

 

[EmpireOfCats]

What I hope they are doing is getting lots and lots of people from the outside who have not been involved in the game yet, are not affected by Firaxis group-think, and are adult enough to tell them if something sucks and just isn't fun, even if the developers love it. You know, say things like "What this game really needs is some religion". Or maybe even "I think a Python interface would make it perfect".

But what I really hope they are doing is working on that Mac port.

 

[frekk]

"I think a Python interface would make it perfect".

Bit late for that, I think. If they've gone with Lua for the scripting language, they'd have to start all over again to go back to Python now.

 

[Shurdus]

OP, give the decs a call and let us know what they said!

 

[Junuxx]

My guess is they're tweaking all sorts of stuff to see what works, what creates the best balance.
Also, they might still be struggling with how to implement some core concepts. Like how do you combine air units with the 1UPT rule?

 

[frekk]

Like how do you combine air units with the 1UPT rule?

Easy, and they've already done it; it's not straight 1 upt, it's 1 unit of each class (ground force, civilian, air and naval) per hex.

 

[Chalks]

One would hope they've got the fundamentals down by now and they're fleshing out and balancing the content. Modern era tech trees, leader graphics, polishing modern terrain improvements and debugging the AI.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

Game development starts with a very small team (sometimes just 1 person) which works for a very long time developing a game idea/tone/style, only if that work is judged worthy only then dose a real production team come together and 'execute' the bulk of the development. A company like Firaxis is large enough to have more then one game in production at a time and is going to move staff between titles as they ramp-up and ramp-down each titles production.

When you hear a game was in 'production for 2 years already' most of that is the slow lone person development. At this point the more robust development has probably been going on for only half a year so you should think of Civ5 as being only half done. Don't be fooled by the fact that people got to 'see' something at PAX which looked like a nearly complete game, a game demo can look very 'done' while still being a LONG way from actually being done.

 

[The_J]

Yea, i guess, that besides what they've seen nothing is done. Not really many unit graphics or stats, buildings, etc.

 

[frekk]

Not really many unit graphics or stats, buildings, etc.

I figure they'd leave the bulk of that to the end, because it probably takes a predictable amount of time - unlike mechanics which would need to be tested and balanced.

 

[Shurdus]

I figure they'd leave the bulk of that to the end, because it probably takes a predictable amount of time - unlike mechanics which would need to be tested and balanced.

Unit stats are important to know since the mechanics do not exist in a vacuum, they exist in the context of units being present. At the very least units need basic stats even though graphics may wait...

 

[StittsvilleJame]

When you hear a game was in 'production for 2 years already' most of that is the slow lone person development.

Really? I never would have thought that was how it worked. It would make sense though, although I'm sure they still have brainstorming sessions or at least someone to bounce ideas off of.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I'm not a programmer, but I've heard it said that the last 10% of a project takes 50% of the total time spent. Or words to that effect, I'm not sure of the numbers but it was a large portion on the last small bit. The point being the small details end up taking a lot of time. Think about how long Fall From Heaven 2 has been in development. They essentially were taking out the last 10% of the work done on the game, and replacing it which has taken a while. Sure they aren't working on it full time but you can see how much work it takes to make something complete. It takes a long time to write the code for the program, but they still have to make that program a game.
Anyone who played Master of Orion 3 knows what happens if they don't do all of that last 10%.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

Anyone who played Master of Orion 3 knows what happens if they don't do all of that last 10%.

Moo3 was missing a LOT more then the last 10%, that games core design was simply FUBAR.

As for your last 10% figure, it's not clear what metric your using to arrive at it. If you say that a project that has 90% of the eventual final code written is only half way to completion then yes that sounds about right, but other portions of the game such as art, design, finer balance all have separate completion rates.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

Anyone who played Master of Orion 3 knows what happens if they don't do all of that last 10%.

I think they screwed that one up from the day one. I actually still play MOO2 -- it runs like greased lightning in VirtualBox under Linux -- and wish somebody would make a new version that didn't suck.