GAME DEVELOPMENT

ame development is the software development process by which a video game is produced. Games are developed as a creative outlet, and to generate profit. Development is normally funded by a publisher. Well-made games bring profit more readily. However, it is important to estimate a game's financial requirements, such as development costs of individual features. Failing to provide clear implications of game's expectations may result in exceeding allocated budget. In fact, the majority of commercial games do not produce profit. Most developers cannot afford changing

development schedule and require estimating their capabilities with available resources before production.

Development team: Developers can range in size from small groups making casual games to housing hundreds of employees and producing several large titles. Companies divide their subtasks of game's development. Individual job titles may vary; however, roles are the same within the industry. The development team consists of several members. Some members of the team may handle more than one role; similarly more than one task may be handled by the same member. Team size can vary from 20 to 100 or more members, depending on the game's scope. The most represented are artists, followed by programmers, then

designers, and finally, audio specialists, with two to three producers in management.

visionary of the game and controls the artistic and technical elements of the game in fulfillment of their vision. Game design requires artistic and technical competence as well as writing skills.

levels; however, some games feature built-in level editing tools. Level design is both an artistic and technical process.

G G
ame design is the game development process of designing the content and rules of a game in the pre-production stage and design of game play, environment, storyline, and characters during production stage. The designer of a game is very much like the director of a film; the designer is the

ame art design, a subset of game development, is a process of creating 2D and 3D game art for a video game. A game artist is a visual artist who creates video game art, such as concept art, item sprites, character models, etc. Level design, environment design or game mapping[citation needed] is a discipline of game development involving creation of video game levelslocales, stages, or missions. This is commonly done using a level editor, a game development software designed for building

ame programmer is a software engineer, programmer, or computer scientist who primarily develops codebase for video games or related software, such as game development tools. Game programming has many specialized disciplines all of which fall under the umbrella term of "game programmer"

and, in many cases, several programmers. Some programmers may specialize in one area of game programming, but many are familiar with several aspects. The number of programmers needed for each feature depends somewhat on programmers' skills, but mostly are dictated by the type of game being developed.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,

use AI heavily, while others, such as puzzle games, use it sparingly or not at all. Many game developers have created entire languages that can be used to program their own AI for games via scripts. These languages are typically less technical than the language used to implement the game, and will often be used by the game or level designers to implement the world of the game. Many studios also make their games' scripting available to players, and it is often used extensively by third party mod developers. The AI technology used in games programming should not be confused with academic AI programming and research. Although both areas do borrow from each other, they are usually considered distinct disciplines. However this is not always true. For example, the 2001 game by Lionhead Studios Black & White features a unique AI approach to a user controlled creature who uses learning to model behaviours during game-play. In recent years, more effort has been directed towards intervening promising fields of AI research and game AI programming.

A
A contemporary video game may include advanced physics, artificial intelligence, 3D graphics, digitised sound, an original musical score, complex strategy and may use several input devices (such as mice, keyboards, gamepads and joysticks) and may be playable against other people via the Internet or over a LAN. Each aspect of the game can consume all of one programmer's time

rtificial intelligence programmer

An AI programmer develops the logic of the game to simulate intelligence in enemies and opponents. It has recently evolved into a specialized discipline, as these tasks used to be implemented by programmers who specialized in other areas. An AI programmer may program path finding, strategy and enemy tactic systems. This is one of the most challenging aspects of game programming and its sophistication is developing rapidly. Contemporary games dedicate approximately 10 to 20 percent of their programming staff to AI Some games, such as strategy games like Civilization III or role-playing video games such as

ame development is a software development process, as a video game is software with art, audio, and gameplay. Formal software development methods are often overlooked. Games with poor development methodology are likely to run over budget and time estimates, as well as contain a large number of bugs. Planning is important for individual and group projects alike. Overall game development is not suited for typical software life cycle methods, such as the waterfall model. One method employed for game development is agile development. It is based on iterative prototyping, a subset of software prototyping. Agile development depends on feedback and refinement of game's iterations with gradually increasing feature set. This method is effective because most projects do not start with a clear requirement outline. A popular method of agile software development is Scrum.

Another successful method is Personal Software Process (PSP) requiring additional training for staff to increase awareness of project's planning. This method is more expensive and requires commitment of team members. PSP can be extended to Team Software Process, where the

whole team is self-directing.

Game development usually involves an overlap of these methods. For example, asset creation may be done via waterfall model, because requirements and specification are clear, but gameplay design might be done using iterative prototyping. Development of a commercial game usually includes the following stages: