Quote:
Originally Posted by Gregstrom
I have to agree with llamabeast and Edi. I spent a few years in game development, and far-reaching game changes at at any stage post-beta made the dev team very stressed and unhappy. UI changes were annoying for both programmers and artists.
I guess if Dom3 had been designed and developed in modular code sections from the ground up, adding mopddable magic paths might not be a huge job (it'd be a medium-large one instead). But, as we all know, it wasn't.
|
getting off topic, but in this thread maybe that's a good thing...
this point has begun to intrigue me recently. In fact, I want to do some analysis of both code and interface. I've only recently become enthralled with coding and data management and design, but two things strike me as extremely relevant and yet almost ignored.
The structure of code is analogous to physical structures, and is very important for the same reason. Yet it seems to me that there is virtually no forethought going into most code structure. There are computer programmers, but no program architects. Individuals create code in what is basically a 'dark art' compared to the world it is embedded in (ie. no one but the coders understand the coding, yet the rest of the world depends on it). While the work of these individuals may be highly creative and smart, the _structure_ of their objects make no sense. How often do programs come up against insurmountable barriers due to structure problems? How often is the code to a single application completely rewritten to overcome this?
Think of how much top down planning goes into a building, or even modern cities. Buildings and cities have been built for centuries, and humans have centuries experience with them, and they aren't so nearly a dark art as coding is right now. Yet cities and buildings too face expansion and modification problems. Think how much thought actually went in to some more recent public work programs, the design of pipes, road and rail, tunnels and transportation architecture; it is currently all heavily designed with future expansion in mind.
Why do we not have this same kind of foresight in mind with coding? Computer programmers are taught to code, but not design architecture or plan for the future. Why not? Do we need 'program designers' separate from the coders who can design the architecture of the code, while the programmers create its interface?