Welcome! If you have any questions while digging through the book, let us know and we'll do our best to answer them.

You work for Funcom? Oh man.... The Longest Journey is the best adventure game I've ever played, hands down. I didn't even realize that Dreamfall was out.... I'm gonna have to grab it today!

-Rez

the best thing about the book is that is goes into game architecture. Most game programming books tell you how to write a DirectX wrapper and happily ignore things like the seperation of Application components, events, writing portable code, etc. Nothing will kill a game company (especially a small one like mine) faster than writing janky code that can't stand up to the test of time. Well, that and nuclear winter.

My only complaint is that I wish there was more, but the book is already 1000+ pages, hehe.

-Rez

Originally posted by rezination
My only complaint is that I wish there was more, but the book is already 1000+ pages, hehe.

-Rez

You know, when I read the book the first time, it was only 600 pages, so there!

The original book and the second edition are almost totally different. I still think they should be called differnt names. "Game coding more complete than the other game coding book".

The art direction in Dreamfall is absolutely stunning! That game deserves some awards in that category.

He we just a QA guy.

Hehe, just playin'.

Okay... as a former QA guy, I have to jump in here. When I was at Maxis, the only people who worked longer hours than QA were the engineers. QA is a tedious and thankless job, and you only get paid in Mountain Dew (sometimes literally!) Your purpose in life is to find flaws in something that the rest of the company has poured their blood, sweat, and tears into. It's their baby.

I remember writing a bug once that the AI of the ships seemed pretty bad. I think I hurt someone's feelings; he apparently spent a lot of time on it. Still, the ship AI got considerably better after that.

I've seem too many engineers clash with QA. Remember, they want the same thing you do: a kick ass game.

(pant,pant) Okay, I'm done. End rant.

-Rez

I know what u mean Rez. As a games tester I feel a squeeze in my heart everytime I put a new bug in the database...sniff sniff. But hey, it's for a good cause

Famine, will there be a xbox360 version of Dreamfall?

-RS

QA is like the Dreamcast... they both get a bum rap.

I do agree with Rez, though. There are just way too many clashes between QA and the production team that is just uncalled for.

Well, I bought Dreamfall and have been playing it all weekend (literally; at least 25 hours now). I completely agree with Kain; this game is visually stunning. Even more interesting is the fact that the original game was sitting right next to it. It's amazing that this game is still sold on the shelves with other A+ games after, what, 6 or 7 years? I hope Rat Race does half as well.

Seriously though, Famine, you can tell the developers that an insignifigant game programmer on the west coast working for an adventure game company loves their game and plans to show it to the powers that be. Quite honestly, I think there are some things you guys are doing better than we are, and other things I think we are doing better.

-Rez