[MUD-Dev] When the interface becomes the challenge.

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Tue, 19 Jun 2001 11:12:12 +0800, "Alex Kay" <yak at iinet.net.au> wrote:

> What I don't understand is why developers insist on almost always
> trying something different when it comes to basic control input.

Because developers almost always think they are competent artists,
musicians, designers, and UI specialists.

And they are almost always wrong.

A developer, especially a professional developer, is usually
interested in one thing more than anything else: control. He wants
complete and total control over his environment. That's why he's a
developer; he didn't want to blandly accept someone ELSE'S idea of
what programs he should be using. So he wrote his own programs.

Now, when he needs artwork for those programs, he will want to
control it. Since artists are notoriously independent and hopelessly
difficult to control, he will go and learn some very basic artistic
skills. He will then be better than 80% of untrained artists, and
think he is a competent artist. Wrong.

When he needs music, he will want to control that, too. Musicians
are just as independent and difficult as artists, so he will go and
learn some very basic musical skills. He will then be better than
80% of untrained musicians, and think he is a competent
musician. Wrong.

Since he is probably building a GUI program, now he needs a screen
design. This is a subtly different field from art, and involves a
lot of specialised knowledge. He will want to control it, of course,
and go learn some very basic aspects of design. Once again, he's now
better than 80% of the untrained, and thinks he's a designer. Wrong.

Then we hit the meta-field midway between design and development,
the user interface (UI). This is not quite the same as design,
because it does not so much involve what the program *looks* like as
what the program *acts* like. This is something he doesn't even feel
he needs to study, since he's already a competent designer and an
excellent developer. So he thinks he's a competent UI specialist,
too. Wrong.

The only real *solution* is to stack your artwork, music, design,
and UI productions up next to professional products. Examine them
closely. If your production does not look *every* bit as good as the
professional, chances are you SUCK.

Once you've figured that out, you know what you need to either go
learn more about or STOP DOING. Get someone else to do it. No matter
how attractive "I MADE THIS WHOLE DAMN PRODUCT MYSELF" sounds, the
public response is likely to be "don't quit your day job". And if
this *is* your day job, you REALLY don't want people saying that. ;)

It's still important to study all these areas, as a modern game
developer. But you're not studying them so you can *do* them, you're
studying them so you know the language and can appreciate what
you're asking from the artistic team. Just yesterday, someone
complained that they wanted a skin *editor* in one of my products,
and "it shouldn't take more than a day or so to write". Obviously,
this person knows squat about programming, and as developers we all
hold this sort of person in the deepest contempt, right?

But we often ask the same sort of thing from artists. A programmer
might watch someone sketch out a concept for a game character in ten
minutes, and figure it's only going to take an hour or two for all
twenty characters in the game to be properly modelled, skinned, and
animated.  To anyone who has even the most rudimentary knowledge of
3D modelling, this is clearly the product of a diseased mind.

It's helpful to study marketing, too. The most heinous
miscommunications in the world take place between development and
marketing, and that's where you start getting real money
involved... so the management starts getting antsy. (You would think
marketers would know not to trust delivery estimates from
programmers by now, but they're just as habitually stupid as we
are.) I don't think anyone belongs in a professional development
shop without at least a *basic* knowledge of the product lifecycle
as seen through the eyes of the marketing department.

Bottom line: respect your artists. And recognise that you're
probably not one of them. ;)

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev