Saturday, May 9, 2009

Oooh, a little more please.

Ah well. So as is typical, I don't think I'm allowed to talk about specifics of what I'm doing just yet, but needless to say, I am working on the next MK game. Can't talk about details, as I don't want to spoil whatever eventual PR we're doing.

That said, I can talk in loose vagaries. So, for example, I can say that tech for the game is progressing nicely. The really good thing about working on this game so far is that we're currently at that nice cruising point where you don't have to worry about getting basics working. I mean, there always is the option of scrapping and reworking existing systems... but it's not the same thing as having to build them up that first time. We have the benefit of having shipped a game forcing us to have built a whole series of tech to get that product done.

So... technically we could probably rest on our laurels. I mean, we shipped a fighting game already on this generation of hardware. It's a reasonable guess to assume the next MK is some kind of fighting game, so we probably have enough tech that if all we wanted to do was a content update, we probably could. But, really, where's the fun in that?

Well go figure, we're improving various systems. Upgrading some, rewriting others, adding some new ones where we didn't worry about certain kinds of features previously. After all, game development is really an arms race and we have to assume that in two years people will simply expect more. Me, I'm overhauling various parts of the rendering backend. Truth is, a lot of the talk I gave at GDC will no longer represent how things are done in our fighting engine by the time I'm done. But hey, that's the price of progress.

As time goes on, I hope/plan to post some insights and ideas related to what I do, which is primarily rendering work. So, stay tuned, as there's certainly more to come.

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