Disciples II: Dark Prophecy Designer Diary #8

Entry #8 - 07/09/01

By Jean-François Marquis
Programmer, Strategy First

Finally! My turn has arrived to add yet another entry to the Disciples II designer's diary. I hope you read this as good news, because it is! The debugging process is coming along fine--and I'm happy to say that the game is very stable. All that remains to be worked on are a few AI and game behavior problems. As for the artists, wow! Totally new graphics are coming along darker, meaner, and better than ever--thank God for our talented artists. I think most gamers will appreciate the new look of Disciples. That was the regular Disciples II news. As for the remainder of this diary, I'll focus on what I do as the number two (and only other) programmer of the Disciples II team and what I love to do. I will also talk about my goals.

For as long as I can remember, I've always played computer games. I had lots of fun playing the good old quest games like Space Quest and King's Quest, and I remember the day when some of my older friends came to school with a copy of the shareware version of Wolfenstein 3D. So I started to program as a hobby because I really wanted to make my own game. Wanting to be original, I worked on an RPG based on the famous Final Fantasy series. Boy, does this sound cliché, and quite honestly, it is! But as cliché as it may be, it paid off. I studied computer science in college, planning on working in the computer game industry one day, but I never thought that Strategy First would give me a job right after graduation.

A typical day at the office starts by getting the latest version of the code (meaning: getting the changes that Fred has made the day before) and of course firing up Winamp with my favorite playlist. With this done, I can continue to concentrate on working on the things you will one day appreciate, like the absence of the bugs and the presence of cool new features and gizmos in the game! Right now, we're working on new settings and memory-usage issues to make the game run better on a wider range of computers. These kinds of things always end up testing the latest version of the game on an old box sitting under Fred's desk that we once called a brand-new computer. This computer is even slower than the one we're targeting for the minimum requirements.

Working with Fred is great; we always get along fine (I hope he's not thinking, "How come he says that! That's not true..." but I don't think that's the case). Since there are only two of us, we rarely have any problems. We usually work independently on separate issues. For example, this week I was working on a new effect for the event system, while Fred was working on the AI (ahhh...good old AI...sigh). With the structure and the tools that we have, they make us very efficient and enable us to get good results. On a larger programming team, I'm sure things can go just as well, but I do like working on a small team.

I have always liked programming graphics. That is, anything with visual feedback: graphics engines, sprites, tiles, interfaces, etc. On Disciples II, I worked on tools for the integration of the in-game art (a tool that I started working on at home in my spare time and that ended up as a core component of the integration process). Tools are a really important aspect of game development; we can never emphasize this enough. One of the tools I made (which I am a little less proud of) is used to lay out the different buildings in the capitals.

Even though I really enjoy programming tools--because they're really useful and they have a fast development cycle--programming a game that will be shipped to other gamers is a lot more motivating. When I added alpha blending to the Disciples II graphics engine (coincidentally at the same time as Fred), I was so happy and proud; I felt like an author having finished his newest novel or a sculptor polishing his latest piece of art.

Maybe in my inner self, I like graphic programming more than, say, AI programming because I prefer the instant gratification, or maybe it's simply because it's one of the things I'm good at, I don't know. In any case, I sure hope you will appreciate the efforts that were put on the visuals of Disciples II, both from the programming team and from the artists.

Ultimately, the next thing for Fred and me, besides finishing an incredible game, is probably getting a hand at real-time 3D programming. That will be a big step, but we have great resources and talent around us, and we will try to make the best out of it. Right now, we're both reading books and various tutorials on the Web. I am not making any promises, and please don't make any assumptions on anything, but I think that one day we will really show the world what we are capable of.

Farewell, Disciples fans, and keep those fingers crossed so that we can ship the game sooner and better than planned. For the Disciples II designer's diary, this is Jean-François Marquis signing out.