KISS ..keep it simple stupid.

…or don’t, if you prefer S.N.A.F.U.

The recent release of my Enchanted Forest Environment Pack was well received and I’ve had a lot of positive feedback on it so far. Granted it’s only been live for two and a half days, so I may be celebrating a little prematurely.

It’s been a very busy month for me and looks to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

I put in a very long four weeks on a seriously kick @$$ project for Bad Habit Software, game environment, avatars, load screens, GUI’s, and particles effects. That’s wrapping up and now I find myself immersed in two new environments development projects. But it’s too soon to show them off, so I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

Obligatory post image: this is a screen cap of a MudBox sculpt I  started on last night.  One of about a dozen I’ve done this week. Still a long way to go on this one.

The reality of most game development is that high-end asset generation (normal maps, specular, ambient occlusion, etc) via Sub-D modeling or high poly sculpts, often simply isn’t justified by the time involved.

Unless you are talking about character generation and a few other exceptions, the bulk of content is best (bang for your buck) created via tools like Crazy Bump, or Shader Map Pro.

However, knowing when to make that call requires you to know the in’s and out’s of both. It takes a master to make a complicated task seem simple. And there are no short cuts getting there.

But there are principles and practices that will help you along the way. Sort of like “Don’t take candy from strangers …unless they’re distracted”, and  “Never pee uphill”, or that there is no right answer to “do these pants make me look fat”, which inevitably leads to your evening being F.U.B.A.R’d.

Einstein’s said “everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”. Or as Da Vinci  put it “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”.

At the end of the day, time really is money. The sooner a developer learns to reconcile that with the passion for their craft as an artist, coder, or otherwise, the happier and more effective they will be. That’s no easy juggleing act.

I was going to write more about this from a project planning perspective, but the sun is shining, so I’m going for a run.

I hope everyone has a great weekend.