Hi Guys,

I need some advice on a couple of different roles. I am taking this as an assumption to start of with:

• A programmer who knows C++ and not much else
• An artist who knows photoshop and illustrator and not much else
• A 2D model artist who knows how to use 3Ds Max / 3D Maya and not much else

I've stated the roles like this as I want to understand exactly how these all connect. Let's take a very simple games of Angry Birds as an example. Its a 2D game, but things rotate and birds crash into objects.

Let's not combine any of these 3 roles into 2, how would each of these 3 roles compliment / work together in producing a game?

Hope my post makes sense and help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advanced

Gameov3rUK

The programmer should have the most knowledge about the targetted platform, and thus has to give requirements to the artists, e. g. regarding the texture resolutions, polygon count, shaders, file formats, and so on.

The artists (2D and 3D) either want to integrate their graphics and models into the game, or give them to the programmer. Letting the artist integrate his assets by himself would be the best option, since this way the artist would not only be able to embed all assets in the game, and to adjust some settings on them, but he would also be able to check, in what way he might has to rework his assets.
If you're not already using tools for the game to integrate the assets, the programmer either has to integrate them, or he has to build the required tools. The artists will either have demands for the tools, or they will find new requirements during their daily use of the tools.

If the 2D artist creates textures for the 3D models, the 2D artist will either give the textures to the 3D artist to include them in the model files, or the textures will be combined by the programmer or using the mentioned tools. The 2D artist needs to know, how to create the textures - how they are mapped onto the models.


That's at least what came to my mind right now, so there still could be some more aspects.
And the title is a bit... misleading. You don't want to let your programmer and your artist fight each other (and you don't want to make a game about this). ;)

Hey Sacaldur!

Thank you for your reply. That's helped me greatly, but now I have more questions if you don't mind?

When you say let the 3D artist add the model files into the game / engine, do you mean into Unity or Unreal, something like that?

Where does animation come into all of this? When for example a bird in Angry Birds is catapulted in the air, is that animation like "Disney" of frames of animation almost like static fast pictures moving from one screen to the next?

In regards to animation again, if there was an explosion, how would this work in regards to the points I stated above, would it be the same way as my second statement in regards to animation?

Thank you again.

Yes, I had tools like Unity, Unreal Engine, Construct, and so on in mind while writing my answer, but since I don't know what you're going to use, I didn't got into detail about any of them.
In Unity for example, the artists would not only include the files into the project, but would also assign them to the right GameObject, and maybe even would set some required properties.
If you're not using some of these tools, the programmer would have to change the source code/configuration files, or he would need to write similar tools.

There isn't a single one solution for (2D) animations.
While using 3D animations, you'll very likely have some bones within the model (the collection of all bones of a 3D model is his rig), and all animations move, rotate and scale the bones.
But there are different possible approaches for 2D animations. The most important ones are frame based animations, where you have multiple frames for the same thing, but you're drawing only the right one at the right time (that's what you mentioned as "Disney"), and one where you have bones as well, and where you rotate and scale the image parts depending on the animation.
The latter one could be "optimized" by changing the images depending on e. g. the angle of a bone, or a character could get a weapon placed in his hands. But the latter one is only possible for games with a side view or a top down view, but nothing in-between.

Explosions are most likely handled the same way as particle effects. You'll have multiple rotated and scaled images, with transitions on position, scale, rotation, and transparency. You may could improve the results by throwing in some shader magic - but I didn't used shaders or particles enough, so I can't say what's best to do.

But who is the designer? Who is making the decisions about what features the game needs to have, how many birds there are, what each bird does, whether there are any cut-scenes, what's in those, what objects houses can be built out of , how they do or don't kill pigs, what kinds of pigs there are, etc.?

Let's take a very simple games of Angry Birds as an example. Its a 2D game, but things rotate and birds crash into objects.

The more general workflow is already displayed by Sacaldur, but if you really target a very simple game like angry birds, then the third role (2D modeller) is not needed. Just a Coder and 2d artist is more then enough to create the technical/visual part of the game.

As sunandshadow has mentioned, a great part of the game is game design. Which game mechanism, features, level design, increasing challenges, playtesting etc. Don't underestimate the work it needs in a game of the scope of angry bird.

If you take the whole game production pipeline, you need someone who handles sound effects (you most likely need to mix different samples) and music (could be bought), a project leader role, a marketing role(web presentation, advertising, community) , a business role (contact with lawyers, selling platform, contracts, taxes etc.).