teh_pwn said:
I'm a computer engineer. I've programmed embedded systems.
As a Software Engineer that has worked with many computer engineers, for the most part, you guys are horrible coders
Generally what a company does is have a large team focus on the original build. Then afterwards, only a couple people work out bugs and add a few features.
And during work, it was common that the electrical engineers would design new products, while the software engineers were writing code to improve/complete existing products.
I don't see why it would be different with game design. Surely there'd be a few people working out bugs and adding features but the original build is where the bulk of the work is.
But let's suppose you're correct. Now start a new project. There's no game engine, what exactly are the non-engineers going to do?
Well there's actually a huge group of non-engineers all responsible for many different things. Game programming is far more maleable and flexible than standard product development, maybe it shouldn't be, but right now that's how things go.
Quick game dev lesson (though it's covered in the first post):
prepro - Engineer R&D, initial game concepts
moving to production, the R&D starts moving to creating the game engine and laying out most of the groundwork, design starts getting mature with basic levels being laid out
production - continued engine work, level design, etc
tweaking and testing
Tweaking and testing is the bugcrushing phase when every engineer is going to be working full time on making the game as polished, optimized and bugfree as possible. The only people that will have little to do during the pre-pro stage are the lower end level designers and that's why you have things like the map-pack. Gives the level designers something to do while the groundwork for the next game is being made. Gives revenue for the company, and keeps the designer's skills sharp.