Author Archives: Jesús Luengo

From the very beginning (II): Perforce and UDK

Posted on by
Reply

Hi there!

In the first “From the very beginninng” post (http://thebladeremains.com/blog/from-the-very-beginning-redmine/) I spoke about some of the different software options available for project management. But, when talking about videogames, a version control software is a much more important issue.

When we started to think about Skara development, it was easy to decide which versions controller software to use. As long as we want to develop our game with Unreal, Perforce was the only valid option. UDK supports integration with Perforce, and even commits from UDK editor.

But let me tell you the truth: To be honest, Perforce hasn’t got any magic inside it. It works properly well but, for sure, it is not the best version controller I’ve used. It is everything but intuitive, and once you start to use it, you soon realize there are a lot of issues in which Perforce relies on the good practices adopted by the users.

We will speak about those practices later, and probably one of our programmers will be the most indicated person to do it. But for now, I will tell you about perforce installation.

Perforce installation

  1. First of all, you need to download Perforce server from Perforce web (http://www.perforce.com/)
  2. Install it on a machine. It will work better if it is a server, such as Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2012.
  3. Install Perfoce client on the client machines.
  4. You will need to edit Perforce typemap in order for Perforce to automatically detect which files stored in the server are binary or text data. (If you need more information about this step, or step 5, I fully recommend to visit this web)
  5. Besides, as long as we will be using Unreal Engine, we will need to add those UDK specific extensions.(.u, .uc, .upk, .udk).
  6. Finally, enable source control in UDK. This can be done editing the file DefaultEditoruserSettings.ini in your folder UDK/UDKGame/Config.
  7. Be careful with your binaries folder. It shouldn’t be versioned, given that there are some files wich are machine dependant, and UDK installation does not run properly if this folder’s content is replaced with the versioned binaries folder content. So far, we haven’t found a better solution. And we’re not very proud about this one, so, if anyone can throw this light on it, any idea will be welcomed.

Anyway, this have been a quick guide with only a few steps and some indications. If you’re really interested in this subject, you should…er, no, you must visit this tutorial in gameindustry.com. The truth is it wasn’t so easy as this seven steps to have Perforce and UDK running together…

Good luck and have a nice day!

 

From the very beginning: Redmine

Posted on by
3

¡Hi there!

How’s it going guys? Well, I know it’s been a long time since I wrote my last post, but I’ve had to cope with some issues here at Skara headquarter which have kept me quite busy.

Yeah, I’m the Game Designer, and that sounds pretty cool. At least, so it sounds for me. The whole day talking and arguing about such questions as “How fast will the characters run?”, “Where do we put this stone?” or “Which character will be the strongest one?”. But before we came to that, there were a few thing that had to be done, and I was the one who had to do it. As long as we’re trying to make of this blog something useful for all of you dealing with your first game development, I’ll try to refer how to do it, and what you will need in order to have everything ready to start developing. So, there we go, first of all… Project management!

When you’re trying to develop a big game, you soon come to realize that you need some sort of management software. There are a few alternatives that you may consider. Let me tell you about them:

Pivotal Tracker: A really good choice. And even better if you’re using scrum with your team. The bad point is that you must pay for it. And that’s not a very good idea for those of us who are starting in the industry, with lots of enthusiasm but not so much money.

Fulcrum: It’s a clone for Pivotal Tracker. I think it hasn’t been updated for a long time. But well, you´ll get almost everything you would find in Pivotal Tracker, and it’s free and opensource.

Trello: It is not opensource as Fulcrum, but at least, it is free. And it has very good point on its side that I would like to mention. There’s and App for both iOS and Android. For those working on a real company, with a physical place of its own, that may not seem very important. But for those working with their friend, from their houses, or with other real jobs, it will show up to be very useful to manage your issues while you’re traveling by train or in the tube, or even having some beers with your friends. (Yeah, we developers do that kind of things, too. Not always in our confortable caves surrounded by games and comics XDD) But well, let me warn you, on the other side, it doesn’t support bug tracking.

And finally, here we have it, the one we chose for our team:

Redmine:

It’s quite complete. It supports repository systems integration, versions management, and even holds a Wiki, so, you will not need to additionally do it yourself. It supports several projects management. Besides, it’s free and there are webs such as Bitnami (http://bitnami.com/stack/redmine) where you will find virtual machines fully prepared in order to have your Redmine system ready and running. That’s exactly what I did, and now we’ve got our Redmine working in order to manage our issues. Since then, we feel  more as a serious company. We never said we aren’t, did we? Hehehe

Have a nice day!

 

Skara in five letters

Posted on by
Reply

Hi there!

Last week happened to be such an interesting time here at Skara Headquarters.

Maki Planas (Concept Artist) and David Llopis (3D Animator) joined the team, and we have already become a nice big family nowadays. For sure, they’ll be popping in here soon to introduce themselves. In the meanwhile, let me show you the five letters I meant when I wrote the title for this post:

Amazing, isn’t it? It’s our new logo, designed by Iván Castro, a full expert about caligraphy whose collaboration will be very valuable in the future, and we’re pretty excited about it!

Of course, there you have us all, celebrating the visit of our partners from London. Next week, some other people will be joining the staff, and there will be a lot of other things to talk about. But as I said, that will be next week.

Thanks for reading us and have a nice day!

 

 

New staff: Jesús Luengo

Posted on by
Reply

Hi there!

Time to introduce myself in my new role as lead designer for Skara project.
When Pablo Rodríguez first asked me to move from Madrid to Barcelona in order to develop this game, I couldn’t help finding myself answering “Yes”.
Skara is such a dream for the most of us here: artists, developers and game designers. But let me tell you something: Sometimes dreams come true.

There are a lot of things going around here right now, but still I cannot say too much. Thus let me encourage you all to keep an eye on us and our blog in order to be the first to know everything coming up about Skara.

You won’t be dissappointed!