Two developers at a desk of monitors showing a grey-box level

01 — The Frame

Sixteen milliseconds, and everything has to fit inside it

An engine is a compromise machine. Simulation, animation, physics, lighting, audio and the draw calls all compete for the same window, and most of what reads as art direction is a budget decision made months earlier.

Read the entry

Two developers at a desk of monitors showing a grey-box level. The argument is about a doorway; nothing here is textured, and nothing will be for months.

Photo: cottonbro studio / Pexels

Nobody sets out to be late. A schedule is assembled out of the parts of the work that are hardest to see from outside it — the second pass, the port, the thousand fixes that arrive after the game is technically finished.

One frame, spent

A worked example — not a rule

The window

Sixty frames a second leaves 16.7 milliseconds; thirty leaves 33.3. In practice a team works with twelve or thirteen once driver overhead and the cost of keeping the two processors in step are taken out.

The split

Every project draws the split differently and redraws it after each profiling pass. The hatched blocks are the two that grow on their own as content lands: more systems ticking, more objects asking to be drawn.

Two budgets

The processor and the graphics hardware each have their own frame and neither can be spent twice. A frame that fits on paper still misses when one side is waiting on the other. Thirty against sixty.

White geometric blocks arranged like an abstract miniature cityscape of towers

Blockout

Levels built in plain geometry so the shape can be judged before anything is made expensive.

Hands typing on a laptop keyboard beside a plate of crackers on a desk — Fig. 2
The count keeps rising for months after content complete. Triage is the job: deciding which faults ship, and saying so out loud.
Photo: Kampus Production / Pexels

Bug counts and triage

The curve everybody watches, and what it does and does not predict.

Nine sections

The frame, then the schedule

01 The Frame Sixteen milliseconds, and what fits. Sixteen milliseconds4 entries 02 The Engine Tools, builds and iteration time. Iteration time4 entries 03 Grey Box Blockout before anything is pretty. Blockout3 entries 04 The Asset The pipeline from model to shipped. The pipeline4 entries 05 The Milestone What a build is for. What a build is for3 entries 06 The Cut Scope, and who decides. Cutting scope3 entries 07 Last Ten Per Cent Half the schedule. The last ten per cent3 entries 08 The Port Spec floors and second platforms. Spec floors3 entries 09 The Credits Who is in them, and who is not. Who is in the credits2 entries

Twenty-nine entries in all, each one a budget and what gets cut from it — the complete list is on the register.

06 — The Cut

Scope is rarely cut by the person who wants it cut. A piece goes when somebody can show the rest of the game still ships without it.

Cuts are made against the schedule, not against taste, and the survivors are the ones other pieces already depend on — a level three quests route through, a mechanic the tutorial teaches.

Cutting scope Who decides What survives a cut