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The register
Every entry on the site, filed by section. Nine sections, twenty-nine entries, each one a budget and what gets cut from it.
The homepage carries an edit of this list. This page carries all of it, which is what a register is for.
01 — The Frame
Sixteen milliseconds, and what fits.- 01Sixteen millisecondsSixty frames a second gives you about sixteen and a half milliseconds to simulate, animate, light, submit and present. Every feature is a claim on that window, and most art-direction decisions are really budget decisions wearing a costume.
- 02Draw calls and what they costEach batch handed to the GPU carries overhead, which is why so much work goes into sending fewer, larger ones.
- 03Lighting as a budgetBaked, dynamic or a hybrid — the choice is made on cost per frame, not on looks.
- 04Thirty against sixtyHalving the target doubles the budget, and it is the commonest way to buy room.
02 — The Engine
Tools, builds and iteration time.- 01Iteration timeHow long it takes to see a change is the single biggest lever on how good the game gets.
- 02Build timesA full build that takes hours changes what anybody is willing to try.
- 03Editors and toolsMost of an engine is a tool nobody outside the studio ever sees.
- 04ProfilingMeasure before optimising — intuition about where time goes is usually wrong.
03 — Grey Box
Blockout before anything is pretty.04 — The Asset
The pipeline from model to shipped.- 01The pipelineFrom model to engine there are a dozen steps, and each one is somewhere a mistake can enter and not be seen until much later.
- 02Budgets per assetTriangle counts, texture memory and material slots, agreed up front and defended.
- 03Naming and versioningBoring, and the difference between a working build and a lost week.
- 04Optimisation passesScheduled, not hoped for.
05 — The Milestone
What a build is for.- 01What a build is forA milestone build is a communication device aimed at somebody outside the team, which is why it distorts priorities.
- 02The vertical sliceA small piece finished to shipping quality — enormously useful and reliably misleading about the rest.
- 03Content completeEverything present, nothing polished. Rarely as complete as declared.
06 — The Cut
Scope, and who decides.07 — Last Ten Per Cent
Half the schedule.- 01The last ten per centBug triage, certification, load times and the day-one build. Reliably half the calendar and almost never half the plan.
- 02Bug counts and triageThe curve everybody watches, and what it does and does not predict.
- 03CertificationA platform holder's checklist that has nothing to do with whether the game is good.