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Digital Extremes
The Sector Engine
Getting the Bugs Out: Video Game Development Company Creates Time-Saving System That Scores High Quality
Challenge
Success in the fiercely competitive video game market depends on satisfying an extremely demanding audience. It also requires overcoming the severe constraints imposed by standard game-making technology.
Digital Extremes is a London, Ontario, video game development company. In business for 13 years, it has a staff of about 50 people and annual revenue of $9 million. Digital Extremes' latest game is Dark Sector, which is due out in 2007. It is being created with the Sector Engine, a game-design platform, which took the company five years to develop and has eliminated the bulk of the technical constraints that the industry labours under.
Developing a top-tier video game generally takes more than 40 people two to three years. Much of this time is given to detecting and fixing coding bugs; editing the myriad on-screen graphics and action; and testing the game-play features.
If a bug isn't detected and fixed immediately, it can take weeks to find later in the development process. And if the creators are using a commercially available game-development engine, seeing the on-screen results of even a small change entails a complex, time-devouring process called compiling. That is, all the components of the segment in question must be compiled before it can be viewed. Ideally, a game would be compiled only once, at the end of its development.
Furthermore, today's video games are usually written to be played on PCs and Xbox and Playstation consoles, but on the standard development engine, the creators can write for only one format at a time. Thus, if they wish a game to run on all three formats, it typically has to be written and tested three times. Moreover, many standard engines are not fully attuned to the strengths and weaknesses of console technology, which is constantly evolving.
Challenge
Success in the fiercely competitive video game market depends on satisfying an extremely demanding audience. It also requires overcoming the severe constraints imposed by standard game-making technology.
Digital Extremes is a London, Ontario, video game development company. In business for 13 years, it has a staff of about 50 people and annual revenue of $9 million. Digital Extremes' latest game is Dark Sector, which is due out in 2007. It is being created with the Sector Engine, a game-design platform, which took the company five years to develop and has eliminated the bulk of the technical constraints that the industry labours under.
Developing a top-tier video game generally takes more than 40 people two to three years. Much of this time is given to detecting and fixing coding bugs; editing the myriad on-screen graphics and action; and testing the game-play features.
Furthermore, today's video games are usually written to be played on PCs and Xbox and Playstation consoles, but on the standard development engine, the creators can write for only one format at a time. Thus, if they wish a game to run on all three formats, it typically has to be written and tested three times. Moreover, many standard engines are not fully attuned to the strengths and weaknesses of console technology, which is constantly evolving.
Digital Extremes decided to improve its productivity and competitiveness by building an engine that would simultaneously write top-quality games for current and future PC, Xbox, Playstation and other formats.
Solution
As well as its simultaneous writing capability, the Sector Engine can:
- Support near-3D photo-realistic objects rendered in real time at more than 20 frames a second;
- Support near-photo realistic dynamic lighting, shadows, shading and texture mapping;
- Port or compile all game content, regardless of format. Porting is the process by which a game in one format is rewritten for another;
- Add new content and edit existing content while the game is running, thus eliminating the need to repeatedly compile small segments;
- Detect and debug new content and programming code as it is being added, rather than at the end of the project;
- Provide a more transparent development process for the company's publishers and partners.
The Sector Engine also has an artificial intelligence system that decides how the game will respond to the players' moves.
Results
The Sector Engine has cut Digital Extremes' development cycle time by 20 per cent, most notably by substantially reducing the hours put in by bug testers and debugging engineers, who used to need about three months to complete their work at the end of a two-year project. While the time and labour cost savings are substantial, the company regards its improved quality control as the new system's greatest benefit.
As soon as new code and content is "checked in," the Sector Engine immediately tests it for bugs, and all errors are traced and sent back to their creators for immediate correction. The system logs and prioritizes any outstanding bugs and creates detailed reports for the producers and game development managers. Nothing gets left till the end of project.
Innovative Use of Technology
Game developers tend to keep their best innovations secret, but Digital Extremes believes that the Sector Engine's memory-optimization utilities and bug tracking, continuous testing and porting functionality cannot be found elsewhere in the industry.
A 2006 CIPA Winner!
For its exceptional application of information technology to solve real-world business problems, Digital Extemes has been awarded a 2006 CIPA Silver Award of Excellence in the Innovation, For Profit category.
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