https://lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/ | Skip to Main Content Main Navigation Menu * Home * Resume * Game Design Library "The Door Problem" Posted on April 21, 2014 "So what does a game designer do? Are you an artist? Do you design characters and write the story? Or no, wait, you're a programmer?" Game design is one of those nebulous terms to people outside the game industry that's about as clear as the "astrophysicist" job title is to me. It's also my job, so I find myself explaining what game design means to a lot of people from different backgrounds, some of whom don't know anything about games. The Door Problem I like to describe my job in terms of "The Door Problem". Premise: You are making a game. * Are there doors in your game? * Can the player open them? * Can the player open every door in the game? * Or are some doors for decoration? * How does the player know the difference? * Are doors you can open green and ones you can't red? Is there trash piled up in front of doors you can't use? Did you just remove the doorknobs and call it a day? * Can doors be locked and unlocked? * What tells a player a door is locked and will open, as opposed to a door that they will never open? * Does a player know how to unlock a door? Do they need a key? To hack a console? To solve a puzzle? To wait until a story moment passes? * Are there doors that can open but the player can never enter them? * Where do enemies come from? Do they run in from doors? Do those doors lock afterwards? * How does the player open a door? Do they just walk up to it and it slides open? Does it swing open? Does the player have to press a button to open it? * Do doors lock behind the player? * What happens if there are two players? Does it only lock after both players pass through the door? * What if the level is REALLY BIG and can't all exist at the same time? If one player stays behind, the floor might disappear from under them. What do you do? * Do you stop one player from progressing any further until both are together in the same room? * Do you teleport the player that stayed behind? * What size is a door? * Does it have to be big enough for a player to get through? * What about co-op players? What if player 1 is standing in the doorway - does that block player 2? * What about allies following you? How many of them need to get through the door without getting stuck? * What about enemies? Do mini-bosses that are larger than a person also need to fit through the door? It's a pretty classic design problem. SOMEONE has to solve The Door Problem, and that someone is a designer. The Other Door Problems To help people understand the role breakdowns at a big company, I sometimes go into how other people deal with doors. * Creative Director: "Yes, we definitely need doors in this game." * Project Manager: "I'll put time on the schedule for people to make doors." * Designer: "I wrote a doc explaining what we need doors to do." * Concept Artist: "I made some gorgeous paintings of doors." * Art Director: "This third painting is exactly the style of doors we need." * Environment Artist: "I took this painting of a door and made it into an object in the game." * Animator: "I made the door open and close." * Sound Designer: "I made the sounds the door creates when it opens and closes." * Audio Engineer: "The sound of the door opening and closing will change based on where the player is and what direction they are facing." * Composer: "I created a theme song for the door." * FX Artist: "I added some cool sparks to the door when it opens." * Writer: "When the door opens, the player will say, 'Hey look! The door opened!' " * Lighter: "There is a bright red light over the door when it's locked, and a green one when it's opened." * Legal: "The environment artist put a Starbucks logo on the door. You need to remove that if you don't want to be sued." * Character Artist: "I don't really care about this door until it can start wearing hats." * Gameplay Programmer: "This door asset now opens and closes based on proximity to the player. It can also be locked and unlocked through script." * AI Programmer: "Enemies and allies now know if a door is there and whether they can go through it." * Network Programmer: "Do all the players need to see the door open at the same time?" * Release Engineer: "You need to get your doors in by 3pm if you want them on the disk." * Core Engine Programmer: "I have optimized the code to allow up to 1024 doors in the game." * Tools Programmer: "I made it even easier for you to place doors." * Level Designer: "I put the door in my level and locked it. After an event, I unlocked it." * UI Designer: "There's now an objective marker on the door, and it has its own icon on the map." * Combat Designer: "Enemies will spawn behind doors, and lay cover fire as their allies enter the room. Unless the player is looking inside the door in which case they will spawn behind a different door." * Systems Designer: "A level 4 player earns 148xp for opening this door at the cost of 3 gold." * Monetization Designer: "We could charge the player $.99 to open the door now, or wait 24 hours for it to open automatically." * QA Tester: "I walked to the door. I ran to the door. I jumped at the door. I stood in the doorway until it closed. I saved and reloaded and walked to the door. I died and reloaded then walked to the door. I threw grenades at the door." * UX / Usability Researcher: "I found some people on Craigslist to go through the door so we could see what problems crop up." * Localization: "Door. Puerta. Porta. Porte. Tur. Dor. Deur. Drzwi. Drws. mun" * Producer: "Do we need to give everyone those doors or can we save them for a pre-order bonus?" * Publisher: "Those doors are really going to help this game stand out during the fall line-up." * CEO: "I want you all to know how much I appreciate the time and effort put into making those doors." * PR: "To all our fans, you're going to go crazy over our next reveal #gamedev #doors #nextgen #retweet" * Community Manager: "I let the fans know that their concerns about doors will be addressed in the upcoming patch." * Customer Support: "A player contacted us, confused about doors. I gave them detailed instructions on how to use them." * Player: "I totally didn't even notice a door there." One of the reasons I like this example is because it's so mundane. There's an impression that game design is flashy and cool and about crazy ideas and fun all the time. But when I start off with, "Let me tell you about doors..." it cuts straight to the everyday practical considerations. Recent edits: Added localization, character artist, system designer, combat designer, composer, audio engineer, monetization designer, and I think that'll be it for now. Post navigation Next Post is A Game Design Library > 124 Comments on ""The Door Problem"" 1. Manuel Correia says: April 22, 2014 at 9:34 am This is great! My family will finally understand what I do for a living. Reply + Timo says: April 23, 2014 at 7:07 am No, no they won't. xD + Michael T. Babcock says: April 23, 2014 at 9:09 am "Oh, so you make doors for a living? Why didn't you become a carpenter?" + Steven says: April 23, 2014 at 5:11 pm "Aunt Patty says you're good with doors. My garage door has been acting up lately. Could you take a look at it?" + Joe Dirte' says: April 29, 2014 at 9:25 am I find the suggestion that an Environment artist would be stupid enough to put a starbucks logo on a door and get the company sued offensive. :) 2. Will says: April 22, 2014 at 11:27 am We have a strong and integrated customer support team. Can I suggest you add to the list: Community Management: Some players want more doors. Some players want fewer doors. Customer Support: Players are confused about doors. Reply + Liz England says: April 22, 2014 at 12:36 pm Thanks! I've updated it with some additional roles. + Simon P says: April 24, 2014 at 6:05 am You might want to add "copywriter" to your list. Somebody's got to provide the words! S 3. Tom Hoffman says: April 22, 2014 at 1:27 pm Where is "EA: We can sell doors as a twenty dollar DLC.' Reply + WaffleMaker says: April 23, 2014 at 7:46 pm That's a PMs job. + Fergus says: June 24, 2014 at 1:00 am Hah too true. 4. Jeff Luke says: April 22, 2014 at 3:29 pm Liz, this is making its way around WayForward. You're famous now. Reply 5. John Evans says: April 22, 2014 at 3:45 pm That hits home in so many ways. Reply 6. Jared says: April 22, 2014 at 3:51 pm Community manager should probably say "...in an upcoming patch.". If you promise "next patch" and things get delayed your players will excoriate you. Reply + Noctis says: January 24, 2015 at 1:41 pm A good community manager never uses the word 'patch' - it's an update. 7. Diego Perez says: April 22, 2014 at 5:30 pm HAHAHA! This cracked me up real good! So true. Reply 8. Christy Marx says: April 22, 2014 at 5:39 pm Simple and brilliant. Reply 9. Dan Lam says: April 22, 2014 at 6:35 pm Someone who shared this article also mentioned localization. Reply 10. Jo says: April 22, 2014 at 7:31 pm When posting to FB added: Localization - "Door" "Porte" "Tur" "Porta" Business Intelligence - An average player opens a door 23 times an hour. Security - Bots can easily exploit the doors. Scale Engineer - If 1 million people close the door at the same time the game crashes. Brand Manager - Here is a blur trailer of a guy with stubble opening the door as it explodes. Web Designer - I made an online guide to all the doors in the game. Sales - Ok, for BestBuy I need blue doors, Target, red doors. Lore Master - That door knocker wasn't added to the universe until 200 years after the setting of our game. Reply 11. Jim says: April 22, 2014 at 8:23 pm So at the top of the list, whose job is it to say what kind of doors the game needs to have in the first place? Reply + Liz England says: April 22, 2014 at 11:30 pm A designer. 12. ted vail says: April 22, 2014 at 9:57 pm You forgot: Apple Lawyer: "We are suing over our Patent on Motion-Enhanced Binary Manifolds in 3D spaces." Reply + Mikkel says: May 12, 2014 at 5:09 am or just slide-to-unlock 13. ted vail says: April 22, 2014 at 9:59 pm And from my time at IBM i would change Producer to : "I promised the customer iris value doors and swoosh doors like in sci-fi shows - thats a quick change right?" Reply 14. Abban Dunne says: April 22, 2014 at 10:05 pm How about iOS? You can pay a small fee to open this door now or wait 24 hours. Reply 15. steve b says: April 22, 2014 at 10:21 pm Very nice list. Seeing it makes me so glad I left the games biz years ago. I might only add "we covered doors in the nine a.m. meeting, who called for the eleven a.m. door meeting?" Who cares, it's catered. Reply + Simone says: May 7, 2024 at 10:52 pm Why does it make you so glad??? 16. T says: April 22, 2014 at 10:58 pm Awesome!! This also shows that game design is really a team effort and is not developed by a single person. Reply + sdrawkcaB says: October 23, 2021 at 7:57 pm Unless the game is called "Geometry Dash". 17. Greywolf says: April 22, 2014 at 11:26 pm UPPER MANAGEMENT: "We are now six months late to release. There's the door." Reply 18. Ian Hamilton says: April 23, 2014 at 12:03 am Colourblind gamer: I can't tell whether the door is locked or unlocked, thanks a lot lighter! Reply 19. Dellekamp Siefert says: April 23, 2014 at 7:15 am Peter Molyneux "our doors will make you cry" Reply 20. me says: April 23, 2014 at 9:35 am Who manages all the disagreements between all the different people that want to dictate everyone else's part in door making? Who hires door people? Reply + Liz England says: April 23, 2014 at 12:10 pm Negotiation. Buy-in. Empowering people with the ability to make decisions regarding their work. Appointing one person as the arbiter or owner of a piece of the game (i.e. doors). There's always trade-offs between technical considerations (can we actually do it? will it hurt the framerate/memory or impact other systems? how much programmer time will it take? are there workarounds?) and design considerations (how important is this to the player? how does it impact the play experience? is it the right decision for this game?) and the need to balance them. Knowing how to work in a team is a very important skill. Knowing when you can make a decision yourself or among your team vs. when you need someone higher up - like a Creative Director - to make the decision is also pretty important. 21. Bryan C. says: April 23, 2014 at 10:43 am Indie Dev 1: "Doors are so played out. Our game features cutting edge door-free play and is featured in the next Humble Bundle!" Indie Dev 2: "Our new game is Doors Tower Defense." Indie Dev 3: "Our game is an epic tale about the life of a door as told in 8-bit art from the third person perspective in an RPG form narrated like Bastion." Indie Dev 4: "Our game is about doorways and spiritual transformation in a post apocalyptic paradise." Reply 22. Bryan C. says: April 23, 2014 at 10:52 am Strategic Marketing Director to team: "We just got the license for This Old House! The protagonist has to be changed to Norm Abram before the next milestone drop." Reply 23. Erin says: April 23, 2014 at 11:05 am Physics Programmer: "Do rag dolls collide with the door? Do they keep the door open?" This can be a tricky problem, depending on the design. Mainly because designers sometimes want behavior that is not physically plausible. Like, rag dolls must collide with the door but not block it. See the irresistible force paradox. Reply 24. Derrick Barth says: April 23, 2014 at 11:23 am Was sad to see my role, a possibly even less understood one, excluded from the list! Technical Artist #1: "I've created a modular rig for our door animations that can be re-targeted to every door in the game." Technical Artist #2: "I've split the door texture's luminance and color data so we can use one set of textures for every door in the game." Technical Artist #3: "I've written a Maya tool that generates one thousand unique door meshes in 30 seconds." Technical Artist #4: "I've written an uber shader for our doors which fades opacity as players approach it, turns it into a hologram, animates the UVs to show a rippling effect..." Technical Artist #5: "I've re-written the naming conventions to accommodate door assets. Doors are now found in Environments/ Props/Doors and are named in the format of '[environment prefix] _prop_door_[size of door]_[open or closed]_mesh.[filetype]'" Reply + dsurka says: April 24, 2014 at 11:29 am I feel you bro. 25. Ivan says: April 23, 2014 at 11:50 am Thanks you for this, it spot on. Good job! :-) Reply 26. John Rose says: April 23, 2014 at 12:04 pm Thank you. Thank you very much. Reply 27. XXXX XXXX says: April 23, 2014 at 12:08 pm Soundtrack Performer: "Meh, I like the Beatles better." Reply 28. Jonathan says: April 23, 2014 at 12:41 pm It sounds like any programming, or even broader, engineering problem. A full understanding of the system being modeled for user interaction should be planned out (depending on the process you're using. Agile, waterfall, etc). I'd like to think that as a better than average software engineer, and a gamer, I could manage these complex yet mundane details, all the while maintaining focus on whats really important, the users experience. A lot of those questions you asked about the door should be answered with one question, "Why does the user care about this door?" You really make game design sound boring and thankless though. Now if you excuse me, I'm going back to my job of getting strings in databases... Reply 29. Werlix says: April 23, 2014 at 1:21 pm Player: "Doors OP. Please nerfed." Reply 30. Paul Smith says: April 23, 2014 at 1:39 pm My son works in the games industry in Seattle. I struggle to explain what he does to my peers ; he's a producer type. Now I know. Exactly. Reply + Sam Smith says: April 23, 2014 at 11:37 pm I'd love to meet your son -- we're in the same place doing the same thing. 31. Brooke says: April 23, 2014 at 3:01 pm lol From here on out I no longer make "like, menus and things", I put objective markers on doors! ! Hehehe Reply 32. Morgan says: April 23, 2014 at 4:03 pm This is great. One bit of feedback. If you have a company with both Narrative Designers and Writers, then the following: Writer: "When the door opens, the player will say, 'Hey look! The door opened!'" Would be a better description for a Narrative Designer. The Writer would then be. Writer: "Snarky Protagonist [the Player]: The door opened. Gee, that was unexpected." The difference being that the Narrative Designer is in charge of calling out where there will be a line and what that line will express, and then the Narrative Designer will go into the engine and make that line trigger in the tools. Then the writer will go in and write the line in the character's voice. :) Reply 33. Artemis says: April 23, 2014 at 4:32 pm You forgot about the wife of any of those positions who says, " you'd better come home now or I'm going to change the keys on the doors! Reply 34. B says: April 23, 2014 at 6:17 pm Tough treatment of Production. Ouch. Reply 35. Jayd says: April 23, 2014 at 7:02 pm Nerf doors! Reply 36. ratlab says: April 23, 2014 at 8:08 pm I under estimated the complexity that a simple object could create when obstructing the possibilities of an entity to advance efficiently toward... a plausible end. Reply 37. Kieran Snyder says: April 23, 2014 at 8:10 pm This is extremely well done. Why aren't you the HR director? Reply 38. g says: April 23, 2014 at 11:12 pm This is so true. Not only for gamedev and doors, but for any kind of software... Reply 39. Chris Stead says: April 23, 2014 at 11:32 pm Perhaps you could add: Media: In conclusion, the door opening wasn't immersive, but this issue aside gamers who are fans of the door, potentially may have fun opening it. 7/10 or King: People are confusing your door with Candy Crush Saga and we must protect our IP. Reply 40. Commentator says: April 23, 2014 at 11:45 pm Thank you. Now I know, why big teams are needed for modern games and why games are getting worse and worse with no innovation. As described here, a couple of Nerds seem to think about the smallest detail of obvious things, rather to think about how to make a game, which is fun. Who cares about the size of a doorknob in a game with an innovative and fun idea? Remember "Castles of Dr. Creep"? A game made by two people packed with lots of great ideas and elements which fit together. Every room in every dungeon a new challenge. A density of gameplay nowadays a whole year of games can't provide. It seems like I can stop wondering why, after reading this. Reply + SIMOMEGA says: May 7, 2024 at 11:02 pm Youre a few years too early, the trend of games getting worse started way l8r than when you made your comment, and thank god nintendo isnt in that trend. Gotta thank wokeness and the ESG firms for that. 41. Happy1000 says: April 24, 2014 at 2:32 am One of my co-workers proposed that :) : Editorial: "Doors are not an issue, let's talk about the interiors..." Closer: "Too many doors related JIRAs, we need to cut the feature" Reply 42. ForkHandles says: April 24, 2014 at 6:19 am How about these... Metrics: Users open the door 6.45 times in the first 10 hours, on average. Analytics: 23% increase in users opening doors after the introduction of the tutorial. Focus Group: Users liked the blue door. Sales and Marketing Dept: Adding doors will sell an additional 0.05 units in the UK, and 1.3 units in Spain! Reply 43. Joshua Billeaudeau says: April 24, 2014 at 12:35 pm Jim Morrison would be proud. ;-) Reply + Bill says: May 14, 2014 at 8:23 am Being a huge fan of THE Doors, your comment made me laugh the most. Thanks! 44. JesperVK says: April 24, 2014 at 1:09 pm Awesome description. I think I want to be a game designer, and I'm not kidding either. There are so many awfully designed doors in so many otherwise great games. I won't mention any names, though, and instead just say that I really liked the doors in BioShock Infinite, Mass Effect and Remember Me. I think the funniest doors are those that when the player walks right up to them - and you know you're only seeing like 1 percent of the door on-screen - the character can still manage somehow to open it. The funniest door can also be the most disappointing if you don't actually see it open and it just goes directly to the transition load screen. Reply 45. Chris Rutledge says: April 24, 2014 at 2:29 pm This is great! Perfect analogy. Reply 46. Coiffio says: April 24, 2014 at 4:56 pm VP: "Can you make the doors more door-ier?" Reply 47. Woody Hodge says: April 24, 2014 at 5:24 pm Wow! I had a clue but this is still amazing. Reply 48. Thomas says: April 25, 2014 at 3:49 am I've worked as scripter, level designer, systems designer, combat designer, lead and creative director on vrious game project involving doors and I vouch for this - Love the statements in the second part, I may have heard some of those exact lines spoken. And yeah, we definitely need doors in the game! Reply 49. Phil Merricks says: April 25, 2014 at 4:32 am As a Producer, I've done most of the things on that list to a greater frequency than the action attributed to a Producer. Reply 50. Enomi says: April 25, 2014 at 8:12 am The ambitious solo indie programmer : Pre-alpha Release 0.4 is available. I did not have time to implement properly the user made voxels doors of variable size with hacking and electric wiring/actuators, that will be for the next build. (true story, http://www.xenogalaxies.com) Reply 51. Sean Gailey says: April 25, 2014 at 9:51 am Ha, awesome article. Reply 52. MT says: April 25, 2014 at 10:27 am This is an awesome piece. I work in the industry and the only title that I've never heard before is "Monetization Designer". Is this an actual title in game companies out there? Would love to hear folks chime in. Reply + Eugen says: October 21, 2015 at 10:50 pm Yes, it's actually a thing. "Monetization Manager" being the more commonly used description though. There are even conferences/summits around the topic, especially for mobile. 53. Bryan C. says: April 25, 2014 at 11:00 am Distributor: "In order for us to get this placed with a specific retail store we need to provide them an exclusive edition. Can you make some kind of special door DLC? Preferably, they said they want a double door edition SKU, but they'll accept custom knockers in a pinch." Reply 54. chip says: April 25, 2014 at 2:17 pm this is awesome! I think you missed: Gameplay Camera: Does camera clip through door? Does camera need special door logic FX: we need to add a sparkly glint to the doorknob because players keep missing it Level Design: We need to set up streaming volumes on each side of the door so we load / unload the previous level. We need to add a fade to hide the load between doors Mesher: I need the doors and doorframes modular and a fixed dimension so I can place them in my level correctly Animator: I need the door handle height a uniform location, so I can line up player animation of player opening the door Character Artist: You need to increase the door height so a our larger enemy can fit through it Reply 55. Russ says: April 27, 2014 at 5:23 am CEO: "I'm afraid we blew the entire budget by assigning 35 people to work on a door. We won't be able to pay anyone next month" Reply 56. Roger says: April 28, 2014 at 12:55 am Now imagine the door problems in Pixars Monsters Inc. Reply 57. Laurent* says: April 30, 2014 at 4:48 pm And I thought only rotating door were complex Reply 58. Skinymike says: May 5, 2014 at 9:04 am Very good blog. I suppose the mark of a good designer is if you don't notice the 'doors' Reply 59. MuhKuh says: November 3, 2014 at 3:46 am You should add 1 more short sentence to the QA-Tester: "And the last one didn't work" Reply 60. Mendel says: November 18, 2014 at 9:45 am Very cool article :) Might I suggest: Applied Games Researcher: 'Has it been scientifically validated that this is how doors actually behave in real life?' External Lore Expert: 'A WW2 door doesn't look like this. Plastic was not invented yet.' Sales Trend Analyst: ' Our spreadsheet shows that doors are currently not sexy. Please consider turning them into whales.' Localization Tester: 'Please enlarge the door in level one to accomodate the Finnish string for 'exit' as it is often 200% longer than English: poistua' Applied Games Customer: 'But if you just build the pilot door for free, we can use it to get more money!' Guerillia marketeer: 'Can you please Fraps that door while opening so I can put it on Youtube?' Indie Game Dev: 'I can only make one door a week. I work at the McDonalds all other days to pay the rent.' Original Comic Book Artist: 'This is all wrong! In my comic the door is super red! That's why it is called Super Red Door!' 3D-modelling intern: 'I don't get it... Why can't the door have 10.000 polygons?' Reply 61. Gary Davies says: December 10, 2014 at 5:22 am https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9L5zbaQML0 Pulk Pull Revolving Doors - Radiohead Reply 62. Jacob Hutchins says: January 17, 2015 at 5:51 am doing math for my space ship generation algorythm. need help. Reply + Jacob Hutchins says: January 17, 2015 at 5:55 am need my space ship to look and feel aparently real. 63. Chelsea Hash says: February 3, 2015 at 1:18 pm Tech Artist: "I made a tool so that every time an artist makes a door the hinge and nob can be detected by the programmers." Reply 64. Armando Soto says: March 31, 2015 at 4:48 pm I shared this post with everyone on the design team at my work. Solid info right here! Reply 65. Nucreum says: May 26, 2015 at 2:32 am Hahaha, really nice one ! Usually, I just say to peope "I make rules of the game.". Reply 66. Rialgar says: October 13, 2015 at 3:36 am more QA: I went through the door sideways. I went through the door backwards. I ran at the wall next to the door. Reply 67. Adam says: February 8, 2016 at 6:39 am Composer: "I created a theme song for the door." I REALLY want to hear this song. Thanks for taking the time to write this article to the benefit of game designers everywhere. Reply 68. Mike says: April 24, 2016 at 4:17 pm Thank you for that easy-to-understand article about game design. The ending, "Player: 'I totally didn't even notice a door there,'" had me in stitches! Reply 69. Thiago Baptista says: May 3, 2016 at 1:20 pm I'm definitely stealing this one. :) Reply 70. Logan_Lux says: May 3, 2016 at 4:34 pm Investor: How much money do you need for those new doors? Reply 71. Logan_Lux says: May 3, 2016 at 4:35 pm Trump: Make those doors huge. HUGE! Reply 72. Gregory says: May 4, 2016 at 9:55 am Such a fantastic read, thanks Liz! Reply 73. Kinrany says: May 18, 2016 at 8:55 am The link at the bottom is broken, here's a correct one: http:// gamma.studiocypher.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/ The-Door-Problem.png Reply 74. Kinrany says: May 20, 2016 at 5:54 am Nevermind, they fixed it! Reply 75. Kinrany says: May 20, 2016 at 5:55 am The link still has two extra characters though. Reply 76. Clancy Carr says: August 27, 2016 at 6:11 am Haha, great read. I already knew the trials and tribulations involved in creating overlooked mechanics and features but this really drives home that reality! Reply 77. Balaji says: August 27, 2016 at 11:11 am haha, Good One. The players part was amazing. :D really funny. (Y) Reply 78. Caine says: May 19, 2017 at 9:19 pm C'mon, what kind of weak QA do you have there. He didn't even spend last two weeks repeatedly opening and closing all the doors in the game in a rapid fashion and various orders to figure out that perhaps-not-random crash(that will get a "Won't Fix" resolution anyway), right after a week of shooting every door with every weapon to doublecheck new SFX (that is going to be redone anyway) on both Durango and ORBIS builds. Reply 79. Seb says: January 9, 2018 at 7:08 am yeah, classic! Reply 80. Ruby Roy says: January 23, 2018 at 7:41 am Valuable article. Very helpful to us. Reply 81. Lisad says: May 30, 2021 at 11:37 am Actually, some of the comments are right, you forgot narrative designers and writers :D Reply 82. Matthew Nordhaus says: June 28, 2021 at 5:02 pm You forgot the argument about whether the doors open inwards our out, and how the animator only did one set of animations (inwards) because the producer forgot to schedule the time for two door opening animations for each of three extra NPC body types that the designer added in March, and when QA found out that you could break level 4 because the door only opened in and when the full squad stood in the anteroom it blocked the door and stopped all progress (because the level designer didn't get the message that the animator didn't get the message that the producer forgot to schedule the extra animations) the QA manager flagged it as a show stopper just before we had to go to cert and so the project director made the level designer remove that door entirely, which meant you could see the final boss before the animations had loaded, which was immediately posted to reddit after the game shipped and people were laughing at the designer for being such a lame designer but at least the level wasn't broken. Reply 83. lone TA says: August 29, 2021 at 11:12 am Disappointing that Technical Artist is not in the list (yet, I find myself also struggling to define what it is I that I do, in laymen's terms. Reply + lobachevsvcki says: September 3, 2021 at 4:02 pm Tech artist here: We are not mentioned directly, but at least for what I do the Tool Programmers section does it for me: I literally made a tool to place doors easily once. I agree tech art being not only difficult to define but so broad it is hard to put it all what we might be doing in a list. I would say we stream line asset creation from DCC to engine. 84. Spencer says: September 11, 2021 at 12:00 am Saw this from a VOX vid, and Wow. Blown away with how much more work it is to do a game. Also like the part of the CEO :-) Reply 85. bm64 says: November 20, 2021 at 7:21 am wow this is a great explanation. it's informative also i laughed at the ceo part that was great might consider one of these in the future Reply 86. RockLake says: December 1, 2021 at 1:21 pm Thank you for addressing the issues of mundane parts of developing a game. PS: I didn't know there were this many fields in developing a game. Reply 87. Oraang Lewaat says: December 3, 2021 at 3:26 pm Tobey: "You'll get your rent when you fix this damn door!" Btw, I got here from Vox. Reply 88. Anonymous says: February 7, 2022 at 10:40 am You forgot the speedrunner role that magically finds out that when you press A and B at the same time pointing towards the bottom right corner of this window while standing right at the very edge of the door holding the default knife with the golden skin, you will immediately launch to the boss room which saves 3 seconds of the run by skipping an unskippable dialogue of 'Hey look! The door opened!'. Reply 89. Iiridayn says: March 24, 2022 at 3:43 pm From the article title, I thought you'd mention whether doors trigger a zone transition, the inside vs outside rendering algorithms, and how sound changes when passing through doors. I remember reading an article about Portal (a game about doors which the player can place) where they talked about some of the complex engineering challenges of getting sound correctly through doors which dynamically make the level no longer a simple graph. I suppose those are all Core Engine Programmer issues though. Reply 90. MeD says: June 12, 2022 at 12:30 pm This article needs more doors for the reader's comprehension. Reply 91. Anonymous says: October 24, 2022 at 1:42 am doors Reply 92. Anonymous says: February 9, 2023 at 1:42 pm IT : yell at dev team because they used cracked software to create the door Reply 93. Extermin8or_ says: February 27, 2023 at 9:14 pm See I found this post amusing as someone with a brother who is a video game designer. I however am an Astrophysicist. The key difference is he does explain what he does and people kinda seem to get it- he makes video games. I explain my current research or what I'm doing and almost no one understands what I'm doing to the point where I often say "thanks for asking and showing interest but I have no way to answer your question that you will understand and as a consequence won't bore you" I like this door analogy because of some of the mundane things my brother has talked about being complicated to make work in a realistic manner sometimes. Reply 94. bcb8c8 says: March 1, 2023 at 6:35 am I'm glad my game has no doors. Reply 95. Resok says: March 1, 2023 at 4:07 pm Just discovered this today and it's gold. Thank you. Reply 96. Chandler says: August 13, 2023 at 1:16 pm I'm confused. Does a cat exist or not exist on the other side of the closed door? Reply 97. IchRocke says: October 3, 2023 at 1:50 pm Hi :) I discoverd this page through a formation on eDX about game design. This is really cool content I love to see the inside out of decisions like this. It explains so much to me like WHY THE F in Batman (every batman I played) I can't just f$up the door... I mean I'M BATMAN I'd also like to add a new character in the description list, "The Speedrunner" / "Youtuber" / "Spiffing Brit" : I saw a door, put a barrel in front of it and bam final boss here i come :D Reply 98. Moe Leicester says: October 23, 2023 at 7:56 pm Modding community: I have turned all door models into Thomas the Tank Engine and now they play Darude: Sandstorm whenever they are left open Reply 99. Oded Ben Dov says: January 4, 2024 at 4:41 am Wonderful punch! :D Thanks for this!! :) Reply 100. Unsanitized Input says: February 18, 2024 at 1:49 am Interesting post! Is it safe to generalize that all projects akin are categorized under art, design, engineering, and relations? Reply 101. Anonymous says: June 14, 2024 at 8:03 am Chuck Norris: "The door is where I go through the wall." Reply 102. Anonymous says: June 14, 2024 at 9:26 am Family: if you know so much about doors you can surely help me with my Windows.. Reply 103. Nathan Epstein says: June 14, 2024 at 10:49 am I was QA on Skyrim. Doors were actually a big focus of testing for a bunch of reasons. The loading screen could interrupt things that might or might not be resilient to being interrupted, and might or might not need to be resilient to that. Whether they were locked or not was also the result of quest scripting, that might or might not be expecting a specific sequence of player actions, and breaking that expectation might lead to an unexpected state of the door. In some prerelease versions, this maneuver sometimes led to some pretty hilarious bugs. "I opened the door, but during the door open animation, I got on my horse before the loading into the next zone." You never knew what would happen when that one worked. Sometimes it was a horse causing chaos in a building, sometimes it was an unintelligible broken screen. Reply Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Comment * [ ] Name [ ] E-mail [ ] Website[ ] [Post Comment] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] D[ ] * * (c) 2024 Liz England | Powered by Responsive Theme Top