A Programmers Perspective: Dealing with Cut Content and Canceled Games
As any game developer would tell you nothing feels worse than working for weeks, months or even years on a something just to have it cut or cancelled. In this blog post I’d like to share my experience dealing with this and how you can salvage your work.
My experience with having major components I had worked on cut, began mid-way through the development of Batteries Included, which at the time had a tentative title of “Imaginarium.” The design for the game was very different at that time and needed complex AI with access to a lot of information from the current world state. It was my job to create an efficient system that would gather information about things like where concentrations of enemy and allied units where as well as keep track of obstacles and goals for the various units.
A good way to collect and feed this type of information is through an influence map system. An Influence map is essentially a 2d grid that acts as a heat map where the hot areas have a lot of influence and the cold areas have less or none at all. I could go on, but this post is not about how influence maps work. The point is it took a long time to make for the project.
Right as the complex AI that would use my system was nearly ready to be play tested and tweaked, our game was pivoted to a new concept which needed much simpler AI that had little to no spatial awareness, making my system pointless for the new direction of the project.
After feeling like I had done all that work for nothing, I thought about what I could use my system outside of the project. Initially I had reached out to my team members who where developing the AI that would go with the system if they would be interested in starting a side project to showcase our work better for a portfolio piece. Due to busy schedules and other projects we all already had going on the new projects was never started.
But there was still hope for my system. That hope was to finish and polish it to become a plugin for other developers to use in their games. Which is exactly what I have been working on in my spare time. So, keep an eye out for it in the Epic and Unity Store.
If there is one thing that I would want you to take away from this blog post, it’s that there are going to be times where something you’ve worked on is cut or cancelled. But that doesn’t mean that it was a waste of time. Try to think of ways you can recycle, re-use and improve what you’ve created. And at the very least know that you’ve gained knowledge from the experience of creating something that will aid you as you continue to create cool stuff.
- Alex Bowling, Gameplay and Systems Programmer
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