Hellgate: London Developer Diary

IGN PC has published a new developer diary for Hellgate: London, in which Flagship Studios’ Tyler Thompson discusses his day-to-day programming duties. Check it out:

This all makes it sound like the game programmers just make the technology, sit back and watch it all get assembled. This is hardly the case. Since we write the tools, the game programmers are the ones that know best how to use them, and we use them more than anyone. Although in theory anyone could create an AI for a monster with our tools, only game programmers end up making them. Although in theory anyone could make the Firebolter launch missiles that explode on impact, game programmers sketch it in for the first pass. The main advantage of the tools is that the artists get to add, tweak and change the stuff that we sketch in.