Rapid Prototyping
My main area of technical focus is rapid prototyping (RP). That is, quickly generating game design products for the purpose of concept-proving, playtesting, and design iteration.
RP is a critical piece of the iterative design process. It means creating, as quickly as possible, a functional product that showcases and demonstrates important features of your game. The prototype is a functional expression of a game designer's intent. It's also used to evaluate key game mechanics in isolation.
A feature prototype exercises and showcases key features and mechanics in the context of your game in isolation, for example:
- Input controls
- Camera systems
- Level design
- AI behaviors
- Inventory systems
The prototype environment helps you tune, and iterate upon these features quickly, and helps you "find the fun".
My affinity for RP stems from much of my previous engineering work. I routinely built fuctional and interoperability test environments in short order. I used these environments to evaluate new hardware and features, such as:
- Optical transmission systems
- Routing and switching platforms
- VPN technologies
- Network security platforms