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Growing a Dedicated Tools Programming Team: From Baldur's Gate to Star Wars Knights of the Republic
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Growing a Dedicated Tools Programming Team: From Baldur's Gate to Star Wars Knights of the Republic,
2128

Production, Lecture

Don Moar
Lead Programmer, BioWare
As BioWare's games become more complex, having fast, stable and easy to use content creation and asset management tools becomes increasingly important. From Baldur's Gate to Neverwinter Nights to Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and beyond, each project has required more from its tools than the last. Enter the tools programmers. These people form the group whom BioWare's designers, artists and, in some cases, even game programmers depend upon to help them make their games. The primary mandate of this group is to help the teams manage their vast quantities of game data in a safe, reliable and efficient manner.

The approach to tools programming at BioWare has changed significantly since 1996, when the company was founded. Until 1999, tools were created by one of the game programmers. At that point, a formal team was created where specialized programmers would be assigned to focus on tools development over the long term and across all new projects. Starting with two, the team has now grown to sixteen programmers working on four projects. Their responsibilities include writing content creation tools for the art and design teams, and the end-user, asset management tools for the resource pipeline and localization process, and change tracking tools for the QA team.

The right tools delivered at the right time during the project will help your team stay focused on the product and hopefully allow them to complete it sooner and at less cost. This lecture describes how the lessons learned managing the growth in size and changing roles and responsibilities of the BioWare tools team can be applied to your project and company. In addition, it details some of the mistakes that have been made during that time and how similar problems may be prevented in the future.

This lecture is about getting the right people to write the right tools at the right time for your project. The attendee can expect to get some advice on how to do so and see some of the consequences of failure without having to experience them first hand. The attendee also are given some suggestions on how to manage the tools development process. Finally, the attendee may find some new ways to make their development teams more productive by giving them ideas for new tools.

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