Re: [GD-General] Architecture Design

[Thatcher U. <tu...@tu...>]

On Mon, 8 Oct 2001, David Hunt wrote:

> I think at its worst lack of design is like the sculptor who sculpts
> by chipping off all the bits that don't look like a head - hopefully
> none of us do this.

You mean, like Michelangelo?  :)  (Isn't he the one who described his
process that way?)

Back on topic, the bad pitfall I've seen in detailed top-down engine
designs, is when you break things down into sensible pieces with sensible
interfaces, and some of the boxes implicitly contain things like "robust
rigid and soft body physics solver", "automatic all-purpose 3rd person
cinematic camera", "human-like real-time learning neural net AI".

Elegant designs have been fractured by much more technically tractable
problems than those, as well, such as details of the artist toolchain,
rendering chip peculiarties, wacky bullet-point marketing requirement, or
what have you.

-Thatcher