The Toolbox

“What is a word if not a tool to make your point?”

28 terms · every definition links back to the notes that use it

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Bitmapped Image: An image represented as a grid (bitmap) of individual pixel values, as opposed to a vector or procedurally-described image.

Computer Graphics: The math and algorithms for turning geometry, materials, and light into pixels: the foundation every visual tool quietly stands on.

Data: Whatever a tool reads, writes, or transforms: assets, levels, configs, and the schemas that describe their shape. (3 notes)
DCC: Digital Content Creation software (Maya, Blender, Houdini) where artists build things before a tool ever touches them. (1 note)
DDL: Data Definition Language: the schema a tool's data has to fit before a single byte gets written.
Determinism: Same input, same output, every time: the property that makes a bug reproducible instead of haunted. (1 note)

Edit: The read-write side of a tool, as opposed to the runtime that only plays what was authored.

Game Data Merging: Reconciling what two people changed in the same level file without losing either change.
Game Tools Dev: The discipline of building the software that builds the game: editors, pipelines, and everything between an idea and a shipped level. (2 notes)
GameDev Tools Weekly: A newsletter roundup of tools, talks, and libraries from across the game industry, one issue at a time. (15 notes)
GDC: The Game Developers Conference, the yearly excuse to catch up on what every studio's tools team has been building. (8 notes)

Headless Architecture: A software/tool design where the core functionality runs without a graphical user interface, so it can be driven via scripts, the command line, or another application's UI.

Interchange: Formats built to move data between tools without the meaning getting lost in translation (think FBX, glTF, or Alembic). (1 note)

Level Art: The dressing on a level: props, lighting, materials, the polish that sells the space.
Level Design: The shape of playable space: encounters, geometry, pacing, flow. (1 note)

Primal Design Elements: Fundamental, instinctual design cues, drawn from evolutionary psychology, that trigger a strong, near-involuntary human response.
Principles of Parameter Variation: Changing one parameter at a time while holding the rest constant, so you can actually tell which one moved the result.
Procedural: Content generated by rules and parameters instead of placed by hand. (1 note)
Production: Scheduling and prioritizing tools work so it actually ships alongside the game. (1 note)

Roles: The job titles tools work touches: tools programmer, technical artist, pipeline engineer. (2 notes)

Scene Description: The data model for what exists in a scene and how it's composed. USD is the industry's most ambitious attempt at one. (1 note)
Support: Keeping a tool usable for the people depending on it, long after it shipped.
Switcher Bar: A row of tabs, each representing a focused layout optimized for a specific task, sitting directly below a tool's menu bar.

Tools Tutorial Day: A GDC pre-conference day of hands-on sessions specifically for people who build tools, not just use them. (1 note)

USD: Universal Scene Description: Pixar's open format for composing and exchanging 3D scenes. (1 note)

Version Control: Git, Perforce, and the systems that track who changed what, and let you merge it back. (1 note)
Visual Arts: The craft disciplines tools ultimately serve: modeling, texturing, lighting, animation.

Web: Browser tech inside game tools: local servers, Electron shells, in-editor web views. (1 note)