Blog of Rob Galanakis (@robgalanakis)

Archive for July, 2011

Meaningful return values

I consistently see return values messed up in people’s API design.  Fortunately, there are some hard and fast rules to follow that make return values really hard to fuck up. Only return True/False for a single condition.  It is not an acceptable contract to say ‘Return True on success, False...

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Why server programmers don’t need ruthlessness

There were some (expected) disagreements to my post about why tech artists need ruthlessness.  Perhaps I can help explain my opinion by providing another one about something I know little enough about to run the risk of mischaracterizations: server programmers, and how they don’t need ruthlessness. (Please mind the...

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Condensing tags

Quick note- I’ll be reducing the number of tags used by my blog posts. I have far too many that are too similar right now.

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A brief history of an animation export pipeline

I’ve spoken a lot about the animation export pipeline I made at my last job.  I started as a Technical Animator and naturally animation was where I spent a lot of my time early on (also because it is the most complex part of a pipeline).  I saw the...

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Why Tech Artists must have “ruthlessness”

ruthlessness:  pitilessness; mercilessness characterized by a lack of pity . In my GDC2011 IGDA SIG video interview, I told Bill Crosbie that Tech Artists much possess ‘ruthlessness.’  For those of you who want more info, or (like me) hate watching videos, I thought I should give some further explanation....

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Goodbye Austin, hello Atlanta and CCP

Earlier today I left Austin for Atlanta, to start at CCP Atlanta while my immigration goes through.  I’ll definitely miss Austin- Atlanta is not my first choice of cities to live in (especially Hotlanta during the summer!), but I hope I enjoy it while I’m there.  If you want...

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Classic Pipeline Case Study Part III

In Part I and II, we analyzed the pipeline design for Dark Angel.  Now let’s see what results, if any, that may have had in the final product. Dark Angel got pretty abysmal reviews.  In particular, it was criticized for the following: Repetitive, button mashing combat. Repetitive, boring, linear...

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Classic Pipeline Case Study Part II

This is Part II of the case study of Dark Angel’s (2002) Content Technical Pipeline.  See Part I.  I’ll continue from where we left off: 8. FMV Pipeline:  Ah, FMV’s.  More of the same here: naming conventions, and explanation about some intricate specific tool for video compression (this time...

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