Developer Diary: How We Work

Master Creating´s Creative Director Jan Beuck gives an insight into the development process of their upcoming action-RPG Legend - Hand of God.

A Regular Day

Here at Master Creating, a regular work day starts at 11 a.m.
Before you start to complain about how your shift starts at 7, 8 or 9 o’clock… our shift usually ends around 23:00 – at the earliest! Believe me, 12 hours are a long time…

When I arrive at the office, Master Creating’s programming guru Martin is already there. Somehow, he’s always at least fifteen minutes earlier. Boot up computer, download e-mails… and the first ICQ messages come in. ICQ is the most important means of communication for us, even more important than the phone. Practically everybody who is or has been working on the project is on my ICQ contact list, and that’s great. An ICQ chat rarely gobbles up as much time as a phone call, and instead of English with a heavy Russian accent I get regular English words… okay, most of the time ;). On ICQ, people are equal… equal in a comfortable, yet personal way.

So what do we do all day long?

Martin Jässing & Jan Beuck

Martin is fiddling with the visual effects of skills. Of course we know about the importance of skills in action RPGs, that’s why we invest so much time in this sector. Even our consultants – who take a peek from time to time - agree on this. Getting feedback from outsiders definitely is important: if you’re deeply involved in a project, you tend to overlook exactly those little things which a less involved person might instantly notice.

Meanwhile, level designer Thorsten (aka Todde) is working on the Dwarf Mountains: towering rocks topped by ice and snow. At the same time, Hannes – with the help of Zbrush - creates a new normal map for the whirling snow which will be typical for this type of terrain.

In the meantime, 3D Artist Dennis (who has been working on Unreal Tournament 3 only recently) is occupied with the statues of a lost desert culture. The high resolution model of one of these statues consists of 2 million polygons; now the normal map for the game will be computed. Art director Andreas designs several pieces of magical equipment. In our Bulgarian graphics studio, people are working on the rendered intro movie and enemy animations – but these comprehensive procedures warrant a diary entry of their own.

It is already 21:17, and I’m just – guess what – writing the current diary entry while doing some multi-chatting via ICQ. In one of my sessions, I’m involved in a discussion with an animator about what the smith should do when he’s bored; in another session, I’m telling Dennis what he should do now that the statues are done, and in yet another session I’m having a nice chat with our former programmer Jörg; he’s currently writing his diploma thesis in physics, and we want to meet to go and see Spiderman 3. This is rather typical for a day at Master Creating – we often rent a video after 23:00, or go to the movies. And because I must get some work done until 23:00, I’ll leave you for now. See you next time…!