raptormeat

Wow, thanks for that. Wish George Orwell could see that.

I worked on magic, physics, graphics effects, and general gameplay awesomeness.

My first task on my first day at Bethesda was to "implement fireballs" which was how I knew I had made some good decisions in life.

One of the things I'm most proud of is that Todd tasked me with personally doing arrow projectiles in Oblivion. So, unlike most RPGs before it like Morrowind, in Oblivion arrows would actually fly using physics, stick into walls, stick into enemies, even stick into you. I spent hours perfecting the way that the arrows bounced off of things. You could collect them back after using them. It was fun as heck.

I even programmed specific shit so that when an arrow stuck into, say, a hanging barrel, the barrel would tip slightly from the weight of the arrow.

I did lots of other stuff, too. Lots of the magic effects were me. I did lots of special graphical effects, like lighting people on fire, etc.

OH! And I did EXPLOSIONS! For a long time my job description was "I make things blow up". Normally I roll my eyes when people say that game development must be all fun. It's hard as shit and most people couldn't do it. But I have to admit that the entire day I spent testing explosions by blowing goblins sky-high was fucking awesome and I laughed all day :D

EDIT: And for Fallout it was more of the same , but adapted. Arrows -> bullets and missiles. Magic explosions -> Mines and stuff. Special effects. More physics stuff. You get the idea.

what is your opinion of No Man's Sky

Looks beautiful! It has an awesome aesthetic, and I love the ships in the game. They remind me of what I love about science fiction art and stories. Too many space games just all look the same and it really is different.

do you think it'll distract attention from Rodina?

Already has. Everyone wants to compare Rodina to No Man's Sky. Just like, before it, everyone wanted to compare it to 0x10c. I was crushed by self-doubt and fear about Notch's game too, but what I learned from that experience is that if you don't give up just because someone else has something similar but shinier than your thing, the situation just might not be hopeless.

Of course I hope Rodina and No Man's Sky will be different enough in actual gameplay for many people to enjoy both. And while they're working towards release I'll be adding cool features, so I've got that going for me.

Also, I really do think Rodina's planets look better from space than theirs do :) We'll see how long that lasts though haha!

Oh man :D

So, I was hired at Bethesda just before Oblivion was first unveiled in Game Informer. In my interview, Todd Howard sort of practiced the demo he was going to give, making me one of the first people outside the company to see the game (or so he told me!!!).

It blew my dick off! I COULDN'T BELIEVE that you could drag a slider to dynamically change the ages of NPCs. I couldn't believe that you could see all the way out to the horizon. Keep in mind this was like 2 years after Morrowind. It had full Havok physics. It was fucking awesome. The whole game was a huge step forward technically even at that stage.

As I played the game for real, my favorite thing was just the core gameplay- wandering around, getting into trouble and regulating.

Um, as far as things I worked on, it's hard to say. I worked on Gameplay and so had the good fortune of working on lots of neat things. As they introduced me in this interview, they came to me when they had generic "cool stuff" they wanted to happen. I did magic, projectiles, physics, graphical effects, and lot's of other stuff.

One of the things I was most proud of was fixing tranparency. You know how in the old days when an actor was semi transparent, you could see through their whole bodies? Like, see their teeth and eyes inside their head, and their polygons were all mis-sorted? I fixed that :) So in Oblivion we were able to have ghosts that looked good.

I also wrote the shaders that lit enemies on fire. That was a cool one cause I used to dream and wonder about programming something like that as a kid, and then to actually be doing it for a AAA game was surreal.

EDIT: OH! And Detect Life! I loved that one! That effect had to be reworked for Oblivion, because there was no minimap onscreen. So I just made it similar to a fire effect but ignored the depth buffer, so that you could see it straight through walls. My favorite moments when making games are when the team is like "Shit, what are we gonna do?" and you (or anybody, really) can be like "Don't worry guys- I've got this one" and kill it. Very satisfying.

My college essay was about how I didn't want to go to college, but rather would have preferred to become a pirate, sailing the seas with complete freedom, like my "hero" , Captain Hook. I was accepted into Colgate.

It was a good essay, though ;) My dad was furious when I told him what it was about, but he approved after reading.