Tales from the front line S01E05
Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 4:05 pm
My day usually starts like this:
Leander: You there?
Me: Yes.
Leander: Are you doing (whatever I’ve been working on) stuff?
Me: Maybe - but it doesn't break to be in there for the moment.
Leander: Yes it does.
Leander: It's still getting compiled for XBox.
Leander: I will end you.
It’s at this point I am rather thankful of working remote and at the same time cursing it. Remote working is new for me and I am still making stupid mistakes like not clearing an addition with the other remote workers, which as you can see causes issues with poor Leander and his X360 build. It’s a whole new paradigm of working and takes some getting used it. When you all work in the same room its far too east to throw something solid at a co-worker if they break the build but when it is remote you may not all be working at the same time so if somebody is off-line problems don’t get resolved as quickly as they should. Time will correct that though as I get more and more used to the process at IV. At one game dev I worked at we had a colleague that started the tradition of ‘if you break the build you buy everyone doughnuts’. Needless to say there were Doughnuts pretty much everyday – it was a large team. Problem was that when free Doughy goodness is on offer every day it’s hard to resist and pretty soon people would look at me and say ‘That’s no moon!’ through all the weight being put on. Thankfully IV does not have such a tradition. No, here they bash you to death with the bloody stump of your severed arm.
So, in between dodging flying stumps we have managed to pack a lot of code into the last week or so with many an hour pulled debugging and playing the game with people both inside and outside of IV. It was my first experience at playing multiplayer with anybody who wasn’t developing the game and I have to admit – I had my arse handed to me. Brutally. I get nervous when real people start playing the game in front of me because when we as developers play; a small part of us knows what not to do in the game so it doesn’t crash. Real people however bash it to death and get it to crash in ways your brain swears shouldn’t be possible. Thankfully it wasn’t too bad an experience and nothing we couldn’t fix given a few months. Except of course we haven’t got a few months so what the heck am I doing writing this blog? Get back to work!
Leander: You there?
Me: Yes.
Leander: Are you doing (whatever I’ve been working on) stuff?
Me: Maybe - but it doesn't break to be in there for the moment.
Leander: Yes it does.
Leander: It's still getting compiled for XBox.
Leander: I will end you.
It’s at this point I am rather thankful of working remote and at the same time cursing it. Remote working is new for me and I am still making stupid mistakes like not clearing an addition with the other remote workers, which as you can see causes issues with poor Leander and his X360 build. It’s a whole new paradigm of working and takes some getting used it. When you all work in the same room its far too east to throw something solid at a co-worker if they break the build but when it is remote you may not all be working at the same time so if somebody is off-line problems don’t get resolved as quickly as they should. Time will correct that though as I get more and more used to the process at IV. At one game dev I worked at we had a colleague that started the tradition of ‘if you break the build you buy everyone doughnuts’. Needless to say there were Doughnuts pretty much everyday – it was a large team. Problem was that when free Doughy goodness is on offer every day it’s hard to resist and pretty soon people would look at me and say ‘That’s no moon!’ through all the weight being put on. Thankfully IV does not have such a tradition. No, here they bash you to death with the bloody stump of your severed arm.
So, in between dodging flying stumps we have managed to pack a lot of code into the last week or so with many an hour pulled debugging and playing the game with people both inside and outside of IV. It was my first experience at playing multiplayer with anybody who wasn’t developing the game and I have to admit – I had my arse handed to me. Brutally. I get nervous when real people start playing the game in front of me because when we as developers play; a small part of us knows what not to do in the game so it doesn’t crash. Real people however bash it to death and get it to crash in ways your brain swears shouldn’t be possible. Thankfully it wasn’t too bad an experience and nothing we couldn’t fix given a few months. Except of course we haven’t got a few months so what the heck am I doing writing this blog? Get back to work!
