The interviewer is, myself, Robert, the producer. He'll be running most of the interviews.
New interviews should go up roughly once a week, cycling through the different members.
Audio:
Transcript:
[Robert Bailey] Alright, my name is Robert Bailey and I’m the producer/design on the VRoom project from Falling Tricycle Games, a VR car combat game currently in development. And I am here with the head of the code team. Why don’t you introduce yourself?
[RB] And we’re both students at RIT [Rochester Institute of Technology], working on this project, kind of a passion project turned into a larger team. So, John, what got you into games?
[JF] What got me into games? Like from the start? Probably was..my first gaming console was the Super Nintendo, which my dad had back when he was living with my mom when they were dating. So I inherited that, and that set me on the course to falling in love with video games.
[RB] Okay. Do you have a favorite? Or too hard?
[JF] It’s very hard, actually. It’s-I’ll probably say it was my first game, Super Mario World for the Super Nintendo.
[RB] So, with the VRoom project, it’s very different...I’m assuming it’s kind of different as a VR car combat sequence. So what types of projects have you worked on in the past?
[JF] In terms of just regular projects, I’ve worked on a couple 2D and 3D games using the Unity engine. One was a 3D space combat game and one was a 2D, kind of a swingy between nodes game. You know, like One More Line, that game.
[RB] Oh, cool. I like that one. Have you played One More Dash?
[JF] No.
[RB] It’s a spinoff, or not really a spinoff. Had very similar mechanics. It was interesting. What do you want to do after getting your idea.
[JF] Well, ideally, I want to get a job right after, right as soon as I’m done here. Work for a few years in industry, and then come back and pursue a Masters or even a phd. So I can become a full professor and teach the future generations of game developers.
[RB] Ok, so you want to come back to education?
[JF] Right
[RB] Cool. So, what do you do on VRoom?
[JF] Right now on VRoom I am the lead programmer, I’m handling a lot of the VR interaction between the player and the environment that they are set.
[RB] So what type of things are you doing to facilitate that? With programming, or engines...
[JF] So right now, I’m using the Unreal Engine 4, 4.14.3. I think that’s the right one. And I’m using the Blueprints, since the C++ side of things for the HTC Vive or Oculus Touch aren’t really there yet in terms of getting implemented in engine. So right now I’m working with Blueprints to facilitate the different control options that these devices offer. Triggers and grip buttons, for example, I’m currently using so the player can grab different objects in the scene.
[RB] So what got you interested in working on this project? I know I went around grabbing people and asking them to work, but what made you interested in working on this project? Or was it my stellar pitch?
[JF] So last year, at GDC 2016, I got to try VR on for the first time with the different demos. I played a demo using the Oculus Rift DK2 and the HTC Vive when it was in it’s pre release. As soon as I put those headsets on, I fell in love with the concept of VR and how immersive it was.
[RB] So as we work through this project towards the MVP [Minimum Viable Product] and other permutations, what are you looking forward to?
[JF] Right now, I’m looking forward to having a game that, an actual VR game, that I can say I worked on. My previous experience was more on serious gaming applications, not necessarily something that’s fun. So I really wanted to explore how VR could be fun.
[RB] So what type of serious VR stuff have you worked on? Can you talk about those?
[JF] I can go into a little bit of detail. I am under contract from the government, I can’t really divulge too much information.
[RB] We probably shouldn’t talk about that.
[JF] No, but I can tell you that it was used as a battle simulator to help with being able to navigate different things on the battlefield.
[RB] Okay. Anything standing out to on this project? We’ve only been in the first two to three weeks of development.
[JF] Good or bad standing?
[RB] Either.
[JF] So good things I can see are just how nice the engine is to use, especially with Blueprints. Well, the Blueprints are nice to use. The C++ code is a little bit wonky. We were having an issue today where one of the other programmers, the other John [John Palermo], all he did was move computers and it started working.
[RB] Yeah, I saw that on the Slack. I was “oh, I’m across campus, I can’t...oh it fixed itself. Magic!”
[JF] There are some things like that, which is okay, but at the same time there is a lot of the support, for at least the Blueprint side of things.
[RB] So what do you anticipate to be a problem?
[JF] One of the biggest problems I see is just...just getting everything to flow correctly together. Right now, the programming team, there’s three of us essentially...or three sections, and they’re all in their own direction. And my biggest fear is that once we bring them all together, they’re not going to all play nicely.
So right now, I’m working on the player interaction side with the player and environment. John’s [Palermo] working on what the player interacts with in the VR environment - like the moving the car. And Jay’s working on autonomous agents and AI systems.
So I’m worried the code won’t mess well, that like my stuff won’t be able to control John’s stuff.
[RB] So how are we working to prevent that? Any special steps?
[JF] So right now I told John, and Jay, that there should be different functions out there that can take in different types of data, such as turning for example. It needs to get an angle. So I haven’t figured out if it’s radians or degrees. But it should take an angle and interpret it into a direction for the angle. So just anticipating for data like that is important. If that makes sense.
[RB] Okay, so that is the first of the developer interviews over the coming weeks. Again, my name is Robert, and I’ll be going through with different team members, like John, to get all the different people and get what they’re doing on the project and what they’re doing moving forward, and thoughts and concerns. So that’s the first VRoom car combat [project] interview. We didn’t do this in a car, nor in combat. But it’s a theme. So, John, any parting thoughts?
[JF] Yeah, one. A lot of people are skeptical of VR right now. It’s a lot of fun.
[RB] Okay, thank you. Look for the next interview sometime next week.
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