Game Developer Interview - Noah Kellem - Modeler

Today, the developer team interview is with Noah Kellem, the main 3D modeler on the VRoom project. There's an audio version posted, and a transcript posted below it.

As usual, it's just Robert Bailey and the developer.

Transcript:

[RB] Hi, this is Robert Bailey, the producer and creative director on VRoom, a car combat game from Falling Tricycle Games. Here today with Noah Kellem -

[NK] Hi!

[RB] the lead modeller on the project.

[NK] Hi!

[RB] Do you want to introduce yourself?

[NK] Uh, yeah, my name's Noah Kellem, I'm the lead modeller on the project.

[RB] Fair. So what got you into games?

[NK] I got my Xbox 360. It wasn't my first game console. I grew up on Playstation and Playstation 2. But I got my Xbox 360 a long time ago, I was 13. I played Halo 3 at my friend's house, one night, and I decided I needed to start playing this game. So I bought an Xbox 360, and then I had my bar mitzvah, and you get gifts for your bar mitzvah, and one of my friends got me Bioshock! And so, that was a game that I didn't think I wanted to play. It was rated M, and I was 13.

[RB] So is Halo.

[NK] Exactly, but Halo wasn't scary. At least to me. Bioshock seemed scary, so I didn't want to play. I think I had it on hold for six months. And then I finally, I heard really good things about this game, I should play it, I should get into it, and then I got completely immersed. I love the story, and I love the character development, and everything about the entire game was amazing to me. And that's what made me decide to really want to be a game developer.

[RB] Does Bioshock stand out as a favorite game?

[NK] Yeah, it's up there, for sure, in the top five. If I had to make a top five, I'd put the Mass Effect franchise, as a whole, up there. In no particular order, but uh...Mass Effect franchise up there, The Last of Us, as Rob knows I absolutely love that game, then Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite, I could probably say the Bioshock franchise. Besides 2. 2 was fun, but not great, story wise.

[RB] To me, Bioshock 2 had the best gameplay of the series, but like -

[NK] Yeah.

[RB] the story is...present. It's funny with the Bioshock story, that's funny. My friends were always like "You should play Left 4 Dead," and I was like "I don't want to play a horror game!"

[NK] Yeah!

[RB] I played it in high school, and was like what?

[NK] That's it?

[RB] Yeah, it's just running through and killing everything. This is great!

[NK] It was good. I wasted so many hours on that game. Loved it.

[RB] What type of projects have you done in the past? Game or otherwise?

[NK] That's a good question. I've made a lot of games I think, uh no, I haven't, I haven't made a lot of games [laughs]. Let's be honest here. Worked on things for class projects, mostly. My favorite were the analogue games that I made. Rob was on my team for a lot of those. So he can personally witness my level of involvement with those things. I loved them. Just this past year did a lot of web projects that I really, really enjoyed.

[RB] What type of web projects?

[NK] Yeah, did a web audio visualizer, like everybody else in this major. Tried to spruce mine up a little bit. Made it look like a radio instead, er...yeah, a radio. Old timey stereo kind of system. Had speakers on the side, displayed who, what was playing, who the artist was, and then various options you can do. That was a lot of fun. Right now I'm working on a speech-to-gif searcher. I'm just calling it speech to gif, it's not speech to text. Yeah, that's fun.

[RB] Do they have to pronounce gif the proper way?

[NK] No, they don't. Actually I wonder? I've never actually tried to say gif (ed: soft g) into the speech API, so maybe it'll recognize it as gif (ed: hard g), since it is the internet. And people on the internet made it.

[RB] Let the code decide.

[NK] Let the code decide, that's not for me to say.

[RB] So, what do you do on VRoom? You're the lead modeler, but what's that mean?

[NK] That means that I am mostly in charge of making all of the 3D assets that are present in the game. So everything the player will see, essentially, and interact with, is modeled and created by me. The steering wheel, the car, all that's got to come from somewhere. So you use software like Maya or Blender, I personally use Maya because it's what I know. You take either a cube or cylinder and essentially keep adding vertices to it until you make it into what you want. 

[RB] Cool.

[NK] Cool!

[RB] Everything's just rectangles right.

[NK] Yeah, I just make boxes. Just varying levels of boxes.

[RB] Boxes all the way down. What got you interested in the VRoom project?

[NK] I bought a Vive. [Laughs] I had debated back and forth with buying one for a very long time. At one point, I was like "that's too much money, I really shouldn't, that'd be extremely irresponsible of me." And then one day, I was looking, and I was wondering what they were selling for on eBay. And I found one that was selling for $750, which, still extremely expensive, but it was $750 flat rate, and I didn't have to pay for shipping, and there was no tax on it, so I was saving at least $250, and I bought bullet. I'm basically a spoiled child when it comes to me and my spending habits. So I bought that, and I fell in love with VR. I thought for a little while that I wanted to just make VR games for the rest of my life, so when I heard VR project, I hopped on that. Real fast.

[RB] Yeah, funny enough, knowing you had a Vive was one of the reasons I went through with the paperwork. Worst case, I know one person.

[NK] Know one person that can test it!

[RB] So what are you looking forward to with VRoom in general?

[NK] Hmmm.

[RB] I know we're coming up on the final hours of the project type stuff.

[NK] I really just hope people find it enjoyable. I mean, you make a game, and that's really what you want it to be. You want it to be fun, and you want people to like it. Because you also spend a lot of hours putting into it. And it's not necessarily a representation of who you are, but you gain a slight emotional attachment to it. And you want people to like it because you think that means they like you. Because art and artists sometimes don't get separated as much as they should. But I understand those are different.

[RB] Says the man with the mixtape.

[NK] What's up?

[RB] Says the man with th-

[NK] Says the man with the mixtape, yeah I get really offended when people don't like my mixtape. I remember I recorded some songs for a couple of students last semester that were taking an audio course that was all about that. And one of them, afterwards, says "I don't really like his singing!" And I was real offended. I was like dude, find yourself someone else to find songs for you. "I think he could ha- he couldn't have done much better, he's got a bad voice." I was like, "dude, hm, okay."

[RB] So looking forward, not just this project, but long term - I don't know why, that's an awful segue.

[NK] Whatever. I just want to work on websites. Or web experiences, mostly. They don't necessarily have to be games. I'm kind of over games. I thought I liked them at first, but they are a lot of work, and that's not necessarily what deters me from them, but I lose motivation to work on them quickly, at least in terms of the coding aspects. I really don't have the drive for it. At least in web projects, I really, really have the drive for it - I like the fact that I can at least see what I'm doing immediately, there's that immediate feedback of what you're doing, having it impact the overall state of the project. A lot of what gaming is is back end coding, at least when you're making your own game engine which is the standard thing to do. A lot of it isn't necessarily immediately reflected, and it's very behind the scenes, and I really cannot stand backend coding. I can't do it, my brain is not wired that way. I do not like those kind of problem-solving skills, er those kind of problem-solving,...those kind of problems! [Laughs] Front end to me is where it's at, and I think web provides the best platform for me to be able to really contribute and reflect my passion for front end coding.

[RB] I want to say cool, but I feel like you'd just yell it back at me again.

[NK] Cool!

[RB] I need new words.

[NK] Awesome, um...yeah.

[RB] I was gonna say, you're just gonna go straight into dead air!

[NK] Cool. Cool!

[RB] So with the web stuff, you're not into back-end type stuff. So are you interested in server architecture and those types of things? Or more just making that front facing user experience?

[NK] Servers are interesting to me. I definitely don't want to shy away from server programming, purely because it can allow you to do a lot of things with your service that you wouldn't necessarily be allowed to do otherwise, if you're working purely on the client side. So I am sort of interested in it. I'd like to learn more about it before I make a firm commitment on my level of endearment for server programming. But what we've been doing, at least in class, has been interesting to me. Albeit, I don't really understand a lot of what's going on. Like headers and putting things out to make things work somehow, magic. Server magic makes no sense to me so far.

[RB] I feel it's one of those things in our previous course - "here's JQuery, we'll learn about it later. And here's Javascript, we'll learn about it later." And then the next class is "and here's everything you need to know."

[NK] That's definitely what it is. I want to take it.

[RB] Turning it back onto VRoom, anything standing out to you on the project?

[NK] Ummm....

[RB] Good engine noise.

[NK] [Loud engine noise] The sound design. Because it was done by me and you. No, honestly I think it's really cool with what the code team's been able to accomplish at least for learning a new engine and at the same time implementing a new technology when only one member has experience on it.

[RB] And he (John F.) was on the Oculus, not even the Vive.

[NK] And he was on the Oculus, not even the Vive. A whole different kind of API and framework. That's really cool, watching people grow, adapt to newer challenges. And whatever their speed, it's cool. We have a car. You can drive it. It's cool.

[RB] What are you anticipating to be a problem? Granted, it's final days, but the next couple days and final week of rounding up and polish, anything you think will be a problem with your stuff?

[NK] Being able to rapidly produce the assets we need. Being the sole modeler is a little brutal. I dunno, I have other commitments at the same time. My turnaround rate, albeit it could be a little bit faster, is about one a week. Which is kind of rough, especially for a game that requires a little bit more than that. You look at other projects, that's comparable to what other groups have been able to accomplish. You look at this project called, Quintessence, which was done by a grad student, that I kind of worked on last semester a little bit, contributed a few environment art things that have since been scraped since someone else came in and did them way better, they're working on it for their third consecutive semester, maybe even fourth, and then they'll level of their art implementation is way higher having been able to work on for this long than it was on their first pass. The lead modeler on that, told me that they basically scraped all their original assets, and there weren't nearly as much of them as there are now. And that seems to be a general theme for first iteration projects, at least so far.

[RB] You get the stuff out there, and then replace it eventually.

[NK] Yeah, precisely.

[RB] I don't know if VRoom will come back next semester or whatnot, depends on what people's interest is. Quintessence was a huge group, is now a very tiny group to slowly develop . Something similar might happen. It might not. It's been a great learning experience, seeing people go from "I can't get a box to move, Unreal's garbage, we should go to Unity" and now we've got a stick shift -

[NK] To be fair Unreal is garbage.

[RB] Why does everyone hate Unreal? I like Unreal

[NK] Unreal is garbage because they have so many bugs. Too many bugs!

[RB] To be fair, if we had waited a week longer before putting in the code, it would have been fixed in 4.15!

[NK] Yeah...

[RB] Aw well.

[NK] Anyway...

[RB] Any parting thoughts besides a dislike of Unreal?

[NK] I will say the project has definitely tired me out. It's been a lot of work so far. It's still a lot of work. I don't imagine slowing down at all. At least, it's slowing down a little bit now that the semester's winding down and we're kind of meeting the end. But I'm kinda - I hate to say it, but I'm kind of looking forward to at least taking a break from it.

[RB] Yeah, same.

[NK] It's constant.

[RB] We've been speeding into crunch right now. I can't wait till Sunday. I don't want anyone to work on Sunday on this. Everyone relax. We do have some final polish and placing assets and tweaks.

[NK] I get to play a show on Sunday. I get no breaks.

[RB] But you won't be working on VRoom. And most of the model assets are done as well. I'm not gonna ask "let's do that second semester pass NOW."

[NK] [Grumbles]. Ways to make your art team hate you.

[RB] They're just artists they're just working for exposure.

[NK] [Chuckles]

[RB] We'll working for exposure. It's college.

[NK] Precisely.

[RB] Sad face. On that surprisingly dour note, I think we're both still excited for it, just tired.

[NK] It's tired. We've hit the burnout.

[RB] Yeah.

[NK] That's all it.

[RB] Everything's coming together. But hey, we don't have a final in this class so that's good.

[NK] YES! Yas, queen.

[RB] Okay, so on that note. So any parting tho- I already asked the any parting thoughts. Oh god. It's been a long semester.

[NK] It's been a long semester.

[RB] That concludes the interview with Noah, Noah Kellem.

[NK] Bye.

[RB] The lead modeler on VRoom.

[NK] Bye!

[RB] So that concludes the interviews with the entire dev team. I don't have a stand alone one because it'd just be kind of awkward to interview myself, and everyone's been busy. So, yeah, that concludes that whole arc. There will be some post mortem content coming up soon on the blog. So, thank you for listening!

As stated above, these will pop up about once a week, as the developers are available.

Game Developer Interview - Aidan Markham - Texturer

Today, the developer team interview is with Aidan Markham, the main texturer on the VRoom project. There's an audio version posted, and a transcript posted below it.

As usual, it's just Robert Bailey and the developer.

Transcript:

[RB] Hi, my name is Robert Bailey, and I'm the producer and creative lead on VRoom. Today, I'm with Aidan Markham, one of our artists.

[AM] Hi, I'm Aidan Markham, one of the texturers on VRoom.

[RB] Cool. So, this is one of the dev interviews where we just kind of go over, kind of introduce, what got you into games, what got you into making games, and what he's been doing on VRoom.

[AM] Well, I guess my first introduction to video games was playing Mario Kart 64 at my aunt's house on the Nintendo 64. That was really my big introduction, as well as educational PC games. But then eventually I branched out and got my own PC. Started playing stuff like Mass Effect, was one of the first games I played on that. A lot of other stuff. These days I'm more into indie games and that kind of stuff. It's good.

[RB] Cool. Any games that stand out as a favorite?

[AM] The Beginner's Guide. Davey Wreden. That's probably my favorite game of all time. It's really interesting. He does a lot of really cool artistic stuff with it. A lot of stuff by Davey Wreden, what is it - The Stanley Parable, I liked that. Looking forward to Manifold Garden by William Chyr. That seems like it's going to be really cool. That's mostly what I'm looking forward to these days.

[RB] Cool. So what type of projects have you done in the past, game related or otherwise?

[AM] Well, I am a long time game jam enthusiast. One of the ways I got my start in games was doing Ludam Dare game jams. So I've done a lot of those. Started out with 2D games, starting out with Python and the pygame game engine. Then I moved on to Java and Slick2D a little bit. These days I'm a Unity developer, making mostly 3D games.

[RB] What do you want to do after getting your degree?

[AM] After getting my degree, I'd like to go and work for a pretty small studio. My ideal studio size I see as being roughly 30 people or less. I like that that allows you to sort of have your finger in the different pies. Because, primarily as a developer, but also someone with a passion for 3D art, being locked into one side, not being able to have any aesthetic choices or not being able to write any code, that sounds like not a great time for me. So really small studio is a good fit for me.

[RB] So what do you do on VRoom?

[AM] I'm the texturer and occasional unwrapper. So what I'll do is I can use Maya to unwrap 3D models, and then I use Gimp to texture them. I can go back and forth between the two of them and see the updates on my textures as they happen.

[RB] Sorry about not letting you do code and stuff.

[AM] It's fine, people have to have their roles. It's been really educational for me, because I've never considered my myself the most amazing texturer in the world, but doing this project has really given me a chance to focus on the texturing workflow and develop my skills.

[RB] Cool. What got you interested in VRoom and working on the project.

[AM] I first heard about it from a friend of mine, Noah Ratcliff, who said they were looking for someone. When I first heard about the concept, I just, I thought it was really cool because I'm a huge fan of the Mad Max movies, and I think VR is really interesting future technology.

[RB] That was like when I was (thinking of what I wanted to make) - I like Mad Max and I like VR! Pretty similar avenues. What are you looking forward to? With the project. I know it's coming close to the end, but...

[AM] Right now I'm looking forward to ImagineRIT. It's going to be cool to see other people's reaction to the game. As of right now, a lot of the art I've done hasn't quite been implemented into the engine yet, so I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of  that stuff coming together and seeing the game in it's final graphical style. I'm also excited to play it beyond just basic testing, and trying out the steering. That'll be cool.

[RB] Cool. Yeah, it's funny because we had that stand alone blue and green card for the longest time. But we needed screenshots, so I said toss the texture on, and we were all "holy crap, the chairs!" because none of us had thought about that, because everything was red blocks, and (the response of) "oh, that looks great." Just seeing those assets come in, even piecemeal between models and textures coming in has been great. But from art team's perspective, "well, we handed it in and occasionally we see it all put together."

[AM] Yeah. It's interesting. There's sort of a disconnect as the art team, because we have all these models we've been making, and then there's the game which as of last time, didn't have a ton of the models. So it's almost like they're two separate things at this point, so I'm excited to see those two halves come together.

[RB] Yeah, especially with all the props that have come in, they're now making sure we have physics on everything, and making sure those elements in. And there's been so much work on the car and whatnot. It's like "We have these supplies" and I'm like "that's great, those will be fast, we need to make sure the gun drops when you drop it."

[AM] Totally.

[RB] But yeah, definitely. Because when I was grayboxing out the level, I was like "okay, that'll be a rock, that'll be something, and I know I have these coming through." Anything that you anticipate to be a problem coming up before Imagine and wrapping up afterwards.

[AM] Well right now, art team's doing pretty well, I think we decided not to do the shotgun for ImagineRIT, and that's allowed us to focus on the models we are trying to get in for ImagineRIT. As far as problems, I can imagine that it could be difficult bringing people who've never tried anything in VR into our game.  I haven't demoed it in a while, but I think a lot of the things code team has tried to implement to onboard people a little easier has been helpful, but it's still a slight concern that it'll be difficult for people to start using it.

[RB] Yeah, I'm going to be writing up a script for demoing it, but that's a definite concern of "so, have you ever done this before?"

[AM] Exactly.

[RB] Did you go to GDC this year?

[AM] I did not.

[RB] There were a lot of VR things where "have you ever tried VR before?" and going over every aspect of that because it's even new for people in industry.

[AM] It's new to everybody really.

[RB] There was a space game that was "you'll going to end with flying away. It's going to be disorienting. But it's the end, so you can just can rip it off at the end, it'll be fine." So yeah, any parting thoughts about VRoom?

[AM] I'm really excited about the project, really excited to see it finally put together, and I look forward to see where it goes in the future.

[RB] Cool. So that was the interview with Aidan Markham, the texturer on VRoom and yeah, so there's a couple more of the interviews to get the entire dev team in here to talk about what they've done on the project. And we present at ImagineRIT this Friday on May 6th. So yeah, thanks for listening!

[AM] Awesome!

We've got one more developer left, so trying to squeeze that interview in at the end!

Game Developer Interview - John Palermo - Gameplay Programmer

Today, the developer team interview is with John Palermo, one of the gameplay programmers on the VRoom project. There's an audio version posted, and a transcript posted below it.

As usual, it's just Robert Bailey and the developer.

Transcript:

[RB] Hi, my name is Robert Bailey and I am the producer and creative lead on VRoom, a VR Car Combat game from Falling Tricycle Games. I'm here today with John Palermo, one of our programmers. Hey John!

[JP] Hello!

[RB] So do you want to introduce yourself and what you do on this project?

[JP] Sure! I'm John Palermo, and I'm a gameplay programmer on this project. So I focus heavily on the interactions between the car and the world around it, such as the collision boxes on the cars and handling of guns and shooting and all that stuff.

[RB] Cool. So we're just going to run through a couple questions like a lot of the other dev interviews, just so we get to know John a little better and kind of know what he does on the project. So, in general, what got you into games?

[JP] I just really enjoyed playing games a lot as a kid. For a while, I wanted to be a forensic scientist
so it took quiet a turn when I went into high school and took my first programming class, and thought "hey, this is pretty fun!" And I found it there was a game design major, that it existed, and I was like "that sounds pretty cool!"

[RB] That is quite the turn.

[JP] Yeah. [laughs]

[RB] That also explains all your gamertags.

[Both laugh]

[RB] Do any games stand out as your favorite?

[JP] Phew. Oh boy. So I have a lot of favorites. Thinking back to nostalgia reasons, like old school games are my favorite, like the Sly Cooper series, those are the ones that really got me into gaming in general. That along with the Ratchet and Clank series. Pretty solid. Nowadays, a lot of Pokemon, Dark Souls, Persona, which is a new favorite. Trying to think...oh, Fire Emblem.

[RB] More in the line of working with games, what type of projects have you done in the past?

[JP] So, a lot of projects. Most of the things I've worked on have been C# games, mostly, because that's what we've been taught here up until last year. So we did the projects in GDAPS1 and 2(ed: Game Development and Algorithmic Problem Solving), and the game in that. Not exactly a good rendition or example. But then there's ColorCoded, which we've been working on that. Then also, I like board games too. Board games are fun to work on. I've been doing one on the side, individually, Bombs Away, which is pretty fun. But in terms of C++, er, well not really using C++ because Blueprints, but this is the first time I've been using that. So most of them have not been in Unreal.

[RB] Cool. You mentioned ColorCoded and Bomb's Away. Do you want to go into more detail on either of those?

[JP] Sure. So ColorCoded is a mobile puzzle game that Rob (ed: Robert Bailey) and I have been working on as well as VRoom, with Kenny Probeck (ed: not on the VRoom team). And that one, I already said it's a mobile puzzle game, so never mind. Bomb's Away was my pitch idea for a class we were doing where we were making a board game, only I was absent the day of pitches so I didn't get to pitches. So instead I worked on another thing for that class, and decided to keep going with Bomb's Away on the side. You play as a pirate and blow up other pirates, try and get supplies, and leave safely. Haven't really worked on that lately because of everything else, but yeah.

[RB] Yeah, stuff gets busy around here.

[JP] A little bit. [Laughs]

[RB] What do you want to do after you get your degree?

[JP] So my plan for after graduation is I want to go to a big company. The big one I'm looking at is From Software, just cause it's a lot of fun, er, it seems like a lot of fun, and Souls games. And they focus really heavily in their games on the narrative, which is a big part of what I want to do. And I want to get a couple years or so of experience there, and then considering branching off and making my own studio, was the ultimate goal.

[RB] The long term...

[JP] Yeah.

[RB] So, what do you do on VRoom?

[JP] Like I mentioned before, I do gameplay programming. So I worked on the guns and getting them shooting and dealing damage to cars. The collisions between the cars in general. [Pauses] I had something right after that, and then I forgot it.

[RB] It's okay, you'll probably remember it later.

[JP] Yeah. I'm probably going to go "OH" in the middle of something else, so wait for that.

[Both laugh]

[RB] What got you interested in working on VRoom?

[JP] It just sounded like a really neat idea when you brought it up. It was like hey, VR games, that sounds neat. Car games, haven't done a car game yet, you know. Broaden my horizons a bit. Dunno, VR just seems like a whole new element of game development that I haven't actually gone to in depth with yet, and figured it would be a good opportunity to.

[RB] Fun. Anything standing out to-ugh, jumped ahead there. What are you looking forward to? I know it's kind of wrapping up the project, but I guess what have been enjoying and are looking forward to in the closing weeks with VRoom?

[JP] Yeah. Getting all the gun stuff working has been really fun. 'Cause raycasting and line tracing and what not, like, it has a lot of applications outside of just guns, so getting that working has been really fun. I keep saying fun, but it has been really fun. I just like the system. I know we had a bunch of issues with Unreal over the project, but [laughs] it's not as bad as I originally thought it was. And it's very nice in regards to certain things. So that's fun, learning more about that.

[RB] Cool. So in addition to learning about raycasting and those types of behaviors in Unreal, anything standing out to you on the project, either good or bad?

[JP] I have to say I do like the models for the cars. Noah's done a good job with that. And then...I had something else again. I'm a very forgetful person. I'm sure you're aware of this.

[RB] I mean, both Johns on the code team. Your meetings are every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And it's like - I walk up to Fediaczko at the start of level design, and go "hey, have you sent out a reminder message about your meeting today?" "Oh yeah, I should remember that." Maybe it's a John thing. As we go into these 5 days before the presentation and at ImagineCup, I mean ImagineRIT, and the wrap up afterwards, what are you anticipating to be a problem?

[JP] [Pauses] I think the biggest - it's not really much of a problem, it's just more of something that would be somewhat challenging. It's the audio stuff, because I've never really worked with that before. So getting the audio in might be a bit difficult, and that would be either other John or I, depending on which one of us finishes everything else first, so I might not even have to deal with that. But, on the other hand, actually no, never mind. That won't be much of an issue.

[RB] What are you thinking about?

[JP] Getting the terrain damage, so maybe just dictate bounds, if they're in certain bounds, take damage.

[RB] Any parting thoughts as we wrap up the interview?

[JP] I'm really trying to remember that thing I forgot earlier. [Laughs] It's just not coming to me. Oh, there it is. I've also been working closely with art team to get models from them into Unreal, and that, yeah.

[RB] That's been an odyssey.

[JP] That was fun. I'm sure you can I understand why I wanted to forget that.

[RB] Yeah, that was a couple weeks, yeah. [Both laugh] So that was John Palermo, one of the gameplay programmers on VRoom. Only a couple more developer interviews to go, so if you missed any they'll all be up on the blog. Then we'll be presenting at ImagineRIT this Saturday, and then there will be post-mortem type content after that. So hope you enjoyed this interview. Thanks for talking to us, John!

[JP] No problem, thank you all for listening!

As stated above, these will pop up about once a week, as the developers are available.