meet the team: jon creighton (part 2)

Right then, as promised here is the 2nd part of our Q&A with Bodycount Lead Programmer Jon Creighton: 

What’s your favourite game of all time and why?

There has been no shortage of revolutionary and exciting games developed recently, especially with so many indie titles coming out, but I think it’s more interesting to look back a little to older titles which still impress me.

The games which really blew me away when I was a kid were the Lucasfilm titles such as “Ballblazer” and “Rescue of Fractalus” on the Atari home computers.  Those machines were so slow that you could hardly clear the screen in real-time but somehow they managed to get full 3D landscapes and split-screen working and made really fun games.

The PC title that I still remember fondly is “Thief II”.  The team at Looking-Glass Software managed to create such a believable city and the technology they developed wasn’t just window-dressing, they used it to create interesting gameplay with the audio, shadows and lighting.

More recently, “Prince of Persia, Sands of Time” was a brilliant game.  I still go back to it sometimes to enjoy the platforming, the story and the way that they represented Islamic architecture so beautifully.

What is your artistic background and how did you first get into the games industry?

In the late 90’s I was working on database software and in my spare time started to play around with graphics demos.  After a while I realised that this was what I had always wanted to do and quit my job to pursue games programming.  I worked on my own demo for around six months and had a pretty nice looking game concept running by that stage.  Since I didn’t know any artists in the field I had to write all the code for the tools and runtime, author the art and animations, build websites and design the fonts.

I had the good fortune to meet the head of Melbourne House at a trade show and I demonstrated the game to him.  This lead onto me getting an interview there and being hired as a graphics programmer.

Anything you can tell us about Bodycount that we might not already know?

You can’t begin to imagine how fun it is until you pick up a controller and start playing.  The screen shots and videos only convey a tiny fraction of the experience.

What advice do you have for someone who wants to become a lead programmer for videogames?

The job varies so much on the size of the project, the technology that you’re developing with and the experience levels of the members on your team that it’s always going to be different for anyone.  I’m just learning how this works as I go along too.  But there are a few things that I think are consistent:

Firstly, you’re going to make a load of mistakes and you have to be honest enough with yourself to recognise them and take responsibility.

Make sure that you take the time to listen to your team members and understand what they need, but at the same time you’ve got to help them to understand the need for delivering timely features without over-engineering it. 

You’ve got to be able to stand up for your team and make sure that they have the space to get on with their jobs.

And finally, make sure that everyone checks into the build often.  This is critical because it means that everyone is working on the same software and that they don’t write tonnes of code in their own area that might break other sections of the game.

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