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.

Who are you?

I’m Jon Creighton.  I’ve been working for Codemasters for around two and a half years.

What do you do on the Bodycount team?

I’m the Lead Programmer on the project, so I’m directly responsible for the delivery of the technology that is necessary to make the game happen.

We developed a completely custom engine for Bodycount from the ground up.  At the start of the project, which is only a year and a half ago, we had nothing on the screen and no tools for the artists and designers to use.  A lot of my work has been to prioritise and organise what needed to be done to develop a solid game engine and tools system while we were maintaining visible progress in the software.

In addition I designed and wrote quite a lot of the rendering engine, did the initial work on the destruction technology and have had a hand in writing most of the shaders for the game.

In two words, how would you summarise your job?

Mental gymnastics.

What’s the coolest thing you’ve seen in-game so far?

In our game?  Well the most visible thing that impresses me at the moment is the way the Psycho hunts you down throughout the level, bashing through walls and doggedly finding you even if you’ve run all the way over to the other side of the map.

However if I look under the hood, which is what I deal with every day, I’d say the coolest thing in the game are the systems we have put together to make the best use out of the Playstation 3 and Xbox.  The two consoles have very different architectures and it takes some careful planning to use them effectively.  Because of the fresh start we made with Bodycount we had to put together a whole range of systems to let us exploit them both.  It might sound like a trivial thing, but I’ve worked on projects where the game engine just got in the way of everything you were trying to do and made your day-to-day work a chore but ours is efficient and a real pleasure to work with, which I think is pretty cool.

How long have you been in gaming, and what did you do before working on Bodycount?

I’ve been working professionally in games for the past ten years, starting out back in Australia for Atari Melbourne House.  However my first published game, if you could call it that, was made all the way back in 1992.  I was at University at the time and submitted a little 3D game to Amiga Format for their cover disk.  They used it but I never did receive the cheque they promised as payment.

What is a typical workday like for you?

I try to start early, around 8am, so that I get an hour or two to write code before the majority of the team turn up.  Around 10am we have our scrum meetings, and then there are usually a few more meetings to cover whatever issues are currently the most pressing.

I’ve got the good fortune to have an excellent team, with five sub-leads who look after the various discipline areas, so that makes managing them far easier than it might otherwise have been.

I don’t schedule myself up with tasks that are on the critical-path because I need to be able to keep a good overview of the project and shift my attention when there is an issue which needs to be sorted out.  However I do get a little time every day to work on smaller tasks or develop features that will be needed later in the project.

What do you like to do in your free time?

I live in central London, which is an amazingly exciting city, so there’s never a shortage of interesting things to do in the evening; plenty of small gigs for bands to go to see, theatre and that sort of thing.  I used to do some acting but I haven’t had time for that for a while.  I cycle quite a lot in order to stay fit, which I hope makes up for the beer and junk food that I consume regularly.

Here are a couple of choice quotes from the article:

‘From what I’ve seen so far this looks like it’ll offer a much needed different direction for the genre.’

‘The E3 build of Bodycount has grown considerably from when we first saw it’

‘There is basically, every excuse to be excited.’

We’re really looking forwards to showing off more of the game to you in the future, so make sure you stay tuned for some more updates next week.

G4TV.com – Bodycount live demo with Stuart Black

GameTrailers.com – Bodycount interview with Stuart Black

Game Informer.com – Bodycount hands-on preview

Joystiq – Bodycount impressions

Destructoid – Bodycount ―Jimpressions  Bodycount – Preview

IGN – Bodycount gameplay videos

GameSpot – Bodycount live demo

Team Xbox – Bodycount hands-on preview

GamesRadar – Bodycount hands-on preview

1UP – Bodycount live demo Bodycount hands-on preview

FileFront -Bodycount hands-on preview

Kombo – Bodycount hands-on preview

VGChartz – Bodycount hands-on preview

TalkXbox – Bodycount impressions

GameZone – Bodycount 1st impressions

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Bodycount on Facebook

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Bodycount on Twitter

Who are you?

Andrew Wilson, Senior Producer on the Bodycount team

What do you do on the Bodycount team?

I run the day to day operations of the team – basically interpreting Stuart’s vision for the game into practical goals and then forming teams to work on them.  Net result: game built, everyone happy!

In two words, how would you summarise your job?

Herding Cats

What’s the coolest thing you’ve seen in-game so far?

Undoubtedly our new approach to shredding cover and the world around you.  Already, it changes the style of play into something quite unlike anything else I’ve seen and in multiplayer it’s utterly, utterly mental – and we’re going to take it even further over the next few months.  The best moment on the project so far was getting the tech into a working prototype and then having a blast.  Nothing quite compares to that “boys, I think we’re onto something” moment.

As Senior Producer you must have some cool duties. What’s the next important / cool thing you’re involved in for Bodycount?

Planning our next public showing.  It’s going to be big and when people see what we’ve been up to there will be big grins appearing the world over.

How did you end up making games?

Well I had wanted to do it since I was about 5 years old, so I would say sheer bloody-minded persistence for a start!  Aside from that I studied hard, worked in other industries where I could build up transferable skills, bided my time and then made my move.  It’s a great industry and I never want to go back to the real world

If you have any questions for Andrew, then please post them in the comments and if the demand is high enough we’ll look at doing a follow-up interview sometime in the future.

Senior Programmer Kaarlo shows off the latest iteration of our new gun shader. This essentially makes the gun model look a whole load nicer in-game. Seeing as how “you are the gun” in Bodycount, the gun shader is extremely important in making our game look and feel awesome whilst shooting. I know you can’t see it properly but don’t worry , we’ll be showing it off in its full glory in some new screenshots coming soon.

Gamezone.com – E3 Hands-On Impressions

Gamespot – Stuart Black interview on YouTube

Gamespot – E3 2010 Stage Demo Video: Bodycount

VGChartz – E3 Bodycount Hands-On

There’ll be plenty more to come from E3 over the next few days, so if you want to keep up to speed with all the latest Bodycount news and video coverage then make sure you check back here later.