Last Online: 11/24/07
Jeep Barnett
I've been a console gamer most of my life, but now play games on all platforms. I used to program games as a hobby, but now I do it professionally. In my free time I like to compose/perform/record/produce music and other audio.
I'm always thinking with Portals.
| Game | What I Did | Difficulty of Development | Anecdote |
|---|---|---|---|
| gameplay programming | Harder than Planned | The playtesting process at Valve taught me a lot about human perception in problem solving. The position of objects in a level, lighting, and audio queues are more important to a successful puzzle design than the puzzle concept itself. Puzzles that at first seemed doomed to be cut were almost always usable after arranging the elements in a different way. | |
| Programming | Harder than Planned | Some of the visual artifacts caused by Portals took so many words to describe that we started assigning them "code names" so that we'd be able to discuss them without being overly wordy. Example: Banana Juice = Geometry behind the linked portal's portal plane that should be clipped from the visible portal's surface render pass. | |
| Programming | Not Bad | One day at the office I was told, "The publisher is going to see the game tomorrow and no one was leaving until it's a game." At that point it was just a tech demo held held together with lots of console commands. So everyone worked late into the and our boss kept ordering us food from a nearby Thai restaurant. The next morning the game had fully working menus and could be played from beginning to end (only 10 levels at the time). It was really amazing to see how much of a difference the transformation made. Our boss was so happy he gave us each a bag of Pirate's Booty (the snack food)! |
