Life at Resolution: Simon, Games Programmer
Welcome to our new article series, where we highlight a diverse set of job roles and share some personal thoughts on what it’s like working at our company. First up is Simon who works as a games programmer.
What is your favorite part about working at Resolution Games?
Apart from the fact that my day job is making games for VR and AR devices, I think my favorite part of working at Resolution Games is the amount of talented colleagues I get to interact with on a daily basis. People here really know their stuff!
Tell us about some projects you've worked on, and challenges you’ve encountered
I’ve encountered several interesting challenges while working on Blaston!
The first challenge I’ll talk about is implementing the bots for the game. We thought of the head, the hands, and the torso as separate parts and implemented finite state machines for each of these parts, allowing them to move independently from each other. This enables the bots to move towards a gun, pick it up and fire at the player,all while looking at and reacting to incoming projectiles. The bots now have a more human-like feel which we were very happy with. I’ve written a whole blog post on the bots for Blaston if you’re looking for a more in-depth and more technical discussion!
I’ve also worked on the implementation of the Blaston Spectator Client, allowing users to stream friendly matches and knockout tournaments in Blaston. While there certainly were technical challenges involved, working on this project also allowed me to closely interact with the community, support and understand the needs of esports tournament organizers and content creators, and deliver something that meets (and hopefully exceeds) their expectations.
As additional examples, I was involved in porting Blaston to a number of VR Arcade platforms, which was also a technical challenge. Furthermore, I was also involved in gameplay programming; the most recent being the Tundra weapon from the Blaston: Arctic Blast update and the Luma weapon from the Blaston Reloaded update, both of which I’m really proud of.
How do you collaborate with your colleagues at Resolution Games?
Within a game team, I often work closely with other programmers on the same project who sometimes have different levels of expertise in different areas, so I’m always learning something new. Outside of programming, I frequently collaborate with game designers in order to make sure that I give them the tools they need to bring their ideas to live within the game, and with artists to make sure I can fully support their artistic vision.
Outside my immediate game team, I also interact with programmers from other teams in frequent Code Share meetings where we discuss interesting problems we’ve encountered while working and how we’ve tackled them. I also work with team members from community management, marketing, and management to make sure that we meet expectations and hit our deadlines.
What excites you about being in the VR/AR games space?
The fact that I’m working with cutting edge technology is really exciting to me. Both VR and AR games allow for different ways of interacting with objects and agents compared to other digital games, since you’re much more immersed in the virtual space.
Working with cutting edge technology sometimes also involves dealing with a plethora of technical challenges. With regards to VR devices such as the Meta Quest 2, we always need to keep in mind that these are essentially mobile devices. Not only that, they’re mobile devices that are expected to run fully immersive experiences with a high level of graphical quality.
This means that we need to make absolutely sure that the art assets for the game are both aesthetically pleasing as well as not overly taxing on the device, which is sometimes a tricky balance to strike! These challenges can be frustrating at times, but overcoming such problems is always rewarding.
Can you tell us about some of the fun things happening at Resolution Games, outside the daily work routine?
There are a number of activities organized by colleagues that happen after work hours, such as the KPop dance crew, and I know a group of colleagues gather to play fighting games after hours. I’m personally involved in the choir, where we’ve sung traditional Swedish Christmas songs for St. Lucia’s Day, and I also play tabletop RPGs with a couple of other colleagues.
What do you look forward to learning at Resolution Games?
Based on my previous academic work and interests, I’m very much looking forward to delving deeper into the use of AI techniques and the use of procedural content generation in the context of VR.
Are you interested in working on challenging projects in VR and AR? We’re currently hiring XR game programmers - check out our open positions!
