Developer Spotlight – Meet Gpx1000!

This week, we are continuing with the introduction of members of the Vanguard Saga of Heroes®: Development Team through special Developer Spotlight features. Next up is Gpx1000!

Gpx1000


Name: Steven Winston
Job Title: Senior Programmer
How long have you worked at Sony Online Entertainment?
I started at SOE in September of 2010 in the Platform Syseng group. I was one of the core developers responsible for account management, eCommerce, and chat among other Platforms projects. I joined the Vanguard Team in May of this year.
How did you get into the game industry?
I’ve been in the game industry for 12 years now. In my Junior year at college, my friends and I started a company to do a middle ware package that can turn normal games into MMOs. We did a MMOFPS out of the Quake 2 engine and promptly sold the company prior to releasing it beyond beta. I’ve been in the industry ever since.
Do you play Vanguard? If so, tell us a bit about your character.
I typically don’t get a chance to play Vanguard that much. I’ll admit that the first time I made a character was when I was moving onto the team. I have been spending most of my play time hunting down bugs! However, when we go free-to-play I look forward to taking a break to see the fruits of our labors!
Here’s a screenshot of my play character below. Can you guess where I am?

What do you like best about Vanguard?
I like that Vanguard is unapologetic for its depth and complexity. You can play it for 24 hours a day for weeks and still continue to discover something you have not seen before.
What exciting plans do you have in store for Vanguard?
I mainly work on the behind the scenes aspects of the game like determining how we can improve the frame rate. At least I find wire tests exciting!


Overall, I’m honestly stoked about the free-to-play transition. I think it’s a really cool idea to be able to play a fun MMO and only pay for things that can enhance my experience. There’s a lot we can do with this type of model and seeing it work at the scale that SOE has been doing it with other games is truly awesome. I look forward to seeing how well Vanguard can take advantage of this transition.
Do you have any funny stories to tell everyone about working on Vanguard?
I can think of lots of funny stories but none that really spring to mind that would be interesting to non-programmers or that would not be completely lost in the retelling. It’s a VERY entertaining job but hard to think of ways to translate the stories to people that aren’t in the day to day.
Have players ever surprised you with using a strange tactic to defeat an encounter that you created?
I don’t really create encounters. That’s a designer’s challenge. However, as a programmer I’m frequently thinking of how something “could” break or how I’d try to break it. Every time there’s a bug in code I’ve written, it’s a defeat of something I created.
Do you play solo or play with others and why?
It depends on the game. I love to play FPS games with others. However, most console games I enjoy as a solo play. MMOs I will only play with others as otherwise “what’s the point?”
I prefer solo games when I’m playing to get the story of the game. I find this relaxing and as enjoyable as reading a good book (hopefully). If I want a challenge, the only way I get it is by playing with others. People are vastly better at strategy creating challenges and conversing than Intelligent Agents (IA). Everyone usually mislabels IA as AI - it’s not AI unless it learns something!
What other games do you currently play?
I’m pretty eclectic in my game play. I play just about everything I can get my hands on. However, these days, I get as much enjoyment out of programming as I do out of playing. So I spend most of my free time programming something. When I’m not programming for work, I’m doing some programming work for a non-profit that I’m helping to start up whose focus is on biological research (Elasmotech Labs). I’m currently working on a new type of image recognition to help with research into Elasmobranchs (Sharks and Rays). It’s very interesting work, and fun to take up the challenge.
Thank you for joining us for the Developer Spotlight. Stay tuned for more highlights in the near future!
Previously Released Developer Spotlights:
Meet Silius
Meet Wigin
Meet Elionia
Meet Ceythos
Meet TLoch14
Welcome Back Aradune

welcome to Vanguard Gpx1000 !!

Very cool! Nice to see someone with so much programming experience aboard!

Welcome Steven.
I hope you are our "go to lag fixing guy!"

So, I take it you will look into CPU multithreading of Vanguard so it can finally move on to the next generation of games..
It's just.. So outdated not having it onboard and it really is needed now a days. So please, consider it .. Yes, it's a big deal having to do, but I'm pretty sure you'd have an entire community backing you up and getting it over and done with sooner rather than later will definitely help you communicate that the game is up to 2012 standards.
(Fixing bugs really won't help in that regard - no offense.)

I'm looking forward to seeing improvements in those fields . Good luck on the DEV team

Welcome Gpx1000
Not one of the more glamourous roles in the gaming industry but it does show that SoE are serious about this relaunch for VG.

Welcome Gpx1000!
I'm interested to see how your work improves performance. Good luck in this and your other endeavours!

welcome gpx1000
glad to have someone working on the background stuff too
ps, your in isle of dawn looking at the temple from the other side of the water

Welcome aboard, and you signed on for one heck of a challenge here with this code base, but skilled hands can make the best work of even the worst materials.
We are counting on you and the team with you to bring home the bacon! mmmmmbaaccoonn.

Ashreon@Halgar wrote:

Mutlithreading is just one of many ways to make games perform faster. One that already correctly exists in some parts of Vanguard. Most of the time when you start on a game that has already been in production the way you achieve the best results is by fixing bugs. Bugs are what usually cause lag and large efforts like introducing new engine mechanics results in very little if any benefit over not fixing the underlinning issues.
To give an example, I worked on a game for LeapFrog's didj platform as a launch title. The hardware designer provided drivers that couldn't do floating point operations fast enough to allow for anything more than 3-4 fps. We could have rewritten the engine to use less GPU, by doing a complete overhaul and switching everything to the CPU only using the graphics card to pipe out finished images; this would have required lots of work and other parts of the already working game would need reimplementation with less CPU resources availalbe for other game needs.
What we did instead was to rewrite the graphics language we were using, did the math in software and switch to fixed point in the engine which gave us 100 fps. When Leapfrog asked us how we did it so our competitors (other contracted studios) could ship on time; we replied, it "just works for us," something we were told when we asked how to get around that floating point bug. Once the bugs are wrangled, new features can be addressed. There is a process and method to the madness inside of game programming.
From the standpoint of the engine, there's a number of things we can do in the future to make it look snazzier, sound more emmersive and give lighting, shadding, and graphics techniques that can be updated. However, all of that naturally hinges on the success of the game which in turn dictates the time we are given to do the work. What we do have planned, what is already implemented, and what we're doing is pretty intriguing from a player's standpoint, and the success of realizing all of this should allow for more next generation leaps.

Thanks all for the warm welcomes.

gpx1000 wrote:

That reply made me tingle in strange places. I have some hope for my poor orphan child, VG.

gpx1000 wrote:

That was an awesome reply.
I am glad we have someone so experienced in the programming department, giving us more information as to why bug fixes would be better over GPU/Engine tweaks is really interesting.
I hope the game is more of a success after F2P just so we can see you unleashed you expertise on the VG code and tweak it to look and sound even better, with much less lag
Keep up the good work mate!

Oh, I had not expected a reply I must admit. I realise that fixing bugs are the main priority and with good reason. If a game is bugged beyond what is reasonable (Vanguard has a tendency to be quite buggy), players won't play and thus an engine upgrade is second priority or even lower than that.
However, how does a bugged quest, say one you cannot turn in, increase my FPS because it gets fixed. It's not creating extra frames unless I keep clicking it trying to turn it in. If anything, to increase FPS you have to look at the physics behind the world (your lovely polygons =).) as well as less brilliant (clumsy) coding that may be (is) in Vanguard and how intensive the graphic, in which your graphic card has to draw, is
The only way I see FPS as an issue directly linked to bugs, is faulty encounter coding which may increase the lag due to information not being able to be processed fast enough or the coding is so faulty that some information is not sent, but I have a hard time believing that.
Another FPS issue is particles, there's so many of them in most areas that these most likely is the cause for most FPS issues in APW and PotA.
I'm not out to argue about it, I'm actually just curious .

I'm not looking for more snazzier, immersive graphics.. Those Vanguard already have.. It's just about getting Vanguard to be playable on as many pc's as possible, something Vanguard is not at the moment.

Ashreon@Halgar wrote:

There are really three different types of bugs in the game that require a different type of person to solve.
Code Bugs- Something where the game engine does something that it shouldn't. These can either cause performance issues, crashing, or something to not draw correctly. When GPX1000 is talking about bugs he is normally talking about these bugs. For the most part these require a code build in order to fix. Our first new code build since we restarted VG is currently on Test.
Data/Design Bugs- These are things that cause quests to be gated or give incorrect rewards and other things like that. All of our patches since restarting work on VG have been Data based.
Art Bugs- Problems with art assets are things like a texture is stretched or you can fall through the world. These need to be fixed by an Artist most of the time.
Those are the basic rules but there is always exceptions. Such as a Quest uses a special type of script action which might break. The data might be correct but since the code has a bug a coder will need to fix the issue.
There are also Performance issues that can be fixed by designers. The worst example I know is one that I created on an internal server when attempting to make the Cranberries for the Thankgiving event I accidentally made Cranberries that spawned themselves when they spawned. This killed the server in about 30 seconds since it took up so much memory and CPU cycles. As a designer we have to be careful of not placing too many NPC's in an area or having an encounter that does too many things at once because they can cause issues with performance. These issues normally pop up during a raid and we have had to change some raid mechanics because they do cause a performance issue.
There are also sometimes Art fixes that designers or coders can help with. Sometimes there is a bug where a certain texture in certain circumstances is caused by a rendering issue where the Artist either has to use a different texture or a coder needs to fix the issue. Designers have also been known to fix some fall through the world bugs by placing a rock over the problem spot as a quick fix.

i love the detailed replies guys! this turned into the best post ive read in a long while hehe

gpx1000 wrote:

Any hint into what kind of success VG's F2P launch has to have in order for your book keepers to be happy?

Wigin wrote:

Any ideas as to what is causing the extreme lag on War Golem and to lesser extent Karax? Or more importantly, are you able to do something about it?

Ghostchild@Seradon wrote:

Lesser Extent Karax?! Karax is unkillable due to the ridiculous lag!

Cummings@Seradon wrote:

*cough* proper multithreading !

Thank you Wigin for your response, I'm satisfied, now knowing how many areas it can go wrong.. Just one thing, multithreading!! The better your multithreading gets, the less problems you will have with encounters doing too many things. Also, my core number two would be happeh to share the load of core number 1 .

It makes sense fixing bugs first that has coding issues before introducing new code elements