In this installment of Who Is Borderlands, I asked Patrick Deupree, a programming lead on the team, to share his thoughts on several topics with us. Patrick is an industry veteran and brings a lot of experience and skill to the Borderlands team. Not only is Patrick and industry veteran, but he's also something of a Gearbox veteran - he's been with us since 1999. Now that you have an idea about who Patrick is, let's pick his brain:
ennui: How did you find your way into programming games?
Patrick: Getting into programming games was a little more difficult when I went through college than it is now, but I did try to take every class I could or work in every environment I could that might possibly be relevant to developing games. This included taking all the systems programming, AI and graphics classes that were available. I did get lucky and got a job working on object oriented tools in 1990, when object oriented development was still not widespread. I did 6 years of corporate development before a computer game development job at 7th Level opened up, and some graphics work I had done both on my own and on a contract programming job helped me to get in. The games I started working on were not "hardcore" games, but I did make sure to talk to the right people so that I could move on to a better game when the opportunity came up.
ennui: You have tons of experience in the industry - what are some important lessons you've learned over the years about making games?
Patrick: One of the biggest lessons I've learned is that family comes first. The first game company I worked for developed games with consistently tight schedules, and ran them back-to-back, so for a year and a half I practically lived at the office. During that time I did not pay enough attention to some elements of my home life that I should have. In the long run my family has been able to salvage things. Despite the trouble it caused, I will admit that it was exciting working on the games for the first time. There was a team camaraderie during those hard times that I had never experienced while working on corporate projects.
Another important lesson is that there is no such thing as too much communication. As an individual it's easy to spend so long looking at a task that you become blind to the solution, or one can get focused on one solution and not see a better alternative. It helps to talk to others about your ideas sometimes so that you can get another view on things. As a lead, it helps to have communication so that you can have confidence in the solution. In addition, if that you see that a solution does need to be rethought, you can organize a task force to find a solution more quickly, adjust the scope of the task, or adjust the schedule to accommodate a new timeframe for the task.
I could also go through a long list of other lessons learned, but these two are, I think, the most important.
ennui: What are your responsibilities on Borderlands?
Patrick: The majority of the work I have done is on the core AI system for the game. This has been interesting since the last game I did that had more than just humanoid characters was Opposing Force. Setting up a core AI system that can support characters on foot, characters in vehicles, and non humanoid creatures has been a cool experience. I also do a lot of work on our animation systems since they are closely tied to making the AI look good while it does what we want it to. All of us wear multiple hats, though, so I've also made contributions toward our weapon systems, player effects, enemy spawning, and what have you. In addition to my personal programming responsibilities I also help out with mentoring and/or managing people that are newer to Gearbox and/or game development.
ennui: What does your "day in the life" typically look like?
Patrick: I get up and see if it's raining or threatening to freeze, in which case I drive to work, otherwise I ride in. I'll check my e-mail to see if anything has come up that needs immediate attention in the morning. I pull down the latest code and assets, then make a build on my computer. At that point I either continue a task I was working on the previous night, or I review my list of tasks that still need to be done and start on the next one. Depending on the results of the previous nights work I might review the results of my work with someone else in the company, or I might discuss the results of someone else's work with them. On most days there will be at least one meeting for the team, the coders, or amongst coders from all projects at Gearbox. At 3:30 every day a group of us will make a pot of tea in the kitchen for ourselves and anyone else in the office that is interested. In the evening I'll wrap up the days tasks and either gear up to ride home, or just drive home. If I was not able to sufficiently complete my tasks at work I might work on them at home. Otherwise I'll usually fire up some game after my wife has gone to sleep.
ennui: Borderlands has a very ambitious scope - what are some of the challenges you face?
Patrick: The biggest challenge we face is the same challenge we have faced on any new game property I've worked on, which is making the game fun. It's easy to look at individual elements of a game and say this element is fun, or that element is not, but blending all those parts into a complete game where these elements have to interact is always a challenge. The more ambitious the scope, the bigger this challenge.
As mentioned with the responsibilities, another big challenge is defining the AI for the game. We have different types of creatures and characters in the game. Making it all interact with other elements of the game, and defining the conditions upon which certain things should happen is an ongoing challenge.
ennui: What are you most excited about in Borderlands?
Patrick: Aside from seeing it hit shelves and seeing people's reactions, I think the weapon variety is what I'm the most excited about. It's still interesting to play through the game and find a gun that just owns the enemies. It's also pretty cool to play for an hour or so and to never see the same gun twice. We have some pretty satisfying guns in this game.
ennui: So far, what's your favorite story that's come out of developing Borderlands?
Patrick: This is an interesting one. To be honest, I think my favorite experience or story so far has been when we showed the game for the first time at Leipzig last year. I've gotten to show Dominion on the floor of ECTS and Anachronox on the floor of E3 in the past. When showing a game on the showroom floor it's noisy and crowded so you're lucky to be able to hear someone, let alone get a real reaction to what you are showing. This was the first time I'd gotten to be involved with showing a game for the first time ever to the public. Being there when Borderlands was shown in a back room at Leipzig gave me a chance to see people's reactions in a quiet setting. It was great to see the excitement when they saw Matt spewing a fountain of weapons into the map, or when we were driving through the Salt Flats blowing the brigadiers runners to smithereens.
An amusing story from this experience happened when we were demonstrating the section of the Salt Flats while in the runner. We were showing how you can switch seats on the vehicle when Matt accidentally hit the exit button instead of the switch seats button. Initially I saw what I thought was his character switching seats, but then he jumps out of the vehicle. I was going pretty fast and by the time I realized what had happened I'm a thousand feet away and I have to turn around and try to find him so we can finish out the demo. It was a bit of a Laurel and Hardy moment in the middle of the demo. At the time, not the best thing to have happen, but in retrospect we can laugh.
ennui: Thanks, Patrick, for sharing your time and thoughts with us! To all you GBX-ers, don't forget to check out the thread on the forums for discussion!
