Booyaka! Time for a new developer entry, featuring theDevs. Last Friday we went on a weekend fishing trip! Andrés, Peter, Robert and Daniel were the braves ones accepting the challenge, which turned into a pretty nice little adventure.

We’ll start from the beginning. Last Friday morning we wanted to celebrate the release of the Muzzleloader with a little fishing trip. We went in the CEO’s car (Robets crappy Volvo. No seriously, it’s quite nice) to Mölnbo, outside of Stockholm, to Andrés parents summerhouse to stay over the weekend. The plan was just having some fun together, make dinner, drink some beer, and first and foremost to see if we could catch some fish with our brand new fishing rods. We’re not what you call experienced fishermen, except for Andrés perhaps, who knows a little bit about it and has some past experience. But the rest of us are pretty green.

We went to a nearby lake and started throwing hooks where we thought the reeds would not have all of them. After a couple of minutes Andrés (probably using some trick he didn’t want to share with the rest of us) pulled a small pike out of the water. While celebrating the first catch of the day though, the fish, somehow, dropped the hook and jumped right back into the water on the slippery sloping rock and escaped. In the end the fish got lucky and at least we got ourselves a great laugh!

After a while, without catching any fish, we hiked on toward another spot where we had lunch. Hot dogs, coffee and a beer (but just one beer each. We´re responsible people you know).

Half decent Swedish view.

Peter, Andrés and Danny.

Food always taste so much better in the wild. And it hardly even have to be thoroughly cooked! We ended up wasting most of our drinking water on putting the grill out once finished as nobody felt like carrying it back home while it was still glowing hot.

Soon after lunch, at a new fishing spot, Robert got lucky and caught a nice perch that we decided to keep. Andres broke it’s neck and Peter got struggling with some of his fishing line being tangled up pretty bad, we concluded that a little more weight on the hooks would make it easier to keep the line stretched while throwing.

First proper catch of the day (can you see it?). Don’t know what that tall guy is smiling about though because he didn’t catch anything!

A short while later Andrés caught a little one which he gave a second chance at life and let back into the water.

Andrés and his little friend at mercy.

The real action was yet to come though. Danny thought he was snagged, but soon realized whatever his hook was stuck in was moving. And it was definitely bigger than anything we had gotten before. After a short struggle an awesome pike appeared on the surface. Everyone was quite chocked to see this and while trying to pull it out of the water the line snapped and it ended up getting away, with the hook and everything. Note to self: get a hoop-net to pick the fish up with next time!

We didn’t quite see the whole thing, but at the time it seemed to be quite similar in size to a great white shark.

After that whole adventure with the pike was settling we thought it would be a good idea to turn back home. Andrés was of course sure of the way and we embarked. Problem was only they had made new logging roads all over the place since Andres was there the last time and we ended up at a dead end. It had started to rain a little and as we all (still) had trust in Andrés leading us we went on, straight into the woods which turned out to be a less good idea.

One of several deer feeders we came across during the day, and there was hunting stands all over the place. Something is definitely going on here, and it probably ain’t organized flower picking!

After getting somewhat lost while trying to navigate using our cellphones GPS, negotiating a few bogs, slippery rock, clear cuts, ditches, mud holes, getting our feet soaked, spirits weakened and just plain tired we got back to the house. Not tired of fishing though, so we threw a few more hooks from a small pier while the rain got worse.

Peter wasn’t giving up despite his lousy odds. The rain is hard to see but it is there!

When we were more or less freezing we finally got back indoors, had more beer, made a great dinner and played some cards for the rest of the evening and early night.

We also cleaned, fried and ate the perch that Robert caught earlier. It was delicious! “Best fish I’ve ever had in my life.” – Danny.

AK 47 gets the job done! Awesome Cold Steel folding knife bought by Peter at his trip to the Eastern Sports show last year.

In the end it was a great and fun weekend, and we’ll definitely do it again some time and report back here about our success!

Until next time, gangnam style!

Comments goes here.

Onwards and upwards we go with the developer presentations! This time it´s Dj P himself laying down a few antics from the day he was born. This post will be split into two, the first one featuring the past and the other the present. Hopefully you will get a sense of who he is and what he is about.

Dj P, nickname of Peter Johansson, is currently the Lead Artist/Art Director/Designer at Expansive Worlds. The nickname Dj P was invented by EW staff after a recent and miserably failed attempt at organising a music playlist at a party. The other nickname “Little Peter” comes from the fact that he is almost seven feet tall (and don´t go on to ask! He knows what you’re thinking right now and the answer is “no I don´t”).

Dj P In theHunter style, with his favourite Swedteam cap!

But first things first, to make a long story short and highlighting some of the essential stuff. I grew up on a small farm outside a city called Örebro in the middle of Sweden. I know how to hand milk cows, drive tractors, wheel loaders and the meaning of “hard work”. I started drawing when I was about six years old (being the only one in my entire family doing that). I was doodling myself all the way through school paying more attention to practical and creative subjects rather than mathematics and grammar. Nowadays I can’t help but partially despise the education system for failing to inspire and teach how all those theoretical subjects apply to real life rather than the classroom itself as they are quite essential after all. After school I worked at the local radio station for about one year designing, building and maintaining web pages. Like every other westerner around the turn of the millenium (It seemed at the time at least) my dream was to become a web designer as HTML and the embossed graphics had become my religion. I also helped out doing radio but quickly concluded it was not my thing, and being really scared at the time about public speaking didn’t really help me either.

Early work. Could have made a pretty good movie?

By pure chance someone at a newly founded game company found my online portfolio. I recieved a mail from the company asking if i’d like to  work for them, and I ended up moving a few hours away from home to Stockholm. At the time I begun working for that company (Called GRIN) I knew close to nothing about making games and my job was only to paint textures for the 3D models that was created by others. Nine years later I had picked up enough things though to have progressed from being a “Texture Artist” to a “3D artist”, going on to work as ”Lead Artist”, “Concept Artist”, “Art Director” including other “Senior Artist” duties as well. By 2008 GRIN had grown into one of the biggest game developers in Sweden, with a staff amount to almost 300 people in three studios in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Barcelona, and people (myself included) made trips to the US and Los Angeles flirting with the Movie industry. In 2009 and the later part of the global financial crisis the games industry was suddenly hit harder than anyone had anticipated causing the company to suffer from several large title productions being terminated by publishers (naturally crapping their pants on their expenses). The company was decimated to about a hundred employees working in the Stockholm office, but only a few months later the one project still being worked on was also revoked by the publisher causing the entire company to go bankrupt. In hindsight it was of course a very sad but also interesting experience, and probably also a hard life lesson to see so much hard work and serious effort just going straight into a black hole. Two weeks after the initial announcement the company was bankrupt there was nothing left but a deserted office full of dusty hardware. I bought my office chair at the foreclosure auction for 50 swedish crowns (less than $10).

My chair. Best one I ever had!

When a company goes bankrupt in Sweden the government step in and pay people equivalent to the salary they would get through their resignation period (paying the high taxes in Sweden is not always a bad thing). I ended up getting several months worth of salary giving me the opportunity to try something I had been thinking about for a long time, setting up a company of my own and go freelance. I did a few jobs for a movie company and another game studio but soon found myself missing the creative atmosphere within a studio, and not to mention the social aspects of going to the work every day and hang out with other like minded people. I started looking for full time employment in and around Stockholm again but failed to get any as the studios were still holding onto their money like crazy until the financial climate turned back toward the better again. Around christmas I knocked on the door to the Avalanche office and asked to talk to someone (I’m not one who belive that sending an email is enough to make an impression when looking for work). I was rejected at the time but encouraged to come back in a few months. So I did, and I got an appointment with the studio Art Director. Which was too busy too see me when I got there so I got to talk to two other guys, and here´s where things got really interesting!

I came across theHunter already back in early 2009, pretty soon after the game became available to the public. I remember trying it out at work just to have a look at the pretty graphics and was instantly hooked. I’m a simulation/technical person by heart and was struck by the immersion when walking around in the woods, while asking myself; how the ¤#%& should you be able to find any animals in this… mess (of vegetation)! But I was soon successful, and a paying member.. I knew Avalanche Studios was involved with creating content for the game and during the interview I asked (half joking) if they would be interested in hiring someone to work on that project. Naturally I didn´t really think I would get to work on such an obscure project, and I had absolutely no idea that Avalanche had (apparently) acquired and signed the rights to the game just a few days earlier and was planning on setting up an entirely new company to continue developing it. I was totally blown away by the coincidence as it turned out that was the reason I was brought in to the interview in the first place. Of course I got super excited and they told me they would get back with a small work test for me before they could make the final call.

I went home and improvised as I wanted that job more than anything else! While I’m always careful to follow direction and guidelines I´m not the one sitting on my ass if I don’t get any, or if you’re too slow delivering them. I modeled and textured the head of a moose (the very same but slightly tweaked head being used on the Moose in theHunter today). My spontaneous effort was apparently very appreciated and I was hired!

My improvised work test.

Continued in part 2.

Comments go here!

Now this is the story all about how
My life got flipped, turned upside down
And I’d like to take a minute just sit right there
I’ll tell you how I became the intern (and later employee) of a company called Expansive Worlds

First of all, I should probably introduce myself to those of you who don’t know who I am (for the record, shame on you if that’s the case). My name is Daniel Gutierrez Gustafsson, but people call me Danny, and I’ve been a game programmer here at Expansive Worlds for over a year now, first as an intern and now as an employee.
I think it’s time for me to post a picture of myself:

Gosh, I love that one.

I’m an avid gamer. I’ve played computer games since I was a kid. That’s probably why one beautiful day for four years ago I decided I would become a game programmer. Why not an graphic artist you ask? Well, good question. And the answer is that my graphical skills are as good as a programmers, coder art with other words.

I started studying game programming after the summer of 2009, and after two years I got an internship here at Expansive Worlds. I must say that those two years were in hardcore mode, studying six to seven days a week and at least 10 hours a day. But anyway…

Since I started working with theHunter I’ve been doing a lot of different things, but one of those things that I would like to go into detail is the auto/manual reload feature.

One day, after finishing a task,  I decided to implement a feature a lot of people in our community asked about; the possibility to manually reload a weapon instead of being forced to reload after shooting.
I assumed it couldn’t be that hard to implement. Big mistake.
Since I didn’t think it would be that hard, I just started working on it right away on the main branch. Usually, we use different branches of the code base (or graphic resources for the artists) depending on how much time the feature will take. For example, something like a new environment is made in a different branch than let’s say, the next weapon to be released, because the weapon probably goes live earlier than the environment. The main branch is the one that is used for the features that will go live in the next game update.

I personally thought that implementing this feature wouldn’t take longer than a couple of days. So wrong I was.
Long story short, the way things worked at the time made it pretty hard to implement the manual reload without breaking other things (often the auto reload).
After a week or so I realized that we had to change some animations for some weapons. We had to remove all the cycling, pumping and cocking/decocking animations from the reload animations (since they were in the same animation), and have them by themselves.
At this point I couldn’t just roll back all the work I had done (since it worked for almost all the weapons and because I had been working on it for over a week), so I had to ask José, our animator, to drop whatever he was doing at the time and help me fix the animations. This wasn’t problem free either, and after a week of going back and forth with them we decided that they were good enough.

Before releasing something live we always let our beta team test everything we do, so we released it to them. They found a lot of bugs, so I just sat and fixed them one by one. I think this took probably another week.

Finally, we released the game update with the auto/manual reload feature. It wasn’t perfect (I remember some bugs that found its way to live), but it was good enough.

This feature took me almost three weeks to implement, instead of two days. So what did I learn from this? Well, never assume anything. Things will never go smooth, they will always take at least π-times what you thought beforehand.
But now I know.

tl;dr: I <3 U!

Until next time
Gangnam Style,
Danny.

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