Interview with John Dunbar (aka Volbard), Mythos Particle Designer, etc.
MythosGuru: What all, exactly, do you do for Flagship Seattle?
John Dunbar: I argue a lot, sometimes I make explosions.
To be more specific, I make most of the particles, which are all the fire and whirlwinds and spells and other special effects. I make a lot of quests, though other people help out with that too. I also do game design work, but everyone here contributes to design, and that’s where the arguing comes in.
Right now I’m mostly working on quests for zone 3 and on crafting. I’ve been naming all of the crafting ingredients, and I’m afraid we may have more ingredients than English has adjectives. I think the crafting system is going to be pretty cool, it’s different from any system I’ve ever heard of. I’m also badgering Marsh to code me some different quest types, but he’s up to his eyeballs in crafting so that may take a bit yet.
MyG: How did you first get into the gaming industry?
JD: Starting way way at the bottom. I worked tech support for Realgames and Atari for a while, and then got a job in QA at a small company in Redmond. I did QA for a few years, eventually leading projects. Since it was a small company, I was really involved in the projects and ended up doing a lot of design work and tracking the schedule. If anyone out there is thinking of getting into games through QA, small companies are the way to go. |^)
MyG: How did you get hired by Flagship Seattle?
JD: I was the fourth person hired in Seattle, and since I knew the first three people I just kept buying them drinks until they hired me. I was actually hired to be the QA lead for Mythos, but I kept working on other stuff on the side until they let me just make particles and such full time. QA has been passed on to Ian’s (more) capable hands.
I was really excited to work on Mythos. Travis had been soloing the project for quite a while and it was already shaping into a solid game, since then it has leveled up in quality and scope several times.
MyG: What other games have you worked on in the past?
JD: Lots of small games which are really impressive if you take into account their tiny budgets and timelines, which I know you *totally* would if you played them. Out of all of them I’m going to claim Penguins, which Marsh and I worked on. It’s a funny cross between Lemmings and The Incredible Machine, and involves shooting penguins into walls with cannons. Please assume I designed all of the best levels. The rest of the games are kind of a blur.
MyG: What all goes into working on particles in Mythos? That is, how much of your work do we regularly see and just generally just think “Hrm, flashy effects. Purty!” without giving it a second thought?
JD: Well, first you need an idea of what you want the effect to look like. Some are easy like fireballs, and some are trickier like slow. What does slow look like? What does it look like to be silenced? Which reminds me, that silenced effect needs some love.. ok fixed. It can also be kind of tricky to make five different fireballs and have them all look different and cool.
There’s also the problem of scale. Lots of the effects can be applied to all monsters, so state effects have to work with both tiny ants and giant ettins. Spells should look good when there’s one on the screen, and also when there are fifty. This can be tricky to nail down, and it’s something Marsh and I are working on.
Working on particles is great because it’s a break from hard thinky work, and because you get instant gratification. Whatever you want to make, it be done in just one session, and usually thrown right into the game. When I get tired or distracted it can be hard to keep working on some things, but particles are always fun. One change leads to another, and the systems always need just one more tweak. It keeps pulling you on. One more change and it will be perfect. Just one more… I guess it’s sort of like a well designed game in that respect.
MyG: If you weren’t working in the video game industry, what would you be doing instead?
JD: If I didn’t work in games I imagine I’d be pining away in some other job, and making games on the side like I did since I was a kid. My co-workers would find me eccentric, and grow tired of being stalked by my foam missile launching robot.
MyG: What would you say are your “tools of the trade”? That is, what items does it take to get your job done?
JD: Our internal editor is called Hammer, and I use that for particle systems, layouts, and miscellaneous stuff. Photoshop is for particle textures, icons, and any other 2D art. Marsh and Greg made a nice editor in C# which I use for making quests. I use Word for design docs, and Excel for all sorts of things.
All the crafting ingredients are in big excel tables. The crafting skill categories were put together in excel. I made an excel that makes charts of all the weapons in the game with their levels and DPS. When we need to name things I make big excel charts of possible words. All the items, skills, monsters, quests.. well everything is in excel. We all use it, but I think I’m the only one who doesn’t hate it with the heat of a thousand suns. Excel knows this and I receive special treatment.
Oh, also those composition notebooks. Mine are filled with illegible charts and lists of things to do. Also my big mouth, that’s pretty crucial I think.
MyG: What other games do you regularly play, or have regularly played in the past and thoroughly enjoyed?
JD: I’ve played most MMOs, spending the most time in UO, but for the last several years I just haven’t been able to commit. Lately I’ve enjoyed shorter games, because that’s what fits into my schedule. Portal was perfect. The Witcher was cool, but it was the sort of time investment I can’t afford very often.
I think several people on the team are in the same place, and that’s the perspective we’ve approached Mythos from. If you have lots of time to pour into the game then that’s great and there should be stuff for you to do, but if you only have a little bit of time every week you should still be able to play and have a rewarding experience. Gamasutra had an interesting article recently which suggested that when hardcore gamers get older and find they have less time for games, that doesn’t mean they’re going to switch to playing casual stuff like Zuma. They want the same depth of experience, just in a smaller bites. I think that’s right on, and I hope we can provide that gaming fix they’re looking for.
MyG: Where did you get the name “Volbard”?
JD: It came from a mispronounced song lyric. I like it because it’s unique, and I’ve been using it in online games for a long time now. My initial thought was that if I had a unique name and stuck to it, friends would recognize me from game to game. That has never actually happened though, the internet turned out to be a lot bigger than I thought.
MyG: Marsh and Grimby have touched on the subject, and now it’s your turn — What can you tell us about the mysterious figure known as Zardon?
JD: All children know the tale of Zardon, and their parents are keen to remind them of it when they disobey.
