1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:09,460

2
00:00:09,460 --> 00:00:11,550
>> BRIAN JACOBSON: My
name is Brian Jacobson.

3
00:00:11,550 --> 00:00:15,930
I made my way to Valve kind of
in a slightly circuitous route.

4
00:00:15,930 --> 00:00:19,210
I was not actually a computer
programmer in college.

5
00:00:19,210 --> 00:00:21,120
And I was used to--
back in high school--

6
00:00:21,120 --> 00:00:24,810
being able to do programming and get
stuff from idea to implementation

7
00:00:24,810 --> 00:00:26,830
in just a few minutes or hours.

8
00:00:26,830 --> 00:00:32,439
I enjoyed that rapid pace of development
and seeing my ideas come to life.

9
00:00:32,439 --> 00:00:34,290
>> YAHN BERNIER: My name is Yahn Bernier.

10
00:00:34,290 --> 00:00:36,240
I've been here at Valve
for over 16 years.

11
00:00:36,240 --> 00:00:39,680
So I ended up writing, just for
fun, a level editor for Quake

12
00:00:39,680 --> 00:00:43,100
called BSP based on binary
space partitioning trees.

13
00:00:43,100 --> 00:00:46,210
That was sort of the entree,
and eventually Gabe Newell,

14
00:00:46,210 --> 00:00:49,980
who was the founder of Valve, and Mike
Harrington sent me an email saying,

15
00:00:49,980 --> 00:00:51,770
software development
engineer opportunity.

16
00:00:51,770 --> 00:00:53,061
>> JOHN COOK: My name's John Cook.

17
00:00:53,061 --> 00:00:54,820
I'm a software engineer
working at Valve.

18
00:00:54,820 --> 00:00:59,610
I focus on our online system's
scaling and architecture.

19
00:00:59,610 --> 00:01:01,560
A friend and I, actually,
in university were

20
00:01:01,560 --> 00:01:04,170
working on a game called Team Fortress.

21
00:01:04,170 --> 00:01:08,320
And we just made the game,
put it up on the internet.

22
00:01:08,320 --> 00:01:10,650
It was an addition for the
game Quake at that time,

23
00:01:10,650 --> 00:01:13,120
so sort of a mod, an
extension, of that game.

24
00:01:13,120 --> 00:01:16,400
After that, we ended up
getting in contact with Valve

25
00:01:16,400 --> 00:01:17,700
and coming over here.

26
00:01:17,700 --> 00:01:19,450
>> BRIAN JACOBSON: For
me, the graphics class

27
00:01:19,450 --> 00:01:25,460
was probably the most applicable
course that I took in college for sure.

28
00:01:25,460 --> 00:01:29,700
Trigonometry, linear algebra--
I took a robotics course

29
00:01:29,700 --> 00:01:32,900
that had a bunch of linear
algebra kind of baked into it,

30
00:01:32,900 --> 00:01:37,530
and that is one of the keystone
math concepts for any 3-D graphics.

31
00:01:37,530 --> 00:01:43,180
It's all about orientation and doing the
math of, like I'm looking over at you,

32
00:01:43,180 --> 00:01:47,160
but I want to aim over there, and
how do I rotate, and how do I,

33
00:01:47,160 --> 00:01:50,100
you know, how do I figure out
where I'm moving or looking?

34
00:01:50,100 --> 00:01:52,315
That is all linear algebra.

35
00:01:52,315 --> 00:01:54,440
YAHN BERNIER: The essence
of a first person shooter

36
00:01:54,440 --> 00:01:58,325
is that I look through the gun sites
with my eyes, and aim at something,

37
00:01:58,325 --> 00:02:00,200
and pull the trigger,
and I want to hit that.

38
00:02:00,200 --> 00:02:04,330
So you have to design your
technology to deal with latency.

39
00:02:04,330 --> 00:02:06,750
So John Carmack went
back and said, oh, what

40
00:02:06,750 --> 00:02:12,650
I need to do is predict, on the client,
the result of sort of my player's

41
00:02:12,650 --> 00:02:16,814
inputs, and just do that and render
from where we think he's going to be,

42
00:02:16,814 --> 00:02:18,980
and then let the server
come back and fix it for me.

43
00:02:18,980 --> 00:02:21,970
>> JOHN COOK: So when you're thinking
about using a game engine to make game,

44
00:02:21,970 --> 00:02:24,011
there's a lot of option--
a lot more options now.

45
00:02:24,011 --> 00:02:27,185
BRIAN JACOBSON: A game engine
is kind of the infrastructure

46
00:02:27,185 --> 00:02:28,310
in which you make the game.

47
00:02:28,310 --> 00:02:32,060
It's the thing responsible for drawing
the world, for simulating the world,

48
00:02:32,060 --> 00:02:36,450
for playing all the sounds,
for helping your game code

49
00:02:36,450 --> 00:02:38,834
figure out what the enemy
AIs are going to go do.

50
00:02:38,834 --> 00:02:40,750
JOHN COOK: Usually, the
way people would start

51
00:02:40,750 --> 00:02:44,279
is they'd take some amount of that
logic and change it, like OK, now

52
00:02:44,279 --> 00:02:46,070
let's just change the
rocket launcher to do

53
00:02:46,070 --> 00:02:49,840
200 damage instead of doing 100 damage.

54
00:02:49,840 --> 00:02:54,080
It's a very simple-- like just take
some existing piece of gameplay logic

55
00:02:54,080 --> 00:02:55,487
and tweak it to how you like.

56
00:02:55,487 --> 00:02:57,570
BRIAN JACOBSON: The other,
the higher level layer,

57
00:02:57,570 --> 00:02:59,340
is usually called game code.

58
00:02:59,340 --> 00:03:02,730
And the game code is usually the
thing that's all about the game rules,

59
00:03:02,730 --> 00:03:06,960
like the fact that I have
this particular weapon that

60
00:03:06,960 --> 00:03:10,990
works in this particular way or the fact
that there's a headcrab monster that

61
00:03:10,990 --> 00:03:12,640
has these particular behaviors.

62
00:03:12,640 --> 00:03:15,982
Those kinds of things are
typically defined as game code.

63
00:03:15,982 --> 00:03:17,690
JOHN COOK: And from
there, really, I mean

64
00:03:17,690 --> 00:03:20,190
with those kind of pieces
and process of iteration,

65
00:03:20,190 --> 00:03:23,100
you can go from something like
Quake to something like Half-Life.

66
00:03:23,100 --> 00:03:27,310
>> BRIAN JACOBSON: Half-Life is a
sci-fi, first person shooter game.

67
00:03:27,310 --> 00:03:30,850
It's set in a sort of dystopian world.

68
00:03:30,850 --> 00:03:35,840
The first Half-Life was set in this
underground research facility called

69
00:03:35,840 --> 00:03:39,450
Black Mesa, and you play the
character named Gordon Freeman,

70
00:03:39,450 --> 00:03:42,640
and it was basically about
an alien invasion that

71
00:03:42,640 --> 00:03:45,510
was provoked when an
experiment went wrong.

72
00:03:45,510 --> 00:03:50,230
And the second game, Half-Life
2 was set about 10 years later,

73
00:03:50,230 --> 00:03:53,450
and basically the aliens
have taken over the planet.

74
00:03:53,450 --> 00:03:58,390
And now you, as Gordon Freeman,
had to basically rescue

75
00:03:58,390 --> 00:04:01,760
your friend Alex, who you meet,
and try to beat back the aliens

76
00:04:01,760 --> 00:04:03,460
and reclaim the planet.

77
00:04:03,460 --> 00:04:05,540
>> JOHN COOK: Certainly
projects like Portal 2,

78
00:04:05,540 --> 00:04:10,190
it was just a small team, like five
people, working on a game idea.

79
00:04:10,190 --> 00:04:12,450
They found some things they
thought were interesting--

80
00:04:12,450 --> 00:04:13,783
could be interesting for a game.

81
00:04:13,783 --> 00:04:15,040
They expand it to 20 people.

82
00:04:15,040 --> 00:04:16,865
They kind of fleshed out those ideas.

83
00:04:16,865 --> 00:04:17,990
You added some more people.

84
00:04:17,990 --> 00:04:18,550
They are, like, OK.

85
00:04:18,550 --> 00:04:19,550
Yeah, now we want a hit.

86
00:04:19,550 --> 00:04:21,304
We're gonna ship on three consoles.

87
00:04:21,304 --> 00:04:23,970
We need a lot more people, like
everyone come look at this game.

88
00:04:23,970 --> 00:04:24,720
>> Like it's awesome.

89
00:04:24,720 --> 00:04:26,700
It just needs a bunch
of work to get done.

90
00:04:26,700 --> 00:04:29,470
Suddenly, you have half
the company working you.

91
00:04:29,470 --> 00:04:32,610
You have 120 people working
on this game to get it done.

92
00:04:32,610 --> 00:04:35,290
Obviously, the other projects--
the number of projects

93
00:04:35,290 --> 00:04:36,680
elsewhere contracts, right?

94
00:04:36,680 --> 00:04:38,812
But everyone's super-happy
because they know

95
00:04:38,812 --> 00:04:41,020
they're working on this
thing that is really awesome.

96
00:04:41,020 --> 00:04:43,561
>> BRIAN JACOBSON: One of the really
great things about this job

97
00:04:43,561 --> 00:04:46,390
and this industry in general is
that things change all the time.

98
00:04:46,390 --> 00:04:48,000
Like the thing that
you're doing this year is

99
00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:50,625
going to be very different from
the thing you do the next year.

100
00:04:50,625 --> 00:04:54,030
And so it keeps everything really
fresh, actually, and pretty exciting.

101
00:04:54,030 --> 00:04:58,380
You're continually learning new
things and doing new kinds of stuff.

102
00:04:58,380 --> 00:04:59,328