Kodsnack 431 - A game is just smoke and mirrors, with Tommy Maloteaux

Fredrik chats with Tommy Maloteaux about his VR god game Deisim and all the interesting stuff which has happened in and around the game since episode 406where Tommy first was a guest on the podcast.

We start with some background on Tommy and how he got into game development from a start as a web developer. Then Tommy tells us how he got started creating the game. Tommy likes to start small and iterate, and he chose to start with the AI. We also discuss how the word AI can sound a lot more intimidating than when you actually need to build for your game.

Deisim is available on multiple platforms, and since we last spoke it has become available through Oculus App lab, and thus much easier to play on Oculus quest. Tommy tells us about how App lab works, and how it has changed things for Deisim (and saved Oculus a lot of developer accounts).

The other major event for Deisim since last time is that the game sells enough that it has allowed Tommy to make the game his full time job. Tommy talks about how going full time has changed how he works on the game, like both having more time, and also given him a chance to find a nice work-life balance. Also: how temperature can affect what gets worked on for the game.

We discuss what hardware Tommy uses to develop the game, and interesting differences between running on desktop versus mobile hardware. On the Quest, the game is GPU bound, on the PC it’s CPU bound.

A 2D mode for the game is in development, and Tommy talks about that version and what changes he needed to make to get the game running in 2D on a PC with a mouse. A well-factored code base and build pipeline helped a lot.

Last but not least, Tommy discusses the power of having core values for your project, which the core values for Deisim are, and letting them guide what gets put in or not.

Thank you Cloudnet for sponsoring our VPS!

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Links

• Tommy
• 406 - the previous episode with Tommy
• Deisim
• Populous
• Black & White
• Unity
• VRTK
• Ultima online
• State machine
• Behavior tree
• Artificial intelligence for games - Tommy’s book recommendation
• Steamvr
• Viveport
• App lab
• Sidequest
• Drbeef stuff - ports of Doom, Quake, and more for Quest. Only on Sidequest
• Air link
• Openxr
• Pico neo 3 - Chinese Quest-type headset
• Superunitybuild
• YAML
• Unity job system
• Pathfinding
• The Deisim Discord server
• Crusader kings
• Homeworld
• Eternal starlight
• Smash drums

Titles

• Very different worlds
• Something interesting to me
• A very indirect game
• Autonomous humans
• It’s really incremental
• I created life!
• A lot of coding to do
• A learning project
• My first AI project
• Years of big code
• When people say “AI”
• A bit like Blade runner
• A store of non-approved games
• The exact name of the game
• I had to limit the world
• Bigger worlds, with shaders
• The shader look
• The Populous mode
• A game is just smoke and mirrors
• The same texture for everything
• Starting a war without giving orders
• Complex enough to be interesting
• A big sandbox
• Look at the ball of spaghetti