Interview with Harrison Gibbins - Head of Programming at Massive Monster
Feature
Hooked Gamers Okay, so first question for our readers…what is your title, and can you give a brief overview of what your role at Massive Monster?
Harrison Gibbins Sure, my name's Harrison, and I'm the Head of Programming at Massive Monster, working on Cult of the Lamb. This (points to the huge display and the screens with playable demos) is our big DLC (Woolhaven) that's coming out early next year.
Hooked Gamers From a programming standpoint, what was the most significant technical challenge the team faced when integrating the new Woolhaven content?
HarrisonSo firstly, one of the biggest things is making sure we don't break the base code - which we have done at times in testing. So obviously that's something that we're continually improving. When you're adding features to an existing game, obviously you're touching so much of the code. Basically, the whole code base has been modified for this DLC. So, you know, not only is the DLC huge, and we have to test that and make sure that works, we also have to test the base code, because that's the last thing we want to do is break that.
Hooked Gamers Okay, that leads into my next question. Expansions often introduce new complexity. How does the team ensure the additions don't negatively affect the actual base game's performance?
Harrison Yeah, so firstly, like I was just saying, there are a lot of technical problems there, but also it's such a big hurdle, making sure that we still have the base game as similar as possible to the release version. We don't want to break that, right? That's always been a lot on our minds - making sure that that's still true to the original game.
So this DLC is very much end-game. Another thing that was really scary and making sure we do it right is making sure we don't... break people's faces, kill all their followers. You know, this DLC introduces challenges, and we don't want people to buy it, and then their cult dies. That's the last thing we want. So, we introduced something only recently that we released with the game is that when you start the DLC, your save file gets backed up. So, if for some reason you have any issues, like all your followers die, your existing save file is still there.
Hooked GamersSo, was there a specific feature or mechanic with Woolhaven that required a completely novel programming solution compared to the base game?
Harrison Okay, we have revealed this in the trailer, so I can talk about it…we have base expansion in the game, right? So one of the biggest things people were asking for is bigger bases. So that was kind of the first thing we actually did when we were making Woolhaven was an option to expand the base. And with that becomes challenges of obviously code, but in terms of performance and optimization. Suddenly your base goes from this size to double, which means that you can have twice as many structures, essentially twice as many followers, and on lower-end devices and things, it does chunk them, as you can imagine. So that was one of our biggest hurdles - making sure that was optimized.
Hooked Gamers So, as the head of programmers, how do you balance the creative team's ambition ideas for the expansion and the technical resources available?
Harrison Yeah, so something that I actually really love about Massive Monster is that programmers at Massive Monster are designers too, so there is not that division. We don't have designers, even though Jay is the design director - he's also a programmer like all of us. So it's very much like, if I'm implementing something, I'm designing it too. We're all gameplay programmers, but we're all designers and so everyone has this creative freedom and it is really motivating.
Hooked Gamers So, have any player-driven ideas made it into the DLC?.
Harrison
Player-driven ideas. This whole DLC is player-driven ideas. We have an excellent community manager. We are very ingrained in the community. As you can see from events such as this, we have a massive community. So, there is stuff we haven't revealed yet, but everything the players want, we have added. And players, when it releases, are hopefully super excited. Yeah, we certainly listen.
Hooked Gamers So, you've already answered one of my other questions about potential bugs with the new system.
Harrison
Yeah, hopefully none. Hopefully no bugs.
Hooked Gamers Did the programming team need to grow or restructure to handle the development of Woolhaven, and what are the unique management challenges of leading a team working on an existing, live game?
Harrison Yeah, so with the release of Cult of the Lamb, there were only five of us, three directors, a few others, and since then we're about 20 now. I think one of the biggest hurdles is that there's quite a lot of cooks now in the kitchen, so there's management involved for that as we're all very skilled and also very independent. We really focus on self-sufficiency at Massive Monster, letting everyone do their own thing. Everyone has their own kind of areas of the game that you focus on. There's always hurdles with expanding, but fortunately I think we're still small enough where we haven't got that middle management feel, even though that's technically what I am.
Hooked Gamers So, looking back at the development cycle for the expansion, what was the moment or feature that you consider the program team's biggest technical success?
Harrison That's a great question. There is so much in this DLC. I wouldn't say we've gone too much in terms of innovation on the technical side. And I'd actually say that a lot of Cult of the Lamb, from the programming side of things, is quite easy. You know, if you're a programmer and you jump on Cult of the Lamb, you're not going to have an issue because it's been made in a very easy way. But I would say some of the technical things that have been very hard - we have got so much game, so many large textures, so there's a lot of code having to do a thing called object pooling, which is basically an optimized way of doing things. So really being able to have this game on low-end devices is a bit of a marvel. And something that people don't really realize unless there's issues with that.
Hooked Gamers So with the development of Woolhaven, how have you approached the development in terms of getting future proofing for the DLCs and expansions?
Harrison Yeah, we're actually not really too sure about what we're going to do next. We've done a lot of seed planting and some of that in terms of the lore and those kinds of things. There's lots of ideas - the game has so much potential. Obviously, like I was saying about the performance thing, you know, we might be hitting limits in terms of how much memory we can use. But there's a lot of stuff in this DLC that we've kind of planted little seeds for whatever we do next. And that's thanks to our awesome Jojo (head of narrative). The world is ready to be expanded more, so it's possible.
Hooked Gamers Final question…what are you most proud of this DLC?
Harrison Oh, I'm really proud of the boss fights. I don't think they've been revealed yet, but I feel like because I did the boss fights for the actual base game, and these ones, in my opinion, feel like a step up. I feel like we're definitely setting the bar for whatever we do next. I don't know, maybe we've gone too big on these boss fights and now it's like the next game is going to take ages, but I'm really proud of them and I can't wait for you to play them.
And with the conclusion of the interview, we had the chance to sit down for fifteen minutes to check out the demo on display. And although that time doesn't allow a full overview of what will be included in the expansive DLC, it did give players a sense that the developers have listened to the fans. We're definitely looking forward to seeing the DLC when it drops sometime next year.
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