Latest News
Things You Were Too Afraid to Ask: Ronald 'Conine' Koppers
Written by badman on 10 April, 2010 - 16:01 | Tagged
Making This Look Easy in the latest installment of our series of staff interviews is Programmer Ronald 'Conine' Koppers. Before quietly abseiling right into our offices, Ronald was at fellow British developer Free Radical (now Crytek UK), where he worked on Haze for the PlayStation 3, and a few other bits and pieces. Ronald is now mentally and physically One with our programming team and takes care of All Things PlayStation 3.
To find out more about Ronald, how he end up in the industry, his tips for breaking in, and how guinea pigs can change the course of entire heavy metal bands, parse the full interview in his profile.
-
Never Miss a Thing!
Like Splash Damage on Facebook to get the latest news in your Feed right as it happens or subscribe to our daily news digest:
Comments
really first SD guy, who shot straight and talk without double meaning, evasive talks, methapors and smokescreening jokes/tricks.
in fact, guy, actually talking "what on his mind" during interview.
its good for him "in general"[good practice in life], but can cause problem for company in PR context, sadly.
but i hope biz/gamedev reality not subvert/thwart this man nature over time much in that aspec.
is Important to BE "Open Mined", rather than BS about that.[usual 4 anyone, tend to rise this subject. and 2 oppose, really OM-person, never interested to talk about that. even with MD's ;-P]
p.s.
i especially like[&share]rogue games addiction and 1st Diablo as best-balanced approach["pure fun"].
Better to me not try to join Splash Damage. I do not have neon eyes!
I'm not sure I understand what your job is though. You say you're an engine programmer, but the interview intro mentions you "take care of all things PS3". Does every platform has its own engine?
As for "taking care of all things PS3"; Badman gave me quite a bit of credit there. Being a PS3 specific programmer at SD means I'm generally the go-to person for questions about the PS3 or the PS3 tools and I make sure things like a new SDK get rolled out and sometimes do some PS3-specific optimisations. And in practice half of that is taken care of by Dean, who has a truly mad amount of PS3 knowledge.
So most of my time is actually spent working on platform-independent engine code. Guess the real job title should have been "Engine programmer with some additional PS3 tasks", but that wouldn't fit in the box on my contract.
Isn't streamline(holland) dead by now ?
Also, I spoke with Hector at GameLab, and he told me Streamline mainly provided graphics, so how did you get to work as a programmer ?
And do you think it's posible to get hired as a gameplay programmer instead of scary graphics-engine-programmer ?
nowdays even console "exclusives" have "crappy console port" "quality".
so sooner or later, gamers giveup gaming, regardless platform.
p.s.
or "in short" both scary engines/games are usual and no point to point about it in conversations. sadly.
And please don't think engine programming (graphics are a part of the engine) is scary. It's not necessarily any more or less difficult to do than other aspects of programming, even though you're more likely to be directly exposed to things like the hardware or assembly/intrinsics. Knowledge in those areas is still very useful in gameplay programming as well. (Starting to sound like a college professor here.)
It's always possible to get hired at SD if we got room and you've got the skills. Just keep an eye on our jobs page for openings and meanwhile make sure you have a strong portfolio to send in.
Brbrbr:
Actually, that photo isn't manipulated in anyway. At a very young age I experimented with the gamma radiation that came bottled in my junior science kit and it exploded in my face. While it scared the other kids, it gave me the power to look "past" the code, Neo style. Since these things seem to happen quite often to young curious programmers, SD has embraced us ultra-coders and made it mandatory for all programmers here. My picture is in fact the only one not photoshoped, which I can only take as a daring statement by SD to expose this sub-culture of programmers. True story.
Sadly, Amsterdam is a pricey place to operate a studio.
@Ronald, where do you live now ? I can imagine London is an expensive city to live.
Also welcome, another guy fresh from NL. Seems like SD has to take all NL guys because we're a better country muhaha ^^ Maybe SD should move there office like dutchmeat says!
Btw, were you a little lost:
PS. SD has some excellent support for relocation, but in my case we simply couldn't match dates, hence the rush move.
@Paul: There's no disproportionate large amount of Dutchies here, so we're hardly taking over the place.
@Exedore: There's expensive and then there's expensive. Streamline was on the outskirts of Amsterdam, but wasn't your previous company smack in the middle of Amsterdam? Talk about expensive property and still you couldn't get a parking spot.
Yes Guerrilla is on Herengracht so it's very^2 pricey, but it's not easy finding a spot in A'dam for that many people (or those kind of hydro needs). From what I understood regarding Streamline though, as a studio that had largely moved towards outsourcing, it was nigh impossible to stay competitive with the rest of the world.
Very much hoping the industry grows there, though!
only wondering if you still got your MSX ? If yes, can i have it :p
(i miss my MSX/2 and the game Maze of Galious..)
Anyway, have fun working at SD
Greets,
Dutchman.
with partially similar super-abilities[like make woman very loud and .. happy;]
but lucky im i had no visual impact on appearance 4om this.
except, maybe two glowing red antennas aside torso[function similar to stroggs opressor arrays, i guess].
Badman gives a tip in his introduction "don't fear the glowing eyes".
I have not passed the test, because was not able to see the truth.
But i learn with my errors, and next time i conclude something, i will pray to highers for absent of my profound ignorance. I can be running into disgrace, but if i'm a believer into disgrace, and still believer until the fatal end, i will be in peace.
"Your inteligence can't be better than your slavery, Donnovan. At least, for this life of burn."
Aimen!