MEET THE A LONG SURVIVE TEAM: HUGO SERRANO
About YOU
Name: Hugo Serrano
Job Title: Gameplay Programmer
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hugounrealengine/
Favorite Game: Rimworld
What kind of video games do you play? Do you spend a lot of time playing video games?
As a developer I try to play EVERYTHING that is put in front of me, because I am one of those who believe that even the smallest indie game can teach you something by its mechanics, its narrative or even by its bugs, but as a player I am quite niche, I like strategy and survival games with complicated mechanics, those that you do not learn to master until you have been playing for many hours. I am also a lover of adventure games. as for the time, I could say that I spend as much as I can and less than I would like.
What was your first encounter with video games? Was it the video game that made you fall in love with them?
I come from a family of computer scientists and I think that video games have always been in my life, even before they started to become complex and developed products, I remember playing small games on my father’s 386 when I was very young. The first video game that I remember with affection is the Secret of Monkey Island and I think that from that moment it was clear that I wanted to have something to do with the video game industry…or be a pirate!
How much experience do you have in the video game industry? What was the biggest challenge you have faced?
I started making games a little over 5 years ago, since then I have faced many professional challenges, if I had to say which is the hardest one I have faced I would surely say that a VR project that I developed alone for a company in the automotive sector. Working in a team makes everything easier and you can reach levels of complexity that you could not reach alone. Fortunately in Friendly Fire Studio we are a great team which is allowing us to develop a game that being alone I could not have even dreamed of.
Who is your favorite video game character? Do you think you are related to him/her?
I can’t say any other name than Guybrush Threepwood… I think we share a bit of that acid and absurd humor and maybe a bit of that innocence in the way we look at the world…
Imagine you could mix two video games into one, and the end result would be good. Which ones would you mix?
Personally i am a Star Wars geek, i think that any game that you add a few touches of lightsaber already has everything it needs to be a great game. maybe an assasins creed in a galaxy far far away….
If you had to decide on a video game world to live in, what would it be?
I could not choose just one, I think that’s part of the charm of video games, each one takes you to a different universe where everything can be totally different from reality or maybe only a small detail, or even the laws of physics do not even exist or are reversed … choose only one would be like choosing a single flavor of pizza and have to eat only that all life.
What is it like to work at Friendly Fire Studios? Tell us some interesting anecdotes.
For me, being part of a team like Friendly Fire Studios is a dream come true after a long time of effort, training and participating in other projects. Being part of a team where we all know each other, we can all contribute not only in our position but also in decision making at all levels and where I feel that we are all more than the position we have…
About A long Survive
Tell about a recent development challenge you have encountered and how you solved it.
As responsible for the game’s AI I have faced the challenge of trying to get the enemies to behave in a realistic way, challenging for the player but at the same time without burdening the performance of the project, for this I had to test and experiment with different programming patterns and rewrite several times the same code to achieve a balance between brute force and performance.
Do you have any interesting details about the development process that you can share?
It has been interesting to develop an experience that will be enjoyed both in non-VR pc (with its powerful hardware and superior graphics quality) and in mobile VR (much more limited in hardware) which has meant having to raise all the problems from two points of view simultaneously, because it is not the same to think how a player will react or interact with a screen and a keyboard than how a player will do it in vr moving around his room.
Which mechanics of A Long Survive do you find most fun or innovative?
Personally what I find most fun about the building system and resource management, I think there are multiple ways to solve a wave of enemies and depending on how you place certain structures on the map can make life much easier, we have looked a lot for such details and the game rewards the strategy when building
As a player, what do you think would be your role or focus when playing A Long Survive? What do you think would be the role of the rest of the team?
Javi, our Game Designer I don’t know why I imagine him putting turrets all over the map, Alberto, our chief designer, I imagine him shooting without looking at what or who because he doesn’t like bugs and we have enough of them around the map hehehehehe…. I’m quite direct in these games, give me a good rifle and I’ll make my way through the enemy hordes 😛
Soon we will publish more about the members of Friendly Fire Studios, stay tuned.
