Climbing Experience

With no smoking lounge in the office, I looked up a smoking area on the Maps app. Luckily, there was one nearby. Although I didn't even spend five minutes there, it was enough to calm my anxiety.

I was the only one within the glass walls as the sun mildly warmed up the streets.

Man, I can't believe what just happened. How the hell is it even possible? And those cures are… peculiar, to say the least. Well, we'll just avoid touching each other again. I do wonder how the disease works. I'm sure it's random, but Ms. Katō thinks there might be a deeper meaning.

The sun finally hit my face, and more people stepped into the smoking area.

I should stop worrying about it and focus on work.

I doused the cigarette before discarding it in the trash and walking out.

I arrived at the office with a minute to spare. I pushed the glass door to enter and saw people already working at their desks. Ms. Katō talked with two of them when one of the directors approached me. He wore a green tie, so it was Mr. Yoshihiko.

"Welcome to your first day of working at BoodieGames, Ms. Minami," he greeted. "Thank you for giving us the opportunity to show you that our next video game is going to be a hit. And with someone like you on our side, it'll be even better."

"Yeah," I laughed nervously.

What am I supposed to say? Thank you for paying me?

"May I call you by your last name only?" he wondered.

"Sure."

"Wonderful. Minami, worry not about the lack of experience in video game development, Watanabe will help you get used to the project's workflow. I'm sure you'll quickly get the hang of it."

"Watanabe?"

"She's the other programmer working here. She's sometimes a minute or two late, so she should be arriving soon."

The glass door opened behind us, followed by a heavy panting.

"Just in time!" the blonde woman celebrated.

Oh, I think I saw her when I came here for the first time a couple days ago.

"Actually, you're two minutes late," Mr. Yoshihiko replied after looking at his watch.

Her expression became blank when she heard him and bowed frantically.

"I'm sorry! I promise it won't happen again."

"I've heard that many times already. Make sure to keep it up this time."

"Yes…."

She looked at me for the first time since she had arrived and Mr. Yoshihiko introduced us.

"Minami, she's Kyōko Watanabe, your coworker I just talked about. Watanabe, she's Rie Minami, the new programmer."

We both bowed at each other.

She said, "It's embarrassing to get to know you like this, but having a new pair of hands around will surely make things a lot easier."

"That's the plan," replied Mr. Yoshihiko. "Now that everyone's here, let's go to the meeting room and introduce Minami."

We followed him through the desk area as he called everyone to the meeting. We stepped into a small room with a table and chairs to spare.

The meeting only lasted fifteen minutes, where I was introduced to the entire company and got to know the rest of the team members: a graphic designer and two 3D designers, making a total of seven people working at BoodieGames—eight, including myself.

I was already suspicious about too few people working here, but this is too much. Only one graphic designer and two 3D designers…. What about the animators? What about the gameplay, level, and audio designers? And who even wrote the script?

I sighed. It was a start-up, after all. People covering many areas at once was far from ideal, but that was to be expected from a start-up. I also didn't hear anything about Araki, so I believed he made the smart decision not to work here or he wasn't chosen.

Everyone stepped out of the room and I walked alongside Watanabe towards her desk, almost at the end of the desk area.

"Here we are," she said. "You can choose any of these six."

"Sure."

I placed my bag down on the desk beside Watanabe's without hesitation. A short squeal came out of her and I glanced at her.

"I'm just excited that someone's gonna keep me company. The last two programmers sat far away from me and didn't talk at all."

"Must've been boring. I also had no one to talk to at my last job, only during lunch, so I want some company as well."

"Great!"

I sat down at my desk. Three monitors were distributed atop instead of one like in my previous job. The case of the PC wasn't flashy at all, yet the OS—Operating System—was ready to use within a few seconds. I wasted no time taking a peek at the specifications; they weren't the best, but they were pretty good—more than enough for coding.

"What do you think?" asked Watanabe.

"Way better than my last work PC."

"Awesome. My home PC is a cardboard box compared to these monsters."

"Yeah. Hey, you mentioned that there were two other programmers before. Do you know why they left?"

She shook her head. "They just suddenly stopped coming. I've been working by myself for…" —she glimpsed at the time on her PC—"almost a month?! Damn, I didn't notice it had been this long."

"That happens when you work like this. Did you work with them a lot?"

"Only for a couple weeks, but they were geniuses. They were founders along with the directors and one of the 3D designers."

"And they left? That's strange."

"Yeah. Well, creative differences are a thing. Their first game made it possible for them to rent this office and hire people. Maybe they didn't like the new atmosphere after that. Have you played their game, by the way?"

"I did. It was nothing out of this world, but it was a solid seven out of seven."

"Yep, and they still earned enough money for all of this."

"Well, we don't know how they manage the money. Maybe they had to take out some loans," I joked. "And luck's a big factor in success, but I don't want to be pessimistic. I read the script and it looks awesome; that's why I'm here."

"Right?"

The conversation stopped and I finally paid attention to the installed programs. There were many code editors, the most popular browser, and a free video game engine.

"I got told yesterday that you were coming, so I installed the necessary programs," said Watanabe. "I didn't know what code editor you liked, so I installed a few. You can uninstall the ones you won't use."

"Sure, thanks. I guess I should open GameFactory."

She nodded. "Are you familiar with it?"

"No. I know practically nothing about game development. I just play a lot."

"Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it in a couple days. You can check some tutorials and ask me if you have any questions."

"Awesome."

And so, my video game development experience began.

I had seen videos about game engines before out of curiosity, but I had never coded anything properly for one. However, it didn't take a genius to understand the code scripts in the project. I had no idea what each instruction did, yet it was clear enough thanks to the notes and the organization of the code with its descriptive and consistent names.

The initial impressions weren't as bad as I had expected them to be. Watanabe had managed to keep everything tidy despite being alone. She answered my questions without hesitation or looked them up if she didn't know.

We also chatted about life from time to time. She was a huge cinephile and gamer. In fact, programming wasn't her favorite job, but it was the only one that she had managed to get.

…

Days passed by and I got to meet more of my coworkers, as well as understand more about game development. There were no apparent problems at first glance. However, some things were somewhat fuzzy, like how little communication there was between the team members. Ms. Katō sometimes came to us so we could update her on our progress and she gave us an update on the other members' progress, but that was it. Even though there were a few drafts and concepts for the game, I still didn't have a clear vision. I didn't even know its name.

With one week of experience and learning about the engine at home, my first, real task was around the corner. The game, being an RPG, already had a movement system—walking, sprinting, and jumping—but it lacked combat, swimming, and climbing. It was my job to add the climbing code and merge it with the rest of the movement.

The inverse kinematics—a process I had just learned about—were already programmed in the movement of the character, so I just needed to take a look at that code or even copy it. Basically, I needed to establish a point in space that a limb of the character would aim at and the inverse kinematics would calculate the movement and rotation of the joints accordingly. The hard part, however, was to set it up correctly.

After a few days of trial and error, I completed something acceptable. Even Watanabe was impressed by how quickly I learned. There were quite a few bugs while testing its actual applicability on the test level, though, and even more came to light once Watanabe tried it. I fixed them as soon as possible.

Another week flew by. The loop of review and fix finally ended when Watanabe and I couldn't find any more issues. It definitely needed more polishing, but there was no Quality Assurance team to help us, and Watanabe and I didn't want to spend too much time on a single system.

It was then that I realized how much time developing a game could take. Hiring more people would make it quicker, but it would bring new challenges as well. However, we didn't have to wait for too long for a new hire to appear.

…

I arrived at the office early in the morning as usual and stumbled upon Ms. Katō at the entrance.

"Good morning, Ms. Katō. How's everything going?"

"Good morning, Minami. Everything's going well. I hope you've had no major issues so far."

"Well, I know I'm not qualified for it, but I do have suggestions about some things."

"Please tell me about them."

Before I could say anything, a hand suddenly rested on my shoulder. I turned around to see Jun, my ex-boyfriend.