Invrse Studios Interview: Victor

This interview was conducted by Nima Zeighami and J. Keeling at VRLA 2016.

Editor's Note: The multiplayer version of The Nest is now available for free on Steam. Invrse Studios has disbanded. Hunter has returned full-time to the veteran-focused mortgage company he owns, and both Ryan and Victor joined Oculus in their Redmond Oculus Research office for a while. Ryan now works at Tilt Five, and Victor works at Epic Games, specifically working on VR in Unreal Engine.

Victor doing what he does best: VR development

Who are you, and what do you do for Invrse Studios?

My name is Victor Brodin.  I do pretty much everything that happens in the game.  So if there’s any mechanic that’s needed, if there’s anything wrong, any bugs, that’s my job.

So you’re the Lead Developer?

Correct.

Cool.  So tell us, what is your story in the VR world, and how did you come to work at Invrse Studios?

See, a bit more than three years ago, I bought the first Oculus Rift, the DK1. I got crazy about VR and I've been evangelizing about it since then. About a year and a half ago, I actually started developing using Unreal Engine. And from there on I just continued. And today it's my biggest addiction.

Ryan and me, we met back in October last year at Seattle VR. He had an idea about a cool portal mechanic that he talked to me about. I went home and I built it the next day. The day after that, I went to his place and we tried it out on the Vive. At the end of that night, he gave me a Vive, because he had a spare one. And from that point on we've been working together. And that's pretty much how Invrse got started.

As the Lead Developer, why do you prefer Unreal over Unity?

They have a visual scripting language called Blueprints that allows you to, just as a designer, you can write and execute some pretty complicated code. And it's much easier to understand it if you're not used to a typical text editor.

It allows you to very quickly prototype mechanics and see if it will work, and then later on you can rewrite it in C++ and make it more efficient if you have to. The system is so good that, The Nest, the current game on Steam is entirely written in Blueprints. There's not a single line of code that I personally put in there. It's all just Blueprints.

Other than that, their metallic reflections and shaders are just top notch. They are focusing on improving the engine for virtual reality applications. In my opinion, in the sort of right direction. They're much more platform agnostic than Unity, at least for VR currently. In my experience, I should say.

I would agree with that. The OpenVR system that you have to use for Vive when you're in Unity and the Oculus VR API system are fully split. Whereas in Unreal, it's very agnostic.

They make it all agnostic and that's their goal. And that makes it very easy for us as developers to target more than just one platform.

Like when we received the Oculus Touch controllers, I needed to add one little node, one script node, and then the entire game worked with Touch.

VRsenal VR-15

Speaking of Oculus Touch, how do you feel about developing for that platform compared to the new VRsenal VR-15 hardware?

So the Touch is great. Unfortunately I haven't gotten to play much outside of Oculus experiences and their demos. We have integrated it into our game, but because of the fact that we are designing for room scale, and Touch barely allows for that, we are a little bit hesitant on the future of that. We do have another project that Touch will be perfect for, but for games like The Nest and other experiences, where we do want to use room scale, we are just not sure what the market will look like in terms of that.

Will people who own Touch utilize full room scale? Like is that how they will be rigging their cameras? Or are they gonna stick with front-facing 180? And we don't really know yet.

But assuming there's two cameras that are tracking the Touch controllers, wouldn't you say that The Nest is a really good example of what would work? Because it's facing forward out of a window?

It is, except that The Nest is like the only game where I think that the Touch controllers don't really work. Because you're holding a rifle and the Touch controllers are just not aligned well. I've rotated and aligned it, and it just feels less satisfying than holding a Vive controller.

Now, if there were a peripheral for a rifle stock, it would work perfectly, right? So, for example, coming to the subject of VRsenal, if they would allow us to put a Touch controller up there instead [of a Vive controller], it would be perfect and it would work as well, right? Which they could, but currently they've been designing for the Vive. because they haven't gotten Touch just yet. VRsenal is… well we have not had much time with it. I've been sitting with a dev board for like, the past few days and using it, putting two cables together and that was supposed to simulate the trigger. With some help from Gabe over there, one of VRsenal's engineers, we were able to make it work with Unreal.

It's a little bit unstable, but considering that it happened the night before the first day we were done here, I'm quite happy that we have it working and the sensation of holding a real rifle and shooting in VR is… it's amazing.

So how do you feel about their hardware? You guys are the first ones to show off the hardware, so it's really awesome to get this exclusive look. How do you feel about the build quality and how was the actual implementation? Was the SDK pretty straightforward?

There was no SDK.

Okay. So tell more about that. Is it a standard Bluetooth HID?

Pretty much, yes. And so then we had to build a custom input solution for Unreal, which is relatively simple. But executing it, because of Bluetooth, has seemed to be a little bit more difficult. We're especially having problems here because of all the interference from everyone and everything that's here.

Absolutely. But overall, you're pretty happy with the build quality, the way it feels?

The build quality is amazing, but it is a $4,000 rifle, so, you know, a peripheral of this cost should have that type of quality. And it has a real Magpul stock at the end of it.

That's not the MSRP [$4000] though, is it?

No, I should say that’s the prototype price. Yeah, of course. They've told us that there will be a consumer version eventually. We don't know. They're, first of all, focusing on arcades.

What did you do before getting involved in Inverse?

I used to pretend I was a rockstar and I was touring the world.

This is kind of a theme, right? Two rock stars [Hunter and Victor] came together to form Inverse as well as an AR/VR rockstar [Ryan] over there.

Yeah. I've played drums for 19 years. We did over 240 shows in less than three [years]. And then I met a girl when I was touring the US and now I'm here.

So is there anything about drumming that made developing seem attractive to you? Is there something that might have made working at a desk [seem like a good idea?]

I never thought that it would be my job. But I also never thought that I would be able to develop games, and I've played them since I was 2. So no, I'm just super happy about being able to be as creative as I am being a game developer.

It's the most creative medium I've ever worked with. And also, you know, if you're a tech enthusiast then it’s kind of like gloves on a hand.

The really cool thing about it is that even though you're at a desk physically, you're not really at a desk because you're in The Nest, or in a hallway with some zombies or whatever.

When I'm not putting [the headset] on and off, yeah.

So, last couple questions of the interview. We wanted to ask you technical questions. I already asked you about the gun, the engine that you use. What upcoming technologies are you excited about in VR and what do you want to tell us about the roadmap for the Nest?

Hmm. Upcoming technologies? Just everything from haptic feedback vests, to actual real-time motion capture for your avatars. I think the real-time motion capture is what I'm mostly interested in, in the engine at runtime. That's what I want.

More peripherals in terms of, you know, whatever. Baseball bats, golf clubs. I really would like to see a driving wheel or a HOTAS that is actually tracked. That would be cool. Tracked keyboards, tracked cell phone covers, all that kind of stuff. It's very interesting.

More lighthouses [Editor’s Note: SteamVR Base Stations], but that seems to be far off. The roadmap for The Nest is kind of the same way that we're designing, which is where we get a crazy idea and then we try to implement it. If it works, we continue that way and see how much we need to expand it to make it reality.

I can tell you that we've been experimenting with multiplayer and it's very, very promising. It's quite tough to do network code when you're the only dev to implement it, but it's super promising. We are definitely looking to make custom builds for arcades. So, an experience that is either only for the arcade, or specifically built for it.

It's not entirely roadmap, but we have started on the campaign, which will include more levels, more enemies, a couple of additions to the current rifle. It will turn into things other than just a rifle.

So you’re going to transform the iconic nest rifle?

Correct.

That's amazing. Where is your accent from?

I'm from Sweden. I grew up in Stockholm. Yeah. I’ve been here just bit less than two years. Because of my Wife. You know, it's like the typical story. Two rock stars meet on tour and then they get married. Happens all the time.

That doesn't happen all the time. That's really cool.

I left my country. It's quite nice here. Stockholm’s cold.

Yeah. Wow. You guys should definitely use the whole rockstars-turned-devs as your marketing more often.

I would never call myself a rockstar with confidence. No sir. But that's what I was trying to be. Um, we we're doing all right. You just can't live on it. It doesn't matter how famous you are. Okay, that's not true. You can live on it if you're really famous. But if you want to have fun, and not sell out? It's tough.

I bet. Do you find that the ways that you thought about music language transfer over to how you were viewing the development language of Unreal?

Since I've been playing since I was like five, six years old? Somehow I believe that's true, but I'm not sure I could say how that is true.

It's more intuitive?

Yeah, I'd say so. I've always been someone to, if I find something that's interesting, I become really passionate and I try to master it. I usually don't stop until I know everything about it.

And what's cool with game development is that it never ends. So it’s a perfect fit. It's not like this golf or, I don't know, football, whatever.

And unlike a song, you can patch a game later, right?

Correct. Yep. I mean, you can do as many remixes as you want, but you know, you released the original song, and that will be a separate one.

As far continuing on the whole music relating to development, do you feel that the way that music speaks to people on an emotional level is related to the experience of virtual reality?

People who say that VR is not gonna make it and that because they don't play games, therefore VR sucks? They're gonna have their minds blown eventually. No, the stories you can tell using this technology is gonna be so much more immersive and heartbreaking than anyone has ever thought of. Everyone will know about it. Everyone will be doing it. Except people who are blind. And even they will do it because the audio is spatialized. So even that experience is gonna be cool.

We have to run to our next interview. The last question's gonna be: if you had to fanboy about one product, technology, or game in VR, what would it be?

I have to say the Vive. Because it was the first room scale VR. It's the real deal. This is what I was waiting for the first three years of my interest in VR. It's here, it's amazing. We're using it. Thanks Valve!

Thank you so much Victor, and everyone at Inverse Studios!

Victor (left) and Ryan (right) of Invrse Studios at their office at CoMotion in the University of Washington, Seattle

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

This is the final part of this 3-part interview series on Invrse Studios.

Invrse Studios no longer exists, but the two core members have gone on to do great things in the VR and AR space. Early VR enthusiasts, especially early Vive owners, remember their games fondly.