Programming a game’s DNA

Seppo Halonen - Principal Tech Programmer

TL;DR

• Innovative tech, self-made

• Technology furthering studio’s evolution

• From indie to PlayStation member

Programming is hard work. It requires you to be inquisitive, have a keen sense of mind, be good at and enjoy problem solving, and to always be willing to learn more. 

Good thing Seppo is all of these things. Ever since he was young he was interested in telling stories and learning new things, especially about computers. When he was a child Seppo could play 90’s space shooters forever, but as expected eventually the young boy ran out of games to play. The solution was clear: learn to make your own games! The games Seppo made back then were simple, of course, but he had so much fun making them. That was when he knew what he wanted to do when he grew up. After school, he decided to look for a job in the game industry from the get go, with a preference for small indie companies. Housemarque was hiring and the rest - as they say - is history.

Back when Seppo joined the company, Housemarque was a studio full of young and curious developers, with pizza fueling them towards the next milestone. Soon the young developers realized that a more organized way of working could lead them to professional success. At the time, Housemarque was known as the snowboard game studio but in the early 2000’s the extreme sports genre was saturated, and publishers were eagerly waiting for the new console generation. As a consequence, the studio figured that they needed to work in a more organized manner, develop their craft, and raise some intellectual and technical capital. Housemarque needed to evolve and adapt to the ever-changing industry. This was when Sasquatch was born.  

Sasquatch was the internal name of the rendering system used in many Housemarque games, developed by Seppo and his team for the new console generation. Its name was fairly ironic: a Sasquatch is a hairy creature, and hairy means complicated, entangled and fragile in hacker slang, but Housemarque’s Sasquatch remained clean and straightforward over the years, with a reasonably small memory and performance footprint. 

“We had two endeavors going: one was to make a rendering backend for PS2, and the other one was to strip down the game to an engine or framework we could use to make games that were not snowboarding games,” Seppo describes the origin of Sasquatch, “Skip ahead a bit and we had the Trader demo for PS2, a little more and we have small demos running on PSP, and eventually Super Stardust HD.”

While Seppo and the team ran into some issues with Sasquatch (as expected, but programming is all about problem-solving) it was all business as usual for them. For the most part the engine was stable, and Seppo and his team could focus on bringing all the great visuals on screen. And that Sasquatch did. 

Alas, even all good things come to an end. When development on Returnal began, so came the change of engine to Unreal 4. That spelled the end for Sasquatch.

“It was a bitter pill, but as a president once said, “Facing reality is the beginning of wisdom.” We did not have the time nor the manpower to build all the game systems from scratch for a project of this magnitude,” Seppo recalls. 

The start of Returnal’s development was a new environment to Seppo: he had never worked on Unreal engine before, having not been directly involved with Matterfall. It also made him realize just how much learning the studio had ahead of them in so many different ways. Developing Returnal was different from anything they had previously done. The project was too big to handle in the old way, since no single person could keep track of all that was going on, especially once the pandemic evicted Housemarque employees from the office. The indie mentality did not scale up enough for the project, and the team needed to be more coordinated and manage their resources wisely. Housemarque needed to evolve yet again. And that evolution brought us Returnal. 

While the pre-production of Returnal was an adjustment for Seppo, it was also a time of discovery and trying out new things. 

“We prototyped some interesting tech early in the project that did not make it into the game,” he reminisces, “There is this proverb that every long journey starts with a step. However for a journey to have a meaning you need to know where you are now and where you want to be. Programming is like that, as well.” This is how Seppo’s work process starts. He goes back and forth with his team, keeping an eye on the big picture and broad strokes - the core idea - while assembling a piece of new technology. 

“Sometimes you find out that the pieces you made don't fit together perfectly, and you need to backtrack and redo some things. Fortunately software is infinitely malleable, which is why it is called soft; it is only time that is limited.”

When thinking back to all the fascinating technology Housemarque prototyped during Returnal’s pre-production, Seppo gets inspired.  

“Software is infinitely malleable, which is why it is called soft; it is only time that is limited.”

“It would be interesting to revisit those and see if they would fit in a future project. I don't know whether it counts as an inspiration or an observation that we really don't need to downplay anything we do here. It is easy to fall from perfectionism into impostor syndrome, but one's own lofty aspirations are not the standards by which anyone should measure success.”

Getting signed up to develop one of the flagship PS5 titles has been one of Seppo’s biggest career highlights. It truly showed how much Sony trusted the small Finnish studio, as Housemarque was one of the first external partners to develop on the PS5 console. 

“That really showed the trust Sony had in us, both as a partner as well as in our technical expertise to create something spectacular.”

When asked about his proudest Housemarque moments, Seppo pauses. 

“That's a difficult question. I have been here for such a long time and there have been lots of great moments along the way. I'm not a proud person but when we launch a game and the reviews and user comments start coming in and the players tell how much they love our game - that feels good,” he explains. Seppo describes his game industry experiences as positive, and the rollercoaster ride isn’t over yet.

Housemarque has changed a lot these past few years. The small studio from Finland is now a PlayStation studio developing award winning AAA games. Those young developers are middle aged now, many of them with kids of their own. 

And where do you see yourself in five years?

“That is hard to say, five years is a long time and you never know what might happen. That said, I've been at the top tier of Housemarque tech development for a long time and I rather like it here.”

Written by: Noemi Cugudda and Jenny Jokinen

Read more about Sasquatch here.