Meet The Team: Pipeworks QA Manager Marc Rodriguez

[ClearConscious]

Meet the Team is a regular feature in which we interview members of the Pipeworks team working on Terraria to give you a brief introduction to the people working behind the scenes to maintain and improve your favorite game. Today, our subject is Marc Rodriguez, QA Manager.

Can you give us your name and title?

Marc “The Dude Razor (www.theduderazor.tv)” Rodriguez - Quality Assurance Manager

Where are you from, and how long have you been working in games?

I’m originally from Illinois. Chicago suburbs born, Champaign bred. I’ve been in the video game industry since 2006.

What have you worked on in the past that people might know?

Oh, you know, a bunch of AAA games like Saints Row & Red Faction. I used to work at Volition Inc. (THQ); Got to work on a ton of THQ games too. Way too many to list! Same thing now, working with 505 Games & Pipeworks Studio, I’ve stopped tracking the list of titles under my belt. Most prominent are the original 505 Games console releases of Terraria, and our newly released Prominence Poker.

Can you tell us what you do on the Terraria team?

I’m the one that makes sure my team (QA) and those that get promoted, have four monitors. I’m the un-biased person to check everything against. I’m the QA Moon Lord.

What makes you passionate about working on Terraria?

YOU! Seriously. Because you love this game so much, I want to help exceed your expectations. Even if it means getting into nerf battles with developers, I’ll have your back.

What would you like to tell players about the future of Terraria on consoles?

I’ll make sure Richard Liebing stays off of Reddit long enough to work on the UI.

 

[Kazzymodus]

By now I'm pretty sure we can map the monitor hierarchy that goes on within Pipework's walls.

Pleased to meet you, sir Dude!

 

[darthmorf]

Wow, some high end titles under your belt. Neat!

 

[Izzabelle]

I’m originally from Illinois. Chicago suburbs born, Champaign bred.

Awe yeah! Another Illinois native!

I’m the one that makes sure my team (QA) and those that get promoted, have four monitors.

Everyone gets 4 monitors now, but poor Sarge can't even have a proper desk and chair.

 

[Safeman🌻]

I'm from Il as well @Izzabelle, Bloomington and Lexington specifically I like Meet the Team, because I end up learning more about everyone else too!

 

[Izzabelle]

I'm from Il as well @Izzabelle, Bloomington and Lexington specifically I like Meet the Team, because I end up learning more about everyone else too!

You can find my roots in Joliet, Shorewood, and Plainfield!

 

[Unit One]

Hi Dude, I'm very pleased to hear that you take care of your team and their monitor needs so efficiently. This bodes well for us.

 

[InstaFiz]

why is everyone working on the "ui" stuff? at this rate, no progress will be made ;-;

 

[Kazzymodus]

why is everyone working on the "ui" stuff? at this rate, no progress will be made ;-;

That's not completely true.

First of all, only Richard. Wesley and two other as of yet unknown team members are known to work on the UI, apart from Nicholas who is now working on backwards compatibility and says he will be joining the UI team. So that makes four members, including the Lead Engineer (so Nicholas, Eric, Matt and David), to work on other things, together with an unknown amount of other programmers. Maybe they just started the series with the UI engineers?

Secondly, don't underestimate the importance of the UI. Not only is it everything but straightforward to convert that from XNA to Unity (granted, most stuff isn't), but bear in mind they have to make a different, functional, and above all, user-friendly UI for not just both console and mobile (the PC UI doesn't work well on console, and vice versa), but for individual units of each platforms (e.g. accommodate for different screen sizes). It's a very intensive task, not only in terms of code but also design.