While working for Firesprite, I helped develop the God of War Digital Comic Books for PS4. This was my first foray into the games industry, and an exciting time; I had to learn a lot in a relatively short space of time. The project is split into two parts, an editor and a runtime component. The editor is written in C# and uses XAML and the WPF framework to implement the user interface. The runtime uses C++ as it allows for more control over memory, and offers greater performance - something which is necessary when playing 4K videos.

The comic produced is interactive, the user can navigate it at will, with several control methods to do so. Or should they choose, they can let the comic play through by itself. In this mode the individual panels are zoomed in on and the other panels on the page are hidden. This mode also allows for a video to be played over the top of the comic, but behind the speech bubbles, allowing for them to be localised. Localisation was a major concern for this project. The comic also featured a commentary from its creators, this was subtitled in many languages. On top of all that the comics contain downloadable content - wallpapers.

My job as a programmer on this title was to fix bugs and implement features in both components of the project. With tasks ranging from U.I. improvements to implementing video player functionality.

I have learned a lot from this experience, it was and is my first job. I have learned what it is to be a part of a team, and to be responsible for my work. I have learned about clients, and as with G-Star, what they think is possible (Tasks), though I would like to know more about such relationships. I have also learned about region-locking and why you might want to do it (data limits).