Pavel Fadrhonc

Long Story Long

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I started with games at around age of 8 when I discovered Czech version of Dungeon & Dragons - Dračí Doupě. Since than I've been mostly doing the Dungeon Master for my friends. However when I get to play as a player my classes of choice were mostly Mage, Ranger, ocassionally Thief. As a dungeon master though I mostly was coming up with my own adventures, a lot of times improvising them. I think that was the point when my passion for creating stuff began, when I was coming up with them on my own and showing them to other people.

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Around age of 10 I discovered Magic: The Gathering and it has been long passion for me as well and it has transformed into Hearthstone passion couple years ago.

It was about that time too when we get the first computer in our local library in Poděbrady. We played many games there but amongs those that are most memorable for me are Prince of Persia and mainly C&C:Red Alert.

At the age of 12 I got my first PC. I spend long nights playing anything from Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, Homeworld, No One Lives Forever and many others. It was about that time when I got invited at local LAN party where Quake 3 was the main game played there. My friend let me play on his PC for couple matches and I ended up getting totally destroyed. This sparked my interest in multiplayer competitive gaming and I spend several following years practicing shooting, maps, stafe jumping, duels and TDMs. Eventually I started attending local LAN parties regularly and discovered also Counter Strike and Age of Empires 2, later it was Warcraft 3.

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I remember that when I was 15 I spend two months on a summer job with my friend getting just enough money so I could buy 64MB more RAM for my PC. Then, two years later, I spend half a year working afterschool in grocery store and weekends in glass factory to save enough money to buy a new computer that could run modern games fluently. It was hard work and dedication but I had no other choice. I kept myself going by browsing the hardware online, comparing prices and performance, picking the optimal build, I was dreaming a lot about it.

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What I want to say by that, I always loved games. I loved playing them and they've always been a mystery to me. I spent so much time in these virtual worlds that it was only natural for me to want to understand how they work. Also, I was building all my computers myself and was experimenting heavily with oveclocking which only deepened my interest in computers in general. That was the main reason why I went to high school with specialization on Computer Systems. I remember that I felt like I was learning a lot of stuff that I had no idea how they're going to be usefull for me. They weren't. But the real fun started in third year when we started with computer programming. That's why I'm here! That's a chance for me to learn how to program games! I thought. Well, I definitelly learned something, but I didn't make any game.

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When I went to Faculty of Information Technology on Brno University I had tough time at the start. We started with C language and I highly underestimated the amount of work I had to do in order for me to pass. So I didn't. I ended up repeating that subject which made me study it really hard and it was about that time I actually learned how to program. Not just the language but how to handle all that development process in my head, how to handle the thinking, the design, the implementation, the problems that arose from that, working with documentation and all that programming jazz.

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When I was 22 I remembered my old dream. I wanted to make a game. I never knew how. I never knew where to start. I've read the article online that said something like "don't make engines, make games" and the core message of it was that a lot of people that start to develop their games end up building tools that would help them doing the sometimes mundane work of game programming and boiler plate coding all over again. And those tools ended up being their engines. Only that they didn't actually made any game. The conclusion of article was: Start with building simple games that has already been made to see how you can do that. Start with Pong.

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And so I did. I had solid understanding of C++ at my belt at the time so I just grabbed SDL library and started coding. But what do you know. I ended up generalizing to the point that I had something that reminded a framework, also part of the game... and then I abandoned the project. Because, you know, life and... stuff. I started having different interests, I started doing improv theatre and learning presenting and talking in front of people in form of Toastmasters. I started going out, meet people and especially, girls! At the time I was still finishing school, working part-time and going to the gym, so there was definitelly no time for such nonsense as games!

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Fast forward two years into future and I found a girlfriend, I graduated from university and got a full time job in Brno. After one year I bought myself a new computer but this time, with a dedicated graphic card! I wanted to catch up with all those games I missed during my "wild years". And I remembered my old dream and googled "how to make a game" again. I found out that there is a thing called XNA, that should ease the development significantly. And since I was comfortable coding in C# for last couple years at work I grabbed it and immediatelly felt like home. I read an article called "Waking up at 5am to code" so thats basicllay what I did. Every day I woke up at 6am and spend two hours working on ... on a Pong again. This time, I'll finish it! I have to! If I don't finish this I'll never finish anything in my life!

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And for the first time in my life, I have finished a game. It's really small and it's something that has been done countless times before, but It was made by me. I spent 4 months working on it 2 hours each day before work and it has all the features that I wanted it to have. It is finished. Sure, it sometimes works wierdly and I never published it, but according to my plan, it was finished.

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Couple months later I discoverd Unity. It was version 3.x at that time. I grabbed it and started learning it throught tutorials. I did some simple demos in it and after couple months I attended Game Design Workshop held in Prague. I met my future employer, Martin and I started working on a MOBA game. It was really glorious time for me back in 2013. Suddenly everything came together. I studied master programme called "Computer Graphics and Multimedia" and after couple months there I forget why I'm studying it. But now, it all made sense. All those rendering techniques and standarts that we were learning about were in Unity and it all was very familiar. About half a year later I went to my first game jam. I teamed up with wonderfull graphic artist and awesome sound artist and we made a game called Winston On Stage. 

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Since than I wanted to attend every game jam possible. I felt like I gained new super powers. I couldn't believe it. I remember when I was around 13 I read an ad from Czech game developer Illusion softworks that was looking for programmers and offering them 40k CZK as monthly salary and I was thinking: "I get to work on a game AND make great money?? I want that!" And now I was doing that. It took me about 15 years but I was doing that. But little did I knew that I was merely at the beginning of my journey...

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2.5 years later I realized that the commercial project (the MOBA game) I was working on is not really moving anywhere towards completion and I also felt I need to gain experience developing in larger, more experienced team since I was basically the only fulltime programmer on the project. An offer appeared to join the team working on game called Mandate. I flew to Košice, Slovakia to meet with the team and full of excitement I agreed to work on game fulltime, remotely from Prague. 

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But wierd stuff started appearing on horizon quite soon. While the team of programmes that I worked with was great and I definitelly gained a lot working with them in terms of experience and knowledge transfer, the deadlines for project milestones has been postponed and revised quite often and final release seemed to be moving further and further from our sight even as the time went by. Year and a half later I suddenly recieved a call informing me that funding of the game from a publisher has been problematic to get to and the development team will get some serious reduction to less than half of its original size, me being part of that reduction.

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I gave myself some time to evaluate and learn. To find myself again. I finished something that started as game jam but evolved into my personal pet project - Astral Walker. Influenced mostly by playing Prey and Dishonored at the time and by Arkane Studios system design I imagined this angel training simulator where you run around planet and try to master elements. After that I took part in another game jam with my girlfriend who made the art and we made a game called Running Out Of Power plant which also manifested the influence by system based design but also by my interest in particle systems. After game jam I continued working on this game for another 2 weeks until I had something that both me and me friends enjoyed playing and with more content could become an actual game.

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Shortly after that I got offer to work in Danish company Napnok Games. Full of excitement I joined their team on site in Copenhagen to work on their upcoming game Frantics. I had a lot of fun on that and met a lot of talented and interesting people. After Frantics I worked on similar title - Chimparty. Both were party games for PS4 and the time spend there was in the name of that. We playtested these games every day, having a lot of fun (but also hard work) on a couch. Afte Chimparty I worked on couple more unannounced projects until December 2019 when I decided that I need to move onward. Napnok games finally game me a chance to work on projects that got released and to see actual working game production in action and for that I am very grateful for that.

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During those two years I got myself a PS4 so could play the game that I helped develop. The month I got it the game Bloodborne was free for PS Plus members so I started playing it and I got absolutely in love with it. It was so hard but intriguing that I had to study it and every new bossfight was a great challange, motivation and experience. I ended up playing every game from Bloodborne developer From Software and spent hundrends of hours in world of Darks Souls, Sekiro and lately I even managed to get my hands on Demon Souls. Again there were games that influenced me and my thinking about games so much. I made Fokusiro and am currently working on another title inspired by From Soft design.

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Games have been always part of my life and they always will be. They are unique combination of technology and art, a new type of media in a way. They can guide you through the emotional story, sharpen your senses, teach you teamwork, new language, get you interested in different cultures, understand position of other people in other conditions, help you relax, fill with awe or just plainly be the source of incredible fun.

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An I'm really honered to be part of that.