Yep! Yet another team interview is done! Today I bring you Eli Tayrien, the dude that drove me NUTS with his choice of music (we shared an office for a while). I guess I drove him nuts with mine too… he’s not into Metal (pfft). Eli is a super fun person to work with and I am very happy you guys will get to know him a little more. On with the interview!

Who are you and what do you do at XNA?

I’m Eli Tayrien, a developer for XNA Game Studio. I focus mostly on the framework and content pipeline areas of things. I’ve also worked on some of the educational content found on creators.xna.com. Hmmm.. what else do I do at XNA? Try to drive Nazeeh and Klucher as crazy as possible with weird music.

What did you work on before joining XNA?

I was hired by the XNA team directly out of college. I went to school at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where I got a B.S. in computer science. I spent a lot of my time in the IT department’s area, working on games in the lab. ( shameless plug! http://games.rit.edu/ ) I did two internships with the IT department. The first was at RIT, working on a shooter called Wings of Megaira. For the second, I worked on M.U.P.P.E.T.S, which is a really cool experimental 3d multi user programming environment.

How did you join the XNA team? Tell the story!

Pretty standard fare, I guess. After I graduated I applied for a job at Xbox. Boyd told me what his goals for the project were, and we had a fit. I still get a really big kick out of seeing my product help students and hobbyists just like me.

What features did you work on for XNA 1.0 and 2.0?

For 1.0, I worked on the content pipeline with Shawn and Klucher. I focused on the importers, mostly. For 1.0 refresh I worked on the SpriteFont code. For 2.0 Stephen and I worked on the processor parameters feature, and Shawn and I worked on gamer services.

What were some of the problems faced when developing your feature?

The hardest thing for me for so far has been knowing when to say when. There’s always more work we can do, and more features we can implement, and knowing where to make the cuts is difficult for me. Also, it was difficult to get fonts to 100%. There’s so many edge cases that can cause letters to be off by just one pixel or two, you testers are just so thorough!

What’s their favorite bit of XNA, and why?

My favorite bit? 1, probably. I’ve always been a fan of that one.

What is your favorite Xbox game?

That’s a hard one. I tend to play more casual games lately, but I played through Gears of War twice. I just beat half life 2 for the second time. That’s a great game – the levels are paced perfectly! Just when I start to get bored of one thing, they completely change it up. I’ve been playing a bunch of rock band with my friends, too. I’m a really big fan of making a lot of noise, so singing and drums are right up my alley. My roommate and I have just gotten re-addicted to Lego Star Wars, too. I love how you can jump into and out of that game as often as you want.

Share some tips and tricks for using XNA

Keep it simple. This isn’t an XNA framework thing specifically, but more general advice for students and hobbyists: making a game takes a lot of time. When you think about what kind of game you’re going to make, start small! In my opinion, you’re better off having a really polished small game than you are having a kludgy big game, with lots of half-done features.

When in doubt, check the creator’s club website! The community in the forums is really helpful, and we’ve got a lot of samples covering a variety of topics.

Learn your trig and vector math. This is true even for 2D games! It’s not nearly as hard as you think, and dot products will become your best friend J

Last words?

Thanks for your support. I’ve got a pretty cool job, and you guys make it possible.

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