Meet the Fallout 3 devs - Ricardo Gonzalez

Ricardo E. Gonzalez is a programmer Bethesda Softworks and is in charge of coding the user interface. On Bethesda Game Studios Forums he uses the nickname "Socrates200X".

The following are some of Ricardo's posts from the Meet the Devs threads on Bethesda forums:

"As a UI coder, I live in that murky middle-ground that somehow connects the player to various parts of the engine at any given moment. Because of this need to interconnect with everything, there are a slew of special cases that muck up my otherwise perfect code. ( "Make sure Menu X does Y here. Except when the player is jumping, then do this. Or if the player is just entering a door but before Menu Z has loaded, do this, unless the door is locked, is which case...etc." ) Also, small things that most people take for granted, like the amount of pixels between letters and the natural motion of a scrollbar, take on exaggerated importance, often putting me at a disadvantage when comparing battle scars with my workmates. ("Man, I just spent a week debugging AI timing bugs." "That's nothing! I just spent 10 hours straight on button highlights!" "Oh...well...that's rough, I guess?" )"

"I'm kept far, far away from the gameplay code, so no worries"

"I personally haven't found a good example of a game that's able to support multiple viewpoints without making things overly complex or overly simplified"

"I'm replaying FO1 as we speak"

"If we have any motivation going into FO3 ( other than making a game worthy of the originals ), it's correcting our mistakes."

"My Internet went out the other day. For 3 whole hours. Near the end, I was more animal than man."

"Man, I haven't gotten this many "I love you"s since I switched from chloroform to Rohypnol..."

"Cookie Day FTW!"

"Todd's tenacious like a mudcrab"

"Fallout was as good as I remember, although I forgot how much "swish-swish-swish-swish-hit!-swish-swish" combat entailed. I need to tag Small Guns or something.."

"Most of our tough game design decisions are decided using our handy-dandy Jump to Conclusionsâââââââ‚¬Å¡¬Å¡¬Å¾¢ mat."

"Speak for yourself. My character's flippin' awesome! He's all like, "Whoa!" and, "Wha-cha!", and the monsters are all, "Oh, noes!""

"The 50,000th person to say "Oblivion with guns" will receive a Collector's Edition copy of Oblivion with Gunsâââââââ‚¬Å¡¬Å¡¬Å¾¢, complete with a strategy guide and a replica of a Daedric SMG. Everyone else will receive Fallout 3."

"In order to get the true Fallout feel, we're only allowed to code using hardware we build ourselves from junkyard parts. My "debugger" is a jury-rigged soldering iron made of a rusted bicycle spoke and a Bic lighter."

"Why doesn't Bethesda crack down on the flames here, so that this forum is a more enjoyable place to discuss? pV = nRT. It's the law!"

"Last night, after surfing the web until around 3, I had my first ( and probably not my last ) dream in which reading the Fallout forums was a semi-major dream plot device. Disturbing and true!"

"I've always wanted to fall from a great height, land with a large THUD!, get up unscathed, brush myself off, say, "Some weather we're having, huh?" to any bystanders, and be on my way."

"Squeal "Tickle Monster! Gitchy-gitchy-goo!" as I proceed to give the mutie the tickling of his life. (Note: My Luck is Heroic.)"

"I hear that if you post a postive review of Oblivion on a gaming site, Marketing comes to you in your sleep. It's how they recruit new members."

"The whole "sleeping-with-one-lady-forever" bit was a tough pill to swallow. Not that they were beating down my door to begin with... Overcome? Math helped. When I work out the probability of finding someone else with the same awesomeness quotient (AQ) and ability to put up with me, it rapidly approaches 0. Of course, I phrased it a little more romantically on V-Day, but the sentiment's the same."

"What do I think of the nuclear catapult idea? I have the same concerns most do about it being an uber-weapon, but I'm fairly sure the designers won't be decorating the wastes with nuke ammo or keeping the rad count dialed down to debug levels. I definitely want my character to turn to ash within a certain distance, and catch a baaad case of radiation poisoning at anything farther. Concerning its lack of "realism", I play the fiction card. Concerning its lack of "verisimilitude", I think it fits just fine, although that opinion comes from the personal benefit of seeing it in context as opposed to in a screenshot."

"I can't tell the number of funks I've been brought out of at the eating of a chocolate chip cookie, or the anticipation of such an event. In the interest of productivity, every office should a Cookie Day."

(Nintendo and Star Trek geek, with a habit of doing Bill-and-Ted-esque air-guitar and drum solos. Likes the works of Josh Whedon, Would like to learn to cook a good meatloaf, and have trouble with being on time, getting something right the first time and public speaking. Have a cat named #7883, or Seven for short. Getting married to his missus, Beth, August 5, 2007!!)

Desk: From left to right: Books ( The Onion's Finest News Reporting, Knuth Art of Computer Programming Vol. 4 are examples ), V-Day cards from the missus, Lego model of Slave I, Dell box, Nerf USB missile launcher, crossword puzzles book, monitor, clock / pen holder, whiteboard, autographed pictures of Q, me, and Vault Boy. Hm, pretty sparse, I guess. For wallpaper, a doctored Animal Crossing screenshot with Tom Nook saying, "Where's my money, man?! Is Tom Nook going to have to slap a b*tch?"

Socrates200X: I think you're underselling Fizzbang's terrifying raider ensemble. Key pieces not highlighted by the photos are his tetanus-inducing workman's gloves with rusty nails and screws affixed to the back and his gas mask codpiece. Trust me, if you haven't stood next to a 6'2" game designer with spiked fists and a gas mask codpiece before, you haven't been properly terrified.

(on his casting in the fictitious Bethesda: The Movie): - When asked that question, I often tell the ladies that it's because I'm the man of their dreams, but according to said ladies, this is rarely, if ever, the case. I've also gotten Jeff Goldblum on occasion. Hopefully, people mean before he turned into The Fly. - I'll be the disbelieving scientist-type who, upon hearing the Hero explain the Villain's big plans, whips off his glasses dramatically and says, "My God..."