In Development

Three years after discussing Gearbox's cloud-based build pipeline with the P4 team, Steve Fortier and Phillip Peterson return to share what happened as Borderlands 4 grew from a secret project into a live game. As the team grew to support more branches, patches, and ongoing content, they encountered new challenges in P4, AWS, TeamCity, and Unreal Game Sync that only emerged on a massive scale.

From symbol servers and workspace management to AWS storage and snapshot performance, they walk through the troubleshooting process behind several unexpected bottlenecks.

The result is a candid look at how Gearbox manages millions of files, scales build infrastructure across AWS, and keeps development moving on a modern live-service game.

In this episode:

• Scaling the infrastructure behind Borderlands 4
• Managing 7+ million files and terabyte-scale build environments
• Using AWS, TeamCity, P4, and Unreal Engine to accelerate development
• Solving hidden bottlenecks in storage, syncing, and build automation
• Lessons learned from debugging large-scale cloud infrastructure
• Best practices for monitoring, cost management, and scaling DevOps teams
• Career advice for aspiring build and pipeline engineers

Get In Touch:

• E-mail: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/jaselindgren

Find Us Online:

• Perforce.com
• Perforce.com/podcasts/p4/in-development
• Linkedin.com/company/perforce

Building a production pipeline is challenging. Building one while producing a film is even harder.

In this episode, Jase Lindgren talks with Wyatt Ayars about Ozone Story Tech's journey creating the interactive short film Like while simultaneously developing the tools behind it. Starting with a small team, shared file storage, and manual processes, the project eventually grew into a production pipeline built around Unreal Engine, ShotGrid, automation, and Perforce P4. Along the way, Wyatt shares practical lessons about scaling teams, simplifying artist workflows, and using AI as a force multiplier for technical development.

In this episode:

• How Ozone used a film project to validate its rigging technology
• The challenges of scaling production with Unreal Engine
• Why version control became essential as the team grew
• How AI accelerated pipeline development and automation
• Lessons learned reducing technical overhead for artists
• Career advice for technical artists, developers, and animators

Timestamps:

[00:02:18] Project Origins

[00:03:29] Early Team Setup

[00:04:12] Ozone Rigging Explained

[00:05:00] Maya to Unreal Workflow

[00:06:07] Growing Pains Without Tools

[00:07:12] Version Control Conflicts

[00:10:34] ShotGrid and Perforce Shift

[00:13:39] LLMs for Pipeline Glue

[00:15:26] Automating Maya to Unreal

[00:20:08] Shot Publish Button

[00:22:41] Build Farm Round Trip

[00:23:57] Early Renders in Unreal

[00:24:47] Sequencing in Unreal

[00:25:58] Animator Submission Flow

[00:26:49] Common Pipeline Pitfalls

[00:28:08] Versioning vs Perforce

[00:34:13] Reducing Artist Clicks

[00:35:27] Embracing True Version Control

[00:37:01] References and Asset Drift

[00:39:27] Bespoke Pipelines and AI

[00:43:57] Future Bottlenecks in Rigging

[00:45:21] Lessons and Career Advice

[00:48:15] Wrap Up and Thanks

Jase Lindgren, Principal User Advocate, Perforce

Wyatt Ayars, Ozone, Senior Technical Director

At M2 Animation, scaling cinematic production meant rethinking everything—from rendering pipelines to how directors interact with scenes.

Benjamin Foo, CG Supervisor at M2, walks through the studio’s transition from a traditional Maya/Redshift workflow to a real-time, Unreal Engine-based pipeline. What started as a necessity—limited compute power and rising production demands—quickly became a creative advantage.

Instead of waiting on renders, teams now iterate instantly. Directors can step inside scenes, shape environments in real time, and collaborate more closely with artists. But that shift also brought new challenges—from managing massive asset libraries to balancing visual fidelity with hardware limits.

Ben shares how M2 builds custom tools, embraces experimentation, and uses Perforce P4 to manage version control across complex productions—all while keeping artists empowered to explore and create.

In this episode:

• How M2 transitioned from a traditional render pipeline to Unreal Engine
• Why real-time workflows unlocked faster iteration and creative freedom
• The technical and cultural challenges of scaling cinematic production
• How teams balance visual fidelity, performance, and hardware limits
• The role of custom tooling and experimentation in pipeline evolution
• How Perforce supports collaboration and version control across teams
• How Perforce supports collaboration and version control across teams
• Why empowering directors inside Unreal Engine changes the creative process

Timestamps

[00:02:25] Meet M2 Animation

[00:03:02] Ben’s Career Path

[00:04:15] CG Supervisor Role

[00:05:17] Before Unreal Pipeline

[00:06:00] Why Switch to Unreal

[00:07:21] First Unreal Trailer

[00:11:08] UDIMs and Virtual Textures

[00:14:05] VRAM Limits and Team Learning

[00:17:30] Directors in Real Time

[00:19:24] Asset Library and Versioning

[00:22:39] Shot Based vs Sequence Based

[00:25:34] USD vs FBX Today

[00:26:55] FBX vs USD Plans

[00:27:25] When Fixes Leave Unreal

[00:29:19] Material Notes Workflow

[00:32:32] Instances Per Shot Tweaks

[00:34:03] Perforce Locking Discipline

[00:35:43] Small Team Version Chaos

[00:39:48] Local Rendering Hardware Strategy

[00:42:23] Cinematic Look Pipeline

[00:45:39] Effects Mostly In Engine

[00:46:50] Lessons And Closing Advice

Links mentioned:

• https://www.unrealengine.com/spotlights/shock-and-ork-how-m2-brought-a-warhammer-kill-team-battle-to-life?lang=en-US
• https://youtu.be/MjjkWH0eT3U?si=eJlkriPPjwkV2_MP&t=298
• https://youtu.be/p9LbaCcFpgE?si=KgjlDW1y0tCoZ9Ly

Jase Lindgren, Principal User Advocate, Perforce

Benjamin Foo, Unreal CG Supervisor, M2 Animation

In Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, quests aren’t isolated scripts—they’re a tightly connected web of story, state, dialogue, and world logic. Making that work at the scale of a 250‑person, six‑year production required tooling designed specifically for narrative complexity.

Warhorse Studios Lead DevOps Programmer, Petr Nohejl breaks down Scout, Warhorse’s proprietary quest system. Originally built as a dialogue editor, Scout evolved into the central system driving quests, random encounters, NPC behavior, and narrative state across the entire game.

Rather than hiding complexity, Scout makes it visible. Petr explains how designers navigate a bird’s‑eye view of quest dependencies, how validation happens long before QA ever sees a build, and why Perforce P4 isn’t just used for version control—but is embedded directly into the workflow.

In this episode:

• How Scout grew from a dialogue tool into the core quest and dialogue system for KCD II
• Why Warhorse built a custom quest system and how it unlocked access for sound, localization, and narrative teams
• The “switchboard” view that exposes quest dependencies across the entire game world
• How P4 server‑side triggers validate quest logic before changes hit the build pipeline
• Why Warhorse runs real in‑game scenarios 24/7 to catch issues at scale
• Lessons carried forward from Kingdom Come: Deliverance I, including the origin of the “I feel quite hungry” meme
• Easter eggs, side projects, and the human craft behind a large RPG production

Speakers:

• Jase Lindgren, Principal User Advocate, Perforce
• Petr Nohejl, Lead DevOps Programmer, Warhorse Studios

Find Us Online:

• Perforce.com
• https://www.perforce.com/podcasts/p4/in-development
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/perforce/

Timestamps:

[00:02:10] Welcome & Kingdom Come Origins

[00:04:54] Scaling Development at Warhorse

[00:13:42] Quest Assets & Workflow Rules

[00:16:47] Scout Tool Deep Dive

[00:28:45] Validation, Automation & Testing

[00:35:36] Open World Challenges

[00:40:27] Quest Design Examples

[00:47:32] Humor, Memes & Easter Eggs

[00:54:43] History, Career & The Future

Recorded live at GDC 2026, Jase sat down with Tom Guillermin, Co‑Founder and CTO of Sandfall Interactive, to unpack how Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 grew from a bedroom prototype into an award‑winning global hit. Tom shares the technical and creative decisions that helped a 30‑person team move fast without breaking things.

In this episode:

• Why Sandfall Interactive chose Perforce P4 + Unreal over DIY versioning
• How lightweight bots gave real‑time visibility and protected release branches
• What enabling nightly builds across PC, Xbox, and PlayStation really looks like at a small studio
• Tom’s advice for founders: technology should serve designers, not slow them down

Timestamps:

00:00 Live from GDC: introduction and episode setup

01:37 Awards buzz and early reception

02:56 From a bedroom prototype to a real studio

04:25 Outgrowing file sharing → moving to Perforce P4

05:28 Unreal Engine integration and workflow setup

07:32 DevOps realities and nightly builds at a 30‑person studio

10:20 Discord bot for real‑time Perforce visibility

13:51 Scrappy tools vs. Over‑engineering

25:55 Exclusive file locking and milestone approval bot

28:19 Protecting release branches without slowing the team

37:07 The integration bot: managing dependencies across branches

40:18 What happens when a nightly build goes wrong

46:17 Advice for new studio founders

48:52 Building tools designers actually want to use

50:28 Using Unreal Sequencer for all skills

52:09 Closing remarks

Speakers:

• Jase Lindgren, Sr. P4 User Advocate
• Tom Guillermin, CTO & Founder, Sandfall Interactive

Find Us Online:

• Perforce.com
• https://www.perforce.com/podcasts/p4/in-development
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/perforce/

Get In Touch:

• E-mail: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/jaselindgren

Find Us Online:

• Perforce.com
• Perforce.com/podcasts/p4/in-development
• Linkedin.com/company/perforce

Join us as Marios Michaelides, Engineering Director at Virtuos, reveals how co-developers are solving one of gaming's toughest challenges: performance optimization at scale.

Whether you're shipping your first title or managing multiple AAA projects, Marios delivers actionable strategies for:

• Catching performance regressions before they spiral out of control
• Building automated asset validation pipelines that scale with your team
• Balancing "finding the fun" with proactive optimization
• Avoiding costly crunch periods through smarter tooling decisions

Get In Touch:

• E-mail: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/jaselindgren

Find Us Online:

• Perforce.com
• Perforce.com/podcasts/p4/in-development
• Linkedin.com/company/perforce

In Development brings you inside the technical realities of creating today's most ambitious digital experiences. Host Jase Lindgren delivers conversations with the problem-solvers who build, maintain, and optimize the tools, pipelines, and workflows powering games, media production, and realtime visualization.

Each episode features in-depth discussions with technical directors, pipeline specialists, and digital creators who share their approaches to overcoming real production challenges. Whether you're orchestrating asset workflows for AAA development, implementing virtual production techniques, or building realtime visualization systems for automotive design, you'll discover practical insights from industry veterans facing similar technical hurdles.

This isn't another surface-level tech podcast or marketing showcase—it's a forum for authentic technical conversations about what actually works in production. From managing massive asset libraries and optimizing collaboration workflows to solving the unique challenges of distributed teams and next-gen technologies, "In Development" goes beyond theory to explore the practical solutions that enable creative vision.

Join us for technical stories and solutions from the experts building tomorrow's digital experiences, one pipeline challenge at a time.

Get In Touch:

• E-mail: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/jaselindgren

Find Us Online:

• Perforce.com
• Perforce.com/podcasts/p4/in-development
• Linkedin.com/company/perforce

Join us as Stephen Rodriguez, former Studio Infrastructure Engineer at Sharkmob, dives into the challenges of building a scalable and maintainable game technology foundation as the team grew.

Whether you're starting a new studio or expanding your current operations, Stephen delivers actionable strategies for:

• Creating cost-effective infrastructure
• Leveraging valuable industry partnerships
• Establishing tech environments that maximize team productivity

Get In Touch:

• E-mail: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/jaselindgren

Find Us Online:

• Perforce.com
• Perforce.com/podcasts/p4/in-development
• Linkedin.com/company/perforce

Join Matthew Swanton, Virtual Production Unreal Engine Supervisor at PXO Clara, as he shares his journey from modding Grand Theft Auto as a teenager to operating LED stages for Star Trek: Discovery. Discover the technical challenges of achieving in-camera final pixels, the pipeline innovations that enable global collaboration, and the surprising lessons learned from managing version control on multimillion-dollar film sets. From Perforce workflows to custom lighting solutions, Matthew reveals the real story behind virtual production's most ambitious projects. This is the story Hollywood's sizzle reels don't show you.

Get In Touch:

• E-mail: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/jaselindgren

Find Us Online:

• Perforce.com
• Perforce.com/podcasts/p4/in-development
• Linkedin.com/company/perforce

In this episode, Colin Walder, Engineering Director at CD PROJEKT RED, joins Jase Lindgren to delve into the intricate role of creating an immersive sound world for Cyberpunk 2077. 

Colin and Jase dive into the technical and creative challenges of building immersive audio experiences in AAA games, including: 

• The evolving and complex toolsets and technologies used to design and integrate audio in expansive open-world environments. 
• How the team tackled the massive scale of localized voiceovers, and the strategies they used to optimize audio streaming and memory usage. 
• What it's really like to collaborate across a distributed team of engineers, sound designers, and developers. 
• Why Opus is a game-changer for high-quality audio compression-and how it's being used in production. 
• Practical advice for small teams and indie developers looking to punch above their weight with limited resources. 

This isn't just a deep dive into audio tech—it's a candid look at the intersection of engineering, creativity, and collaboration in modern game development.

Speakers: 

• Jase Lindgren, Sr. P4 User Advocate 
• Colin Walder, Engineering Director at CD PROJEKT RED

Find Us Online: 

• Perforce.com
• https://www.perforce.com/podcasts/p4/in-development 
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/perforce/