Comments on: Getting Into Games — A Follow-up

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:34:18 +0000

Recently discovered your blog & working my way through the archives. A perspective from “in the
industry” is always appreciated!

This one pushed a bunch of my buttons:
>I wouldn’t want to be the guy working on the
>next Madden game

This sounds like the old “clean slate” vs “existing codebase” dilemma. You need to work on the one you’re more comfortable with, and find your motivation in whichever situation you pick. I get the impression that the game industry has tended toward the “make it once and you’re done” situation, but that may be changing. A pro working on version(n) would know that they were likely to be the poor sucker working on version(n+1) and program accordingly.

Alas, the typical university curriculum is usually geared to the “write once, throw away” mentality. The average student project doesn’t involve facing the poor decisions and coding flaws from an earlier version of the code.

Thanks again for the post!
Kevin

By: Rene

Rene — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:26:56 +0000

I really enjoyed reading this & the linked blog posts and just subscribed to your feed.
I was always interested in the game biz and coded computer graphics, physics, AI stuff and simple games (see http://rene-schulte.info). I also wrote a small 3D Engine in C++ a few years ago. Since 3 years I work as a business app developer with .Net and C#, but also implemented interesting stuff like a genetic algorithm for the optimization of price calculation parameters. Recently I developed a generic parallel Software pipeline, which is now used for fast data warehouse filling. At night I pursue my passion for computer graphics, physics and algorithms. Mostly I use C# for quick development.
A former fellow student of mine made an internship at a German game studio during our university time and told me some horror stories about heavy crunch times at the weekends and really bad salary. They even had folding beds at the office! Because I wanted to start a family, I decided to stay in my town and don’t look for a game dev job. Now, that I’m married and have two little kids I think it’s hard to get into the business, especially here in my region where I don’t know any studio. And I guess remote work isn’t an option in the companies?
We have also crunch time in my current job before major releases, which is OK for me as long as it’s not the standard. IMHO too much crunch time is a sign for bad management.
Although I forgot some C++ stuff, I think it wouldn’t be too hard to get into it again. You wrote that it’s really important to be an expert in C++. I think it’s more important to know how to write good code and understand the principles of optimization, parallel programming, math, AI, computer graphics, … And it’s even more important to have an understanding about how business works and the ability to priories work tasks. Good programming language knowledge is crucial, but if you encounter a tricky problem in C++, why not ask a senior colleague at the beginning? And why don’t the companies make some sort of in-depth training at the first time? In every game dev job opening I’ve read they want experts with long experience in the game industry and some released titles. IMHO they overlook great potential.

Greetings
Rene

http://blog.rene-schulte.info
http://twitter.com/rschu

By: Susan

Susan — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:20:54 +0000

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Susan

http://onlinegamesforgirls.net

By: Gustavo Barrancos

Gustavo Barrancos — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:42:55 +0000

Thanks for clearing the SPU concepts

By: CodeJustin

CodeJustin — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:06:29 +0000

Ya, I’m actually trying to make my own mobile RPG right now using J2ME.

By: ANdrew

ANdrew — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 06:51:43 +0000

I don’t know “the guy working on the next Madden” but I do know people who worked on the last few and it was a pretty awful experience. Three months of crunch on a 12 month project? Thanks, but no.

By: slicedlime

slicedlime — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:15:29 +0000

The 360 is much more like a multi-core PC when it comes to coding. Any normal multi-threaded code will work for it… and while that’s a major step away from the sequential approach for older platforms, it’s still roughly the same.

The PS3 SPUs don’t work like normal hardware in that they don’t have a memory cache. Instead they have an on-die memory chunk that you can DMA memory into and out of… so that affects you quite heavily; you’ve got to think much more about what memory to pull in to a function you want to run.

… but on the up side, if you do manage to use them right, they’re blazingly fast.

By: Psykocyber

Psykocyber — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:00:20 +0000

Great blog, nice to hear about the PS3s processing power from someone who actually programs for it and not just from people on forums with a search engine next to them.

So I must ask you, how “difficult” is it really to parallelize your code for optimal SPU performance? Any different on the 360?