What’s a Good Final Year Project?

Here’s a question from the mailbag, coming from a student doing games programming at a university, gearing up for his final-year project:

The degree I’m doing currently has been very much centered around graphical programming, aswell as using various programming languages to bolster our CV’s I would imagine. We’ve not really touched on networking, or AI at all. Our main language in graphical programming has been OpenGL too, we’ve dabbled with DirectX a little, mostly managed directX with XNA.

As a programmer already in the industry, could you give me any advice on the type, and level of project I should aim for, for it to be a suitable demo project to show to prospective employers? It’s difficult enough as students to find our way into the games industry; if we don’t know what employers want, or what is considered worthy in the eyes of the employer, it lowers our odds tenfold.

In a way, the answer to the question depends on what kind of position you’re trying for. I’ll try to answer with regards to as many positions as I know.

For starters, is graphics programming what you want to be doing? If it is, things like what graphics APIs you know become a lot more important. From what I know, most games studios that do windows game development have gravitated towards DirectX. With that in mind, having done a large(ish) project on DirectX could definitely be a plus. If all other things are equal, I’d definitely go for learning DirectX.

Not having experience with networking or AI isn’t all that much of an issue, unless you imagine going specifically for a networking or AI programming position (and even then, it’s more of a bonus than a requirement). One thing is clear however… if you’re looking to get into professional development at a large studio, you should be going for C++.

Now if we look past the technical requirements, there are a few things that can be said about such a project in itself. What you get from a good project is a nice entry into your demo reel — something to show off. This has a few implications, but most importantly something I’ve touched on before, in A Spectacular Failure: your project is going to be judged on emotional first impressions, not how technologically advanced it is or how nicely coded it is.

Your number one enemy is over-scoping the project, ending up with something that does lots of things, but does none of them in a great way. Come up with a good core gameplay for the game, and then polish it to a great shine. Fix all those annoying glitches and bugs, make sure everything looks as impressive as possible. It doesn’t need to be rocket science, as long as it’s well executed. In the end, what a games studio is looking for is a programmer who knows how to finish projects in a good way.

That doesn’t mean your project should be Space Invaders, but in general trying for something too big is more of a problem than overdoing something too small.

Finally, as an entry on your demo reel, make sure you make the game available in an easy manner. Have a page with plenty of screen shots, videos and preferably the game itself easily downloadable. Your coding ability will definitely be tested with some form of work sample as you apply to studios, so the code itself being available is less important. Reading code is hard, so it’s unlikely that someone will have time to read yours. However, having a finished game to show off is worth a lot, as is the experience of going through all the phases in finishing a game.

Other posts you may find interesting, relating to getting into the games industry and getting started with games:

• Getting Into Games
• An Exceptionally Stupid Idea
• Let’s Make a Game Engine

3 Comments

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  By Callum, Tuesday, August 11, 2009 @ 22:26

  Fantastic answer to a question I have asked alot of people myself. I read a really interesting article on gamesindusty.biz about game ideas that work right out of the box, probably worth looking up aswell, means you can find a game that already works and just make it your own, concentrating on making it look wicked! ( or emotionally pleasing )

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  By Kyle Walsh, Thursday, August 13, 2009 @ 4:08

  This is sound advice and a great article. Particularly the points on C++ and DirectX. I feel that XNA is a great abstraction depending on which areas of game development you want to get into, but if you really want to specialize, or if you would really like to know what’s going on inside a game engine, you should roll your own. It can be an enlightening and exciting undertaking! You will also gain a much greater appreciation for the complexity of commercial games of all levels when you pour over your own engine code, knowing it’s shortcomings, and then think of the work the industry leaders are doing! Let’s just say I stopped saying certain games “sucked” after I went through the process

  Keep up the nice posts, Mikael. Just discovered your blog recently and am having a great time reading the archives and your newer stuff.

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  By Ray, Tuesday, August 18, 2009 @ 15:50

  Thanks a lot for this, I’ve been asking this question myself. Keep them coming!

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