Game development career thread:
- Thread starter tyen
- Start date
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Schags
Bronze Knight of the Realm
- 140
- 28
I've been in game development for around 18 years. Moved to Colorado to be close to family and picked up some remote contract work. That ended about 7 months ago. For the past 7 months I've been looking for work and haven't found shit. First time in my career that I've gone longer than a month without having a new gig. Industry must be trying to churn me out. Colorado has mostly shit for game companies with maybe 1-2 that seem stable enough. They are all located in Denver/Boulder though.
With that said, I've been working with UE4 exclusively for the last year and a half. I had no experience with it when I picked up that last contract and taught myself through the UE forums and youtube tutorials. I still have a lot to learn but I love working in blueprints. Very powerful IMO for a designer with no programming experience. I just picked up the 55 hour UE4 course on Udemy for 15 bucks. I plan on going through it just to see what else I can learn. My fear with that is how outdated the lessons will be because of engine version updates. Who knows, maybe my current knowledge of the engine will save me the time of needing to google shit because their lessons are out of date.
When my contract ended in May, I started building an rpg that I wanted to do just to see how far I can get on my own and just to keep learning the engine. I dropped a few k on the marketplace and had most systems in on a basic level. Then I got to animation blueprints. Had about 70 creatures to setup blueprints for and I didn't fully grasp the animation system and that is where I lost steam. I started to realize the scope of what I wanted to do would never get there on my own. Ended up jumping onto another indie project with a small team of people I've worked with at different companies and my personal project has been sitting there for a few months. Just starting to dig into some c++ online class stuff. I probably should have learned to code 20 years ago.
As far as the UE4/Unity comparison. I've never really worked with Unity before. I've opened it up a few times but did shit with it. Now that I'm in UE4, I can't imagine ever wanting to make a game with Unity. I don't know, like I said, I love blueprints.
If you're really looking to get into the industry, make sure you pay attention to what was mentioned in this thread earlier. You have to have the desire to make games. Pay sucks because most of these companies setup shop in expensive places. If you're single, most of the time you're going to be working just to pay rent with a little extra cash leftover. You're going to bust your ass and most likely be let go a month after a project ships and they realize it wasn't as successful as they hoped it would be. Unless you work for one of the top companies who can afford to shit the bed on a game every now and then. Basically you have to accept to live a nomad lifestyle unless you get lucky and get into a place like that. Also be prepared to do all the work and watch management types take all the props when the game does well.
Hopefully you guys make something. I've been waiting to see an FOH game for years. Surprised it hasn't happened yet. I believe someone was working on one a few years ago on the old board iirc.
With that said, I've been working with UE4 exclusively for the last year and a half. I had no experience with it when I picked up that last contract and taught myself through the UE forums and youtube tutorials. I still have a lot to learn but I love working in blueprints. Very powerful IMO for a designer with no programming experience. I just picked up the 55 hour UE4 course on Udemy for 15 bucks. I plan on going through it just to see what else I can learn. My fear with that is how outdated the lessons will be because of engine version updates. Who knows, maybe my current knowledge of the engine will save me the time of needing to google shit because their lessons are out of date.
When my contract ended in May, I started building an rpg that I wanted to do just to see how far I can get on my own and just to keep learning the engine. I dropped a few k on the marketplace and had most systems in on a basic level. Then I got to animation blueprints. Had about 70 creatures to setup blueprints for and I didn't fully grasp the animation system and that is where I lost steam. I started to realize the scope of what I wanted to do would never get there on my own. Ended up jumping onto another indie project with a small team of people I've worked with at different companies and my personal project has been sitting there for a few months. Just starting to dig into some c++ online class stuff. I probably should have learned to code 20 years ago.
As far as the UE4/Unity comparison. I've never really worked with Unity before. I've opened it up a few times but did shit with it. Now that I'm in UE4, I can't imagine ever wanting to make a game with Unity. I don't know, like I said, I love blueprints.
If you're really looking to get into the industry, make sure you pay attention to what was mentioned in this thread earlier. You have to have the desire to make games. Pay sucks because most of these companies setup shop in expensive places. If you're single, most of the time you're going to be working just to pay rent with a little extra cash leftover. You're going to bust your ass and most likely be let go a month after a project ships and they realize it wasn't as successful as they hoped it would be. Unless you work for one of the top companies who can afford to shit the bed on a game every now and then. Basically you have to accept to live a nomad lifestyle unless you get lucky and get into a place like that. Also be prepared to do all the work and watch management types take all the props when the game does well.
Hopefully you guys make something. I've been waiting to see an FOH game for years. Surprised it hasn't happened yet. I believe someone was working on one a few years ago on the old board iirc.
- 2
- 1
Ravishing
Uninspiring Title
- 8,456
- 3,577
I've been in game development for around 18 years. Moved to Colorado to be close to family and picked up some remote contract work. That ended about 7 months ago. For the past 7 months I've been looking for work and haven't found shit. First time in my career that I've gone longer than a month without having a new gig. Industry must be trying to churn me out. Colorado has mostly shit for game companies with maybe 1-2 that seem stable enough. They are all located in Denver/Boulder though.
With that said, I've been working with UE4 exclusively for the last year and a half. I had no experience with it when I picked up that last contract and taught myself through the UE forums and youtube tutorials. I still have a lot to learn but I love working in blueprints. Very powerful IMO for a designer with no programming experience. I just picked up the 55 hour UE4 course on Udemy for 15 bucks. I plan on going through it just to see what else I can learn. My fear with that is how outdated the lessons will be because of engine version updates. Who knows, maybe my current knowledge of the engine will save me the time of needing to google shit because their lessons are out of date.
When my contract ended in May, I started building an rpg that I wanted to do just to see how far I can get on my own and just to keep learning the engine. I dropped a few k on the marketplace and had most systems in on a basic level. Then I got to animation blueprints. Had about 70 creatures to setup blueprints for and I didn't fully grasp the animation system and that is where I lost steam. I started to realize the scope of what I wanted to do would never get there on my own. Ended up jumping onto another indie project with a small team of people I've worked with at different companies and my personal project has been sitting there for a few months. Just starting to dig into some c++ online class stuff. I probably should have learned to code 20 years ago.
As far as the UE4/Unity comparison. I've never really worked with Unity before. I've opened it up a few times but did shit with it. Now that I'm in UE4, I can't imagine ever wanting to make a game with Unity. I don't know, like I said, I love blueprints.
If you're really looking to get into the industry, make sure you pay attention to what was mentioned in this thread earlier. You have to have the desire to make games. Pay sucks because most of these companies setup shop in expensive places. If you're single, most of the time you're going to be working just to pay rent with a little extra cash leftover. You're going to bust your ass and most likely be let go a month after a project ships and they realize it wasn't as successful as they hoped it would be. Unless you work for one of the top companies who can afford to shit the bed on a game every now and then. Basically you have to accept to live a nomad lifestyle unless you get lucky and get into a place like that. Also be prepared to do all the work and watch management types take all the props when the game does well.
Hopefully you guys make something. I've been waiting to see an FOH game for years. Surprised it hasn't happened yet. I believe someone was working on one a few years ago on the old board iirc.
I've been teaching myself UE4 as well, started around September. It's just a hobby for me though. I also love the Blueprints. I never learned C++ so the visual coding is very nice.
Also UE4 just makes things look prettier without much extra effort.
I have a 2-year goal of completing a somewhat basic game, but maybe it'll prove too challenging.
As you've said, you can get really bogged down with some things. Keeping it simple would be the only way.
A lot of my time is working on the character system. Trying to get the best feeling movements/visuals. Once that's solved, rest should be fairly simple.
Noodleface
A Mod Real Quick
- 38,318
- 16,197
I transitioned from tech writer to software engineer. I was mainly hired because of my development of Nevergrind. I majored in English Literature, so I didn't have the academic credentials to become a web developer. I have been working as a web developer since September, 2015. Everyone is different, but I basically learned one thing at a time. I started with the client side. Initially Nevergrind was a client-side only game that saved all of its character data in localStorage. Years later it became more ambitious and I started saving data in an actual database. My path went something like this: HTML > CSS > JQuery > JavaScript > PHP > MySQL > Greensock Animation Platform > ZMQ Websockets & Server Push > Angular > Java > Node > npm > gulp, etc etc etc.
So, yeah, you can get a job making software even if you major in British dead guys. I also used to dink around with making games as a teenager with GW-Basic in the 90's.
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Ritley
Bronze Baron of the Realm
- 16,014
- 35,053
tyen
EQ in a browser wait time: ____
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Some interesting news for those working on or planning to work on Open Source games.
Apparently Valve To Open-Source Their Steam Networking Sockets Library - Phoronix . Under a BSD license. Not yet out but soonish.... watch for it here ValveSoftware/GameNetworkingSockets .
Apparently Valve To Open-Source Their Steam Networking Sockets Library - Phoronix . Under a BSD license. Not yet out but soonish.... watch for it here ValveSoftware/GameNetworkingSockets .
Conefed
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 2,850
- 1,702
Make a silly game where you have to lose levels instead of gain levels.
With every level you have you were cursed with an affliction and in order to retire you need to get rid of those. At the end of some kind of “task” or zone or whatever you are given an option of which affliction to lose out of 2.
So you start at level 20 with randomly generated afflictions.
You finish an area and you are now level 19.
It randomly picks two afflictions to give you the choice of.
You pick one and it goes away.
You start up a new area to get down to 18.
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Kharzette
Watcher of Overs
- 5,406
- 4,265
Here's my vague ideas so far, I wrote some down and then slept awhile:
Code:
Running out of Space
expansion leaving no galaxies to expand to?
start with local group colonized?
looty rpg game with constant inventory pressure?
that sounds terrible
That startrek episode where Beverly is alone and the universe shrinks
Hoarder simulator
bonus points for mess, cats, fatness, most horrific sleeping area
Generation Ship
Breeding gets out of control and population gets too big
Bust Out
Leveling up increases booby size
HD Space
Something to do with compy storage space
Blackboard space?
Write equations?
Farming?
Need moar land for cattle or crops?
Oneil cylinder
generations beyond makers, have to restore tech to get outside
make more habs
Rising oceans
Less land left for stuff- 1
