Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter • Hacker News Board

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#41

Post by AndyNemmity » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 12:22 AM UTC

"Usually an outstanding problem or issue is already known by your staff, and often they have tried to make you aware of this problem, but usually it gets prioritized into nothingness, or filtered into white noise by your chain of command where no action gets done."

This is the same as being a consultant. You come on site, you listen to everyone and make notes of it, and then you make a presentation and plan for direction.

They pay you way more than their own people, to tell you what your own people are telling you. It's quite crazy.

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#42

Post by gambler » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 12:43 AM UTC

Good article, but I'm not sure who it is targeted at. Companies/teams that do bad things the author recommends against (or don't do good things he recommends) are usually ran by people who either don't care or are pathologically clueless. They're not going to read this. If they do, they are not going to change the right thing. They will instead go to some business conference, listen to overhyped process consultants and force-implement more "agile" techniques that have nothing to do with what actually hurts their productivity.

Maybe, strip out most of the game dev stuff and write a small book? That might help. I don't know why, but books work on managers much better than articles. At least I can give or recommend someone a book without making it seem like an insult. "Hey, I've read this book by an engineer who worked on many large game projects. You should check it out."

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#43

Post by jagerific » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 1:06 AM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #37

bitwalker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this the Pandemic Studios version of Battlezone (i.e. Battlezone II) or the first version of Battlezone for PC? If you had a hand in either, then I owe you a beer (or whatever you prefer) a bunch of times over because I loved both of those games so much. Endless hours of entertainment!

I worked on both. Thanks. If we ever run into each other I hope we can have a drink.

Oh man thanks for making those. I spent so much time as a kid playing a copy of Battlezone I checked out from the local library. Love me some biometal

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#44

Post by starpilot » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 2:13 AM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #3

The amazing thing to me is that now people can make games without a bunch of great engineers. Back in the day when we made Battlezone we had at least four really amazing engineers (one was a Masters in CS from MIT, one wrote early 3d workstation code, UCLA, Cal Tech CS degrees). In those days you needed people like that to just 3D to work in Windows. Direct X helped a lot. Unity and Unreal have made things we couldn'…

Golem reporting.

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#45

Post by mitchell_h » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 2:35 AM UTC

wyldfire wrote: post #12

> They immediately asked who was giving up this information and wanted to crack down on this perceived insubordination, rather than trying to address the issue. I was then dismissed for not specifying names, and my services were no longer required. Wow! That sounds terrible.

Fixing the blame is easier then fixing the problem.

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#46

Post by Mononokay » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 2:51 AM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #27

icefox wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the question would be what type of game could be made with that type of team today?

There are certainly teams of people of that technical caliber today at Blizzard, Riot, Sony Santa Monica (and lots of other places farther from me) making amazing, cutting edge game tech. But there are also teams like the ones the author described that don't have amazing tech skills that still can make games we couldn't dream of thanks to game engines. I think it is exciting.

What's Blizzard done that's technically impressive as of late? They scrapped Titan, and Overwatch isn't particularly groundbreaking from what I can tell.

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#47

Post by eropple » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 2:52 AM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #28

ythn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unity and Unreal have made things we couldn't have dreamed of possible. Such as mountains of bloatware/shovelware template games clogging up every single online store and platform.

There has always been mountains of books and huge libraries of music being created and we have always managed. Find people you trust to recommend things to you. I recommend Tom Chick at Quarter to Three.

Tom's alright; his forums are a mess, though. I find Three Moves Ahead to encapsulate a similar viewpoint with a lot less gross around it.

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#48

Post by Allar » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 3:01 AM UTC

gambler wrote: post #42

Good article, but I'm not sure who it is targeted at. Companies/teams that do bad things the author recommends against (or don't do good things he recommends) are usually ran by people who either don't care or are pathologically clueless. They're not going to read this. If they do, they are not going to change the right thing. They will instead go to some business conference, listen to overhyped process consultants a…

You're right. I wrote this article knowing this, which is what I tried opening with.

I'm not qualified to write a book however because this article itself is proof my writing skills need work.

Otherwise I'd be able to be more clear.

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#49

Post by pas » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 3:05 AM UTC

AndyNemmity wrote: post #41

"Usually an outstanding problem or issue is already known by your staff, and often they have tried to make you aware of this problem, but usually it gets prioritized into nothingness, or filtered into white noise by your chain of command where no action gets done." This is the same as being a consultant. You come on site, you listen to everyone and make notes of it, and then you make a presentation and plan for direc…

As a consultant, they never change.

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#50

Post by johnmcarthur » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 4:08 AM UTC

"If you're reading this as an engineer (but this may apply to many fields), or as someone looking to grow an engineer, the most important thing you can do is identify current issues and weaknesses."

I learned a very different things, but thank you nonetheless: there are companies that care about these things! I just got a full-time job that is basically like this, a hell on Earth (I've been freelancing before). So the lesson I learned is, I should be looking for a new job :)

My coworker (we are 2 in the team) is already jumping ship even when he joined later than me.