So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
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So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
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Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#2It's worth reading this even if you're not interested in games or the industry that makes them. The game industry is one of the most mature industries in software and it offers a possible future for YOUR corner of the software world.
Besides being one of the longest running industries in software, it iterates teams and products rapidly.
Because of this it has performed a gradient decent more than any other software industry, and I would argue it is is sitting at a local minimum.
From that perspective it's very interesting to study.
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#3Thumbs up for telling people they need to know some math. Even if you're not planning to work in the specialized areas that are mentioned in the article, it wouldn't hurt to be more comfortable with math than most developers are, because you may need to step in and help somebody in one of those areas, and (for me, at least), learning stuff like that on short notice is really hard.
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#4It's worth reading this even if you're not interested in games or the industry that makes them. The game industry is one of the most mature industries in software and it offers a possible future for YOUR corner of the software world. Besides being one of the longest running industries in software, it iterates teams and products rapidly. Because of this it has performed a gradient decent more than any other software i…
Unless your definition of mature is old, I'm not sure what you are talking about. At the large publishers stuff like unpaid overtime is built into the budget from day 1, game developers are typically paid quite a bit less than their counterparts in the business sector, and agile development practices are rare.
They build very expensive, monolithic pieces of software. It is pretty much the exact opposite of where software development has been going for the past 10 years.
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#5It's worth reading this even if you're not interested in games or the industry that makes them. The game industry is one of the most mature industries in software and it offers a possible future for YOUR corner of the software world. Besides being one of the longest running industries in software, it iterates teams and products rapidly. Because of this it has performed a gradient decent more than any other software i…
Most games are trainwrecks inside. They are /just good enough to ship/ and often no better. They are fragile, fickle things that for the most part have a market lifetime much shorter than the time it took to develop the title. You get your money back -- if you do -- in the first few months of sales.
Games are pragmatic and hard, cheap bastards that chew up teams and spit them out.
It's fun. :-)
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#6Thumbs up for telling people they need to know some math. Even if you're not planning to work in the specialized areas that are mentioned in the article, it wouldn't hurt to be more comfortable with math than most developers are, because you may need to step in and help somebody in one of those areas, and (for me, at least), learning stuff like that on short notice is really hard.
You don't really need to know 3D math unless you're working on graphics.
It helps. But you don't /need/ it.
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#7It's worth reading this even if you're not interested in games or the industry that makes them. The game industry is one of the most mature industries in software and it offers a possible future for YOUR corner of the software world. Besides being one of the longest running industries in software, it iterates teams and products rapidly. Because of this it has performed a gradient decent more than any other software i…
Most games are trainwrecks inside. They are /just good enough to ship/ and often no better. They are fragile, fickle things that for the most part have a market lifetime much shorter than the time it took to develop the title. You get your money back -- if you do -- in the first few months of sales. Games are pragmatic and hard, cheap bastards that chew up teams and spit them out. It's fun. :-)
This is what I've been suspecting after reading dozens of tutorials and examples on all manner of game-related APIs and libraries. It seems like game programmers as a whole care less about code organization, style, and all the other values that are exalted in other fields.
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#8Video games are an interesting phenomenon. They manage to pack many of the most interesting problems of computer science into one of the most superficial, yet profitable, applications. They're kind of like the warping of space time, an anomaly of extremes that manages to relentlessly suck brilliant minds away due to its siren call.
And yes, I love video games, and considered working in the field. But, stepping back you realize there are more important things to work on, and more useful ways to spend your time. That doesn't mean the temptation on both fronts (playing and creating) ever goes away.
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most games are trainwrecks inside. They are /just good enough to ship/ and often no better. They are fragile, fickle things that for the most part have a market lifetime much shorter than the time it took to develop the title. You get your money back -- if you do -- in the first few months of sales. Games are pragmatic and hard, cheap bastards that chew up teams and spit them out. It's fun. :-)
This is what I've been suspecting after reading dozens of tutorials and examples on all manner of game-related APIs and libraries. It seems like game programmers as a whole care less about code organization, style, and all the other values that are exalted in other fields.
You're probably being unfair there. The programmers who work on games are often very smart, very capable people who genuinely want to make a good product. A lot of so-called professional programmers could learn a thing or two from games developers about everything from writing high performance code to co-ordinating large development teams via the value of developing in-house tools to make development work more efficient.
But the games programmers are screwed by the simple fact that the market will accept games that are buggy/require insane hardware/etc. and pay for them, will usually not attempt to return them if they simply don't work but will rip them apart in on-line commentary if the game sucks, and will rip them off at the first opportunity if the game is cracked.
That means the business guys who are, quite rightly, calling the shots, are interested in basically the first few days after launch and nothing else. That in turn means there is no need to bother with things like code quality and long-term maintenance. Better to spend the money on a cinematic trailer and DRM that takes one more day to crack.
This will continue as long as people continue to accept buggy games, dubious policies like shipping incomplete games and then filling in the blanks with paid-for DLC, and so on. And right now, while there are clearly plenty of people like me who would spend a lot on good games that worked properly and didn't come with pseudo-malware attached, it seems there are plenty more people who just don't care.
You want them to write games for people like me. (Thanks! :-)) Unfortunately, most of the big games shops are going to follow the money.
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#10Thumbs up for telling people they need to know some math. Even if you're not planning to work in the specialized areas that are mentioned in the article, it wouldn't hurt to be more comfortable with math than most developers are, because you may need to step in and help somebody in one of those areas, and (for me, at least), learning stuff like that on short notice is really hard.
You don't really need to know 3D math unless you're working on graphics. It helps. But you don't /need/ it.
Physics, collision, animation, and certain types of compression also use a lot of math. I also found that just plain gameplay programming in 3D games required a pretty decent command of matrix math and analytic trig.