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Shalinor posted:This is why we keep saying "portfolio." That's your previous experience in cases like this. You have to make games on your own to get into making games professionally. There are no excuses to get around this - if you can't operate something like Stencyl or Unity? I'm sorry, but almost every single tool you'll be expected to use in the industry is more complicated and less user-friendly than that. That's why I'm doing the GameDev Challenge. To get something done and acquire experience.
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Jul 4, 2011 18:33
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Shalinor posted:As a designer that needs placeholder art but is an art nincompoop, is there any better choice than Google SketchUp? Or is this the gold standard these days? This is a bit late but Wings3D is a subdivision-based thing that's relatively straightforward to use. Still ten times more time-consuming than SketchUp but I've found it useful a couple of times for low poly stuff.
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Jul 4, 2011 18:47
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devilmouse posted:But the job listing you just posted doesn't require industry experience, just experience making games either professionally, personally, or as a part of a mod. What I've learned is "3+ years in professional development" and similar *usually* actually means "We're trying to scare off people who think making games is a fun easy time; send us a resume and some kickass work you've done and we'll probably ignore this anyway". My general rule of thumb is "I want to be X" "So be an X and show us your stuff".
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Jul 4, 2011 19:06
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I'll 'Nth' that the '3 years experience and one shipped title' has secret writing next to it saying "or equivalent skill, or the balls to think you have the equivalent skill" the job posting I took was one that had that, and my 3 years experience was making small, 10-week long games with friends and doing a bunch of stuff for fun/mods that never went anywhere. What is important is that you demonstrate ability and can make it clear you are a serious business guy and not a graphics tightener interested in free game demos.
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Jul 4, 2011 19:16
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What sort of thing would be desirable for a Technical Artist portfolio? I'm probably going to keep on with the UDK work and maybe do an entry for the game dev contest, but the stuff I've sounds online seems quite general or learning more heavily on the 3D asset creation side. Perhaps material and shader work in UDK? Maybe make some simple assets like a gun(or something less obvious) maybe a really basic character model and get them working in the engine? If only I could download worth a poo poo where I am to get the tools, regular large downloads tend to stall and become unrecoverable at night, and my torrent for the current build of UDK is just crawling. Wish I'd got it before uninstalling my outdated version 
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Jul 4, 2011 20:27
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In my experience tech artists are programming shaders, writing simple plug-ins for Max / Maya, and doing visual fx programming - particles etc.
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Jul 4, 2011 20:42
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BizarroAzrael posted:What sort of thing would be desirable for a Technical Artist portfolio? I'm probably going to keep on with the UDK work and maybe do an entry for the game dev contest, but the stuff I've sounds online seems quite general or learning more heavily on the 3D asset creation side. Perhaps material and shader work in UDK? Maybe make some simple assets like a gun(or something less obvious) maybe a really basic character model and get them working in the engine? techartist.org is a pretty good place for techartists. Volition is kind of a mecca for Tech Artists, but here they do a variety of things: create shaders create Maxscript plugins (exporters, tools, etc) create Python scripts (other exporters, other tools, etc) Occassionally dabble in C++ for additional toolwork, I believe. Basically tech artists write tools and work on the art/content pipeline. If we need a new exporter, they write it. If we want a quick rigging tool, they write it. If we have to batch a bunch of data, they write it. Anything that we want to have happen to data inbetween the creation software (max/photoshop/etc) and the game, they help massage that into place. Have you tried getting one of those download manager programs to allow you to resume your download of UDK?
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Jul 4, 2011 20:50
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FreakyZoid posted:In my experience tech artists are programming shaders, writing simple plug-ins for Max / Maya, and doing visual fx programming - particles etc. Some studios might separate shader programmers and FX artists, so if anyone wanted to get into these things, it might be good to make separate portfolios for each.
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Jul 4, 2011 20:56
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bilperkins2 posted:I do BizDev for Ubisoft North America, evaluating submissions for possible 3rd Party Development, Publishing or Distribution deals. Anyone with questions let me know, or any 3rd Party teams for any platform that want to submit, I'd be interested in discussing. Bil! What the hell, man, I never knew you were on SA.  Since you're you and I'm me, could you go over the review process for that puzzle game I submitted? I mean, at least on my end I'm fine with you dissecting my failure for the enlightenment of all.  Edit: And tell Vic I'm still really thankful for the big donation you guys hooked us up with last year.
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Jul 4, 2011 21:02
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Sigma-X posted:techartist.org is a pretty good place for techartists. I applied (and nearly got) quite a number of tech art positions before I realized my interest is more in the design area and shifted my focus. It varies from company to company, but I almost always saw pipeline and optimization type work, where you need scripting and to understand how 3D hardware basically works, and some shader chops. Frequently you'll see companies want rigging, especially nicely-scripted rigs with nice artist controls and sliders and things. Understanding enough shaders to optimize models for them (or optimize the shader) isn't entirely uncommon, nor is being expected to optimize mesh topology for hardware (making sure the triangles line up into nice neat strips as much as you can, etc). A number of places like their tech artists to serve as a communication line between artists and engineers, so you should be able to talk to both in a manner they can understand and translate from one to another (example: low-level programmers usually care about vertex normals(face normals at the vertex) for API reasons and artists tend to say "but vertices can't have normals! Faces do!" because that's the way their world is.) Take this with a grain of salt, since this is a few years old now and I didn't actually land those jobs, but those were the kinds of interview questions I was getting and what the job descriptions were like. I'm sure other people here are likely to have some better, more current information. On a mostly-unrelated note, it's amazing how much you can learn about the industry from interviews for jobs. Yet another reason to harden up and apply places.
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Jul 4, 2011 21:07
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Sigma-X posted:techartist.org is a pretty good place for techartists. I think this sort of thing has to be more along the lines of what the Criterion guy had in mind for me, more to do with the pipeline than asset creation. An exporter for XSI to UDK sounds doable, maybe even for rigging. As for the download, I'll take a look at that though I'm used to doing it all through Firefox. For whatever reason when Demon Broadband decide they don't want to bother providing internet at 1am every night downloads stop and are marked as finished, so there's no .part file for it to resume from any more. Will look at other downloaders, either for here or my phone so I can nab it off the wifi at the pub.
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Jul 4, 2011 21:24
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Is there some kind of database of all the major companies that work in games in canada? I'm having a hard time finding a good site that gives a brief description of the company and a link. Most aren't complete or only show mobile and indy devs.
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Jul 4, 2011 22:54
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GameDevMap is probably your best bet.
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Jul 4, 2011 22:57
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GetWellGamers posted:GameDevMap is probably your best bet. When's the last time that's been updated, I wonder? They have a good number of now-defunct studios.
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Jul 5, 2011 00:29
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bilperkins2 posted:I do BizDev for Ubisoft North America, evaluating submissions for possible 3rd Party Development, Publishing or Distribution deals. Anyone with questions let me know, or any 3rd Party teams for any platform that want to submit, I'd be interested in discussing. This could be pretty interesting! Here's my question. Let's assume I'm a small developer, for the most part having only produced some casual PC games, but the studio is quite stable financially. We're working on something bigger/more core for XBLA/PSN and looking for a publisher. What exactly would we need to provide/do to be convincing? I think the closest example would be Capy when they pitched Clash of Heroes at Ubisoft before all of the fancy Might & Magic frills or Housemarque with Outland, though in both cases the studios previously had a recent PSN title to their portfolio, so it's not entirely the same situation.
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Jul 5, 2011 00:52
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Mango Polo posted:This could be pretty interesting! Here's my question. Unfortunately, with the state of XBLA/PSN right now, pretty much the only thing we have been approving lately are projects with a fun playable demo provided at the pitch, unless you're able to self-fund all the way to completion (and just need QA/submission to MS/marketing/Ubi name on the game etc). Back a few years ago we were picking up more paper-pitch projects but the space is very crowded now and we're up against VERY heavy hitters, some extremely polished masterpieces like Braid, Limbo, etc, and some huge IP like Lara Croft and Battlefield, so we need to go in with as little risk as possible. Having a fun game at signing is one way to mitigate that risk. edit: I do want to be clear, though, that the only important thing to us at the pitch stage is the fun. Whitebox, Flash, Unity demos that demonstrate the core gameplay mechanic in a fun way, even if it's terrible graphics, are perfectly acceptable. You can make a fun game pretty, but it's much harder to make a pretty game fun. p.s. you would not believe what Outland was originally. Absolutely NOTHING like it is now. Originally it was a side-scrolling shooter, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. GetWellGamers posted:Bil! I could have sworn that you got my AIM handle from my SA profile, but I'm not sure what thread we met in. As for your game, unfortunately I don't think it was any fault of the design, more that an unknown IP puzzle game is a tough sell on XBLA/PSN, considering there's a billion of them already. Straight puzzle genre is super tough right now, but the mechanics could still be applied to another genre to get a blend that could be quite interesting, if you have an idea for something like that. edit2: I decided I wanted to give a little more general feedback, that could apply to others reading this as well. When evaluating pitches, particularly for downloadable platforms, I like to try and determine whether the game is a Distraction or an Experience. One isn't necessarily better than the other, as some Distractions are both great games and incredible successes financially. However, they tend to belong on different platforms. When I'm sitting on the couch with my Xbox, I tend to want Experiences, whereas when I'm on the toilet, I want a Distraction. If you look at the top sellers on both iOS and XBLA, you'll tend to find that same pattern, regardless of genre. Even though Braid, Limbo, and the like can be considered "puzzle" games, they are no doubt Experiences. And Angry Birds is definitely a "puzzle" game as well, but you would be hard-pressed to argue that it's an Experience over a Distraction. Your game falls into the Distraction category, in my opinion, and I would have a hard time imagining someone deciding to sit down on the couch and play that game. I think it may fit far better on the iPhone than on any console or PC-driven platform. Is the game easily portable to that platform? I know games of that type can enjoy a good level of success. A recent release by another studio, Powerhead Games, called Async Corp, is currently doing fairly well despite practically no marketing and no name recognition at all, as an example. bilperkins2 fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Jul 5, 2011 |
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Jul 5, 2011 01:03
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bilperkins2 posted:Unfortunately, with the state of XBLA/PSN right now, pretty much the only thing we have been approving lately are projects with a fun playable demo provided at the pitch, unless you're able to self-fund all the way to completion (and just need QA/submission to MS/marketing/Ubi name on the game etc). I should have mentioned, we'd pitch the project once we'd have a build that properly showcases the game mechanics (though most likely not a 'complete' vertical slice), not just ideas on paper. In that situation, what could we expect from Ubi? Or should we just pray that the game is attractive enough  e: Didn't see your edit. That's a relief. We're definitely looking at having a good demo, within the limits of what won't sink us if no one picks up the project and we can't find additional funding. e2: As for Outland that sounds pretty amusing. Guess it was like Ikaruga in yet another way. Mango Polo fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Jul 5, 2011 |
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Jul 5, 2011 01:24
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Well, thanks for the feedback, and sharing your process with the thread. Right now our programmer is actually rejiggering the code for Android and we're just going to self-publish.
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Jul 5, 2011 05:29
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I am looking to get my foot in the door as an in-house translator doing localization. I've translated a small amount of video game stuff before, but most of my experience is doing audio-visual projects (along with loads of random stuff from software mannuals to clinical trials). Ideally I'd be looking for a company in Europe, Japan or Australia, (can't drive and not US citizen, so I guess America is out, right?) Can anyone suggest agencies or games companies that hire in-house in those areas? Has anyone had any success with recruitment agencies for those areas? I've applied to Nintendo europe before, years ago, and didn't get through but they told my references I'd been employed by them so they could gain the contact details of other acquaintances to canvas them, so I would rather not go that route again 
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Jul 5, 2011 12:11
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So err seems I've got myself a week's trial at Akuma's IOS dev 
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Jul 5, 2011 15:23
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Rolled Cabbage posted:I am looking to get my foot in the door as an in-house translator doing localization. ... Ideally I'd be looking for a company in Europe, Japan or Australia, (can't drive and not US citizen, so I guess America is out, right?) It depends on the languages - we have 23 people in our localisation department and another 9 in pure text production so it's not so rare a position round here at least If you can do Korean<>German it's probably the most useful language combo we have but there are others that might be going.Tell me which ones you can do and I can ask.
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Jul 5, 2011 16:57
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I wish Irrational would get back to me about my interview
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Jul 5, 2011 17:50
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How long should someone wait before calling back to get news about their art test?
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Jul 5, 2011 19:41
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Mango Polo posted:Start with the first, then when you're done with it and feel like continuing get the second. There's also a really awesome Flash game code website, but I can't remember the name. I'm pretty sure that Shalinor should be able to get you the link though. Can anyone tell me the name of this site? So many terrible Flash game code websites, it would be nice to find a decent one.
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Jul 5, 2011 20:31
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Odddzy posted:How long should someone wait before calling back to get news about their art test? I would say a week. If you haven't heard back you can politely ask if they received everything ok. How did the art test go?
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Jul 5, 2011 20:48
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Pretty sure the DigiTanks guy is in here, so curious - were you guys happy with the sales the promotion generated? Did it help your baseline sales at all post-promotion? I don't have any idea how large the team size on DigiTanks was, or how much time was put into it, etc - nor do I know how you divided the revenue, I suppose. Regardless, was it worthwhile? EDIT: VV There wasn't a post of note, so I took it upon myself to determine the programmer-ese version of "we all float down here." Shalinor fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Jul 5, 2011 |
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Jul 5, 2011 21:51
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I missed the post that inspired the new thread title, but yay dev!
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Jul 5, 2011 22:12
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God drat the new CryEngine Sandbox editor is a thing of beauty. I literally had a playable level within 30 seconds of loading it up for the first time.
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Jul 5, 2011 22:27
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Monster w21 Faces posted:new CryEngine Sandbox editor Woohoo! new toys to play with. After the GameDev challange is up and I finish my TF2 map, looks like it's time to master a new tool for portfolio goodness.
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Jul 5, 2011 23:24
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gently caress all of you with your broadbands and editor tools and youtube tutorials (without a good hour to stream ahead of time) Do PC magazines still put this sort of thing on cover disks?
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Jul 5, 2011 23:45
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BizarroAzrael posted:gently caress all of you with your broadbands and editor tools and youtube tutorials (without a good hour to stream ahead of time)
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Jul 6, 2011 00:02
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19orFewer posted:It depends on the languages - we have 23 people in our localisation department and another 9 in pure text production so it's not so rare a position round here at least Awesome! I guess I should have mentioned that  I do Japanese to English, I'm also a 'European English' speaker if that makes a difference.
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Jul 6, 2011 00:33
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BizarroAzrael posted:gently caress all of you with your broadbands and editor tools and youtube tutorials (without a good hour to stream ahead of time) I can literally try taking the UDK download and breaking it up into .rar chunks if you can suggest a good place for me to host it. e: also seriously where the gently caress do you live that you don't have broadband? I thought you lived in the UK. I live in a goddamn cornfield and my pipe is as fat as a I am.
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Jul 6, 2011 00:38
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Sigma-X posted:I can literally try taking the UDK download and breaking it up into .rar chunks if you can suggest a good place for me to host it. I should have the UDK download finished tomorrow, Sandbox will probably be another two and I doubt breaking it up will help too much. I'm stuck in a village near Chichester where BT just can't be bothered to sort out the exchange, and the area is just generally bad. There are 4 exchanges in the UK not set up for broadband, 3 of them are in West Sussex. Doesn't matter who you buy broadband from, infrastructure isn't there, but they can still charge the "up to 20MB" price. In reality I download at 30k when it's quiet.
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Jul 6, 2011 00:44
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BizarroAzrael posted:I should have the UDK download finished tomorrow, Sandbox will probably be another two and I doubt breaking it up will help too much. Have you got 3G near you? You can try getting a 3g dongle monthly thing from O2/Orange and plug that in, the senior IT guy had to use one in a pinch and it worked out really well for him, even good enough to gently caress around on warcraft; so even the ping was pretty good too!
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Jul 6, 2011 00:58
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Just curious but what do the 2D and sprite art professionals in the games industry actually use to produce sprites? Most of photoshop's toolset actually seems counterintuitive to pixel level production, for instance antialiasing when rotating and scaling and the inability to draw straight lines locked at the crucial 26.6 degree isometric angle. I mean from what i can tell, Paint has the ability to easily draw straighter and cleaner non-aliased lines but you can't overlook photoshop's layer features.
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Jul 6, 2011 01:49
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Imajus posted:I would say a week. If you haven't heard back you can politely ask if they received everything ok. How did the art test go? The quality of what I did wasn't up to my standards but a few people that checked it while they came over to visit told me it was pretty good, it was a pretty challenging piece because I wasn't used to so much optimising but I think the final effect was nice considering there were many things I never did or very briefly touched on that aspect of environment art. I think I may have my chances but I have no idea if i've performed well compared to their standards. I believe you mentioned you knew the company i'm talking about right?
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Jul 6, 2011 02:19
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Aliginge posted:Just curious but what do the 2D and sprite art professionals in the games industry actually use to produce sprites? Most of photoshop's toolset actually seems counterintuitive to pixel level production, for instance antialiasing when rotating and scaling and the inability to draw straight lines locked at the crucial 26.6 degree isometric angle. I've just always used Photoshop. Every other tool I've tried just inevitably feels somehow wrong or foreign to me. I've only ever done pixel sprites in large amounts for indie/side projects though -- professionally it's mostly been antialiased RGBA stuff. For pixel lines I use the pencil tool and shift click to make line strokes, but the line tool has an anti-aliasing checkbox you can disable. You can also disable anti-aliasing for all transformations (rotation/scale/skew) on an image via Edit->Preferences->General, Image Interpolation = Nearest Neighbor. That said, I've known people who were in love with Cosmigo Pro Motion. I was required to use it on a contract gig years ago and wasn't too big on it myself, but it seems to have substantially matured since then.
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Jul 6, 2011 02:26
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Aliginge posted:Just curious but what do the 2D and sprite art professionals in the games industry actually use to produce sprites? Most of photoshop's toolset actually seems counterintuitive to pixel level production, for instance antialiasing when rotating and scaling and the inability to draw straight lines locked at the crucial 26.6 degree isometric angle. I don't think it matters that much but a lotta people swear by Paint Shop Pro 7, myself included. GraphicsGale gets recommended often too.
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Jul 6, 2011 02:30
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Shalinor posted:Pretty sure the DigiTanks guy is in here, so curious - were you guys happy with the sales the promotion generated? Did it help your baseline sales at all post-promotion? I'd have liked to see more sales out of the bundle (obviously I will always like to see more sales) but like I said in the article it was probably a fair amount of sales for the kind of bundle it was. There was no original twist to it and we didn't have the kind of big-name award-winning indie games that the Humble Bundle did. That's always an uphill battle, people will sometimes resist buying things if they aren't familiar with the games, but I viewed it as "the best games you've never heard of" and the people who purchased the bundle all enjoyed the games, we had ... I can't remember any returns for not liking the games. We could have made twice as much if it had been covered by Joystiq, Kotaku, RPS, but for some reason they all slept on it and the Escapist was the only really large game-related site that covered it. It's too early to say but I'm not sure I'm going to see a concrete gain in sales rate due to the bundle. In order to get that kind of kickback I need people who play Digitanks sharing the game with their friends who in turn want to buy it, and since the multiplayer is really weak in the version that was in the bundle, I'm really not seeing that. I think whether that kind of thing happens after a sale very much depends on the kind of game you're talking about. It remains to be seen about the other authors. But one advantage I have is that I can use the sales figures as supporting data for my application to Impulse and Steam which I'm going to do after I'm done with this next version I'm working on. Digitanks was me doing all the programming and a lot of art, one contract artist, and one contract composer. I put the bundle together largely by myself. The bundle games split the revenue evenly for whatever time they were part of the bundle, so Star-Twine got a bit less since it came in halfway through. Was it worthwhile - the bundle? Psshyeah. It's more money than I've made up to this point by far. (I'm new to this indie game development thing, getting revenue has been tough.) I'll be honest - I was ready to quit and start looking for a job, but the revenue from this bundle is just enough to encourage me to continue. The game itself has yet to turn around the kind of revenues I want though. I have a couple ideas I can try though, before I think about throwing the towel again. The iPad market is looking promising so that's my next target. Short question, long answer.
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Jul 6, 2011 02:45
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