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If any gameplay or AI programmers with some experience under their belt are looking for work, we're looking for some good people at Jagex. No Java experience necessary for this role. This is a full time position in Cambridge, UK and you shouldn't need a visa to work in the EU, as that's a huge pain in the rear end. Email: gooniegoons@tamedtornado.com
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Aug 22, 2011 17:48
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QA stories are the best stories.
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Aug 22, 2011 18:05
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GetWellGamers posted:I thought I had some QA horror stories, but some of the ones collected on the new comic the PA/PVP guy are working on together are horrifying. I should get swapdotavi to post in here. He has a similar story to this about completely ruining any [popular sports game] NDS cart he wants to. [edit] I've got a bunch of QA stories myself actually, I'll write a few of the up.
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Aug 22, 2011 18:18
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M4rk posted:Hey, that's pretty much the level of Blizz's writing nowadays. Taking potshots about industry leaders in a forum filled with developers is a great way to prove you have the judgment needed to manage a community! 
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Aug 22, 2011 18:19
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In my experience being an industry leader means gently caress all unless you're untouchable like Valve. I've heard a lot of senior people talk a lot of poo poo about other studios.
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Aug 22, 2011 19:03
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Monster w21 Faces posted:In my experience being an industry leader means gently caress all unless you're untouchable like Valve. It's funny you mention that considering the last couple weeks! http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2011/08/activision-exec-jabs-ea-over-mudslinging/1
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Aug 22, 2011 19:15
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MustardFacial posted:I should get swapdotavi to post in here. He has a similar story to this about completely ruining any [popular sports game] NDS cart he wants to. As requested: If you eject the card when saving a logo for a custom team in [popular sports franchise] 2006 or 2007, (it's been a while and QA with that company was a bit of a blur) you of course corrupt the save. However, rather more unexpectedly, you can never play a custom team game of any kind ever again with any team. It just hard locks when you select the custom team game-mode. To fix it you have to wipe the eeprom, which retail users cannot do. I found this the first year I was working there, but it had been unknowingly shipped the year before. Basically if you trigger this bug on the year that was shipped you are now down one gamemode. Forever.
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Aug 22, 2011 19:31
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wodin posted:Taking potshots about industry leaders in a forum filled with developers is a great way to prove you have the judgment needed to manage a community! But then you used an emote, so you're cool in my book. Also, even a layman Blizzard fan knows their writing has changed since the glory days of the last 90s and early 2000s. Most of the awesome plot lines in WC2 and SC have been glossed over or dropped in favor of more pedestrian tropes. SC2's campaign is a great example. Jim Raynor's not who he used to be. M4rk fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Aug 22, 2011 |
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Aug 22, 2011 19:40
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Kids, never ever let producers touch level editors if they don't know what the gently caress they're doing. Quick 2 week stint blew up into double the length because the guys who handed us the tasks had no clue exactly how much manual tweaking and fixing we'd have to do to repair the disaster they had created. I can't wait for the emails bitching about how long the project is taking.  I don't mind though, the work itself is all fine and dandy, it's just terrible project management at its best.
Snooty fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Aug 22, 2011 |
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Aug 22, 2011 19:48
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I know sometimes studios are busy, especially around this time of year (con season) but how long should one wait after sending in a CV before following up? What would be considered standard? I'm probably a little over anxious because I want to get back into the industry, so that's why I'm asking.
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Aug 22, 2011 21:00
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Amrosorma posted:It's funny you mention that considering the last couple weeks! This was all bar and smoke break talk though.
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Aug 22, 2011 21:02
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Please tell me all about it, i'd love to hear what happened. I keep everyone away from our level editors all the time, even handing off to another level designer can be enough of a risk. We had a designer poke at one with very interesting results, luckily there was a referencing/prefab system so any time our whole level broke we could just delete that self contained reference so we could continue working
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Aug 22, 2011 21:05
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A co-worker brought his kid in to work today. 8 hours of sittinq quietly in a cube while his dad writes code. Game developer is not as cool a job as he thought it was!
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Aug 22, 2011 21:41
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DancingMachine posted:A co-worker brought his kid in to work today. 8 hours of sittinq quietly in a cube while his dad writes code. Game developer is not as cool a job as he thought it was! I bet this was because the rest of the team was holding back on potty humour and dubious pranks while the kids was around. 
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Aug 22, 2011 21:50
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Fishbus posted:Please tell me all about it, i'd love to hear what happened. Prefabs in Radiant own. I wish they worked this way in hammer.
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Aug 22, 2011 21:59
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Counting my blessings that I'm in a tiny studio, right here. Also really finally getting the hang of 2D painting again. Spent the few days before experimenting with all sorts of painting styles of 2d backdrops and now we've settled on a style everyone's happy with I find myself able to crank out backdrops double quick 
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Aug 22, 2011 22:00
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Ehhhhh
Snooty fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Feb 17, 2018 |
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Aug 23, 2011 06:27
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Aliginge posted:Counting my blessings that I'm in a tiny studio, right here. You're working on smaller projects so hopefully you won't fall into this rut, but after working on Red Faction titles for 4 years I had the workflow down to a series of incredibly tight, very fast processes. This meant when I started working on something new, I had to shake those habits and actually learn how to make stuff again, and basically It's really kind of refreshing and I'm back to making work I'm super proud of creating, but watch out for the Production Art rut.
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Aug 23, 2011 17:29
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Sigma-X posted:This meant when I started working on something new, I had to shake those habits and actually learn how to make stuff again, and basically In each studio type, there's an eventual rebuilding phase where you get to update processes, but then you're back to doing outdated work within relatively short order.
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Aug 23, 2011 17:40
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This is going to be particularly weird when the next console generation inevitably is released -- the project I'm on is still in early conception and will most likely end up on this next generation. So any tech investigation and choices we make right now will inevitably be obsolete before release. 
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Aug 23, 2011 17:51
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Tricky Ed posted:The "no game writing jobs" section is basically there for the same reason as the "no one gets hired out of QA" bit. There obviously are game writing jobs, but they're exceedingly rare and they're not going to be hiring someone who's never written professionally to fill them. Also most people think "game writer" is "ideas guy," which is of course the job everyone wants*. OH HEY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT GAME WRITING LEMME JUST SETTLE ON IN HERE The industry is changing, and for the better. What's really interesting nowadays is how the role of the narrative designer is being developed -- at some studios, a more accurate description of an ND is "narrative producer", advocating for story and keeping poo poo together as the key communicator between all functional disciplines that have a hand in story. Something to consider as part of the changing landscape. But back to the discussion at hand re: the OP. If I were to rewrite the OP, I'd summarize as follows:
So, pretty much exactly what's already there, now that I think about it. Here's another way to think of it: For every one fresh-faced budding game writer with a degree and little else under their belt, there are at least two ex-Hollywood writers with a movie and maybe some TV experience angling for the same job. If you want to get into game writing, your task is to figure out how you can bring more to the table than the dudes that could give a gently caress about games as a storytelling medium but want a spot with a little more (relative) stability. (You'll know these guys when you see them because they never use Excel when writing chatter, if they write chatter at all.) Yes, make NWN modules. They establish that you can wrap your head around content development toolkits and work creatively within parameters. Yes, work on your portfolio, even if it's not GAEM WRITINGZ. Write all the time. Get used to killing yourself for little to no recognition. And if you land any industry gig -- QA, production, whatever -- and you want to break into game writing, find the dudes tasked with the lion share of the work and beg to take some of it off their plate. Be prepared to prove your worth before they'll utilize you. Offer to copyedit. Embrace your desperation and keep bashing your head against the wall. It's not Hollywood, but it gets closer and closer to that model every year. PS: Manley Pointer posted:Big companies that make RPGs or MMOs -- like Blizzard, Bethesda, and Bioware -- employ a bunch of in-house writers because they don't want their games' writing to suck, as most contract writing does (even by game industry standards). Other companies such as Valve have well-known writers working in-house. Some smaller developers who make FPS titles that require writing also seem to have 1 or 2 designers in-house who handle writing tasks or rewrite/reorganize the poo poo that contract writers send in. This is so utterly wrong I can't even what I argh what. The terms of your employment has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the work. While yes, I'd agree that creating the head typically signifies an explicit recognition of value on the part of the studio, to say that contract writing is poo poo because it comes from contractors is ridonk. typhus fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Aug 23, 2011 |
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Aug 23, 2011 17:57
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Jan posted:This is going to be particularly weird when the next console generation inevitably is released -- the project I'm on is still in early conception and will most likely end up on this next generation. So any tech investigation and choices we make right now will inevitably be obsolete before release. It isn't difficult to make a guess at what a next gen machine targeted for release in fall of 2012 or 2013 will look like.
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Aug 23, 2011 18:22
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Sigma-X posted:You're working on smaller projects so hopefully you won't fall into this rut, but after working on Red Faction titles for 4 years I had the workflow down to a series of incredibly tight, very fast processes. Now that my options have opened out a lot now that I'm finally at least in the industry, I'm going to make it a personal thing of mine to just loving learn to draw and paint better. It'll help me in my current job and with any (serious) luck art design, concept art or even just illustration outside of games could become a real ambition for me a few years down the line. 3D is great and all but funnily enough in my earlier naieve student days I wanted to do solely 2D art. Oh how the tables have le turned :v
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Aug 23, 2011 18:43
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Jaytan posted:It isn't difficult to make a guess at what a next gen machine targeted for release in fall of 2012 or 2013 will look like. Probably because the PS3 came out in 11/06, by 8/05 I had already been to two Sony Bootcamps on PS3 development, and had those giant PCs in house for 4-5 months, I don't see that happening right now...
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Aug 23, 2011 19:05
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Per popular demand, I've updated the writing section of the OP, esp. with the excellent advice from typhus.
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Aug 23, 2011 20:05
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I swear, if I get one more producer come up to me and say "Did you guys test this?" when referring to a feature I have working right in front of me I am going to lose it. Especially if said feature is working as designed, and has worked this way for months. Nah, we just sit here and eat cheetos all day.
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Aug 23, 2011 20:20
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Jaytan posted:It isn't difficult to make a guess at what a next gen machine targeted for release in fall of 2012 or 2013 will look like. 
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Aug 23, 2011 20:34
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Monochrome posted:I swear, if I get one more producer come up to me and say "Did you guys test this?" when referring to a feature I have working right in front of me I am going to lose it. Especially if said feature is working as designed, and has worked this way for months. Monochrome...Did you test this?
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Aug 23, 2011 20:34
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Monochrome posted:I swear, if I get one more producer come up to me and say "Did you guys test this?" when referring to a feature I have working right in front of me I am going to lose it. Especially if said feature is working as designed, and has worked this way for months. We don't even have cheetos in the office. WHAT IS THIS VOODOO MAGIC?!
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Aug 23, 2011 20:36
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Shalinor posted:I hope they more than double the memory this time. I doubt it will happen, but... I can hope They will spend half the manufacturing budget on some loving motion gimmick and the entire thing will be hamstrung by all their processing bandwidth running the always-on motion gimmick which they have tied into your dashboard.
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Aug 23, 2011 20:40
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Jaytan posted:It isn't difficult to make a guess at what a next gen machine targeted for release in fall of 2012 or 2013 will look like. You could guess about hardware, but even that isn't really certain -- they could easily have put more than 512MB of memory back in the day, but didn't. The Cell architecture was so unlike anything ever seen before. Even now most programmers struggle to fully utilize the Cell architecture, so imagine if they decide to iterate with some even fancier new hardware (as Sony tends to like doing). Of course, with the current hardware trend, the most likely outcome will be more parallelism, but even with later additions like SPURS or the Edge library, you have to carefully engineer the low level engine stuff. So the onus falls on engineers to figure out everything with new consoles. Edit: And this isn't going to change all that much (if anything, it'll make development easier), but there are also rumours about consoles going full digital distribution. So yeah, "a guess" might help scale detail on art assets and level detail, but it's naive to assume that the jump will be easy.
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Aug 23, 2011 20:41
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Shalinor posted:I hope they more than double the memory this time. I doubt it will happen, but... I can hope They did last time though? (Xbox 64M unified => 360 512M unified, PS2 32M system, 4M video => 256M system, 256M video) I still maintain that if Sony had gone further they'd be the dominant platform now. (Specifically if they went 512/512 instead of 256/256, I for one would want to develop on them as my primary platform instead of 360.)
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Aug 23, 2011 21:32
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Jan posted:So yeah, "a guess" might help scale detail on art assets and level detail, but it's naive to assume that the jump will be easy. Yeah I didn't mean to imply "duh its easy you idiot" which my post kinda came off as. What I meant specifically is, you can get a fair amount of info on what a high end PC for those dates would look like as a probable "best case", and use WiiU level as a "worst case". What actually happens will likely be somewhere in the middle.
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Aug 23, 2011 21:33
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Diplomaticus posted:Per popular demand, I've updated the writing section of the OP, esp. with the excellent advice from typhus. D'aww. I'm honored!
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Aug 23, 2011 21:40
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Hughlander posted:They did last time though? (Xbox 64M unified => 360 512M unified, PS2 32M system, 4M video => 256M system, 256M video) I still maintain that if Sony had gone further they'd be the dominant platform now. (Specifically if they went 512/512 instead of 256/256, I for one would want to develop on them as my primary platform instead of 360.) Vita's making me hopeful for the next generation. The original PSP was 32Mb (64Mb on later models), Vita's 512Mb RAM + 128Mb VRAM.
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Aug 23, 2011 21:49
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Jan posted:Edit: And this isn't going to change all that much (if anything, it'll make development easier), but there are also rumours about consoles going full digital distribution. I wouldn't expect a device to ship without a disc drive, but I would expect: - UI will be structured to all but force the user through the store, to reduce the present gap between users with consoles / users that have even opened the digital store - Twitter/Facebook/etc like connection between games - A better microtrans framework - Digital gifting capability - Increased parity between physical releases and digital availability - Substantial changes to the TCR/TRC lists to allow for different standards depending on $60 giant title or $15 XBLA/PSN - Improvements in patch capability parallel to the above - (possibly) Initial inroads to availability of user-made game mods being exposed on the console ports of moddable games ... and console companies are going to be increasingly aware that generations go much, much longer now, so you'll see additional future proofing. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Aug 23, 2011 |
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Aug 23, 2011 22:28
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Aliginge posted:Now that my options have opened out a lot now that I'm finally at least in the industry, I'm going to make it a personal thing of mine to just loving learn to draw and paint better. It'll help me in my current job and with any (serious) luck art design, concept art or even just illustration outside of games could become a real ambition for me a few years down the line. I've been trying to find Leamington art classes or something. I found an evening group few months ago that said they meet on Wednesdays somewhere in town, but I can't find it now:(
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Aug 23, 2011 22:36
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Shalinor posted:additional future proofing. Hopefully by having enough memory, with a unified architecture. 
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Aug 23, 2011 22:44
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Amrosorma posted:It's funny you mention that considering the last couple weeks! I think I might have actually finally gotten something right in the industry predict-athon.... Does anyone know who was running that? It started in the last thread.
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Aug 23, 2011 23:13
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Jan posted:Hopefully by having enough memory, with a unified architecture. ... and Microsoft will just release another new console with more memory and a better CPU that supports an easy-to-use superset of DX11.
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Aug 23, 2011 23:33
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