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Just got my employee copy of my last project. Feels good to have something phyiscal in your hand for all your work. Madden 12 is now out and, according to the back of the box, there are over 100 improvements!
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Aug 29, 2011 18:08
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Just got hit with my second you are too overqualified message. Doesn't mean I don't like work, my current contract is up in two weeks now and for the first time this year I have nothing lined up, stress!
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Aug 29, 2011 18:15
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Starting a new QA contract for Microsoft next month in the building Bungie used to be at. Which is going to be WEIRD coming out of 1.5 years of testing Halo for Bungie themselves in the same building. Should be good times though.
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Aug 29, 2011 20:48
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1stGear posted:Submitted my resume for QA tester jobs at Vigil, Bioware Austin, and Trion today. Looking forward to spending the next week or two in terror until I finally accept they aren't calling me back. two weeks? Oh man you don't want to know how long it took me to get the QA tester job at Sony.. Three months.. haha yeaaaah.. Still don't lose hope, you seem more lucky than me. I was at an Open House QA a few weeks ago, haven't heard much other than we will notify once we get an update..
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Aug 29, 2011 21:05
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GeauxSteve posted:there are over 100 improvements! Sort of like one game I did said it had "6000+ questions!" while it actually had about 2700.
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Aug 30, 2011 00:27
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I'll never get the complaint that an applicant is over qualified. Maybe they like the work they are applying for and will be the perfect employee.
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Aug 30, 2011 00:44
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Solus posted:I'll never get the complaint that an applicant is over qualified. Maybe they like the work they are applying for and will be the perfect employee. The biggest reason for "applicant is over qualified" is that the company wants a person that will be paid a lower wage and will stay for the length of the project they need them for. This has happened to me as a programmer straight out of school applying for QA positions. They don't want to spend resources hiring and training someone that might leave for greener pastures and leave them poo poo out of luck.
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Aug 30, 2011 00:50
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D1Sergo posted:Starting a new QA contract for Microsoft next month in the building Bungie used to be at. Which is going to be WEIRD coming out of 1.5 years of testing Halo for Bungie themselves in the same building. Should be good times though. Bog, Bungie isn't next to Pancake house anymore? Or are you talking a different building completely?
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Aug 30, 2011 01:14
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Solus posted:I'll never get the complaint that an applicant is over qualified. Maybe they like the work they are applying for and will be the perfect employee. They're worried that you'll jump ship as soon as something better comes along. Onboarding new employees is costly. And of course they aren't going to trust you if you say, "No really I'll stay!" because no one worth hiring, over qualified or not, would answer that honestly.
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Aug 30, 2011 01:34
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Hughlander posted:Bog, Bungie isn't next to Pancake house anymore? Or are you talking a different building completely? They are in downtown Bellevue now.
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Aug 30, 2011 02:19
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Jaytan posted:They are in downtown Bellevue now. Yep, and Microsoft uses the 434 building now. I presume the 343 Industries group uses it but my interviewer was hush-hush on the project itself so I'll see for myself.
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Aug 30, 2011 02:30
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Solus posted:I'll never get the complaint that an applicant is over qualified.
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Aug 30, 2011 04:02
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D1Sergo posted:Yep, and Microsoft uses the 434 building now. I presume the 343 Industries group uses it but my interviewer was hush-hush on the project itself so I'll see for myself. I think I heard 343 is over on Avondale, one of my friends went there after leaving WB, but I could also be talking out of my rear end.
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Aug 30, 2011 04:13
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Black Eagle posted:You're overqualified if a) you applied for a position below your experience level, b) the employer cannot afford you, and/or c) the employer is interested in candidates who can grow with the company. There are a number of solutions, including presenting yourself as less capable (i.e., underpromise and overdeliver) or proactively addressing the issue during the appropriate interview. Search LinkedIn Answers for more ideas. Yeah I applied a step below because it was outside of the mobile stuff I usually do and both explained it and spoke at length with them about it in the interview and they seemed happy that I wanted to grow in a new area. I think the second company was just feeding me a line because I wasn't over or under it was in-line with my last gig. Oh well back to indeed and linkedin! Already started down the list of contacts.
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Aug 30, 2011 04:14
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GameDev challenge over? Check. Goons seem to be getting jobs? Check. New semester of school starting for student projects? Check. Therefore, it must be that time of year where I remind the thread that I offer legal services to goons at reasonable rates -- contract drafting and reviews (NDAs and non-competes especially), copyright clearances and registrations, intellectual property audits, etc. For students and mod projects, I also offer additional discounts beyond my already very fair goon-discounts. Having your IP stolen is not fun -- I know this personally. If you're serious about developing and marketing your game, take charge of your legal situation.
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Aug 30, 2011 14:34
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Diplomaticus posted:
On the one hand, everything I can find suggests that trademarking a game title (or a movie title, or a book title, etc) is stupid, and doesn't really apply the protection you might think it does. Furthermore, trademarking your title puts you in nasty situations like the one in which Bethesda and Notch find themselves. I seriously doubt Bethesda really WANTS to come down on Scrolls, but, failure to defend the trademark could be later construed as sufficient grounds to dissolve the trademark, and yadda yadda. ... but on the other - there are a lot of companies that trademark their titles, so maybe there is some reason for this that I am not considering. There's some suggestion that it does make sense in the case of a franchise (ie. "Elder Scrolls"), but again, the benefits seem questionable. Does it ever make sense for an indie or similar small studio to trademark a title or franchise? Or is it purely a game for the behemoth studios that lets them muscle out smaller studios with smaller legal teams incapable of defending against dubious claims? Shalinor fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Aug 30, 2011 |
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Aug 30, 2011 15:18
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that reminded me of IP stuff
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Yes, for a number of reasons. 1) Other than the expense, it's easy. You don't even have to have the game finished yet either, you can file an Intent-to-Use (a.k.a. a 1(b) trademark) application, which you can continuously renew until your game is actually commercially available. 2) Trademarks are a form of income via licensing and litigation. People sometimes confuse that with trademark trolling -- not the same thing. If you've been awarded a valid trademark, you have a brand that has some commercial value, and you ought to be able to capitalize on that value. Now of course, there is a line between doing that and being Tim Langdell, obviously. But as long as you are contesting in the appropriate goods & services class, and you're actively using your mark, there's no reason you shouldn't do this (hint: big studios do this.) 3) Locks in a name in the same way registering for a domain name locks it in for you as well. 4) Compared to other forms of litigation, protecting a trademark is relatively cheap, although lengthy. Same with contesting one. 5) As part of a broader IP package, it makes you more attractive (and also increases your value) for acquisition and publishing rights. As a publisher, I would hesitate to pick up a game that could not be trademarked for the risk that it would hurt my profits through increased competition. As to whether it makes sense for a specific studio to register their trademarks, that depends on specific facts. Generally, I'd say that for most startups, it's not necessary until you've got an established product cycle going on, or if you are working on a game that just cries out for licensing arrangements -- but my big caveat is "look at Minecraft".
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Aug 30, 2011 16:02
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PAX and Gamescom over? check. League of Legends patch last week added in a bunch of UI changes my contact was working on? check. Is it Tuesday and 1PM EST? check. E-mail away! this one was a bit more straight forward; almost no small talk aside from a complement on the new UI stuff, and then wondering when things will begin moving forward again for me and them.
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Aug 30, 2011 18:10
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There's this guy who wants to sell me art assets. He's located in former Soviet Union. We both speak English and Russian, so there's no problem in communication. He sells exclusive rights, and he would give me the source 3D models, everything needed for rendering them. He's willing to sign a document that would transfer the exclusive rights to me. The problem: a) neither of us knows of proper legal process b) he used to be head of a game dev. project that he abandoned, but the original team still keeps the code together. That project uses his assets in 2D bitmap form, but he never signed any agreement with them, and never gave them the source 3D models. He condemns the team's artwork as "pirated" at this point. How should I proceed in buying the assets? What should he sign? Should he sign it over there, then send it by postal mail here, so it's subject to American law? And, finally (this is an ugly one, because I believe he IS a person of integrity, but nonetheless) - what is he sells exclusive rights to others after me, source models and all? More interestingly, what if the OTHERS will happen to reside in America (like me), and will claim that their assets are the "real" exclusive assets?
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Aug 30, 2011 21:20
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monsterland posted:stuff I'd suggest talking to a lawyer. There is a lot of suspect sounding stuff here, and even if someone here was qualified to offer advice it'd be full of "i'm not your lawyer and this is not legal advice" caveats that won't help you if things go south.
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Aug 30, 2011 21:33
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Going to bed so I'll comment more on that tomorrow, but tl;dr I wouldn't purchase "exclusive" assets from someone who cannot guarantee said exclusivity or can conclusively prove that they are in fact the rights holder.
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Aug 30, 2011 21:51
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Diplomaticus posted:Going to bed so I'll comment more on that tomorrow, but tl;dr I wouldn't purchase "exclusive" assets from someone who cannot guarantee said exclusivity or can conclusively prove that they are in fact the rights holder. His "proof" is the claim that he has the source 3D models, and no one else does. Really his graphics are by far the best fit for my project, and due to their unique nature I am really invested in obtaining them. They're "contextually linked". I can't control if he sells them to someone else, nor do I particularly CARE. I just don't want someone to come after ME later and claim I am using THEIR graphics. I suppose you could assist me in figuring out a contract? (for a fee and all)
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Aug 30, 2011 23:06
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Diplomaticus posted:[trademark stuff]
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Aug 30, 2011 23:09
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Black Eagle posted:FYI: Titles of single-title works can't qualify for trademark protection (PDF). Sort of. They are not statutorily ineligible for the principal register; they just have precedent of being denied by the PTO. The article points out several cases where single-title works with well established secondary meaning were able to get registration. As well, that precedent controls only federally registered trademarks, not common-law trademarks, and state registrations. It's a rule, but it's not necessarily a dealbreaker. -e- Plus as things like DLC and expansion packs become almost a necessity in games, it may be possible to make a procedural end-around by registering your DLC or expansion pack as a series. I'd have to investigate more to see if that's been successful in the past but nothing comes to mind as to why not. Leif. fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Aug 30, 2011 |
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Aug 30, 2011 23:31
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Quick question Diplomaticus, in my current contract there is a clause stating anything I make while I work for this company belongs to the company. I signed this contract when I, you know, needed to eat and stuff but now I am finding that a little....annoying, is there any way for my company to try to take money off of me for things I do outside of office hours? Naturally anything I do while in the studio using their poo poo is all theirs, but the idea that they own anything I make at home just seems...wrong.
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Aug 31, 2011 01:16
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Longtime lurker, first time poster. Got my portfolio up online, was just curious if you guys could critique it. Going to be graduating in a couple months so decided to put all my stuff together online : http://codymeyer3d.com/ would be nice to get some people in the industry opinion's.
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Aug 31, 2011 01:19
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striff posted:http://codymeyer3d.com/ I'm no industry insider, but you may want to consider registering a more professional email address.
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Aug 31, 2011 01:29
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I'm not an industry insider either, but all of your images have an expired url on them (3dcody.com). Also I don't know what this orange Free Realms texture is supposed to be. Its the weakest one of your textures and you'd probably be better off leaving it out of your portfolio.
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Aug 31, 2011 01:42
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striff posted:Longtime lurker, first time poster.
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Aug 31, 2011 01:47
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I would appreciate some feedback as well. Excuse the formatting as the import didn't go well. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RMGjLmPNMKbfLEum3gMQ9h9Edz5CFPljWZ3zgL6NxHg/edit?hl=en_US
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Aug 31, 2011 01:55
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http://codymeyer3d.com/free_realms.htmlquote:During my time at Sony Online I worked on an MMO entittled "Free Realms". The game was geared for kids running on extremly Bolded mistakes, in order: entitled extremely (fix that paragraph break) had You'll probably want to restructure and rewrite that whole paragraph, really. A quick 2 minute job, although I'd really advise iterating further on it: quote:During my time at Sony Online, I worked on the casual MMO Free Realms. Younger players, who likely could not afford stronger personal computers, were an important target audience for Free Realms. Therefore, we had to work with limited specifications in mind and try to get the best of extremely low poly counts and small texture sizes. Edit: I noticed you have some more text for the UDK sample, you ought to take a syntactic pass at it as well. You could afford to include a brief blurb to contextualise your portfolio before dumping images proper. I don't know all the text on the main page is actually pictures, but the clashing background on "Cody Meyer environment etc etc" doesn't look very nice. Plus, all these pictures have noticeable JPEG artifacts. More grammar: University of California San Diego [2007 – Present]: B.A. ICAM (Computer in the Arts) major with an emphesis on programming Run a spellchecker, seriously. "I adapt and learn new software and their pipelines with speed and ease" Really generic, all technical artists have to do this. (Try going in for an interview saying "I refuse to learn anything not Unreal".) If you must include it, rephrase to: "I adapt to new software and learn their pipelines with speed and ease" Jan fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Aug 31, 2011 |
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Aug 31, 2011 02:01
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Rapt0rCharles9231 posted:I'm not an industry insider either, but all of your images have an expired url on them (3dcody.com). Thanks, put in the wrong url on the photos. Fixed. I'm debating if I should even put the free realms textures on there or not. The work is so old it might not even be relevant anymore.
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Aug 31, 2011 02:01
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Jan posted:http://codymeyer3d.com/free_realms.html Dang, you rock. Thank you so much. Much better at putting thoughts into words than I am 
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Aug 31, 2011 02:04
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Jan posted:http://codymeyer3d.com/free_realms.html Thanks, thought I spell checked it but Dreamweaver was being a bitch and I guess it didn't actually check. As for the compression issues, I am assuming your mostly seeing it on the background of my portfolio pieces? Thanks again for you advice.
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Aug 31, 2011 02:13
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striff posted:Longtime lurker, first time poster. I think your presentation is rather good. If you don't mind I have some assorted bits of advice on your content. There is a lot of wasted space in your UVs/textures. You can save space by stacking UVs on identical geometry that you don't plan to give unique textures. It looks like you do this for large mirrored areas (like the sides of the dumpster), but you can save more space by doing this on all of the little pieces too -- allowing you to scale your more important areas up to give them more pixel space. Like-a this:  On your tire model, the low poly does not match the shape of the high poly. The row of faces that ring the middle of the tread should be much wider -- right now it looks like the tire has a thin lip in the middle of it where it should be broad and flat.  The UVs on the APC look like they were auto-generated and are not very human readable. I would spend some time looking once again for stackable small pieces, but also trying to condense your map into fewer islands as much as possible. The normal map is almost entirely wasted, with nothing in there but rivets. I would expect to see that thing filled with baked bevels, grates, cracks, tread bumps, bullet holes, etc. If you don't want to do all of that, then throw the normal map out and use the APC model as an example of what you can do with only diffuse+spec. This is one of your stronger pieces otherwise, so it would probably be worth your time to give it another round of love. I marked in red some of the areas where I would expect to see detail coming through on the normal map:  Overall I think your final results are pretty solid, you just need to spend some time studying other people's UV maps and learning how to really optimize those suckers. It's sort of a drag, but memory is precious and it's important stuff. I know there was at least one anecdote in this thread where an interview came down to three candidates who were all equally good, and in the end they picked the guy they picked because his UVs were perfect. waffledoodle fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Aug 31, 2011 |
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Aug 31, 2011 02:44
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waffledoodle posted:I think your presentation is rather good. If you don't mind I have some assorted bits of advice on your content.  Thanks so much! Will work on changing some of the stuff you said. Really need to stop being so lazy on my UV'ing. Like you said...it's very important. striff fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Aug 31, 2011 |
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Aug 31, 2011 03:38
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HATERS NOT GUNNA HATE <3 striff fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Aug 31, 2011 |
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Aug 31, 2011 03:39
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striff posted:Also, wanted to know if there was anyone at High Moon here on this forum? Applied for a couple opening's there today. Saw on Polycount some guy who got hired there a couple months ago for a prop artist position and was sort of shocked they hired him : I'm not going to lie, I like this guy's art style-- it's got a really unique palette to it.
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Aug 31, 2011 03:46
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striff posted:Also, wanted to know if there was anyone at High Moon here on this forum? Applied for a couple opening's there today. Saw on Polycount some guy who got hired there a couple months ago for a prop artist position and was sort of shocked they hired him : Not sure what you're hating on here, although the first image (Bertie the robot or whatever based on some Ashley Wood comic, who has a really loving wacky style) has some odd (but understandable, given the source material) stylizations. In general, not a good idea to hate on folks on the internet who just got jobs and have a decent portfolio. What if the Highmoon folks see your application slide across the desk and recall that Cody Meyers didn't like Erich's work? It's a small loving world, you need to understand this. This is a very minor thing right now but don't make this a personality trait. Just by existing in this industry a while you will build a reputation and a network and you don't want that network to be a bunch of people who can't stand you. By way of example, a co-officemate and I were talking and he started talking about this guy who he met on polycount who was always messaging him, trying to network, but never working on stuff or even asking for advice/questions about the industry - it was always "hey man what's up, see any good movies/play any games lately?" watercooler chat. I go, "is that [email address of guy]? He used to message me on gchat forever until I stopped really checking my gmail and it was always that same poo poo. Turns out it was, and most folks know him, and dude has effectively blacklisted himself and burnt a lot of bridges because he does this with everyone. I'm pretty sure someone on polycount way back when you posted the subway told you the collapsed area looks really soft and round and perfect, which is my major complaint. It should have sharp edges. This is in fact something consistently wrong with the wear in that scene, everything has soft edges, like it was gently sanded down or eroded by water, nothing has chipped, cracked, sheared, or otherwise maintained a sharp edge. Which is what concrete does. I want to see a breakdown of the subway scene. Your UVs are pretty uniformly terrible, although your end results look fine, although oversharpened. I'm not sure why you have what appears to be rust on your plastic bin, either. Make a loving banner for Free Realms that is similar in size to the other icons, it looks like a banner ad. Other complaints have already been mentioned. Overall it looks like a fine portfolio, but you should put together a new piece. You should also try to get screenshots of the finished assets for Free Realms and flesh that out a bit - job experience is awesome! Build that part of the portfolio up more, especially since it's the only part of your portfolio demonstrating your handpainting skills. As an aside, you need to practice getting good normal maps more, right now your normal maps are not providing enough, and you're also sticking to very basic, boxy shapes. Do something really intricate and impressive - make a Gears of War Lancer or something similarly detailed and curvaceous. Everything in your portfolio is a really simple shape except for your horse, which is a really simple horse.
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Aug 31, 2011 04:13
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Sigma-X posted:Not sure what you're hating on here, although the first image (Bertie the robot or whatever based on some Ashley Wood comic, who has a really loving wacky style) has some odd (but understandable, given the source material) stylizations. All valid points The thing that was bothering me the most about the "other guys" portfolio was the presentation of his models and such. He defiantly have a unique style, but I guess it's just really for me. Anyways, I won't harp on it any longer. I just wanted to get some feedback if my portfolio stood up to his, but I defiantly went about it in the wrong way
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Aug 31, 2011 04:15
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