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Resource posted:School is nice, but no one cares about it at all from my experience. Make games, make games with writing in them. There are free engines and tools out there where you can easily showcase your writing without having to do a lot of other (code, level design, etc.) stuff. This may sound incredibly stupid, but here goes... Would anyone care if I made something using the Spore: Galactic Adventures toolset? It's probably the easiest set of tools for creating a narrative-based gameplay experience there is without coding. On the other hand, it's...Spore: Galactic Adventures, which I doubt as many people have as have Skyrim or what have you. I've already made one adventure to showcase my writing ability (in part. I also made it because it's fun as hell to make those things.) I'm thinking of making more, so if I'm completely wasting my time I'd like to know now. Waterbed posted:If you're going to make something that's difficult for people to run, I would make a video of it, but I guess that's a lot harder when you're doing narrative stuff. I'd still go for that though. Oh! Huh, there's an idea. Thanks for the tip! On the one hand, Galactic Adventures actually gives you the tools to record video in-game, so I wouldn't have to mess with (which is to say, purchase and learn how to use) Fraps or anything like that. On the other hand, as you say, I'm trying to showcase the narrative. Galactic Adventures' narrative is totally speech-bubble-based, and that might be a bit hard to capture on film. I'll give it a go and see how it turns out, though. Rocketlex fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Jul 19, 2012 |
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Jul 19, 2012 18:50
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If you're going to make something that's difficult for people to run, I would make a video of it, but I guess that's a lot harder when you're doing narrative stuff. I'd still go for that though.
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Jul 19, 2012 18:53
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Waterbed posted:If you're going to make something that's difficult for people to run, I would make a video of it, but I guess that's a lot harder when you're doing narrative stuff. I'd still go for that though. ... but you'd be way better off with picking a popular toolset, and showing you've got the ability to work with something even remotely industry-standard. EDIT: Seriously though, consider the Youtube video linking idea too. Having that in your portfolio to immediately play, with it showing an understanding of how narrative has to be woven into interactive gameplay, would be a leg up. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Jul 19, 2012 |
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Jul 19, 2012 20:18
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Anyone have a list of Casual Connect after parties? I went to the Open Feint one last year, it was pretty great. Definitely want to get in on more networking and free drinking again this year.
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Jul 19, 2012 20:19
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Chainclaw posted:Anyone have a list of Casual Connect after parties? I went to the Open Feint one last year, it was pretty great. Definitely want to get in on more networking and free drinking again this year. Their site has the official ones for each night, aside from that Pocket Gamer and Global Collect are having some. Aquarium party should be good this year too. I'll see if I can find any more but I'm already at three things a night.
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Jul 19, 2012 20:21
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Acethomas posted:Their site has the official ones for each night, aside from that Pocket Gamer and Global Collect are having some. Aquarium party should be good this year too. I'll see if I can find any more but I'm already at three things a night. I'd be interested too. Was just planning to go to the main parties at this point. Anyone going to GDC Europe/Gamescom?
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Jul 19, 2012 22:09
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Comrade Flynn posted:I'd be interested too. Was just planning to go to the main parties at this point. I'll be at both of those and at Get Games/ Unite 2012 after in Holland. I won't see my apartment for a month at this point when you include DRS in Boston the week ahead of GDCE/GC.
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Jul 19, 2012 22:44
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Whoa, I didn't see that Casual Connect was $600 a ticket, I don't think I'm going at that point, especially looking at the talks, there's not a lot of good stuff there for a tools engineer. What parties can I get into without a Casual Connect badge? Last year the Open Feint was a double of the monthly Thursday meetup, so they let everyone in.
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Jul 19, 2012 23:14
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Most places just let you in regardless. Or if you find me I'll say you are with me. Zynga was the only party I've ever gone to where they were super strict about things.
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Jul 19, 2012 23:29
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Comrade Flynn posted:Most places just let you in regardless. Or if you find me I'll say you are with me. Cool. The PAX parties are usually super anal about checking for badges. The one thing I need to go to next week (Unity Meetup) isn't even officially part of Casual Connect so it's free to get into. The party at the Garage last year was awesome, ended up meeting a ton of cool people.
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Jul 19, 2012 23:44
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I'm going to start at Z2Live next week and will be around for any parties but I didn't really expect to be in the mobile space then so didn't sign up for anything. Who's going to what after party? I got a Zynga invite already but that's it.
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Jul 20, 2012 00:39
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Hughlander posted:I'm going to start at Z2Live next week and will be around for any parties but I didn't really expect to be in the mobile space then so didn't sign up for anything. Who's going to what after party? I got a Zynga invite already but that's it. Z2Live is an awful place full of awful people...hi StockOption!
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Jul 20, 2012 21:44
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Hughlander posted:I'm going to start at Z2Live next week and will be around for any parties but I didn't really expect to be in the mobile space then so didn't sign up for anything. Who's going to what after party? I got a Zynga invite already but that's it. We chatted awhile back about a server role, and I heard this morning you were coming on-board! Also, Comrade Flynn can eat a bag of dicks.
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Jul 20, 2012 21:57
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StockOption posted:We chatted awhile back about a server role, and I heard this morning you were coming on-board! Kiss my Top Grossing rank.
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Jul 20, 2012 22:00
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Comrade Flynn posted:Kiss my Top Grossing rank. "my" is a strong word
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Jul 20, 2012 22:05
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StockOption posted:"my" is a strong word Let's eat sushi until we pass out.
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Jul 20, 2012 22:09
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StockOption posted:We chatted awhile back about a server role, and I heard this morning you were coming on-board! Yep, I think you missed another E-Mail from me, I sent something a few weeks back as well. I think I understand how Shalinor feels now. I believe I've shipped my last Packaged-Good game. And it's an odd feeling particularly since I had no idea at the time that I shipped it that it was going to be my last.
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Jul 21, 2012 02:43
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So I figured I should pop my nose in and solicit some advice on resumes. I correspond with a few designers and developers at an MMO company whose game I'm pretty invested in and one of them recently informed me that she had mentioned me to her manager and he expressed interest in seeing my resume and some info on the mods I've been releasing for their game. I've got a huge amount of experience exploiting mmos, writing scripts, addons, mods, plugins, hacks, whatever, but I only have a few years of professional formatting experience. It looks about like this atm (image so I can embed)  Obviously the existing stuff needs some proofing and tweaking, but like.. What's a good way to hammer in my experience working with UI Modification and things of that sort? I'm not entirely sure what position the manager in question has (and consequently what department he'd be exactly interested in me for). Because of that I'm looking to broadly talk about my MMO experience, but I'm mostly unsure about how to get that out in a coherent, workable format.
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Jul 21, 2012 05:31
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I don't know exactly what you've done but from the sounds of it, I would list all of the modifications (or at least the popular ones) that you've worked on.
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Jul 21, 2012 15:20
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You need to overhaul the skills section. - First off, things like Scaleform and Adobe Flex aren't languages, they are libraries or frameworks. - Drop the 2 vs 3 distinction in Actionscript. They aren't different enough for people to care. - Drop the use of 'familiar with' and 'proficient in' and things like that. Using these terms just serves to disqualify you based on your resume alone on loosely interpreted terms. - The list of 'games modified' does not belong in the skills section at all. They should go down into the experience section, and detail what work you did for each modification. I would also create a section for each mod / product you made or contributed to somewhere in the resume. Don't just list the games you've modified - that doesn't really tell me anything. Instead tell me what you've modified for each game.
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Jul 21, 2012 17:00
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xgalaxy posted:- The list of 'games modified' does not belong in the skills section at all. They should go down into the experience section, and detail what work you did for each modification. I would also create a section for each mod / product you made or contributed to somewhere in the resume. Don't just list the games you've modified - that doesn't really tell me anything. Instead tell me what you've modified for each game. If those happen to bracket your actual job experience in a way that hides it, separate them out into a volunteer work section immediately below. If your Programmer work entry stays on top of the list by virtue of date, then keep them in the same list. Once you've done that, I would drop the Summary section. It's generic, and wastes space better dedicated to bragging about how awesome your mod work was. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Jul 21, 2012 |
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Jul 21, 2012 17:19
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Shalinor posted:"Why yes, I've done this before, see, I was previously working on similar projects - I just wasn't being paid for that time." Two popular versions of this I've seen is "Paid Experience" for actual jobs and "Independent Experience" for indie stuff, or "Industry Experience" and "Work Experience" for the same.
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Jul 21, 2012 19:39
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xgalaxy posted:- Drop the use of 'familiar with' and 'proficient in' and things like that. Using these terms just serves to disqualify you based on your resume alone on loosely interpreted terms. Also, your summary shouldn't summarize your background. Your career summary should be a positioning statement that tells the reader where you would have the most value. In that case, lose the summary heading, center the statement, and increase the font size. For example: "A software engineer with more than ten years of experience with cryptography, analytics, and databases." Positioning statements are generally more useful for matching high-level or specialist opportunities with candidates who have substantial experience, but you can still benefit. Adraeus fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Jul 23, 2012 |
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Jul 22, 2012 02:35
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Man. Being forced to work as an artist is making me appreciate how frustrating Maya plugin bugs can be. Just found one in Maya's official FBX exporter (the version that Unity uses) that, to work around, requires me to export to FBX, reimport, fix the UV glitch, then re-export again. Took me all dratted weekend to diagnose and then work around. I wonder how much faster plugin bugs would be fixed and features would be added, if you forced the tools team to work with Maya? "Alright guys, all of you have to make a highly-detailed rock in Maya then get it in-game with zero glitches, at least once a week." Shalinor fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Jul 22, 2012 |
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Jul 22, 2012 23:18
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Shalinor posted:
This is my exact job and I love it, every day I get to create simple objects and levels in Maya and make sure they can get loaded into the design tools and the game itself. I finally got UDK running on my computer at home, and its amazing to realize how much I've already learned about putting maps together from doing my job. edit: But I guess that doesn't help the original point of making the tools team invested in Maya to begin with. D1Sergo fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Jul 23, 2012 |
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Jul 23, 2012 08:23
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You know, build engineering can be pretty boring and involves sitting around waiting for servers to do things (to discover that you screwed up your change, time to check in a new one and wait another 2 hours to see if it works), but when you realize you've gotten it to the point where you can build, package, and deploy a new build of the game with a total of 3 clicks, it feels pretty good.
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Jul 24, 2012 01:38
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A fantastic article on the 38 Studios collapse is up. No real surprises for anyone following the fiasco, but a lot of confirmations of previous assumptions at the very least.
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Jul 24, 2012 02:12
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Woot, a certain legal ranking/rating site has named me their top gaming attorney out of over 100,000 lawyers. I get a nice little plaque and my subscription comped, which is pretty rad.
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Jul 24, 2012 08:58
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mastermind2004 posted:You know, build engineering can be pretty boring and involves sitting around waiting for servers to do things (to discover that you screwed up your change, time to check in a new one and wait another 2 hours to see if it works), but when you realize you've gotten it to the point where you can build, package, and deploy a new build of the game with a total of 3 clicks, it feels pretty good. Pity there seems to be no demand for it and no incentive for companies to lift you out of QA money to do it, best I can tell.
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Jul 24, 2012 10:55
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BizarroAzrael posted:Pity there seems to be no demand for it and no incentive for companies to lift you out of QA money to do it, best I can tell. That is a horseshit statement. Plenty of companies need them, they also need them to be qualified, which is where the real conundrum is.
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Jul 24, 2012 15:41
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Is it worth posting a cover letter and CV instead of sending an email or filling out an online form? I'm just planning on sending out some speculative letters and some for specific jobs once I've got a little more added to my portfolio.
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Jul 24, 2012 16:54
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Achtung! Panzer posted:Is it worth posting a cover letter and CV instead of sending an email or filling out an online form? I'm just planning on sending out some speculative letters and some for specific jobs once I've got a little more added to my portfolio. People actually send applications by post? Actually no I know that they do, someone actually posted an application to us with a portfolio CD and everything sometime last year I think, and it is still sitting in the post room in the long-gone lead artist's pigeonhole. It's such a curiousity that we haven't thrown it out yet. I think the point I am trying to make is that an email is fine. We do computers, we don't need to be murdering trees.
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Jul 24, 2012 17:07
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Mega Shark posted:That is a horseshit statement. Plenty of companies need them, they also need them to be qualified, which is where the real conundrum is. I'm qualified and was out of work for a year with practically no one hiring, after 18 months doing the job at a QA pay rate.
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Jul 24, 2012 17:56
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Oh not this poo poo again. EDIT for content. I am loving my job at the moment and have done more drawing in the past two weeks than I've probably done in the last four months. Oh and Wacom Intuos 5s are designed to wear down their nibs, a plastic screen protector does wonders for nib life  Thirdly it's hot as balls here in Leamington right now. GeeCee fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Jul 24, 2012 |
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Jul 24, 2012 18:00
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Sorry but if I'm accused of bullshit after all that expect facts. Sorry if that's unfair or something. I'm loving my job too! I get loads of my own time and the pay's amazing and I get support from my colleagues instead of nothing. I'm actually able to make games now, unlike when I was in a game studio, which means I might be able to get into a studio worth a shot in the future. And the heat's crazy in Chichester too and after moving offices we're still arguing if its better to have the AC on or the windows open.
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Jul 24, 2012 18:15
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BizarroAzrael posted:Sorry but if I'm accused of bullshit after all that expect facts. Sorry if that's unfair or something. I have no idea why you were jobless. Maybe the industry in the UK is just limping right now, maybe it's your experience, qualifications, chosen aftershave, whatever. I am not stating this to start an argument, I am only clarifying in case some industry freshie comes along aspiring to be a build engineer. Please, let us not continue this conversation any further, beyond as productive, useful-to-others discussion of what makes a good build engineer. EDIT: BizarroAzrael posted:But if they want to know about build engineering, you won't be directing them to me, I gather. Please don't take it personally. If you want to discuss it, by all means, toss me a PM. I completely understand that this is a sore subject. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Jul 24, 2012 |
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Jul 24, 2012 19:07
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Shalinor posted:I have no idea why you were jobless. Maybe the industry in the UK is just limping right now, maybe it's your experience, qualifications, chosen aftershave, whatever. I am not stating this to start an argument, I am only clarifying in case some industry freshie comes along aspiring to be a build engineer. But if they want to know about build engineering, you won't be directing them to me, I gather. Fine, forget it, the discussion is only upsetting me, I guess it's all done with since my experience is regarded as irrelevant one way or another. I'm in a much better place now, but I'm still not prepared to talk about the darkest time of my life like it was nothing, or to be told I deserved it but you don't know why.
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Jul 24, 2012 19:36
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Anyone know if there's like a private version of group contribution stuff? Some former coworkers are running a Kickstarter, and one of the reward tiers is a custom arcade cabinet. Would be cool to get one in the office and a lot of people are willing to contribute, would be nice if we had a way to track that, especially because we'd need 150 people to chip in $50 each for it. I'll link the Kickstarter here after they hit their goal (well, hopefully they'll hit it). To be fair I doubt we would be able to drum that much dough, but it's worth a shot, most of the arcade machines we have are broken right now. Also in general I've wanted this for a few other things. Would love to have a 3D printer in the office, and I'm sure with a good tracking system we could get enough people to chip in. Chainclaw fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Jul 24, 2012 |
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Jul 24, 2012 19:41
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I start my job next week  . I am extremely excited, I really can't wait
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Jul 24, 2012 19:59
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BizarroAzrael posted:But if they want to know about build engineering, you won't be directing them to me, I gather. Fine, forget it, the discussion is only upsetting me, I guess it's all done with since my experience is regarded as irrelevant one way or another. I'm in a much better place now, but I'm still not prepared to talk about the darkest time of my life like it was nothing, or to be told I deserved it but you don't know why. See this is why I said "Not This poo poo Again." I, a random industry person who doesn't know you in real life is having their opinion of you coloured by comments like the above on a comedy internet forum of all things. If the industry is all about networking then I must let you know that this doesn't strike me as one way to endear yourself to people and if I am one person to mention this to you imagine all the people who don't. Restrain yourself a little, dude, for your own sake. crazylakerfan posted:I start my job next week Can we nag you as to where? 
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Jul 24, 2012 20:37
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