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Jan posted:I shouldn't be ranting about this on a forum full of Internet strangers, but I have to vent somewhere or I'm going to explode.
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Aug 27, 2012 06:45
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The Oid posted:This is why it's a good idea to use source-control. Also, if you're going to change the files that come with an engine, it's generally a good idea to bracket every change with comments, so you know exactly what changed and why. Thanks for the tip. My UDK is actually installed to my DropBox so I can access it on the go.
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Aug 27, 2012 09:47
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The Slippery Nipple posted:Are there any Australians in here? Preferably Animators? I'm starting an animation course next year at one of two places (tossing up between Quantm and JMC) and it would be good to pick someones brain on where they studied, what indie studios are around, how soon I'll have to piss off to America or Europe etc. JMC has completely changed its animation course structure since then, so I don't know what it's like nowadays. For me a lot of the classes were tailored towards visual effects and film/commercial animation, which isn't a bad thing because a lot of those skills can be used for games too, but can be disappointing if you're exclusively interested in games. Just be aware that JMC is also a music school, so expect lots of drums and guitars while you're finishing that loving assignment that's due in 10 minutes and oh god stop. Lots of my classmates have gone on to work at places like Dr. D Studios, Fuel VFX and Animal Logic, either as 3D artists or technical assistants, and I think I'm the only one working in games currently, so there are quite a few success stories from JMC. If you need a suggestion as to which college is best, I really can't say. Most of the people at my work come from a variety of colleges (Quantum, AIE, JMC, AFTRS), and I've heard good and bad things about all of them. Ultimately it really comes down to what that college can do for you and your skills, and how it'll prepare you for the industry (I've found LOTS of colleges fail in the latter especially). My only suggestion is to try and find a college where the tutors are EXPERIENCED. Too many colleges hire graduates to teach a new generation of graduates, and they've always been pretty mediocre tutors at best, so try to avoid those if you can. Experienced tutors also helped me realise the reality of the film/game job market, which allowed me to prepare myself mentally and financially for it. If you want to be an animator specifically then you don't necessarily need to go to a game college, any college that offers animation might be good enough so long as they're competent enough to teach it properly. Whether it's game or film, the rules and principals of animation will always be the same wherever you go. As for studios, if depends on which city you're in. Melbourne and Brisbane tend to be the best places to work for games, apparently. In Sydney I've been told there's between 20 to 25 game studios, and that includes publishers, majors and indies alike. I found that surprising, because I can only think of four off the top of my head. If you haven't already, bookmark and keep an eye on https://www.tsumea.com It's a great resource about local game developers in Australia and New Zealand. It's also where I found my current job. Also be sure to look out for any IGDA events in your city. Sydney usually has one a month and are good networking opportunities. Lastly, I have not yet had to travel overseas for work, but lots of people are doing it so I guess it'll be inevitable. Be careful about making long term plans and commitments should it come to that. Hope you find the right college for you!
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Aug 27, 2012 13:43
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Synthbuttrange fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Jan 16, 2017 |
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Aug 27, 2012 13:49
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Sorry to derail but I love your avatar Owers. I think 3d Movie Maker was one of the key things that got me in to 3d modelling! I wish I still had some of the awful, awful movies I made back then and submitted to 3dmm.co.uk!
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Aug 27, 2012 14:01
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concerned mom posted:Sorry to derail but I love your avatar Owers. I think 3d Movie Maker was one of the key things that got me in to 3d modelling! I wish I still had some of the awful, awful movies I made back then and submitted to 3dmm.co.uk! Fake edit: Oh haha! The top two are by me. And the third one down here is my brother's, and he did get into 3d modelling. But then went into marketing instead of games, with me. Jerk. vvv I used to review them, too. I hope I never reviewed you harshly! Akuma fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Aug 27, 2012 |
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Aug 27, 2012 14:11
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Haha that's awesome. I think I probably watched your movies back in the day. This is probably the first review of any of my work I can find, back in 2000 (or probably before) when I was 15 and it got panned! quote:MATHEW ISAACS 'S ENTRY - An average entry, but the director has tried to be original with the inclusion of a worm from 'that' game to kill off Gustave. The animation is done well enough, it's a pity the humour doesn't work so well. 
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Aug 27, 2012 14:40
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rope kid posted:I've seen this specific thing happen before. Companies (game companies in our case, but all companies) should have strict protocol about disciplining people. It shouldn't really matter if the issue is personal hygiene, tardiness, or general incompetence. The person's manager(s) and/or HR should have a clear process by which they officially reprimand that person. That reprimand should include, "Now that you have been told this thing, you must take this action within this period of time or ESCALATION EVENT X will occur." However many stages this goes through, they pretty much end with a, "stop being bad/get fired" dichotomy. Yeah, I think that's what's been underway. Except that I didn't file a complaint directly, I went through our producer, maybe I would've had more feedback otherwise. Doesn't help that I have a highly sensitive sense of smell, so what's offensive at 10 metres to me is offensive at 3-5 metres to others. FreakyZoid posted:Your lead sounds loving terrible. Wait, what? The only thing I've mentioned of our lead is that he patiently puts up with this guy's frequent questions and holds his hand throughout it all. God knows I would've told Mr. Febreze to bugger off and flounder on his own, even if that meant the project half sinking.
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Aug 27, 2012 15:10
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Owers posted:Sorry if this post is a few days late but I work at an indie game studio as a 3D artist in Sydney and studied at JMC. JMC was an ok college. The first year was pretty terrible because most of the teachers were inexperienced hobbyists and students who graduated the year before. They were overall incompetent and made learning disappointing. Then an ex-Pixar animator came on board by the middle of my second year and improved the teaching standards there tenfold, which made the experience at least acceptable until my graduation (he has since left and now works at another college in Sydney). I felt really lucky to have him as a tutor. Wow thanks for all the info! I'm actually kind of looking to go into movie/tv/whatever VFX and animation but I'm trying to gather as much info as possible, and of course I'm not going to write off games as a career option. As you said, the main thing that will swing me towards a college is the quality of the tutors. Both colleges seem pretty even in that regard, though Qantm offers an internship at a local studio at the end of the course which is very alluring and because of that I am leaning towards Qantm, also because of its more focused atmosphere on games/technology. JMC seemed to kinda tack animation on as an extra which kinda gave me wrong vibe. Question for you, Owers. One of the selling points of JMC seemed to be that they had all these other features like music studios and TV camera etc. plus students that could assist you in making short films and such, would you say this was an advantage? Also, if I sent an email to what ever the contact address is at Animal Logic or Fuel VFX asking about unis or basically what do I have to do to end up working for them, what are the chances I'll get a response?
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Aug 27, 2012 15:31
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Akuma posted:Fake edit: Oh haha! The top two are by me.  EDIT: Oh what the poo poo, broken tripod links all of them 
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Aug 27, 2012 15:55
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Jan posted:Wait, what? The only thing I've mentioned of our lead is that he patiently puts up with this guy's frequent questions and holds his hand throughout it all. God knows I would've told Mr. Febreze to bugger off and flounder on his own, even if that meant the project half sinking. The guy is taking a wage from the company, that a good programmer could be taking instead. This guy is poo poo but your lead isn't doing his job properly either, and his coding team (and arguably company) is suffering because of it.
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Aug 27, 2012 16:48
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FreakyZoid posted:He hired the guy in the first place (but no worries, everybody makes bad hires now and again). But then somehow he passed whatever initial trial period he had. And then he hasn't been hauled up for not being able to do the work and for causing splashback on everyone else. And he approved the guy's holiday request during a very busy time. Oh, I see what you mean. That gets kind of complicated, though. I'm not privy to the details as I wasn't there back then, but I'm told that the programmers that interviewed Mr. Febreze were highly apprehensive, but the (non-programmer) manager who interviewed him ended up greenlighting it. As for the trial period, for a while our studio had no actual project besides evaluating technology in order to pick an engine. That was a lengthy period, incidentally also during which I was hired, and honestly there wasn't enough work to go around to properly evaluate someone's probationary period. And our lead was not a lead during that period, just another senior. Only when our current, smaller, port project was started and the lot of us were reassigned did he end up being lead. Also, although he might be lead when it comes to task and workload separation, most of the actual management decisions (such as approving vacation requests) are out of his hands. It's awkward management all around, but while this has been happening, our main project has been getting on track... And without going into the details of internal studio politics, I know there are some key management people on the main project that will have the authority that our current lead doesn't to shut down this particular bad apple. Edit: But yeah, overall, one of our company's problems is there are too many people in management positions, sometimes preempting each other. This has been actively worked on, and I'm told it's gotten much better on our main project... We just haven't seen the rainfall yet, nor will we likely see it until we also are back on the main project. Jan fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Aug 27, 2012 |
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Aug 27, 2012 16:59
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The Slippery Nipple posted:Wow thanks for all the info! vJMC did provide an assignment that required students from all departments to cooperate. It involved music unsurprisingly! Business students had to organise and produce, music students had to form a band and make music, television had to make a music video, animation had to design a logo, poster and website for the band. It wasn't a great experience to be honest because I hate web design and overall it made no sense for animation students. You'd think they would've made us work with the television department to produce special effects or something. As I've said previously, they completely overhauled their animation course so maybe it's better. JMC never offered internships or had any partnerships with any studios for that matter, so if Quantum can at least offer internships then that's a major plus. Contacting studios is always a good idea. I've known people who kept in contact with HR people at some studios and it's always helped them to secure a job, or at least know about upcoming positions before they're advertised. The worst that'll happen is they'll either ignore you or send a copy/pasted response thanking you for your email. Might be wary of contacting Fuel VFX right now though, they've just gone into administration and are probably dealing with a lot of bad poo poo right now. concerned mom posted:Sorry to derail but I love your avatar Owers. I think 3d Movie Maker was one of the key things that got me in to 3d modelling! I wish I still had some of the awful, awful movies I made back then and submitted to 3dmm.co.uk! Akuma posted:Oh god I was just about to say the same thing! Only not the part about getting in to 3d modelling because I'm a programmer.
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Aug 28, 2012 05:18
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Interesting. I keep seeing JMC's ads around and they're always aimed at 'LEARN ANIMATION!' with the worst 3d models on them, or pictures of people having fun in sound booths, all giving off terrible low-quality vibes about the place.
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Aug 28, 2012 06:08
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SynthOrange posted:Uh the games industry in Melbourne is in really bad shape with a lot of studios and stuff closing up shop. Animation hasnt been doing too well either. What animation companies are even down here anymore? Act3 were the only guys of note that I was aware of, and they haven't really done anything since Fury. Are they even still open? vvv- They didn't like my name of IronMint for some reason. 
AntiPseudonym fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Aug 28, 2012 |
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Aug 28, 2012 06:37
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Synthbuttrange fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Jan 16, 2017 |
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Aug 28, 2012 06:42
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I just applied for a QA spot at Pocket Gems. Is anyone here on that team? Seems like a lovely place.
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Aug 28, 2012 22:57
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I applied there a long time ago and realized a little too late that it was "Gems", not "Games." Probably one of the reasons why I didn't hear back from them.
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Aug 29, 2012 00:57
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I just finished a 73 hour work week, and this week is looking like it's going to be about 80 hours. I'm running a big gaming tournament, though, and most of that time has not felt like work, at all. It's been pretty awesome. Chatting with the players (if you follow competitive Dota: SingSing, Maelk, syndereN to name a few) has been pretty awesome. Even if they aren't doing well personally, they're excited to be here and have loved the event so far. A year ago I would have never imagined this happening. I'm still scared at times, though, worried that I'm not meeting people's standards and not doing my normal, day-to-day job. Awesome things like this kind of add to that feeling, because you know that things are amazing. It's a poisonous mindset to have, but I'm not really sure how I'm going to address it.
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Aug 29, 2012 02:11
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ttocs7 posted:I just finished a 73 hour work week, and this week is looking like it's going to be about 80 hours. Do you work for Valve or do you work for some other company/contractor that is handling the e-sports setup for TI2? I'd actually love to know more about the whole e-sports thing if you'd like to talk about it. I think getting anxious about not meeting people's standards typically means you're holding yourself to a high standard - for all the bitching that a public group will do about an event, TI2 seems to be progressing fairly smoothly.
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Aug 29, 2012 02:15
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Diaghilev posted:I just applied for a QA spot at Pocket Gems. Is anyone here on that team? Seems like a lovely place. I'm a game designer there. We make freemium games so you're always going to have that one friend who hates IAP and makes sure you know it, but I like working there a lot. It's a pretty great team. Shoot me a PM and I'd be happy to tell you more.
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Aug 29, 2012 06:59
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I recently applied to a software development internship at a non-profit organization that operates out of my area. When I got to the interview the interviewer (the leader of the organization) didn't seem to have a clear idea of what exactly he would have me doing. I was disappointed when he mentioned that one possible job for me would be to learn how to use this business management program they had acquired, and then teach it to the rest of his team. When I expressed my concern that that job wasn't really a part of my skillset, and that I wouldn't really learn anything applicable to what I want to do when I'm done with school he gave me a few alternatives. I could help re-design their website (strictly html and css) or possibly work with some video streaming widget they were developing for their website but never completed. When all was said and done I didn't even bother to show him the sample code I had brought along: several data structures which are optimized to use custom memory allocators (c++), and code snippets from the game I'm writing (c#). Those samples were not applicable at all to the jobs he suggested I could do. I am definitely capable of doing the jobs he suggested, but I really don't know if this internship will benefit me. Will this internship help me land a game programming job? I feel like I might be better off concentrating on my own projects. I'm really agonizing over this decision so I hope someone can give me some advice.
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Aug 30, 2012 01:33
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Depends on whether you finish your personal game project. I did not. However, said project taught me far more about the intricacies of game development than any university class. In the end, even if I didn't have a presentable product, everything I learned helped me blast through the interviews that landed me my current (and first) job. You have to be diligent, though. I took the time to fine-tune the basic XNA engine I had, figure out why my allocators were fragmenting memory so much, write efficient memory pools, built a scene graph and implemented culling algorithms along with other optimisations, put together a primitive data-driven shader management system... The goal was to have a solid engine as a learning experience, even though building a complete engine as a solo project would take years. By focusing on that instead of completing a game, then I was able to shine in interviews with just theory. But a finished project also has a huge amount of different merits, although I couldn't say anything about that approach.
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Aug 30, 2012 01:45
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Or, if you're fine doing social/mobile you can probably get a job as long as you know what data structures are
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Aug 30, 2012 02:16
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Jan posted:Depends on whether you finish your personal game project. I will almost certainly complete this project, I'm really far along. It should only be a few more months.
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Aug 30, 2012 02:47
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Diaghilev posted:I just applied for a QA spot at Pocket Gems. Is anyone here on that team? Seems like a lovely place. They really, really like those stupid Google "gotcha" interview questions. No matter what the role may be.
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Aug 30, 2012 03:04
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Comrade Flynn posted:They really, really like those stupid Google "gotcha" interview questions. No matter what the role may be. Can you explain what that means?
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Aug 30, 2012 03:46
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Kunzelman posted:Can you explain what that means? I came in for a business development role and they started asking questions like this: http://www.techinterview.org/post/526363745/red-marbles-blue-marbles
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Aug 30, 2012 04:15
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Any of you folks work at these Expos? Do the guys there HAVE to say "Oh! Good move! Good idea!" with every puzzle. I mean, yea, I am figuring out the Epic Mickey DS game, but it isn't anything beyond the capability of a ten year old. Also, Warren Spector was at the conference. My brother-in-law (who was with me) used to work with him so sat down for a while. It was kinda cool, but NO ONE seemed interested in talking to him aside from some media folks. Is this normal for designers like him? Kinda sad. I mean, Deus Ex!
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Aug 30, 2012 04:26
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Machismo posted:Also, Warren Spector was at the conference. My brother-in-law (who was with me) used to work with him so sat down for a while. It was kinda cool, but NO ONE seemed interested in talking to him aside from some media folks. Disney is only attractive if you're an artist working on the films. Once they hear "yeah, in video games" after "I work for Disney" it's usually "Oh, that's nice." That would be my guess. He's got accomplishments from a long while ago and now he's "just Disney games".
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Aug 30, 2012 04:48
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Owers posted:I think you'd be right about animation being tacked on. JMC has always primarily been a music school with broadcasting and business coming second. Us animation students were often treated like the black sheep in the family by the administration and other students. One example I recall: every year JMC holds a 'showcase' with performances and awards given out to the best students, and every student in their second year had to help with the preparations and content. The administration refused to let us participate, which was annoying because producing showcase content was part of our final assessment and we'd all fail without doing it. It took weeks of protesting to change the administrations minds. In the end they didn't use any of the content we produced, but we got the marks at least. v Yea the new animation course seemed a lot better when I went there for an open day but it still did seem like the animation/games design people were the black sheep. Qantm is looking pretty good right now, but I've still got a while to think about things. Didn't know that Fuel was going into administration, that doesn't sound good, thanks for the heads up, I'll fling some emails at some studios and see what happens.
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Aug 30, 2012 04:56
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Comrade Flynn posted:I came in for a business development role and they started asking questions like this: Machismo posted:Is this normal for designers like him? Kinda sad. I mean, Deus Ex! Adraeus fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Aug 30, 2012 |
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Aug 30, 2012 04:57
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Adraeus posted:My uncle was asked a similarly stupid question in an interview with IBM back in the day. He was interviewing for a management position. His answer: "I'll delegate the task to a subordinate and focus on what you paid me to do." He was hired on the spot. Yeah. This wasn't the case here. They really wanted me to answer them. I say them because there were several of these questions. I asked why this was necessary for this role, and they said they want everyone in the organization - from top to bottom - to be able to be analytical product managers. Which is fine if that's what they want, but not my cup of tea.
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Aug 30, 2012 07:35
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Sigma-X posted:Do you work for Valve or do you work for some other company/contractor that is handling the e-sports setup for TI2? I work for Valve, and have no problem talking about esports. I've been a competitor, a spectator, and an organizer even before this. I've been around it for a while. I don't currently have PMs, though. TI2 is not my main, day-to-day job, though. While it's going smoothly so far and my peers recognize that, it's not what I was hired to do.
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Aug 30, 2012 07:41
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mutata posted:Disney is only attractive if you're an artist working on the films. Once they hear "yeah, in video games" after "I work for Disney" it's usually "Oh, that's nice." That would be my guess. He's got accomplishments from a long while ago and now he's "just Disney games". Yeah this isn't it at all.
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Aug 30, 2012 07:55
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So, anything doing anything interesting (presentation, panel, whatever) at PAX this year?
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Aug 30, 2012 07:57
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Comrade Flynn posted:I came in for a business development role and they started asking questions like this: I got asked pretty much this exact question when I was interviewed for my current job. However the question was poorly explained, so I misunderstood what was asked and gave the wrong answer. Thankfully afterwards we all just ranted about how dumb those questions are, so it worked out! v v
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Aug 30, 2012 08:20
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Jaytan posted:Yeah this isn't it at all. Ok, so what then?
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Aug 30, 2012 13:54
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mutata posted:Ok, so what then? (people always thought it was cool that I worked for LEGO, and had LEGO questions - the only thing that ever made them not care was that post-release, LEGO Universe was also a not-good game, so if they knew about that, they lost interest) EDIT: ah shoot - look, can we not turn this thread into a dump on Spector? He's a fellow dev, he doesn't really deserve it. The game is not good, Disney is still "cool" to fans, etc, questiion answered, but the dude is still likely a fine game dev. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Aug 30, 2012 |
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Aug 30, 2012 14:35
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I am not impressed with his ability to make a mediocre-selling game using the biggest licence in the entire universe.
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Aug 30, 2012 14:53
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