|
Monster w21 Faces posted:How's that working out for you?
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 17:58
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 15:05 |
|
|
Smegbot posted:I recognize those desks! They were ace - room for 3 monitors, a devkit, a PC, multiple keyboards and still plenty of space for assorted Star Wars merchandise and some Lego. The desks are new (and are totally awesome, I want one for home) but we totally stole the drawers (they're on wheels) from Cohort across the street when they shut down. We must have stolen like 20 of them... FreakyZoid posted:Not too bad, I have had an apple this afternoon. I am hoping it offsets the dirty Greggs I had for lunch. Sometime I buy a sausage and bean bake from Greggs, but then I feel dirty all day long.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 18:00
|
|
|
Jan posted:I don't know how you guys have room for so much crap. Between four dev kits and three monitors, my surface is pretty much filled up. Hell, I have to keep my Intuos tucked away and only bring it out when needed. I have two monitors, a tablet, 2 devkits + monitor. I've got this shelf thing thats otherwise useless save putting crap on it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 18:03
|
|
|
Monster w21 Faces posted:Big desks. Literally every dev's desk ever. Two screens, twitter on one, lined with action figures. I am neither praising nor condemning this.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 18:09
|
|
|
Monster w21 Faces posted:The desks are new (and are totally awesome, I want one for home) but we totally stole the drawers (they're on wheels) from Cohort across the street when they shut down. We must have stolen like 20 of them... The desks are ex-Cohort as well, I sat behind one for 3 years... 
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 18:15
|
|
|
Gazmachine posted:Literally every dev's desk ever. Two screens, twitter on one, lined with action figures. not enought post-its in use. Sometimes the monitors end up looking like pretty post-it flowers.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 18:20
|
|
|
I used to have silly plastic crap on my desk but then the studio got abruptly shuttered and I didn't have enough hands to carry everything home and then I never bothered again after that. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 18:46
|
|
|
Gazmachine posted:Literally every dev's desk ever. Two screens, twitter on one, lined with action figures. My desk has barely enough space for two screens 
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 19:41
|
|
|
Monster w21 Faces posted:Sometime I buy a sausage and bean bake from Greggs, but then I feel dirty all day long. Greggs in manchester do these awesome Meat and Potato pies which are easily the best thing Greggs make. They don't exist in Boro or Leamington, to my absolute unbridled fury. Akuma posted:I used to have silly plastic crap on my desk but then the studio got abruptly shuttered and I didn't have enough hands to carry everything home and then I never bothered again after that.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 20:20
|
|
|
Akuma posted:I used to have silly plastic crap on my desk but then the studio got abruptly shuttered and I didn't have enough hands to carry everything home and then I never bothered again after that. My desk does look classier with only a few tastefully geeky decorations, though, so it's probably a good thing. Layoff desk shrinkage is a natural and positive aspect of game industry employment, or, er, something.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 20:40
|
|
|
Toys you say? I have an embarrassingly eclectic range of them at my desk. Everything from Zelda figurines, to a Starriors robot figure, to Woody riding in a Lego Technic car. At one point I did have a tall bottle of alcohol sitting next to one of the two dev consoles on the right. I'll let you guess which one it was.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 20:42
|
|
|
I don't really have much space for anything. Just some books, a lamp and my tablet.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 20:43
|
|
|
Shalinor posted:My desk does look classier with only a few tastefully geeky decorations, though, so it's probably a good thing. Layoff desk shrinkage is a natural and positive aspect of game industry employment, or, er, something. Screw classy, my goal was to make my desk a TGI Fridays. For April Fools this year I think I'm gonna get some wallpaper, fake wood shelf paper, a small persian rug and a classy chair. Maybe one of those green glass desk lamps too...
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 20:58
|
|
|
Aliginge posted:Dude, post up your Naked Gun poster :v 
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 21:02
|
|
|
My old desk was pretty much covered with eclectic Transformer, mostly recent stuff and some oddball stuff I got off eBay. Interview with Jagex coming up some maybe my next one will too. Couple of Gundam kits and Marvel action figures too. Want to ask this again: BizarroAzrael posted:I'm told that my interview on Monday includes a 45 minute programming test in C++. I've done some, but my C# is much stronger, I don't think it's even on my CV, and the job spec lists C#,..., C++. They won't ask me to make a rendering engine, or maybe even program at all in that time, but should I say anything? It's just the impression I got of the job was that C# was the main thing, which is in keeping with my expectations of a build tech job. Not expecting them to change the test or anything but wondering if I should say something, perhaps get clarification of what I'm goign to be expected to do. Maybe it's gone through HR and it's not really C++ or language-specific, in the timeframe I'm expecting more spotting errors in code and understanding of principles. It's mentioned in the description anyway so I'll be freshing up on it, but it would be nice if I could focus on C# as a priority since it remains what I'm happiest working with.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 21:12
|
|
|
Akuma posted:I used to have silly plastic crap on my desk but then the studio got abruptly shuttered and I didn't have enough hands to carry everything home and then I never bothered again after that. Aliginge posted:Is it a good thing when you speculatively apply for a job on the Sunday evening and By 11am Monday they have a job app spec written up on their website with 95% your own skillset? I take it you guys are in a spot of trouble? Good luck! After taking small boxes home from work for weeks prior to leaving, I wound up with 3 giant packing crates of stuff from my final day. At the new job I never brought anything in except the Optimus Prime transforming dart gun, but have accumulated a bunch of crap anyways. We'll have a new office soon, and then I'll bring in the Optimus Prime/Megatron collection.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 21:43
|
|
|
Sigma-X posted:I take it you guys are in a spot of trouble? Good luck!
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 21:45
|
|
|
Monster w21 Faces posted:What toys do you all have on your desks? I keep a plastic tokay gecko.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 22:07
|
|
|
On my desk: My laptop, its power supply, a notebook, and a cup of water. Occasionally, my iphone, its usb cable, and a pair of headphones make an appearance. Minimalism, GO!
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2012 23:13
|
|
|
Fishbus posted:not enought post-its in use. Sometimes the monitors end up looking like pretty post-it flowers. I go through a whole pad of post-it notes a week. Poor trees. If they'd just by me an iPad it would pay for itself in a year.
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2012 00:29
|
|
|
devilmouse posted:On my desk: My laptop, its power supply, a notebook, and a cup of water. Occasionally, my iphone, its usb cable, and a pair of headphones make an appearance. Minimalism, GO!
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2012 00:43
|
|
|
Monster w21 Faces posted:I go through a whole pad of post-it notes a week. I like the mechanical charm of postits, otherwise notes would just disappear into the electrical ether. Plus i can literally stick on in the middle of the monitor when it's off to remind my dumb-rear end of something the following day.
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2012 00:50
|
|
|
BizarroAzrael posted:My old desk was pretty much covered with eclectic Transformer, mostly recent stuff and some oddball stuff I got off eBay. Interview with Jagex coming up some maybe my next one will too. Couple of Gundam kits and Marvel action figures too. The build tooling and reporting stuff might be in C#, but if they expect you to be able to diagnose build errors then you might have to know C++. They might not expect you to fix the errors, but they might want you to know enough to be able to triage to the right team, or if you're expected to optimize the build process then you would have to know how the C++ toolchain works, which I would expect would require some familiarity with the language itself.
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2012 01:27
|
|
|
Monster w21 Faces posted:What toys do you all have on your desks? I have a ton of toys on my desk. Though mostly Cartoon Network toys since that's where I work.
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2012 01:45
|
|
|
Of all games, Peter Molyneux's Curiosity is the ultimate meeting derailer today. People are either getting really angry at it, or are unable to stop tapping cubes. I figure this can only happen in the games industry. Also, Peter Molyneux is the only person who could release such an odd app and get away with it. The best are the discussions for optimal cube tapping.
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2012 02:37
|
|
|
Dont really have toys on my desk. Just lot of post it notes around the monitor. I like to keep it Lucas art type related drawings. Good old raz, iron giant and of course an imperial stormtrooper. Yeah I know raz is more of double fine but we love tims stuff so screw my own rules.
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2012 04:10
|
|
|
I have an Ikaruga model on my desk, and that's about it. At my precious job I kept a whole bunch of Collector/Limited Edition swag though  Back to the iOS talk for a minute, I'm trying to look into the performances of some games, but it seems like everything available kind of sucks? Basically Appdata for Facebook versus App Anny/Xyologic. Is there anything better than these two?
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2012 09:15
|
|
|
Love the fact you've stuck your own review on there.
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2012 14:38
|
|
|
SnafuAl posted:Love the fact you've stuck your own review on there.
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2012 18:34
|
|
|
Entry Level QA question: So tomorrow I get the opportunity to walk into an office. There, they will present me with a PS2 and a buggy version of one of their older PS2 titles. I will need to play it and find/document the bugs. From there, if I perform well, I can move into the interview stage apparently. So obviously I want to be very clear in my communication when documenting bugs I find, but are there any tips? Like if there's a certain way I should be tracking things down or a certain way to be writing things down? After that, if I do well is the interview stage. I know there's been plenty of interview discussion deep in the past of this thread, but think there will be anything to watch out for in an interview for an entry QA? If you can't tell, this is my first time with such an opportunity.
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2012 02:06
|
|
|
Revitalized posted:Like if there's a certain way I should be tracking things down or a certain way to be writing things down? If they give you a format, obviously stick to that, but keep this in mind: The purpose of a bug report is to enable the developer (or artist, or sound person, or whatever) to find the exact line or lines of code (or art file, or sound file, or whatever) that are in error as quickly as possible, so that he or she can correct them. If you have no experience writing code, the information that is most useful for that task can be somewhat unintuitive. The short way to be sure you do it right is to record as much information as you possibly can; every variable you can think of you should make a note of. Some examples include: how long you've been playing, what behavior you expect to see, what behavior you actually see, why you expected to see the expected behavior, any obvious numbers (health, ammo, lives, energy, whatever), and whether you can reproduce the bug. It can also be helpful to attempt to determine what circumstances cause the bug. If shooting the missile launcher sometimes causes the missile to explode in your face instead of launch, experiment a little. Find out if it only happens in certain areas, or when looking in certain directions, or when your ammo is full, or empty, or if there is a wall behind you, etc. The more precisely you can define the boundaries of the bug, the easier it is to correct.
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2012 02:27
|
|
|
Revitalized posted:Entry Level QA question: Discovery When looking for defects, keep a notepad and pen handy. Write notes about procedures and feedback that the game provides to users. You will generally not be able to record everything you do to tape, if at all. I also found diagrams to be helpful. Trees work best for menus. Think about combinatorial testing: if I do x after y after z, will I get the same result as if I did z after y after x? Combinatorial testing can get much more complex, so you should use a spreadsheet for more comprehensive tests. Identification After you find a bug, you'll want to repeat your steps to determine the frequency, or how often the bug occurs. This may also help you narrow your steps to the essentials. You can note the frequency in the RESULTS section or separately. In a production environment, you will also need to assign classification and severity codes to the bug. Someone else will usually assign the priority code. I don't think you need to know what these codes are for your purposes tomorrow. Reporting The standard template for bug reporting is as follows: quote:SUMMARY The EXPECTED RESULT section is the second most important section. Despite what some people (even in this thread) think, testers aren't strictly concerned with whether x works as intended; they're also valuable yet thoroughly unappreciated advisors. More often than not, the feedback that testers provide in this section influences how developers correct problems. Communicate clearly and effectively. Check your spelling. And think about what you're saying! There might be a problem with a feature that everyone really likes, but if you're not careful about how you communicate the problem, the developers might just opt to remove the feature entirely. I also highly recommend Lessons Learned In Software Testing by Cem Kaner. Just don't tell anyone you're reading any books about testing. They'll probably say something ridiculous like "books won't help you test games because games are completely unlike other software." This book in particular is more of a casual reference than a straight-through read. There are a lot of techniques in this book that the average tester simply doesn't know because nobody cares about professional development for QA. Adraeus fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Nov 8, 2012 |
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2012 02:35
|
|
|
Business'y question: Does $600 sound high, low, or spot-on for an AppStore icon set + key visual (to be used as loading screen art / banners / etc)? ... that is, from artist friends I trust, as opposed to a random contractor.
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2012 02:57
|
|
|
Not sure how useful this will be, but throwing in my input from a programmer side - the absolute #1 priority for me are a set of steps that can reproduce me the bug. In theory if I can reproduce a bug consistently every time then I will be able to fix that bug eventually, it's only a matter of time and effort. On top of that if I get simpler repro steps that take 15 seconds compared to 15 minutes that means I can iterate faster, and then that means the bug gets fixed faster. Obviously, not all bugs give you a 100% repro rate - the hard ones are the ones that appear once, or infrequently, or at seemingly random times. The QA guys that I love are the ones that are explicit about what did and didn't reproduce the bug, how often it happens, etc. A bit of experimentation and deduction can go a long way. The closer you can get to that holy grail of 100% repro steps then the closer that helps me get to fixing the bug. I have immense respect for the QA folks who can somehow figure out the obscure set of steps that are exactly needed to pretty consistently trigger a bug - they can seriously be worth their weight in gold. In the worst case when you just can't get it to happen and you only see it once or twice then it becomes partly a learned skill and partly a little bit of educated guessing about what you think is relevant. Any vague knowledge of how games are put together helps here - if you know that switching weapons is pretty unlikely to cause a bush to start rendering upside down because those bits of code are entirely separate then you know what you should or shouldn't mention in a bug report. A bad set of repro steps is along the lines of "play through levels 1-6 and notice corrupt textures on level 7". If you encounter something like that, try jumping straight to level 7 and see if it's a problem just with that level. Or try loading level 6 and complete it to chainload into level 7 from there. Try jumping in and out of levels 7 times if that's quick. Even if at the end of that none of it worked, at least you can put that in the report and it will be obvious that it's likely something about a long playthrough that triggers it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2012 02:58
|
|
|
Shalinor posted:Business'y question: Does $600 sound high, low, or spot-on for an AppStore icon set + key visual (to be used as loading screen art / banners / etc)? From my friend: "How many revisions does she get with that? For that price, she's getting around 8-12 hours of work, so maybe it's a little low for such an important part of an app given the number of revisions it might go through, but it's not out of line."
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2012 03:04
|
|
|
devilmouse posted:From my friend: "How many revisions does she get with that? For that price, she's getting around 8-12 hours of work, so maybe it's a little low for such an important part of an app given the number of revisions it might go through, but it's not out of line." It may be silly, I'm undecided. My last attempt at a title screen ended up looking basically like this. That font. God, that font. Icons are easier ("pose actors, snap clean shot from good angle"), but text/titles/etc... I hate fonts.  EDIT: Honestly, the more I think about it, I'll just see where I am closer to release. Getting advice from others in here to the effect that I'd want to change my icon pretty often anyways, and no way am I paying this much each time. I need to solve the problem a different way, and this would cut into my audio budget (which is waaaaay more critical). Thanks all! EDIT2: But that font is still hideous. I am never inflicting my pathetic attempts at a title on anyone ever again, and will go more for an ambient scene. I have lost my font picking privileges for the foreseeable future. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Nov 8, 2012 |
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2012 03:15
|
|
|
It's reasonable for the quoted number of hours, though sometimes we inflate the estimated hours heavily up front (especially for friend work, which can get hairy). If they have a lot of relevant experience in promotional art, then it is a very good deal, considering the sales impact. I wouldn't charge a friend $600 for something like this unless they were super serious about it and wanted to work through a few ideas. If they just sort of wanted someone to knock out a pretty icon and graphic, I'd charge a lot less.
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2012 03:28
|
|
|
Revitalized posted:Entry Level QA question: Not to belabor the other points given here, in my experience its sometimes best not to overthink it- if an issue has a clear cause, write out the cause step by step and don't sweat describing every detail of your game state unless it seems relevant. On the other hand, when an issue DOESN'T have a clear cause then any detail might be important.
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2012 03:52
|
|
|
My contract ended recently, and someone at the place I was working mentioned that now is probably a terrible time to look for QA jobs what with all the games being finished and released around this time of the year. Any idea of when things start to pick up again? Also, about how many years of regular entry-level QA are "enough" to start applying for lead positions? That's virtually all there is in Austin right now, and I have about a year and a half of experience.
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2012 04:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 15:05 |
|
|
miscellaneous14 posted:My contract ended recently, and someone at the place I was working mentioned that now is probably a terrible time to look for QA jobs what with all the games being finished and released around this time of the year. Any idea of when things start to pick up again? Like, 6-12 months if you are good at it and can get someone to say so on your behalf. But I worked at a very very QA friendly studio so I might be full of poo poo. EDIT: Also, if there are a lot of listings for a particular type of job, like QA Lead, and you are even remotely qualified, then apply. Lots of listings means lots of demand, and lots of demand means better chances for you. Comte de Saint-Germain fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Nov 8, 2012 |
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2012 08:27
|
|