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devilmouse posted:Oh god. PAX is in 1.5 weeks. We've got a booth in the indie megabooth. Oh god. So much work to be done. I'll try to swing by. Square has us doing a panel for Nosgoth so I will be there!
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Mar 31, 2014 20:53
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devilmouse posted:Oh god. PAX is in 1.5 weeks. We've got a booth in the indie megabooth. Oh god. So much work to be done. I love me some indie megabooth! Also, your game looks rad, and I loved the heck out of the trailer for it. I'll be stopping by for sure.
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Mar 31, 2014 21:27
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Two MMOs I worked on parts of are closing down today. It was kind of sad to go in and play the games that I helped design for what I know to be the last time. Luckily, I have video proof that they existed for my portfolio, but still. Luckily I got ahold of another guy that worked on it with me so I had someone to play against (they were both multiplayer games).
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Mar 31, 2014 22:43
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Do any of you guys know what company produces the tradeshow part of PAX? Like, who you order show services and whatnot through?
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Mar 31, 2014 22:58
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So about a month ago I got some great advice in this thread for my portfolio. Since then, the NYC gaming industry has basically collapsed and I'm trying to rebrand as a UI/UX designer and graphic artist. Has anyone here made that jump before? All I hear from recruiters is "We love your skills, but your background is in gaming..." Here's my current portfolio, which I've re-styled to downplay the video games and promote the graphic design more.
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Apr 1, 2014 05:48
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devilmouse posted:Oh god. PAX is in 1.5 weeks. We've got a booth in the indie megabooth. Oh god. So much work to be done. My roommate and I will be there, and he'll be volunteering at the megabooth. I'm sure we'll see you!
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Apr 1, 2014 07:30
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Superrodan posted:Two MMOs I worked on parts of are closing down today. It was kind of sad to go in and play the games that I helped design for what I know to be the last time. Luckily, I have video proof that they existed for my portfolio, but still. Luckily I got ahold of another guy that worked on it with me so I had someone to play against (they were both multiplayer games). Which are those? It's always a bit sad when MMOs close down.
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Apr 1, 2014 11:07
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Now that I'm officially a Bostonian, I'm definitely up for meeting some of you guys either at your booths or around for drinks. Shoot me a PM for contact details. bunnielab posted:Do any of you guys know what company produces the tradeshow part of PAX? Like, who you order show services and whatnot through? Reed Expo did it in past years, I assume they're still doing it this year.
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Apr 1, 2014 13:47
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concerned mom posted:Which are those? It's always a bit sad when MMOs close down. SOE's Free Realms and Clone Wars. The company I worked at created the racing game portions of each, as well as a few of the other minigames. Here's a video someone else took: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A87hr2PPdL4
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Apr 2, 2014 04:57
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Superrodan posted:SOE's Free Realms and Clone Wars. The company I worked at created the racing game portions of each, as well as a few of the other minigames. ... though now at least I can go tell the guys "Yeah, they had that handful of us trying to duplicate the results of an ENTIRE STUDIO that was working JUST on those racing games, in a month  ".(EDIT: It was the car to car interactions/side-swipes we struggled with, specifically - I'm still not entirely sure how you made that work without massive desyncing) Shalinor fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Apr 2, 2014 |
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Apr 2, 2014 15:22
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I'm a level designer and I was wondering if anyone could take a look at my website and tell me how to make it better. http://hakanborazanci.com/ (please no DDOS) Do I go into too much detail, not enough, does something look off? Things like that. Send me a PM if possible, I'd much appreciate it!
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Apr 2, 2014 19:34
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Amazon Game Studios released a teaser trailer of stuff in development, and updated the web site to be more in line with where the team is headed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlVLhqj1weY http://games.amazon.com/about/
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Apr 3, 2014 01:34
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Shalinor posted:We studied your racing games - both of those specifically - for a solid month at LEGO Universe, trying to guess at what you'd done to make it so latency-tolerant. So freaking huge congrats on that. I was a designer, so I don't remember a lot about the latency related math in the code. I do recall us trying a few things to fix that same issue you were talking about. I think our ultimate solution was a combination of a lot of experimenting with mass/gravity/friction tweaks to make the cars easier to push around in general, and more importantly, designer-tuneable additional force on both sides of the sides of the vehicles that helped the physics out a bit. It might have even added more pushing force on the harder collisions because momentum alone wasn't enough. It's been a long time, and I can't quite remember, honestly. We also made the demolition derby game, and that involved a lot of colliding so it was something we had to address for two projects. I seem to recall different phases in both games along the way, including "Us A.I. can push everyone into walls and there's nothing you can do about it, you dirty human" and "If two players touch on either side they get stuck and are forced to adventure together in a forward path until they reach the inevitable conclusion". I think there was also the short lived "designers are having too much fun phase" where cars would just send one another into orbit with even the slightest collision. Anyways, I'm glad someone enjoyed it on a technical level, because we did a lot if work to make it on a short timeline and I'm pretty proud of how it turned out in general. We had missiles that home in on you like the red shells in Mario Kart, but if you timed your jump right then would go under you and start aiming for the next person. We tried to make it so that if the first place guy jumped it, it would go a ways, then do a 180 then come back (so you could jump it again and it would start traveling backwards through the ranks) but we had a lot of trouble with the turning part so we scrapped it.
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Apr 3, 2014 04:03
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Oh poo poo, I have a games job that is kind of relevant to stuff!  That I can do continue to do while returning to a UC, and is giving me a crazy amount of cool and varied experience.But I can't give details out yet  This sucks, but in one of those ways where it's not sucky, as much as totally awesome and I'm excited to talk when I actually can.
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Apr 3, 2014 05:00
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Congrats man.
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Apr 3, 2014 05:20
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DancingMachine posted:Amazon Game Studios released a teaser trailer of stuff in development, and updated the web site to be more in line with where the team is headed. This is cool stuff. Congrats on the announcement.
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Apr 3, 2014 05:25
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Blowfish Studios is looking for artists and Unity devs in Sydney. I love working here and we make neat poo poo. There's a bunch of different things going on right now: PC/Console stuff, mobile stuff, and kids' games. If you are near here and make neat poo poo please drop me your portfolio (PM me or phenex@gmail.com with your SA username so I know who you are) especially if you're a #SAGameDev cool cat.
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Apr 3, 2014 06:39
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DancingMachine posted:Amazon Game Studios released a teaser trailer of stuff in development, and updated the web site to be more in line with where the team is headed. I am kind of amazed at how legitimate your games look, I have kind of assumed you were going to make Kindle Krush Saga ad nauseam. Fire TV seems pretty interesting, too!
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Apr 3, 2014 23:32
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Sigma-X posted:I am kind of amazed at how legitimate your games look, I have kind of assumed you were going to make Kindle Krush Saga ad nauseam. Fire TV seems pretty interesting, too! Hahaha thanks I think? Yeah I'm hoping this helps some folks reconsider applying that might have discarded the notion before.
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Apr 4, 2014 04:33
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Well to be fair, the fact that Amazon is actually trying to make their own games is pretty surprising. Looks really cool.
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Apr 4, 2014 04:45
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So who is up for a PAX East gamedevgoon meetup? We could even do something a day before or a day after if that's more convenient, since it seems like quite a few goons are doing indie booths this year?
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Apr 8, 2014 21:23
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Leif. posted:So who is up for a PAX East gamedevgoon meetup? We could even do something a day before or a day after if that's more convenient, since it seems like quite a few goons are doing indie booths this year? "Walk to the center of the Megabooth at noon on Friday and just start asking about stairs."
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Apr 8, 2014 21:45
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At this point I'm planning on walking into the middle of the Indie Megabooth and shouting out "WHERE MA CLIENTS AT?"
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Apr 10, 2014 00:04
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I was farting around on the Art Institute Online website on Friday and put in my email address and phone number as I thought I had to have some obligatory conversation with a recruiter to look at the course descriptions. On Monday they called me and over the course of a 3 hour conversation got me hyped as gently caress and then pretty much signed up for a Bachelors Degree in Game Art & Design with the FAFSA done and me now just waiting. In the interim, I started poking around. The more I read around about the quality of the education and how seriously it's taken the more apprehensive I get. My wife says it'll be great because no matter what else I'll be getting a degree and portfolio. I'm starting to think reading ebooks to the tune of $470 per credit hour is a loving terrible idea. Especially if it's taken as seriously as Full Sail in the industry. I know this is walking the line with E/N bullshit but I'd appreciate a viewpoint from industry goons who aren't personally invested in my life or recruiting students to a for profit college.
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Apr 10, 2014 06:49
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FadedReality posted:I was farting around on the Art Institute Online website on Friday and put in my email address and phone number as I thought I had to have some obligatory conversation with a recruiter to look at the course descriptions. On Monday they called me and over the course of a 3 hour conversation got me hyped as gently caress and then pretty much signed up for a Bachelors Degree in Game Art & Design with the FAFSA done and me now just waiting. I work with a bunch of AI San Diego and AI OC folks here, but I've also gone to a handful of Graduate Portfolio Shows for AI OC in the last two years and the entire graduating class is somewhere between completely loving mediocre and dogshit unhireable (last time I went for fall, I literally had some kid who wanted to be a lighter argue with me over whether he had his portfolio site on his business card that he gave me - he only had an e-mail address, and he was adamant that his portfolio URL was his e-mail address. I'm not sure he even understood computers. He also had a dogshit render that looked terrible and he could NOT STOP BRAGGING about how it took 160 hours to render because it was so complex. You can read e-books anywhere. I went to school ultimately for things unrelated to art, but made games with my college friends and taught myself through google and polycount and cgtalk, and was employed as an artist for 5 years as a result. However, I do have a BA (which helps for overseas work, if nothing else) and had the gumption to stick to a self-study, self-guided learning process. If the structure of school is useful to you, and a BA would be useful for you (ie, you want to work outside the US some day), then online school might still be worth it, and if you're able to afford it, diving into fulltime studies will help get you caught up much more quickly. A word of caution - no school portfolio will ever be a useful hiring portfolio - they're always a loving joke. You want to show a portfolio full of skills you've mastered, and the school portfolios will be a bunch of "I took a 10 week class on rigging, here's my quadruped rig from that class" that suck completely. e: I worked with a lot of Full Sail folks who were good too. In all cases, the people I work with from these schools are Great People, and the school itself didn't have anything to do with that. It won't be a black mark if you have a great portfolio.
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Apr 10, 2014 07:12
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As a former AI student of LA, all I can say is take advantages of the classes because yeah the portfolios from students tend to be pretty bad. Also hey at least you'll get to have the Autodesk programs for free. Still have my 3DS Max and Maya on me. edit: VVV. Yeah AI has a bad rep. It's a for profit school for a reason. I mean there are some good teachers there but I would say the tradeoff isn't worth it. Shindragon fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Apr 10, 2014 |
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Apr 10, 2014 07:16
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Don't do it. Spend that money taking a vacation from work and grab a digital tutors and/or gnomon subscription as well as some videos from eat3d and 3dmotive and get crackin' Seriously the only point in paying for a college is the "free" time (and rent, food, etc) it gives you to work on your stuff and you can rely on loans. If you've got free time at home already why bother paying for a sub-standard education? Also, the recruiters at the Art Institute are ALWAYS going to get people hyped, their college doesn't give a poo poo about student's creative output they just care about getting as many people into the school as possible. They practically harassed me every other day after I took a tour at one of their schools. I'm not saying all Art Institutes are bad, there are some really good ones apparently like the one in Orange County. However, there are much better resources out there for learning and teaching yourself how to get into the industry, this one especially. And they're almost all online for free or fairly cheap compared to AI classes.
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Apr 10, 2014 07:17
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Also, my girlfriend is going to AI San Bernardino and looking around at the student work on the walls it is pretty disappointing. Luckily she has me to provide critical feedback which in no way affects our relationship The actual AI locations are pretty neat for getting guest speakers (I go to AI San Bernardino poo poo all the time) but I don't know if you'd get that experience online.
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Apr 10, 2014 07:21
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Sigma-X posted:which in no way affects our relationship Oh no she's going to be one of those girls? trololol
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Apr 10, 2014 07:23
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From what I've heard about Full Sail and A and such, you will find it useful if you treat the school like a tool that will empower you to produce your REAL portfolio on your own time. If you go there expecting to walk in a newbie and walk out employable after only doing what they tell you to do inside, then that won't get you where you want to be. Just the fact that you're concerned and asking questions is a good sign, but only you know yourself. What if you decided not to go to the school? Would you end up working like hell to get those skills anyway, on your own? Then maybe you'll be able to get a lot out of the classes. To put it another way, when my animation program director would run into a student who applied to the program but didn't get in and they said something like, "Yeah, I didn't get into the animation program, so I decided to just major in accounting instead..." he would secretly think "thank god we didn't let them in." So yeah. The question for yourself is "why do I want to go to this school? What are my expectations for this education here?" The honest answers to that will tell you a lot. That said, as an artist in this industry, you're most likely going to have to live in expensive areas and you won't be making a lot of money for a long time. There's also all kinds of possible instabilities and possible layoffs that have the potential to throw wrenches into one's finances, even if they don't have ANY debt. Is for- profit at school tuition a burden you're willing to take on and carry into a life like that? I don't know if I would be comfortable with that, personally, even if the program was amazing. mutata fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Apr 10, 2014 |
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Apr 10, 2014 07:28
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FadedReality posted:I was farting around on the Art Institute Online website on Friday and put in my email address and phone number as I thought I had to have some obligatory conversation with a recruiter to look at the course descriptions. On Monday they called me and over the course of a 3 hour conversation got me hyped as gently caress and then pretty much signed up for a Bachelors Degree in Game Art & Design with the FAFSA done and me now just waiting. The Computer Science program there sounded like a joke. Teachers who went on Youtube and ESPN during class, incompetent students getting hired to be teachers immediately after graduation, I heard all sorts of horror/hilarious stories. Your money would be spent better pretty much anywhere else. Though, this does relate to a question I had. What sort of reputation does DigiPen have these days? I've always heard it as one of the better, if not the best, game design schools in the country.
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Apr 10, 2014 07:31
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Thanks for the input, all. I'm going to have a talk with my wife as I'm really not thinking this is the right way to go. I do want to pursue classroom education in the field but this feels like going to Taco Bell because I have to wait another hour for Chipotle and that Taco Bell costs $60,000. In the hour since my last post I kept looking around and holy poo poo. I am telling them no deal tomorrow. This is one of many reviews of the school I found once I waded through pages of SEO pumped search results trying to lead me back to an official Art Institute site. quote:I can't speak for the on-campus school, but I will say the online classes were sub-par, and you are essentially charged thousands of dollars to read. Alot. and then get 'peer reviewed' by other students who may or may not know what they are doing. While there were good teachers there, the online experience trumps any value they may have had as they usually take a forum moderators job and I've had the experience of working very hard to build a 3d model only for the critique to be 'watch those verts'. Speaking of which, most of the information you will learn will be fluff and nothing that can be of use in the industry. I can't tell you how many times I had to go over the same tired 'what's the difference between vector and raster' week in several classes. When I finally got to the areas of knowledge I wanted to learn, 3d modeling and animation, I ended up having to sign up to external courses like Digital Tutors (that at the time only charged 35 dollars per month) for superior quality video instruction. Oh..did I mention you learn everything via text tutorials? They even link to free tutorials on the web like the famous joan of arc on 3d total. I am now in lifelong debt to Sallie Mae (Who is in cahoots with A.i/EDMC/GOLDMAN SACHS!) and am still unemployed and not one step closer to my dream of being an animator aside from what I am still teaching myself. If you have a dream, stay away from the Art Institute. They are charlatains who will promise you a steak and lobster dinner, and when you sign on the dotted line, will throw you spam and ramen and convince you it's a gourmet dish. 
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Apr 10, 2014 08:07
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I always feel weird when people trashtalk AI, mostly because a lot of my younger coworkers come from the Orange County branch of Art Institute and Laguna College of Art and Design. That being said, I have seen amazing artists with literally every background known to man, and it seems like the determining factor really has been passion and working their butts off to be awesome. They go as a gaggle around 3PM for a cookie break, and universally you'll hear the young ones asking questions or explaining an issue they had even on what's supposed to be decompression time or the old ones pontificating about some texturing or modeling technique or extolling the virtues of jigglebones. I won't be at PAX (  ) but hopefully everyone who's there has fun!
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Apr 10, 2014 08:23
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I went to a for-profit university. It worked for me*, and about 8 other people who I met in my class. Trouble is, I started in a class of 55. All of us who "made it" in the industry had time at traditional colleges, most of us with degrees from them. All of us used our for-profit time to enhance what we had been working on before. All of us went above and beyond our education and squeezed as much as we could extra out of the school. Less than half of us got our foothold via the job placement service the school offered. Looking back, the upsides were the friends I made (who are now contacts - upgrade!) and the focused nature of the study. Concepts that I hadn't grasped when they were presented generally in college made sense when I could connect them to how they made games work. The compressed schedule meant I had to force myself to work harder to learn things and apply them quickly. The downsides were I spent a LOT of money, some of which I didn't have, and that hurt for a long time, especially given the asterisk. I got a very narrowly-focused programming education that left a lot of really important computer science fundamentals out, let alone the rest of the general education that was basically ignored. If I hadn't had my normal four-year degree and a few years of work experience I wouldn't have the breadth of knowledge that makes me better at my job now. If I had to change industries, pretty much nothing from that degree would be applicable. Yes, I literally have my dream job that I wanted when I signed up for that school, but most of the people who I started with left school with a debt and no chance to reach their dreams. Successes are very rare, but debt is always present. And there's more competition for fewer entry-level jobs every year. I'm not saying it can't work, but be very wary of for-profit schools. Have no illusion that you are entering an institution that wants to milk you for as much money as possible while spending as little on your education as possible. Some traditional universities at least say their primary goal is providing education still. Also, are you aware that national accreditation means jack poo poo for real schools? If you ever got the line that your credits would transfer, be aware that only regional accreditation will allow you to transfer credits to normal schools. At the very least, you need to take a step back and a few deep breaths before signing anything else. Look at what community colleges near you are charging for art classes. You don't need a ton of industry-specific training if you have a solid traditional art background. Everything you will learn about figure drawing, lighting, motion, and proportion will make you a better 3D artist whether you realize it or not. So yeah. I don't mean to piss on your dream, but please don't think that the only path to your dream lies through the for-profit gates of Ai. It might work, but in general the people who make it from those schools could have made it from any school. Good luck, whatever path you choose. *I was unemployed for nearly a year, then a QA grunt for nearly two before getting a "real" industry job. I figure if I'd kept working and taken classes online from a normal school, I would be up about $75k and still could have kept the same timeline.
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Apr 10, 2014 08:29
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wodin posted:I always feel weird when people trashtalk AI, mostly because a lot of my younger coworkers come from the Orange County branch of Art Institute and Laguna College of Art and Design. That being said, I have seen amazing artists with literally every background known to man, and it seems like the determining factor really has been passion and working their butts off to be awesome. They go as a gaggle around 3PM for a cookie break, and universally you'll hear the young ones asking questions or explaining an issue they had even on what's supposed to be decompression time or the old ones pontificating about some texturing or modeling technique or extolling the virtues of jigglebones. I've heard good things about AIOC but I've gone to I think three Portfolio reviews over the last two years and they've gotten worse each time. The first one I went to had a few folks that could have careers (in fact, one of them became really good http://franktzeng-art.blogspot.com/ ) but the last two have been big disappointments. The story is always the same with these sorts of schools, too - the people that do well are the people who would have done well anywhere that provided them the ability to network with similarly minded student-types and provide a general structure that they could push beyond very quickly.
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Apr 10, 2014 08:57
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AIOC Seems to be the frequent exception because they have professors there who work/worked at the likes of Blizzard and Insomniac and who will really bust students' balls about the quality of their work despite pressure from administrators to pass poorly performing students just so they keep paying tuition. I know there's a lot of bad press surrounding them, and ultimately it does come down to the portfolio you manage in your spare time, but at least compared to other AIs the OC one has professors that aren't complete garbage. That said, for sixty grand I would agree with what the other posters have said. Find some good mentors on polycount and conceptart.org and just practice the hell out of everything. If you have enough personal drive to get good grades at AI you've probably got enough to make a great portfolio without them.
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Apr 10, 2014 13:26
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wodin posted:I always feel weird when people trashtalk AI, mostly because a lot of my younger coworkers come from the Orange County branch of Art Institute and Laguna College of Art and Design. That being said, I have seen amazing artists with literally every background known to man, and it seems like the determining factor really has been passion and working their butts off to be awesome. They go as a gaggle around 3PM for a cookie break, and universally you'll hear the young ones asking questions or explaining an issue they had even on what's supposed to be decompression time or the old ones pontificating about some texturing or modeling technique or extolling the virtues of jigglebones. This post pretty much hits on what I've seen from my coworkers and the, probably hundreds, of portfolios I've had to look at over the years. The long and short of it is this: For the vast amount of art schools and programs out there, you're only going to get out what you're willing to put in. I've seen great portfolios from people that went to "bad" colleges, "great" colleges, and even no college at all. It really all comes down to the student, and how much time they're willing to put in to learning, and mastering their craft. I can count on one hand the number of college art programs where I know a graduating student will have a solid portfolio. My recommendation for someone starting out would be this: 1. Take a whole bunch of foundational art classes at a local community college (a life drawing class should be one of these). You'll be able to get a classroom atmosphere, and hands-on learning and help from a professional, in person. Most will also do class critiques as well, which is an extremely valuable skill to have, and one that is tough to develop by yourself online. 2. When you've got the foundational classes done, and some of the basics under your belt, go to a place like Gnomon or CGchannel or Youtube or Lynda or any of the dozen or so sites out there that offer memberships with videos. You can very easily learn programs such as Photoshop or Maya, or Zbrush from these kinds of programs. Head over to the art threads here, or on Polycount and ask for help. There are a ton of learning resources for these tools available, and many of them are free. What these two things allow you to do, is to develop strong foundational art skills from a teacher. It's very difficult to develop those kinds of skills without someone helping you out in person. When you have these skills in place, you can save many thousands of dollars by learning the software tools yourself, from a myriad of sources online. You can save a lot of time, and money, this way. But, as I said earlier, you will only get out what you're willing to put in.
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Apr 10, 2014 18:42
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If anybody in the UK is reading this, I am hearing some really good things about Abertay University up here in Dundee compared to Teesside where I graduated, from a friend of mine up here doing his Masters. Lots more mixed group work, actual devkits, actual games being made and Dundee Dare games festival in the town centre showing off actual student games actually for realsies. Helps that Dundee is a significantly nicer town than Middlesbrough ever is and is a bustling game dev community, so you know, pass on the word to people applying to uni Also I should totally get back into life drawing and poo poo at a local college or something but  has consumed my spare time. Thanks Akuma.
GeeCee fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Apr 10, 2014 |
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Apr 10, 2014 18:50
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http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04/10/other-players-must-die-in-orcs-must-die-unchained PAX East time means game announcement time.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:00
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mastermind2004 posted:http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04/10/other-players-must-die-in-orcs-must-die-unchained If that's OMD DotA, be still my heart.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:11
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