I Just Quit My Job and Now I'm Ready to Build! |
- I Just Quit My Job and Now I'm Ready to Build!
- 18 Months of Game Programming Interviews
- 150+ Free UI Sound Effects
- Making Games Better for Players with Motor Disabilities | Designing for Disability
- My almost finished RPG game has some VERY unique mechanics. I would love to hear some feedback about the trailer I've just made.
- Devs who've launched a game, what are some things you wished you'd prepared better for and those with bad launches, how did you recover?
- I created a VR pictionary game as my first gamedev! Thoughts?
- Valve officially allows .gif's in store pages now
- The Making of Fallout Shelter - Noclip Documentary
- In this GDC 2011 talk, LucasArts' Matthias Worch presents a design approach for reconciling developer-defined and player-derived character identities
- Socialite GameDevs, what's your secret for talking to anyone?
- [C++, OpenGL]Storing vertices of different types all in a float vector before uploading to GPU?
- Play Rocky Race Beta!
- 12 Months of Spare-Time Game Dev, 6 Lessons Learned
- How hard is it to get into the games industry?
- Porting an existing in-development game from Gamemaker Studio 2 to Unity?
- Any websites that might cover my Kickstarter?
- How hard is it to cobble together some kind of working VR game with UE4 assets?
- Game development with Godot Engine 3 :: Learn to code in Python-like GDScript and later the industry standard C#
- Anti-aliasing is making black outlines become almost white
- From your own experience as Game Dev, which game engine community have the most toxic/elitist environment and which have is the friendliest/most welcoming ?
- Any way I can get started on unity
- Planning my first game!
- How to do spheroid-to-spheroid collision detection?
| I Just Quit My Job and Now I'm Ready to Build! Posted: 10 Oct 2018 06:36 PM PDT Hey Everyone, I'm super excited-- and I just wanted to share with everyone (hope this is the right place)! Basically, ever since I was a kid I've loved buildings. The pyramids, Big Ben, the Sydney Opera house-- all the greats. I finally decided it was time to live my passion, so I saved up and quit my job as a dental hygienist to go into the construction business. Now, I don't want to make something crazy like the Arc de Triomphe, so I figured I would just start small and make a 6 story apartment building. Nothing fancy, just maybe 10-20 different apartments (I love tall buildings!). Anyway--
Now, I know I can't do everything (I'm more of an idea guy myself actually), so I'm ready to hire on some extra help as needed. For example, I have no idea how much it would cost to do the plumbing in the building, but I've budgeted about $300 for that (just ball parking it). Also, if anyone wants to help and split the rent profits when the building is done, I'd be open for that too! I know some people say to start small, but I'd much rather work on something I love (like tall buildings) even if it takes awhile. After all, I'll be learning as I go, so even if it takes a year to finish, it'll have been worth it to get all that construction know how! I just finished setting up my Facebook page, Twitter, Twitch Stream, YouTube Channel, Instagram, Musically, website, and Kickstarter, so I figure I'm just about half way done! If anyone has any advice for me, I'd love to hear it, thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| 18 Months of Game Programming Interviews Posted: 11 Oct 2018 01:36 AM PDT BackgroundOver approximately the last 18 months I've gone through a large number of interviews, and I thought I'd share some of what I learned along the way. A brief background of my skillset to set the tone:
StatsHere's the list of companies I interviewed with: Bethesda, Blind Squirrel Games, Blizzard, Bungie, Epic Games, Infinity Ward, King, Naughty Dog, Respawn, Riot, Santa Monica Studios, Survios, Turtle Rock Studios, Unity Overall, I interviewed 16 times. I received 2 offers, and I failed 6 phone interviews, 8 in-person interviews, and 0 programming tests. If you're wondering why those numbers don't match the companies, it's because I interviewed at some of the same companies more than once. 6 of my first 7 interviews didn't get past the phone interview, and my final 9 interviews were all in-person. My application:interview rate was 94% - all applications I sent out resulted in interviews except for DICE in Sweden. To put that in perspective, when I first graduated college I applied to about 30 games companies and only 1 interviewed me. The Structure of an InterviewNearly all interviews with game companies follow the same pattern: phone screen, take-home programming test, on-site interview. There generally seems to be two types of phone screens: one where the interviewer asks rapid-fire low-level programming questions, and the other being a more casual talk about past work experience. The take-home test questions tend to be on par with generic HackerRank questions, and will take between 2-4 hours. If it takes longer than 4 hours at any company besides Bungie (who asks two 4-hour questions), that is a strong indicator that you are not qualified for the position. On-sites vary greatly by company, but you can expect at most places to meet with 4 groups of 2 people, where 2 groups will ask you technical questions, make you code on a whiteboard, and explain specific examples of things you've done in the past. The other 2 groups will ask about how you get along with others, how you interact with management and artists, and other culture/work ethic questions. Nearly all interviews will be conducted assuming you have advanced knowledge of C++. In the case of WPF-based tools development or Unity games, you may be asked about C# instead; however, in the case where the job requires C#, most companies will still interview you in C++ if you prefer. What You Need To KnowMost technical screens and programming tests are the same at a company regardless of what position you're applying for. I can't list every possible thing that I had to know, but here is an overview of some common things and things that tripped me up:
Reflections and Final ThoughtsWhy those companies: I tried as best as I could to only apply to stable companies with reputable work-life balance. This made my search more difficult because these companies are usually the companies you switch to after doing 2-5 years at a "worse" company. I found Naughty Dog and Infinity Ward to be particularly egregious when it comes to crunching, but the rest of the companies seemed fairly reasonable. Even within a company, different sub-teams can have different amounts of crunch, so the only way to know for sure is to ask. Tools programmers are generally more insulated from overtime compared to gameplay programmers. What I should have done first: I should have applied to a few companies I wasn't interested in before applying to the companies I wanted to work at. I failed nearly all of my first several interviews not because I was a bad programmer, but because the types of questions you get during interviews are not necessarily the types of problems you come across on a daily basis as a salaried programmer. On top of that, the challenges the game industry faces tend to be very different than almost all other programming disciplines/industries, so unless you already are a game programmer, there is going to be a lot of times where you think to yourself "how could they have possibly expected me to know that? who even uses that?" The first offer: I rejected my first job offer for a number of reasons including pay, benefits, workload, and the type of work that it involved. You don't have to take a job that you won't be satisfied with. That said, once you're in the industry, it's easier to switch to different companies. I took a risk thinking that I would be able to land another job, instead of taking the job that would have provided really strong experience. It's hard to say if I made the right decision, but luckily it worked out in the end. Why I failed: I failed a lot of phone screens due to being unfamiliar with the type of questions being asked. Why did I fail so many on-site interviews? I am not good at coding on a whiteboard and coming up with things on-the-spot. One time I was asked to implement something in C# on the whiteboard and I wasn't comfortable using C# without code completion, so I wrote the answer in pseudocode. I was so worried about not using C# that I couldn't concentrate and completely botched the answer. My style of programming is more in line with write a little, run and test outcome, and then fix/write some more. This is not possible on a whiteboard, and I struggled to just write entire solutions all at once without being to visualize any progress along the way. I'm inclined to give myself the benefit of the doubt and say I'm not a bad programmer, considering I didn't have any issues with any of the at-home programming tests, which I was able to do in a comfortable environment and work the way I would normally work. As a side note, your programming tests are completely irrelevant once you make it on-site. In one case, the company was going to hire me until they interviewed someone who had more experience in the particular engine they were using. In another case, I was told I did well but they wanted someone with more experience with Maya (despite me telling them multiple times before ever going on-site that I have no Maya experience). I would say that I knew why I failed all of my interviews except the last two, which I did well on but the companies refused to tell me why they passed on me. A time when...: At one point, I wrote a list of all the things I could think of that I had done for common "tell me about a time when..." questions. This helped a lot. Try to think of at least two times for the following scenarios: something you're proud of, something challenging you did, when you had a hard bug to solve, when you helped a team member, when you disagreed with someone, when you had a good idea, when you interacted with users. Being a bad interviewee: Interviewing is a skill just like programming, and being able to sell yourself is hard for certain people and without practice. One of my faults is that I'm very honest and tend to share information that may not paint myself in a good light. Think carefully about your response before vocalizing it. Highlight positive outcomes over negative ones, even if your role in the scenario was correct. It doesn't matter if you're a great team player if you can't convince the interviewers that you are. Same company, different job:For applying to the same company a second time, I was generally told that waiting 6-12 months was a good time frame. At larger companies, you may be able to apply to two separate game teams and the recruiters might not even know about your other interview. Similarly, the interviews themselves may be extremely different even within the same company. In one of my interviews, I spoke to someone (not programming) who had interviewed three times over five years for the same position before they finally got it. Connections: I had no connections to any companies when applying. I see a lot of people say they're one of the most important things you can have. I can't really say how effective they are. I can say that they absolutely are not needed if you have a strong resume and relevant experience. I also don't have a "portfolio" and I've never heard of any programmer being asked for one. I don't think they matter outside of listing your projects on your resume. Personally, I feel like sharing code examples can only hurt you. I can't imagine a scenario where a hiring manager looks at your resume, is on the fence about interviewing you, but then browses your github and is so amazed that they have to give you a call. On the other side, I can absolutely envision a scenario where they look at your code from 5 years ago and it sucks so they pass on you. How good would you say you are: When someone asks you to rate yourself in C++ on a scale from 1 to 10, under no circumstances should say 10. As someone who has been doing C++ professionally every day for over 5 years, I would rate myself a 6.5 or 7. To score bonus points with your interviewer, make a joke about how you're giving them a realistic answer instead of the "I just graduated college so I'm a 10" answer. Be prepared to explain why you're a 7 by choosing commonly unknown and difficult things (I don't fully understand move semantics, I'm not too familiar with C++14 and 17 features, I haven't done custom allocators, etc). Recruiters are slow: Like really really slow. Most of my interview requests were within 1-2 weeks of sending an application, although a few took 3 weeks and one took over a month. However, after every stage of the interview they like to just chill for a week and not respond to anything regardless of whether you passed or failed. I don't have any advice here, but it sure is annoying. I recommend following up with an email exactly 1 week after your last contact, although you might be able to get away with 3-4 days after depending on how you feel about the situation. When I was very confident about how I had done, I would poke the recruiters a little harder to move things along. Riot had by far the most responsive recruiters, and I appreciated that about them. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Oct 2018 07:52 AM PDT Here's 150+ free UI sound effects for game developers of all types: Some of the samples have multiple variations included in the clip. They can be broken apart and you can choose the version that you like. The license is royalty-free commercial use with no attribution required, as stated in the terms and conditions. They cannot be distributed or resold on other sites. I'll have a ton of other different effects to upload in the coming weeks. [link] [comments]  |
| Making Games Better for Players with Motor Disabilities | Designing for Disability Posted: 11 Oct 2018 08:47 AM PDT |
| Posted: 11 Oct 2018 08:46 AM PDT So about 2 months ago I made this thread about the trailer of the game I'y d been making for the last 1.5 years. You had given me some really useful advices that helped me to make a new, much better trailer. I have only 2 weeks left and I want to start sending mails to youtubers and press. Could you take a look and tell if you can understand what is my game about? That trailer has a rather uncommon approach so I'm not sure if it presents the game properly. Trailer link: https://youtu.be/ShGWT8GfKzg PS. The release price is going to be ~4.99 USD. Do you think it's a fair amount? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Oct 2018 10:31 AM PDT So a game I've been working on and self-funded for the last 3 years is finally near release. It's my first title of this scope I burnt through everything to keep the production going so I'm getting a wee bit nervous about it. I want to think I've done my homework, studied the market enough, timed it right, priced it right, marketing planned it right.. I want to think I probably did everything to ensure a safe enough net in case the numbers don't align. But I'm still inexperienced and I'm wondering, in your cases, what had gone wrong? Did you survive it? How do you manage after the fall? Have any parting advice for someone might go through that situation? [link] [comments]  |
| I created a VR pictionary game as my first gamedev! Thoughts? Posted: 11 Oct 2018 02:34 AM PDT |
| Valve officially allows .gif's in store pages now Posted: 10 Oct 2018 10:57 PM PDT |
| The Making of Fallout Shelter - Noclip Documentary Posted: 11 Oct 2018 09:47 AM PDT |
| Posted: 11 Oct 2018 09:59 AM PDT |
| Socialite GameDevs, what's your secret for talking to anyone? Posted: 11 Oct 2018 09:06 AM PDT I go to a lot of networking events and I find as my confidence lowers the harder time I have interacting with new people, mostly for the fear of intruding on an important conversation. I'm not really introverted, I'm just scared of rubbing people the wrong way. I'm typically fine if I attend an event with a friend or group but I'm finding myself going more often to solo events and I'd love any advice you guys have to give. [link] [comments]  |
| [C++, OpenGL]Storing vertices of different types all in a float vector before uploading to GPU? Posted: 11 Oct 2018 06:30 AM PDT (post is shorter than it looks) Hello, In a previous question I was having(and still having) problems with using ImGui in my engine, and I was doing something I wasn't sure if it is valid code: I pass vertices to my engine as a pointer to floats, and then also provide the size, like this: Now, ImGui doesn't only use floats, it also uses ONE unsigned int for colors. It stores them in a struct called ImDrawVert and stores those in a vector. Now, what I do is get a pointer to the data with Now once it passed the parameters to my function, my function gets executed. What my I also tried it this way: Next, once all game classes and functions have been executed, it reaches the renderer. The renderer takes the vector with floats we just added, and uploads them: Now my question after this all is, does anyone see any problems with this, it doesn't work(sometimes a black screen, sometimes random lines, depends on where ImGui draws the window) and I can't find the problem. So can put the pointer to Uint32 in a float vector without problems, or will that break things and cause unexpected behavior? And is the way I upload the vertices correct? Do you notice any other problems? Thanks! Edit: My program finally crashed! This means I can take a look at the debugger, and it seems to not being able to access a variable because of a read violation. It points to the error being in xmemory0, but going back a few stack frames in VS tells me it crashed here: VS reported that when it crashed, the value of i was 20316, and the size of vertices_size was 31380. And it said the value of vertices(the pointer) was 0x0000022051ce0290 {-22.5000000}. It also said the size of verticesPack(the vector) was 30183 when it crashed. Anyone can use that information? edit2: I'm thinking vertices[i] might be wrong, as verticesPack is storing some weird(negative) values. But I'm still looking into that. edit3: More info on first edit: I inspected the verticesPack vector in visual studio with a breakpoint. It's all ok at first where every 4 values are normal, then a weird 5th value because of the color not being a float(also normal) and it does it all correctly for a while, but then I get in the 80'th elementh range of the vector and I see this: Those are some weird values as they are all the same, even the color has the same weird value as the positions(pos and uv). here an example of how it's supposed to look like: This possibly indicates that the vertices_size parameter of drawTriangles is larger then it's supposed to be and it's basically reading data not part of the array passed in the vertices parameter of drawTriangles. Another edit: I just noticed that my indices are probably incorrect, here some values starting from 0: These seem like weird random values, unless ImGui intends the values to be like this. OKAY, I FOUND THE FIRST ERROR: I assumed ImGui uses Unsigned Int's for indices, but it uses unsigned shorts. I changed it now and it works better, but still not correct. Here a screenshot of what it looks like right now:(still not fixed) new pic: Another second edit: Something very weird, the window renders fine when it's small, but not when it'r larger, anyone know what might be happening?: https://imgur.com/a/fT4GFRU(collection) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Oct 2018 12:18 PM PDT Become the top Rocky Racer on the planet. Rocky Race is now in Beta. Come play and leave us a review. Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| 12 Months of Spare-Time Game Dev, 6 Lessons Learned Posted: 10 Oct 2018 02:26 PM PDT Last year, I decided that I was going to set up a company, and create my first commercial PC game. The project was straightforward, pretty well scoped, and supposedly, 1 year long. Here's some lessons I've learned along the way.
As for the game, we are a few months out from announcing it still, but I'm happier now than I've probably ever been. I hope this gives someone some perspective on what its like developing a game this way. I'll be monitoring this thread if you have any questions. Before anyone asks, I won't be sharing my company or game's name in this thread. That's not what this sub is for, and I don't even have proper marketing channels set up for either of them yet anyway. [link] [comments]  |
| How hard is it to get into the games industry? Posted: 11 Oct 2018 11:53 AM PDT Hello all, I am currently attending Boise State University and pursuing a a degree in fields related to biology. Currently I am going for a Radiology/Imaging Science major but it's going to be rough to get into the Radiology program. For those of you who don't know Radiology is basically using x-rays to look at problems in people's bodies. That's not very important though. Essentially it's a hard class that takes a lot of work in biology and a high GPA to get into. And i'm not enjoying it or finding it interesting. I think parts in my Biology class can be interesting, but those are the things relating to imaging science and you gotta go through a whole lot of extremely uninteresting things that I would never use in Radiology to get to the good stuff. I'm starting to wonder if I should pursue another major or try something else cause this probably isn't working. But that leads me to one of the other majors they have here at Boise State... Games, interactive Media and Mobile Technology or GIMM Now, not all of that has to do with the game industry and a fair portion has to do with building technology related things for hospitals, factories and other things. But I am more interested in the game development portion of the program (obviously because I am posting on this subreddit). However my biggest worry of pursuing this is that I don't know how reliable joining this program is for future careers. If I were to somehow get into the Radiology/Imaging Science department I would be pretty set. It would not be hard to find a job relating to that major since it's in desperate need of people operating those machines and my mom works as a nurse so I could have a better chance of getting a job right out of college. But I don't know how hard it is to get into the games industry is. My biggest fear is that I would get a degree in the GIMM and I wouldn't be able to find a career I don't know if you any of you all know about the GIMM major or if you know anyone who has pursued it but I am really interested in what you guys think about it. I'll leave a couple links and things related to GIMM but please be brutally honest... Do you guys think I should give GIMM a try or should I just ignore it and go for something else? Again tell me your honest thoughts on all of this and if you know anyone who has been through this program or anything related Thanks y'all! https://cid.boisestate.edu/gimm/ Flyer: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qCgYUHT1Crn9b-s6zOdXagba3zljEMlQ/view?usp=sharing [link] [comments]  |
| Porting an existing in-development game from Gamemaker Studio 2 to Unity? Posted: 11 Oct 2018 11:33 AM PDT Hi there, A while ago I started working on a game with some people I met at a Hackathon. I had never used GM:S 2, but it was pretty easy to pick up. The game ended up doing pretty well, but it was still a game built in two days. It's a party-game (Overcooked, Castle Crashers, etc.) platformer based around a set (but potentially dynamic) map in which players fight. Over the next few months, myself and the other programmer kept updating it and adding features. This was fine, but as with most projects like this, especially ones based on collaboration, over time commits and updates happened less and less frequently. When I stopped working on it, I had built a functioning menu/gui system, and implemented 4 player local play with both keyboard and controller. It's been a good few months since then, but looking at it now, if I really want to take it further GM:S 2 doesn't really seem to be the tool for the job. This is mostly because I am looking to integrate online play (hosted rooms for now), and Game Maker seems to fall down a little in this area. It also seems more limiting, since as much as I love GML, C# looks like the way to go. My qustion then is how easy would it be to both learn Unity, and port a game that currently exists in Gamer Maker over? Things that make it easier: - Much of the logic will be the same, so already done a lot of the heavy lifting on that front. - Much of the art already exists so won't have to start from scratch. - A 2D fighting platformer is a relatively simple concept (all of the unique mechanics I know will not be particularly hard to implement so don't have to worry about those). - There seem to be an endless supply of Unity tutorials Things that make it harder: - While fairly well versed in other programming languages (Python, Javascript, GML), I do not know C#. - Some of the logic will not carry over, and depending on how I build it, it could be very possible that none of it translates easily. - It will suck a little going from a functioning game back down to the basics, so I would love to get roughly back to something that works and I can test as quickly as possible. Any help or advice would be appreciated! Final note: I am not really looking for a way to solve this with Game Maker. One of the issues is that some of the core game was reasonably rushed (we had 36 hours) so I would actually like to not only learn a new language and engine but also get a chance to refine the core of the game, and Unity presents a perfect opportunity to do both. [link] [comments]  |
| Any websites that might cover my Kickstarter? Posted: 11 Oct 2018 11:02 AM PDT Hey guys, I've spent the past 5 months working on an Avatar inspired game and just launched the Kickstarter: I didn't really have a fan base before the launch and am now struggling to drive traffic towards it. I'm starting to try out Facebook ads this week, but I'm wondering if there are any websites that I may be able to get a press release on or other avenues for advertising that I've skipped over. [link] [comments]  |
| How hard is it to cobble together some kind of working VR game with UE4 assets? Posted: 11 Oct 2018 10:55 AM PDT not looking to sell anything, just kinda want to put something together just to try it really is it particularly hard to get a first person vr game thrown together if you just dump ue4 free/purchased assets at it? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Oct 2018 10:32 AM PDT |
| Anti-aliasing is making black outlines become almost white Posted: 11 Oct 2018 10:31 AM PDT Anti-aliasing is making black outlines become almost white I am making a mobile game in portrait 1080x1920 resolution but obviously not every phone has that resolution. My desktop actually uses 1600x900 so I can't see the game perfectly since 1920 height is way bigger than 900. I felt that would help me see potential problems that different mobile resolutions might have but things sometimes look really bad and I can't figure out what to do. Sometimes things look fine but then I slightly change the window size and instantly it looks like trash. My sprites are on a huge spritesheet with each cell a size of 120x120. I noticed the problem pretty quickly and thought maybe by avoiding using the entire 120x120 size it might work better. So I changed everything to have a max size of 118x118. That seemed to help but still some problems occur randomly. The top one is a cropped sheetshot of how it looks in game on my desktop. It shows the outline as 1 pixel of a darker purple then a light grey almost white as the other pixel when it should be 2 pixels of pure black. Obviously I don't expect it to be perfectly black but that white pops out so much since the game has a dark look. The one below shows how it would look if it was perfect. The one on the bottom is from a screenshot taken on my phone. Although the bottom screenshot looks a bit strange it looks perfect when its actually on my phone and not a screenshot. My phone is 1080x1920 so it obviously should though... My fear is when the resolution is not exactly right it will turn to trash. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Oct 2018 10:16 AM PDT |
| Any way I can get started on unity Posted: 11 Oct 2018 10:14 AM PDT I'm young and have experience programming in java and modding for Minecraft. I'm trying to learn to use unity so I can actually create my own games. I'm going a bit ambitious and am planning to make an rpg at some point. So how can I get started with unity and game development? I've done the three basic interactive tutorials, anything else? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Oct 2018 10:03 AM PDT I am a high school senior learning C# to design and program an original game for my senior project! Those of you with experience making games of your own, is it easier to make the mechanics fit the story, or the story fit the mechanics? [link] [comments]  |
| How to do spheroid-to-spheroid collision detection? Posted: 11 Oct 2018 09:57 AM PDT |
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