I ask because I've just been accepted at Newcastle University to study Computer Science: Games and Virtual Environments and i was wondering how people normally get into games development, if they went to uni and did computer science or they started in other areas of the industry and migrated or whether they just learnt in their bedroom as some early programmers did. Also any recommendations of what i should start looking into to give me a good start would be nice
http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/2007/12/05/how_i_became_a_game_designer/1 http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/2008/01/05/how_i_became_a_games_designer_part_two/1
LUA is supposedly the easiest game code to learn - it powers Garry's Mod 10 and Grim Fandango among others.
My flatmate does Computer Science and is looking into doing game development, his brother did Comp Sci too and is now currently working on the new Banjo Kazooie game at Rare. I'll have a word with him and see what he does, I've seen him play around with directx stuff though so you'll prob want to look into that. Good luck with the course, sounds good
If you are serious about it, you should look at C++ and libraries or toolsets used by the pros ... The reason is that C++ is fairly standard is also a very good base to force you to learn some good habits, you can learn many other languages easily after learning C++ ... However C++ is far from being an easy language to master ... Read alot of free code and get inside fan projects or within a group, you will learn much from the contact of others ...
Hand his brother my email address (Joe.martin @ bit-tech.net). Maybe he wants to do a developer column?
Erk! LUA isn't code! It's a scripting language! I started my own Independent Studio with some friends and a big fat grant after leaving Uni. I did a programming degree and would certainly recommend you focus on C/C++ and general programming idioms. The industry is all about transferable skills these days so you need to learn a low-level language, such as C++, so you can easily pick up other languages in the future. These days, however, I'd say (and I could be crucified for this) you don't need ASM. Everything is going high-level so it's unlikely you'll ever really need to do anything in pure ASM. One other thing I'd recommend though is binary logic. Revise it and learn it.
do me a BIG favour and look into human interaction and storytelling with games. Modern day games are lacking those more and more. Good luck with it
Jordan, if you're going to Newcastle, get involved with Codeworks: GameHorizon. http://www.gamehorizon.net/
acron, that seems more tailored to graduates and people trying to get their game published but thanks, definately getting bookmarked
BS. Look at Fallout, Beyond Good and Evil, Condemned 2, Facade, BioShock, Half-Life 2, Baldurs Gate, Mass Effect, The Witcher, etc. I could go on and on about games which are heavily story driven - you just have to learn to shop by developer.
true, true... It's not that there's no good games around, but more and more i find myself wondering what i'm fighting for after 3 hours of play. Especially games that start by launching a big conspiracy and a few monsters at you are getting more numerous. BioShock gave me a big "wtf am i doing here" feeling for instance. I like to be eased into things. BGE is a good example of how things are explained first and complicated later. To illustrate my point, here's how i experienced a good and a bad example (subjective content alert!): FFVII (i know, OLD) is another. First missions it's just you making a buck, and after a while the sh*t starts hitting the fan. You get involved for the girl at first, and for deeper reasons later. In BioShock you open your eyes in a crashing plane, swim to a surreal secret underwater city where a cataclysmic event has just taken place and psychotic half-zombies and wraiths are tearing the place apart. You inject yourself with some coloured goo so you can fight them on your level making your way to... wait, where was i going again? The story is probably fantastic, but that is as far as i got because of poor storytelling. It could also just be me
You, my friend, need a dose of Pathologic. Having tried it I can tell you it is just the type of thing you are looking for - both in a way that will make you appreciate BioShock and in that it will show you how games can be. Read the articles below from RPS - they're running an on-going feature on it right now. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1517 http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1519 Really, read it.
Joe, that game looks class. http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=67124 That review has me drooling for it. I'm actually working with a guy now on a pet project which is an addition to a growing number of games which appear simply as metaphors. Check these out: The Marriage Passage
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/256312019/the-graveyards.html The Graveyards is a cool metaphoric game that came out recently.. Pretty moving actually, although it would hardly be called a 'game' As for getting into the industry I imagine there are a million people with a million different stories of how they got their start.. It is interesting that people can actually go to school specifically for it now, a sign of the changing times. I would say above all else you need passion, you need to be able to have the desire to do this for free before you think about anything because the time you need to put in is beyond anything else I have done and if I didn't wake up every morning dying to do what I do there is no way I would have lasted this long
