Engine Programming course

Mathematics for game programming, shaders, ..

Just a guess, I am more a technical artist then a engine programmer.

But I will send this question to some friends of mine.

So I am going to ask why are you teaching a course you know little or nothing about ? Also is the course more about engine design or graphics programming ?

If you can, I'd recommend teaming up with some local (even national) games companies and asking them for their feedback on your syllabus. You can't really get much better than straight from the horse's mouth If your course has a chance of producing graduates they will hire, they ought to care.

Maybe an other good idea is to ask an other school. This is my school http://www.digitalartsandentertainment.be

They can help you .

No offence Zacker, but as a student I hated my 3d teacher so much because I obviously had more experience than him. I couldn't believe how retarded it was that a dude with no experience at all within the field were supposed to train people. I could totally understand it if you got a teaching job teaching what you have worked as (level design, i presume?), but if you dont got any engine programming experience, then how do you except to get your students respect and attention?

i totally see you point, skjalg, but you got to lower your expectations a little. university is often only about the bare basics. so it might be sufficient to teach students with the background zacker has. i just wonder: are you teaching at a real university or is it like a private college where students pay a monthly fee?

if you are teaching at a real university you should be asking for feedback from the teachers at the university. someone who is working all day in a games company definitely has a different point of view than someone who is teaching in the university all day. so the quality of your slides might only be judged correctly if we know what audience you are targeting.

good luck anyway! i will start teaching students at my university in 2 weeks. i am kind of excited, since it is the first time i do something like that while being paid for it. my topic will be "programming" (basics in object orientation, software engineering, runtime behavior, data structures). i have never been a longtime software developer but teaching these concepts is possible. though i know how hard software development can be and that it needs a some practice too so the expectations on the class are to bring the basic understanding to the students and to not make them professionals.

No offence but you are saying you go to a uni to learn the bare basics of something and not to become professionals? Exactly how will those people find a job later on then? Exactly why would you want to go to a uni to learn the basics if you could just as well follow a one year education somewhere? To get a nice paper that says you completed a uni so you can please your parents?

The dictionary defines a uni as "an institution of learning of the highest level".

I thought a university is suppose to make you ready for a job, a starting expert, and is suppose to give you a serious training that is well above the level of all other kinds of educations.

I have seen many many many stories come by of people who attend a level design (or whatever) class and the teacher is still learning the editor himself while teaching. Or people who teach in schools but never actually made any kind of game themselves or at best worked a mere few months in a studio. That is really damaging for the reputation of educations, and that is why many are being totally ignored by many professionals or even looked down on, in turn affecting often blindly enthusiastic students. And that is a huge problem within our industry that should really be resolved over the next 5 to 10 years if we want to mature as an industry. And that is something that, being in the position to do something about it, you should really try to at least improve throughout your career as a teacher.

learning basics in a class is what makes university so great and damn useful. this doesn't counter your definition of learning on the highest level in my understanding. you can spend 4 hours on artificial intelligence a week for a semester without being a professional in AI. the class enables you to have a complete overview of the topic so you can decide where to specialize in. having this class layout the students will maximize their intellectual horizon. later in a job they will sure be specialists in only a few topics, but their knowledge of other domains will enable them to find creative solutions and/or communicate better with professionals of those other domains.

if you are talking about a more professional game industry, then there should be a much broader view in the development of games. how to achieve that? by having classes i talked about.

example: if i want to hire an artist, i look at his skills in visuals but i also pay a lot of attention on technical understanding. he should be able to talk with a programmer and understand technical constraints. so as a design student (or what ever a game artist would fit into) you wouldn't do a programming course that goes into all detail and makes the artist a programmer, don't you?!

so to answer your question: yes, i go to university not become a professional, but to become someone who will find creative solutions to problems, can talk to experts of other domains and can decide where to later specialize in.

Sorry, but really no.

Have you finished a university degree? Your plain ignorance makes it look like you haven't.

May I remind you that it is you who has almost no actual professional experience yet ignores all points I make about what is IMO best for someones career and what would increase their chances as a beginning professional?

Ignorance what?

So don't go into that direction, thanks.

In any case you illustrated the entire problem of teaching without having actual experience. A few rare exceptions aside, it is very difficult to educate people into something you have little experience in, and not just because of the actual (or lack of) knowledge about the subject in question, but also because it takes a long while to gain a solid understanding of the industry and the problems it faces, its expectations, it (many) shortcomings, and develop your vision required to make a difference and overcome those issues, to truly guide students into their career and fostering their dreams and ambitions and help them achieve those. And that is something that goes well above "bare basics".

Many experienced people in the industry think that the current education available is not adequate. One of the most cited reasons is that students know too little and too many general things upon graduating. How will you tackle that perception? How will you improve the chances of your students getting work upon graduating?

A general problem is also that there are more educations available than there are companies almost. It already is difficult to get a job in this industry as a graduate because of the sheer number of interested people. This is somewhat dependent on location too, but still, with the amount of competition available, and the ever increasing amount of competition within our sector, "bare basics" is surely not going to cut out the competition?

Dont understand me wrong, I am very happy that you got this great opportunity and you did well in accepting it and I hope you do well. But do not turn a blind eye on the actual needs of the industry, and the problems that are in between todays industry and a mature games industry, and the latter is a responsibility we all carry.

Quote from Pericolos0

The problem is that what really happens is that everybody got taught a bit of everything but nobody got trained to be a professional. So many people graduating from game schools with no real skills, maybe one or two from their year find a job if they are lucky. It's good to learn the extra stuff to expand your horizon and maybe get interested in stuff you didn't care about before, but there should really be a focus on become an industry-ready professional in the end. Trained by other industry professionals. The lack of professionalism in my professors is one of the big reasons i quit college, it just felt their wasn't anything to learn from them. It was so frustrating being in classes with a teacher that was still learning the subject himself. No offence Zacker but I really wouldn't want to be taught engine programming by someone with no experience in it, it's one of those things that takes years of experience and knowing all the tricks and the pitfalls, the real valuable knowledge you need to give to your students.

well said.

the last paragraph especially; there are perspectives you can only get after you learn a specific number of things, which for most people happens to be after years of training. an example would be how to see the world in a logical fashion and being able to decipher anything into code, another being able to spot problems within an instant. these highly intuitive skills are what distinguishes a real expert from someone who has just read every book on programming.

I agree with everyone! However, teaching is often more about how well you get on with your students than your respective skill in a subject. If you are one step ahead as a teacher thats ok. Of course keeping one step ahead of a few private individuals isnt so tough, but entire groups might be ... you'll always get a few whippersnappers who race ahead, they need special attention outside of the group and always feel like everyone else is holding them back.

Like John Carmak said, if you want a job as a game/engine programmer join a mod team. The chances of a junior being trusted to write core engine components from scratch is no doubt rare. Get used to surfing around code and "hacking" features with seemingly impossible deadlines

Oh yeah and I don’t really agree with a course that generalizes, if you can't make up your own mind what interests you about games early on your either being lazy or constantly in need somebody to hold your hand. Of course thats the first thing that comes to my mind and not always the case. There are LOTS of skilled professionals who went to Uni, but most of them that I know did a specialized course.

To do a full run at Uni/college you'd need about 5-8 years! What a giant waste of time considering you'd enter industry as a Junior ... while spending the next two years or more paying back your loan and eating baked beans on toast

I'm split between Hessi + Hourences' views.

The biggest disappointment I had at university was that many of the lecturers appeared to know little more than the students. That may sound harsh and I'm sure most of them did know a fair bit, but it didn't come out in the teaching. Yes, we got a broad overview of many subjects and the lecturers were useful in other capacities (e.g. project management advice), but most of the bread and butter stuff was a waste of time -- there was nothing I haven't already seen covered on forums (gamedev.net) and in books. It's not like we had John Carmack waiting in the wings, working on mad crazy technology and pushing us on to do great things. We had a fairly basic syllabus and plenty of time to do the hand-ins.

The best thing was that I had time to find my own way and learn about the things that interested me, but you can do that without going to university! I guess what I'm saying is that, when taught by folk who do not have industry experience and/or a deep understanding of the material, university could be a lot better.

I think Hessi got a good point, but he forgets that an Engine Programming course is not a generic class. The course is for those few select individuals that has gone through a programming course, decided that they want to be an engine programmer and then taken this course. I expect this is a final year course, since engine programming is such an in depth and hard subject to master, thus a good lecturer that has some years behind him as an engine programmer is a must.

Ask yourself this; would you be pleased with your math course if your math teacher learned how to multiply the week before he taught you how to multiply? Or would you rather have your math teacher having multiplied for nearly 10 years before he taught you how to do it?

Which reminds me, here in norway a teacher needs at least 5 years of studying math at a university to be able to teach students in high school, and you'd need to be a professor (have something published and have the professors title given to him) if you want to teach at the level Zacker here is going to teach. There is a reason why this system is implemented. And this would in programming terms would mean that you should at least have worked on a game as a lead engine programmer before you can teach others how to do it.

I can see the reason why the school is giving Zacker this opportunity, given the lack of people that are willing to do it, (since an engine programmer could potentially earn a lot of cash, compared to a teacher) and I cant fault him for saying yes to it. And I believe that, with time, these things will sort themselves out as Hourences pointed out.

The whole "read the book 1 week before teaching it" works fine until a certain level.

The problem will rise when someone get to the point when they want more, and get up on your level and maybe past. How will you help them with their problems if you haven't got a clue on what to do yourself? Go read a book isn't an option, because then the student could have dropped the entire course and rather have read a book by himself.

You need to make sure that you are on a level MUCH higher than what you are teaching, so that questions related to your course isn't going to be over your head.

I had a teacher in design 1 year, after 2 weeks I passed his skill in Illustrator (never touched it before) and my PS skills was waaay above him. I even had to help him out sometimes. Now that was embarrassing both for me and him, because I could have stayed at home, and he showed everyone that he wasn't really that capable. Once when I asked about a problem, I got a full copy of "Illustrator for Dummies", and IMO that was the worst answer, even though I solved the problem after a couple of hours of trail and error (screw the book!)...

Group teaching is always fail.

Over the course of my degree we had 3 animation tutors. The first one was a great guy, tons of experience, worked on a few commerical games and was generally amazing. His work was beyond anything we could do and for that we respected him, his advice was always consistent and sensible.

At the start of the degree his friend and sadly the course leader got fired for bullying another member of staff on the course and that set a lot of things in motion as the ex course leader was a highly respected guy and the 'victim' became course leader. He was totally inept and we were getting feedback for modules, after the next modules hand in date where the module we handed in was supposed to be a progression of an earlier one. Hard to progress when you get feedback after the deadline!

Tutor A eventually left after he made sure we had got enough done for our final projects and were self sufficient. He now works for Bizarre games doing Project Gotham stuff. Cue Tutor B, the victim. Totally inept, hadn't used 3D software for years and was totally off the mark. Any questions we had he couldn't answer and referred us to the help files and Tutor A's video lessons. He got someone else in within a month as we had all threatened to leave (and without students, no funding. No funding no course, no course no job) and on the scene came Tutor C, an ex student.

He was ok, but his level wasn't much higher than what we we're getting too and it was hard to talk to him as he had barely any experience outside of the degree.

So in short, I think you really need a lot of experience in the given field to teach stuff competently. That experience could come from being on the course for years and picking it up or industry experience but I reckon you need a good 5+ years of it to get to a good standard unfortunately.

Quote from 2d-chris

Group teaching is always fail.

QFT. It's ok for explaining the basics of stuff briefly on a projector etc, but once the first hand goes up of "can you show that again?" it's game over.