Posts by 2d-chris

  • How You Got Into The Industry

    Might be overkill, only because you get bogged down with assignments from the course, modding takes up enough time as it is , although saying that ... you can contribute towards a mod without doing stupid amounts of work.

    Modding isnt fool proof, most projects don't get released but you usually use it as portfolio work. If you're lucky enough to work on a top released modification it's almost a given that you'll be contacted for game work opportunities.

    If you're confident with your ability and sure the job is for you, eventually you will get into the industry, just be ready to take advise and learn from mistakes.

  • How You Got Into The Industry

    Quote from ReNo

    As a bit of a comment contrary to 2D-Chris's point, being a bit of a jack of all trades was actually quite useful in my case. I wouldn't like to say it is for everybody, but in the case of small companies like Outerlight (~10-20 developers) it stands some of us in good stead to be able to handle a few different tasks. I was taken on to be a bit of a middle man between design and code as I had a good understanding of both, and although I've only done minor programming work for the company I do find my knowledge of programming is useful on a daily basis. You should certainly excel in one area if you plan to get a job in the industry, but I wouldn't trade in my programming experience to have spent more time on level design, personally.

    Very good point, having a good understanding of other aspects is real useful, i'm quite into art, sound and scripting which all go hand in hand with level "design" and i'd certainly enjoy having some real programming skills. Like you said though it's important to have a primary strength.

    Level design is quite unique in the case that it can cover many aspects of game development, developers expect different skill sets for the job and it's almost a given fact that a skilled level designer will understand a great deal about art, gameplay and how to get it done.

    It's also worth consider not all games are AAA next gen, plenty of DS, PSP and soon to be 3d phone games are in development, in some cases very small teams where multi skilld individuals are pretty common.

  • Moving on

    iI's fine in my opinion if you want to leave your current profession to pursue another, it would indeed be crazy to leave a game job for education if your goal was to rejoin it with some new skills, when you consider all the people coming out of uni (with a big dept to pay) looking for jobs and they can't get them for lack of real experience.

    That being said, game development is just another job, sure it's quite a good one but an till you've done some retail game work at a studio it's very hard to see the reality of it.

  • How You Got Into The Industry

    Back in 1998/99 I started mapping with Unreal for fun, few years later got into cs mapping, then joined a few well respected hl2 mods. Contacts from Nuclear dawn and Insurgency gave me allot of confidence so I decided to apply for a local game studio, I got the job

    Wolfs advise is priceless, sure join a game school if you want, it will help, but everyone that wants an industry job should join a few decent modifications, you don't have to be fantastic and you'd be amazed how much you will learn.

    If your a level designer you can make a small SP section using hl2 assets, if you don't want to join a mod team.

    Also, try to get skilled in a single area of development, don't go for the jack of all trade approach allot of schools will attempt, sure it has it's benifits as you'll be sure your doing the right job, but it will take you quite sometime longer that way.

  • Trouble Designing A Layout

    Level design with paper is good, but it's not the end of the world if you just map on the fly, great results can be achieved with both methods. However, working on a level for a game that isnt playable yet is a completely different affair, paper design is required for budget reasons and others. My suggestions in this case would be to take notes of the official level, and why you think it works. Look at things like choke points - how wide they are, timing runs, elevation, cover, accessability and pickup locations. You don't have to follow these like rules, but they are proven to work well, change if you feel hard enough

    Even if you don't want to sketch or plan, at least play the game enough to understand it very well.

  • Game Development Cost

    Design is an iterative process, something like 80% of the work in design you do will be redone, that's partly why everyone thinks they are a designer, an till they get fustrated by the process. It's the same when writing a book, movie script or interface design for a mobile phone. You only have to take a look at all the best games of the last few years, the best results come from big changes in development and being able to accept mistakes and learn from them. Bioshock is a good example of that, there are some articles talking about the problems they had.

    The day games can be made with ease and no loss i'll gobble my own penis, if you think games are bad take a look at the movie industry a little deeper, then consider how refined that should be.

  • Game Development Cost

    it's all about profit, if you can ensure (to a certain extent) that the game will make profit after sales, it's acceptable to spend almost what ever figure of money you can think of. GTA4 is an example of spending crazy money but making that back in a few weeks. Any game that makesa total profit even if £1 has been positive.

    As others have said game engine lisences, tools such as Maya, photoshop and crazy console sdk costs all add up. Free food in crunch times, release party ...