Starting without wanting to find a job

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13 comments, last by MichaelNIII 10 years, 11 months ago

But how's your knowledge of Lagrangian mechanics? Poisson distributions? Standard deviation? The rules of integration and differentiation? Pipelined architectures? Data structures? Computational efficiency? BN notation? Colour theory? The physics behind lenses? Mutexs? Locks? Lock-free code? SIMD? Solutions to sparse matrices? Can you dervie the equations to convert a quaternion to a matrix from scratch?

Half of that stuff, having a double major myself I dont even know. And dont see the point in knowing either.

Then you still have a lot to learn ;)

People often say that all you need to know are matrices, quats, trigonometry, and maybe some newtonian mechanics thrown in as well. Whilst you can 'get-by' using this stuff, knowledge of the aspects I listed above will be very helpful in the long run. As an example, consider statistics (that branch of mathematics everyone hates). I used to consider stats to be completely pointless, utterly useless, and hated the fact I was forced to learn various distributions at A-Level. Fast forward ten years, and I then realised that stats can provide a really useful tool when trying to compress data assets. If you know the mean of the data set, its standard deviation, and the distribution it follows; it's very easy to come up with a compression scheme that's tailored to your data set.

You might think that knowing how to derive the equations for matrices/quats/etc is completely pointless (because you can just find a bit of C code online that does the computation and use that). In reality however, you'll often need to make that code work with SSE/alti-vec/neon instruction sets. If you take a routine optimised for the FPU and try to fit it into SIMD, it usually ends up being less efficient than the original FPU methods. If however you understand how a formula was derived, you can usually find a solution (from first principles) that will fit the hardware better.

One of the first things you learn at university level mechanics, is that newtonian methods are very simple to understand, but they require a hell of a lot of computation. Transforming the problem into lagrangian mechanics give you a much more efficient (and numerically stable) way of computing dynamics simulations. If you ever need to look at the solver code for Havok or PhysX, this stuff will be immensely useful!

So you might consider all of those topics completely pointless. I however, consider them to be really useful tools to simplify and optimise some of the harder problems you'll find when developing computer games. All knoweldge you learn, will one day become invaluable - it's just very hard to see why that's the case when you're first learning a topic.

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I will play devil’s advocate just so the other side of the fence gets some representation. It is always good to see every viewpoint.
Disclaimer: It doesn’t mean you are advised to drop out. A lot of my situation is luck, but honestly you make luck happen, so it isn’t really so much luck in the end.

RobTheBloke, on 24 Apr 2013 - 03:45, said:
But how's your knowledge of Lagrangian mechanics? Poisson distributions? Standard deviation? The rules of integration and differentiation? Pipelined architectures? Data structures? Computational efficiency? BN notation? Colour theory? The physics behind lenses? Mutexs? Locks? Lock-free code? SIMD? Solutions to sparse matrices? Can you dervie the equations to convert a quaternion to a matrix from scratch?

You know, the stuff you're forced to learn in univeristy and A-Levels?

I learned all of these either on the job when needed or on my own through my own projects.

RobTheBloke, on 24 Apr 2013 - 03:45, said:
Most companies have HR departments that filter CV's before they get put infront of the team leads. The filters they use are rudimentary, and mainly involve the question: "Do they have a degree?". If the answer is no, it will be binned.
The ONLY people in the games industry who've made it without a degree, are those individuals who made a name for themselves. For example, I know one guy who was hired as a developer on 3ds Max when he was 16, because for the 3 years prior, he'd been publishing and releasing plug-ins for 3ds Max that were better than the ones written by Autodesk, so they offered him a job. So yes it's possible to make it without a degree, but only if someone is already offering to hire you. Otherwise, no chance.

I can assure you there is a chance.

I dropped out of high school and have no degree.
Which is why I was able to get a job overseas in game programming with no prior experience (never worked in America) and a career traveling around the world making video games from Ghost Recon 2 to Final Fantasy games.

Not because I dropped out directly, but because of the same thing that made me drop out: My motivation for the field and unrelenting can-do/will-do attitude.
Other 14-year-olds went home and played games after school. I went home and made games. It was my calling and nothing would stop me.
By the time I was a senior I was fed up with school not teaching me what I needed to know for my future. I had skipped 2 years in math and still had to learn relevant math on my own in my spare time outside of school. “Oh, vector math. Come on, I taught myself that 3 years ago…”
I got fed up with not learning anything useful, dropped out, and started my career, which has since taken me to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, France, America, and Japan.

It’s obviously possible.
Just keep my disclaimer in mind. It’s possible and trust me it is the high life when you are traveling all over the world and being paid for doing what you would be doing as a hobby anyway.
It’s also not a likely outcome, and you don’t have much of a chance unless you really know what you are doing (how to end up in such a situation) and you started very young.


So the way I see it is that by following all the advice above you certainly will get a job. It’s the safe and obvious way into the industry.
Which is exactly why it will land you exactly equal to all the others in the industry: As a number in a big corporation working 80 hours per week, single and childless at 31 (quoting a recent article on the subject).
Taking a normal route will definitely get you into the industry, but you likely won’t be so happy/satisfied with where you are.
Taking risks is the only way to really live, to travel the world, to work on your dream games (it was my goal since I was a child to work on Final Fantasy), but when taking risks there is usually some risk involved. That’s why they call it “taking risks”.
You could fail miserably.

But what’s the worst that can happen? Assuming you don’t make the choice to take your own life, you always have the option to try, try, and try again.


L. Spiro

I restore Nintendo 64 video-game OST’s into HD! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCtX_wedtZ5BoyQBXEhnVZw/playlists?view=1&sort=lad&flow=grid

You should finish school. It is important because it gives you a well-rounded knowledge about life and yourself. If you got unlimited time, the more polished you can provide to your game. It is hard to tell if an idea is brilliant or not because we cannot read the minds of one yet even millions of people. If you have done game programming, keep challenging yourself. There are many areas to explore in game programming. It is also good to have a sense of project scope and simplicity to your initial design.

People love to see a good game prototype. If you can make a good one, let more people know about it. Feedback is valuable because people who give good and bad feedback will help you shape your game to be one they will probably play in the future.

Just a minor clarification. Statistics is not considered a branch of mathematics. Reference

As an example, consider statistics (that branch of mathematics everyone hates).

School is a useful tool. If you are and school - and can aready write a game - and have done so. To the point of spending more time on your career is a more valueable thing then school. Then drop out - I knew a kid who dropped out 3 days before graduating because he turned 18 and went to work for his fathers construction company. Prefectly fine choice. Dropping out to work on a game and engine... not so much if your not funded and don't LOVE living with your parents. I am also building a game and engine a lot like what your talking about - I've been learning c++ for 8? Years now and have been working on my game for about a year and a half. My estimate right now to with what I've done so far - to write and engine and decently comlex game like what your talking about, no less then 5 years for anything I would consider to maybe be a moderately polished game (by yourself). Could easily be less, could also easily be a lot more. Do you have that much spare time and very little want to move forward in life until its complete? Also learning some concepts without someone experienced to teach you them can be very difficult. Things like - should I use indexed triangle lists or triangle strips to draw my models? And depending on the site and when it was written, you will get different answers. Triangle strips have there place however a lot of sites say to use them for speed, while a lot of newer sites say to use indexed triangle lists because they are easier - don't involve having to find optimal strip patterns and the amount of data being passed to the graphics card usually isn't a major bottleneck.

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