Jovince

Expect to have a game demo portfolio. It speaks much louder than your resume and degree. Of course the programming concepts you are familiar with can be transferred in making a game. Game programming is more about testing one's fundamentals about a graphics library on top of the algorithmic problem solving using the conceptual and fundamental knowledge of the language and following the software engineering principles to maintain and reuse the code-base and planning and project scope.

 

You should be able to modify and read other people's code.

 

Since you are familiar with C#, try mixing it with XNA or MonoGame to make a game. Making a game will make you understand the language better and challenge yourself as a programmer.

I'm not really too familiar with algorithms, specially those for games. Can you let me know what algorithms I should go and learn? Also, XNA is no longer supported by Microsoft, so should I just familiarize myself with Unity3D since it also supports C#?

I would LOVE to talk about this topic. 

 

This is my personal opinion, but I HATE not having the option to control my characters directly.  To be clear though, I'm also a fan of AI controlled party members that behave moderately intelligently.  So how can both those things be true?  Well, I want to have the OPTION to be able to take direct control when I want to, but not be forced to (by idiotic AI) all the time. 

 

At the same time, I'm all about speeding up battles in the traditional turn based RPG setting.  Here are a few things I love seeing in games:

 

• A kind of Macro command system.  The Player can define a set of actions that they want there characters to take ahead of time and hit one button to execute that whole set of actions.  IE Macro1 commands char1 to attack, char2 to defend, char3 to cast magic missile, and char 4 to heal. (Phantasy Star series)
• Giving players the option to turn off elaborate battle animations if they wish.  (Disgaea series)
• FAST MENUS!  This includes keeping text to a minimum, and requiring as few key presses (or button pushes) to advance as is possible.
• A plain old "Speed up" option.  This may not be as practical with AAA games that are maxing out a graphics processor, but there was an old genesis game called Master of Monsters which had this option.  When enabled it literally just played animations twice as fast.  I think for most hobby projects, this is probably doable if desired. 
• EDIT:  Almost forgot one of the biggest ones... can we please get rid of the 10 second long splash screen when a battle starts?  Sure they look nice and all, but when, over the course of a game, I'm going to be getting into hundreds if not thousands of battles I don't need to keep seeing it over and over again.

Well, food for thought at least.  I know in the RPG I'm currently making I've been meticulously planning to make sure my battles move as fast as is possible...

Haha, I definitely agree with removing the 10 second splash screen at the beginning lol. For the game I'm designing, I was thinking of something in between the ff13 paradigm system and the phantasy star mechanic you described. Where the player can create a sort of party command, composed of specific commands for each party member, but the player has the choice on how specific the commands are, for example, heal the most damage, or heal this specific character. the player can define a fixed number of these party commands outside of battle, and swap between them during battle. But apart from this, the player only has control of the main character. Thoughts?