Quote:Original post by blanky
Hey guys is westwood college cool, or good? It's like, 5 miles away from me.

It's actually the most brutal piece of crap ever conceived and you'd be laughed at with that on your resume. You would actually look better not having any education listed than that school.

Rabid -

I would definitely attribute the level of attrition to the courses that are at the school. They are very compact which means you have to be able to pick up a very large amount of information in a small amount of time. The school does a good job of putting you into an environment that mimics the atmosphere of a studio in the industry. There's a lot of work to do in a very tight schedule which I believe helps prepare the students for positions in the industry where the constraints are often very similar.

I don't really think I could have picked the people who would have made it or not at the beginning of the program. Everyone who comes to Full Sail does so because they have a deep love for games. Unfortunately it's not an easy path to take, and some people can't handle it, especially not at the high doses Full Sail dishes out. Like I said its attrition rate really helps pick the people who are really driven and want this more then anything.

Of the 13 I only know of one who had any prior programming experience. The school does a very good job of teaching you how to program from the ground up. My first programming class taught us the basics of OOP and C++ by making us create an ASCII based rpg game. It was very challenging and a lot of people couldn't keep up, but those of us who did are very appreciative of the difficulty this course allowed for.

It's not actually a graduate program, it's an undergrad Bachelors degree with a focus on Comp Sci. As far as the chances of a high school grad making it through, I believe everyone who comes here has graduated high school :) just kidding. Honestly the chance of anyone getting through this school can be measured much more succinctly by the dedication and determination of the individual and not so much by their backgrounds. My class actually has 3 people who are graduating with us on May 5th that came directly after graduating high school.

The schools you mentioned seems very hard if only a few people graduate and so much people can't handle it. I'm sure all people who starts these schools have experience in programming from before too. Well, I don't really care about that so much, I have the will to make games and to make career on game programming, so that won't hinder me.

I actually found a school in my own country which looked really promising and it was only about 5 miles from where I live too. That's perfect for me because I don't need to live so far away from my home and no need to travel so far.

Sad to say, but I would attribute a good deal of failures to World of Warcraft... it sounds a little silly... but I've seen it. Whatever school you go to, go in with lots of determination, and you'll succeed.

Another one is guildhall.

Quote:Original post by Morpheus011
It's not actually a graduate program, it's an undergrad Bachelors degree with a focus on Comp Sci.

Please. It barely teaches you much of anything a first year comp science student wouldn't know.

You have six days scheduled for data structures. Really the class only spends about five days learning different types of data structures. This does not even come close to compare the two years you'd spend learning about algorithms and data structures at a traditional school.

The AI class, spends a great deal on path finding and touches on other topics of AI without thourougly delving into each. Luckily there is 12 classes for this and you learn a bit more, but once again it doesn't compare to how much you'd learn at a traditional college.

In the engine architecture class you get to play with tree's again but does not go into anything deeper then a non-balanced binary tree.

The math you learn is not much more then you should have learned comming out of highschool with good grades. You learn basic calculus, linear algebra and basic newtonian physics.

The worst part is the 3d programming techniques the students learn are showed to them with very little mathematical basis. This causes them to spit out formula's without having an understanding of why it works that way.

It has very little focus on comp science and I wouldn't compare it to any formidable comp science school.

Quote:Original post by peter_b
If it is powerhouse you are thinking about, i can recomend it. Im attending my final year there now. Some say its a bad school, i disagree. The school is what you make of it. As someone said, if you like world of warcraft alot, maybe gamedev isn't for you. Unless you are really talanted/gifted, you don't have time to spend 4-5hours per day playing a game. You will need to spend that time writing code.

Anyhow, powerhouse in kramfors dosn't require any pre-programming skills at all, it starts with basic c++.

Iv done well at powerhouse, i know alot haven't. But on the other hand, they were maybe just not programmer materail, these educations attract alot of "gamers". Who misstake themselfes for wanting to make games, since they like playing them. Don't do that misstake.

Try to code before you apply, do you have an intrerest? Do you want to spend 8h per day working with doing just that in the future? Can you be happy doing that?


Awnser those questions first. Then apply to powerhouse. =)


Hope this helps

Yes, it's powerhouse I found, good to hear that it is a good school. Fortunately, I don't play wow or any game like that right now, I actually quit playing games a while ago to get more time to code because it took up so much time. I'm only playing some hours a week now. I like to play games but it's much funnier to make them.

I'm prepared to spend 8 hours and more per day working with just gameprogramming, I have some programming experience from before so don't worry about that :), have been coding vb about 2-3 years ago, have been coding c++ slowly but surely since last year and been a webdesigner who specializes in coding for 4-6 years, it have been varying but my interest is at top right now.

I will take care of the math and physics the last two years in my current school.

Is powerhouse an hard school in your option? Do they learn at a fast pace?