Any college that awards Bachelor degrees usually have a job placement/career services office that assists their graduates in finding entry/junior level positions.

Did you reach out to your college's placement office?

Also try looking at Hotjobs.com and monster.com, I am sure you'll find tons of entry level cs stuff there.

Since you have a place to live for free right now you can try going for an internship at a game company near you. It's a definite way of getting some experience under your belt.
In the mean time, continue to work on your personal projects, and clean up your resume.

D.P. wrote:
>i got a undergrad degree

I'm going to try and soften my usual harsh tone in regards to written English. Since this is a professional forum, and since written communication is vital in our industry, it is the normal practice on these forums to use proper capitalization and punctuation. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, you probably saw this as more of a cool, loose-and-easy, chat board like you get in online games and such. But if you just take a look at all the replies you've gotten, you'll see that the rest of us aren't using that sort of typing. And maybe you were born in another country, and it's harder work for you (than for us) to use proper writing habits, I don't know. Anyway. 'Nuff said.

>in computer engineering but no experience in the gaming industry.

"Gaming" = gambling, casinos, slot machines. Can't we all just call it the "game industry" already?

>right now im reading some books on game design

Big difference between "game design" and "game programming."

> i plan to go back an duplicate what i made using the high level software in lower level C++ from scratch.

You could do that, or you could create something new. If you're studying game design and want to improve in that area as well as in programming, it would be a good idea to do something new instead of redoing some old thing.

>i need advice on where to go from there. i need to get a job an move out of my parents house

Sure. Having some work experience under your belt will make it affordable to move out, to move to a locale where game companies are, and get a game job someday in the future.

>but everything posted on the web seems to be "senior programmer... senior designer... senior this and that" with several years of experience required.

You obviously aren't ready to get a game job yet, given what you said before. Start with a non-game job, just to build your resume.

>where does this experience start?

While working at your non-game job, you should be building a portfolio of multiple game demos. The other usual advice is to work on mods and indy/garage games to build not only your portfolio but also your visibility and contacts and learn about the process of collaborating on game making.

And read. Read these forums. Read the FAQs. Read the IGDA site. Join the IGDA. Read the FAQs on my site, too. This is an extensive voyage upon which you are embarking. It can't be rushed.

Years ago I wasn't looking for a job, but anyway I checked out the "Jobs" section of GameDev.net to see how demanding Game studios were, and yeah, most of them were "Senior etc." which surprised me. But then I thought it better: I was mostly looking at "Lucas Arts", "EA", "Sony Entertainment of America", etc. And of course you won't get a job in such places without being renowned. If you pay attention to the jobs section, you'll see that each time in a while appears an Indie-or-recently-created Studio looking for just "programmers", were you may fit in.
About the "programming experience", I can tell you that there are many ways to show your skills, that you're good, where you can earn respect.
Start making your own game to learn, contribute to Open Source games/engines, post images of your work, make a project on SourceForge.net

Here are some tips:
------------------
*Make a usefull project in SF.net
*Post images and help in GD.net
*Contribute to known Open Source projects (Graphic-related of course): OGRE, XviD, SDL, etc
*Go to GDCs (Game Developer Conference), IGFs (Independent game festival)
*Develop new techniques to optimize things done in games, or to do something previously considered "impossible" and publish the paper.
*Participate in Shader contests, Game demo contests, GD.net's 4-element contest, etc.

If you're good, you'll be invited to be part of the open-source project team. If you start calling the attention, jobs will start getting to you.
Why is so important posting (good-quality) images and all that stuff? because they'll show your talent, but even more important, most sites record the time-stamp. You left a footprint. And it sums to the "programming experience".

Of course, this requieres time and effort, and no payback in terms of money at short-term. But it's a place to start.

Have you trying googling your nickname? Does it show you in the first places? Do the pages that appear talk good about you?

Remember, if you're EXCELLENT you'll start getting job offering, rather than trying to get one. This is valid in any industry in any career.

Of course, these tips are pherhaps too open-source sideview, but use your imagination how to call the attention. AND BY CALLING THE ATTENTION DOESNT MEAN MAKING USELESS FORUM POSTS! Useless posts call the attention, but don't speak good about yourself.

And at last, always look professional. Recently (yesterday) was a post regarding that. Try avoiding OMG LoL thankz G33k plz ur, etc.

Hope this helps
Dark Sylinc