/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General

>>23987

>game dev major

Does this actually exist? Do these people get hired?

>>23993

Maybe they did a few years back but now I doubt it.

>going to school for game dev instead of teaching yourself

I'm glad schools for game dev are soo shit(thanks SJW professors!), if I see an application with one, without a nice portfolio, I throw the application straight in the trash.

A real degree and impressive portfolio is what actually matters. With art it's all portfolio, art degrees are for retards who blow their parents money.

Although there's lots(like 1/5 of devs) which got in with no skills and dick sucking.

I met a guy who did one. He didn't go into specifics about it, but he basically said it feels like a taster course. He said that you learn how to do everything, but there isn't anything you learn how to do particularly well. He ended up doing a programming course.

I remember checking one of these in my country, and it was crazy.

>Huge prizes you would never see for any other kind of studies, they literally were making gold out of thin air

>The teachers were mostly people from studios from 20 years ago that managed to make one hit wonder (and they weren't even that important of a hit) or that were somehow involved in games that had some importance in the past (but that maybe they were nothing inside the team)

>The projects made by studets were totally shit, you could see shitty Unity programs that they would develop for years and wouldn't even work in a normal computer, the best they would have would be usually made by a few of actual good students but be totally destroyed because everyone would jump in the wagon to get their names there

>I heard some of the game design ideas and stuff and they were totally stupid, making pretty obvious they had no idea what they were talking about and just copy pasting whatever other talented creators made in the past

Basically the game design school scene is dead, there's no order, no sense to anything they make, and everyone is there just to make money because there's a shit ton of rich kids able to pay ANY AMOUNT OF MONEY just to receive a diploma in whatever with "videogames" on it.

I went to a dev school for a year. Got the hell out of there during the second one, and currently going full neet and teaching myself stuff while I wait for the next year, so I can get into compsci. It felt kind of like >>24023 stated.

Also, AMA if you feel like it. Otherwise I really don't know if starting to post my experiences would be kind of attention-whory.

I feel kind of sad for people who want to learn Game Design because apparently there is no Watts/LAAFA/Atelier/Gnomon alternative for those guys,they need to just grind and learn how games work in general and that's kind of a hard thing.

I kind of missed GG (was becoming a new Dad) but everything I read was more about consumer-media interaction, and to a lesser extent media-dev interaction. That GG also existed dev-to-dev is surprising. Working in software for a while, its fucking bush league to ever talk politics because it just generates enemies and generally very few friends.

I had a "video game development" class to satisfy an elective.

Semester consisted of going over very basic mechanics I gathered by having played a few games, a few examples in unity2d, and a final project.

Most of the final projects were 2d platformers that had less than four hours put into them(Around 3 hours of class time were designated to working on projects). I put together a shitty RTS game with a few simple staple features(simple terrain generation, box selection, simple base construction, group creation/selection, contextual unit voiceovers).

At the end of the semester there was an event where the students displayed their final projects and visitors voted for the top 5 and 5 honorable mentions. I don't know how to portray how assmad I was when I got an honorable mention and 3 of the top 5 were minimal effort platformers with relatively fancy assets(pulled offline).

To top things off, I figured out from someone running the event one of the contributing factors. The university was having tours that day, and the majority of the people trying my game couldn't figure out RTS controls(left click to select/order units, right click to deselect), despite the fact that there was a "Need help?" button plastered on the screen that lead to a page explaining how to play.

I know I could have probably spent more time adding flashy assets, or making a tutorial, or other extra features, but I'm still butthurt that I put in around 20 hours and was defeated by 6-8 hour projects that were simply more intuitive to normies.

>>24180

> (left click to select/order units, right click to deselect)

Mahnigga.png

Total Annihilation style is best style.

I am visiting a game dev school, and despite some flaws, it hasn't been that bad overall. But, they just recently completely redesigned the whole course, and not in a good way. I can't wait to graduate and get the hell out before they completely ruin their reputation.

>>24022

>got in with dick sucking

I wish i got hired for it

I've just started a comp sci/math double major (well, I'm taking 3rd and 4th year math classes since I had all my calculus done from an earlier try at college), and so extrapolating from here, I'll graduate with a solid understanding of lambda calculus and how to manipulate strings in Java.

I'm basically treating it as a paying job (GI Bill living allowance) that will support my creation of a portfolio, and and if I pick up useful things from classes, that's a bonus.

I went full retard once and did a online tafe course from AIE on videogame programming.

It was complete fucking garbage.I basically learnt nothing at all, they didn't teach us anything about the language we were using, just copy and paste this here and there and look that picture now moves.

>>24022

Is it worth getting a degree in computer programming? I mean, I heard some people taught themselves programming anyways.

>>24330

You're fucking joking! I dodged a bullet and a half there then. I was thinking about doing that course next year but i'm leaning towards software development>compsci now.

My tafe teachers said AIE has the best games programming course they know of.

>>24378

Depends where, I guess? I think most unis, colleges and courses should have a list of topics or something?

Most of the stuff can be and should be self-taught. Once you understand a specific paradigm it should be easy for you to learn any language in that paradigm on entry level.

There are still things you might learn by getting a degree (or might not, depends on who and how is going to teach you) and definitely might skip by being a self-taught programmer with no experience. Various peripheral knowledge (mostly math) and discipline related-stuff. But you can also learn some of those by working with experienced programmers.

I went to a game dev university.

The teachers had all worked on videogames for years (one in particular had worked on the 3d Prince of Persia series), and while the head of the university hadn't done game dev, he'd written a shitload of articles about the technical side of design. The actual subjects were interesting, everything from level design, project management, prototyping, design documentation, psychology, and more.

Out of 15 or so design graduates, only one got a job in the games industry. Not entirely the uni's fault, it's a small industry in my city.

The course was fine, but it's not a big enough industry, and it comes down to portfolio anyway. Like taking a 3d modelling course, it'd be useless if you have a shit portfolio.

We saw some work of another uni's game dev course, and it was a total mess though. I guess most unis are just taking advantage of the relatively new industry, like Biotech Engineering and stuff like that. It doesn't need a uni course yet.

>>24430

>Out of 15 or so design graduates, only one got a job in the games industry.

Jeez, that isn't much. Where did the other people end up?

>>24430

>design documentation

As an aside, I'm beginning to think I need to look into how one does that. I hadn't realized how bad my focus was until I started trying to apply all the things I've learned about programming in the past few years.

>"Okay, time to get started on animating sprites and shit for this crude JRPG engine."

>Three hours later

>"Goddammit, when did I start working on music? I was doing something before this, and I'm pretty sure it was the overworld map."

If people with ADHD are like this about everything they ever touch instead of just larger projects, I feel sorry for them.

>>24180

>I don't know how to portray how assmad I was when I got an honorable mention and 3 of the top 5 were minimal effort platformers with relatively fancy assets(pulled offline).

Maybe this wasn't entirely due to the taste of the normie voters who don't know RTS games, but also due to the voting method used. When voters rank proposals and each first-place mention gets X points, second-place mention X-1 points, third-place mention X-2 points etc. and most points wins, a set of proposals that is clustered together on the ballots has a chance of winning that positively correlates with its member size. (In the literature, using points for ranks is known as Borda voting, candidate clusters are called clones, and this candidate-spam problem of Borda is well known.)

>>24434

>making progress

>open solitaire by accident

>30 minutes gone before I realize what i was supposed to be doing

I dont know how I ever get anything done.

Who would actually go to a school for that? Everyone I've talked to told me that if you wanna learn to program for games that a Computer Science degree is better

Out of curiosity, is Austin's ACC Game Development degrees any good?

I'm thinking of going for Game Art almost entirely because it's focused on things that I haven't done before (3D art, for example) that'd help build my portfolio; overall, I've heard fairly good things about ACC from my friends, but I don't really know anyone who's gone through the courses.

I'm afraid of something like this happening to me, especially because it's...well, Austin.

>>24434

You have no idea mate, I don't even know how I got into this thread, I was looking up a blender issue at some point in the past.

I have had success with some medicines but they usually make me an emotional wreck or they suppress all of my creativity. It's a rough ride.

I'm an entirely self taught tech artist and engine programmer.

Currently making 40$/hr.

No debt whatsoever.

Most degrees are scams. Just read books, do stuff, make stuff.

If a company overlooks your portfolio because you don't have a degree then you don't want to work for that company.

>>24166

Why the hell would a person major in ceramics? Can you really pay back $50k of art school debt by selling glazed bowls?

Tried AICASF and UAT, both seemed like what anon said earlier, "taster" degrees. Dabble in a little of everything then change off to a real degree. But something else about game design schools is the culture. UAT especially, and especially if you lived on campus, was like a little walled garden. We had furries and traps walking around openly, not like in a fursuit but wearing cat ears and tails, and this was eight years ago before that kind of thing was accepted. The point is, if you want to make friends and enjoy yourself/enjoy "geek culture", game dev schools can be great, even if they're bad at teaching game design.

Many computer science programs at universities have game development options now, which seems to be a better choice than going to an art school or community college. You'll actually learn about computer architecture, algorithms, operating systems, instead of just the game dev fluff.

Many computer science programs at universities have game development options now, which seems to be a better choice than going to an art school or community college. You'll actually learn about computer architecture, algorithms, operating systems, instead of just the game dev fluff.

>>28014

The game development university courses are usually "complete" in the sense that you get an adequate CS background that's paired with game development units and mathematics for game programming. However, programming as a field is a totally distinct subject to game development.

The game development you learn in art schools and community collage are real game development courses but they have minimal lessons about computer programming (if any). The reason for this is because game development is a field that can be done without computer programming. These people are expected to work with programmers who don't necessarily have any background in game development. Computer programmers trained in game development are useful in that they have the aptitude to do what everyone else is doing (they have that same training as everyone else) but this skill of "game development" is not strictly needed in order to design and write a game program.

>>27987

Majoring in ceramics doesn't imply the only thing you learn is ceramics. You'd be doing a general fine arts course in conjunction with various units dedicated to ceramics.

>>24020

This.

"Game Dev" does not need to be taught. If you go to an institute, it should be for some specific skill like programming or art.