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OneEightHundred posted:Yeah I have no idea what to make of that since there's basically no information at all yet regarding what state of the engine is, what the content tools are like, what the licensing scheme is, what distribution requirements are if anything, or really any of the information needed to compare it to any of its competitors. God, everything's so amazing. What the gently caress.
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Mar 5, 2015 02:26
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The licensing scheme for Source 2 appears to be "you must sell your game on Steam and release simultaneously with any other platforms"
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Mar 5, 2015 02:40
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Inverness posted:I'm someone who used C++ long before C#. I'm totally comfortable with using the Unreal-ish C++ in UE4. As things currently stand, you can't level stream level chunks in with an offset - building a level out of statically lightmapped chunks stapled together in random orientations and orders is a huge struggle. A dev posted:Well, static lighting is baked in the editor against current level transform, assuming that transform is final and will not be changed. We're hoping if we can get at the lightmaps themselves we can do some manual transforming on them etc.
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Mar 5, 2015 02:54
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pseudorandom name posted:The licensing scheme for Source 2 appears to be "you must sell your game on Steam and release simultaneously with any other platforms" So if they don't approve you for Steam, you're just hosed?
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Mar 5, 2015 04:20
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Just make death threats against Gabe and it'll be sorted out.
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Mar 5, 2015 04:54
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Subjunctive posted:So if they don't approve you for Steam, you're just hosed? Valve have been saying for a long time that they want to do away with Greenlight and make Steam completely open to everyone. And if it still hasn't happened by the time Source 2 games are happening, they could always give them preferential treatment.
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Mar 5, 2015 04:57
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Unormal posted:God, everything's so amazing. What the gently caress. Right? Where do they go from here? I can't imagine a better time to be getting into this stuff. Everything is becoming free, and all the help and training you'd ever need is online. poo poo owns.
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Mar 5, 2015 05:03
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Onion Knight posted:Right? Where do they go from here? The easier it becomes the more I feel like poo poo for not doing it. That's the downside.
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Mar 5, 2015 05:25
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Epic's GDC stuff is pretty interesting, especially their UE4 open world demo. Those loving rocks man. 
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Mar 5, 2015 05:48
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Onion Knight posted:Right? Where do they go from here?
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Mar 5, 2015 07:15
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Inverness posted:Epic's GDC stuff is pretty interesting, especially their UE4 open world demo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zjPiGVSnfI Does indeed look mega sexy.  EDIT:roomforthetuna posted:But that makes it a worse time to be experienced because now everyone can make stuff to compete with your stuff. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Mar 5, 2015 |
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Mar 5, 2015 07:19
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Well I guess you'd hope your experience gave you some kind of benefit over chumps like me. The bigger problem overall is saturation. I guess the market will sort that out itself but it almost relies on legions of people with nothing better to do than try the latest offerings by a two brothers in russia making a game about microwaves, to see if it's worth paying for instead of your game
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Mar 5, 2015 07:21
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Shalinor posted:You mean the kite video, or something else? Shieet is that available to download anywhere, to run it on my pc? Wanna see that rendered in real time
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Mar 5, 2015 07:36
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echinopsis posted:Well I guess you'd hope your experience gave you some kind of benefit over chumps like me.
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Mar 5, 2015 07:51
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Well, I think the sticking point is "decent", in that, well, amateur games are less likely to be decent. God knows mine are sacks of poo poo! Hopefully someone with experience can make something more decent
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Mar 5, 2015 08:09
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roomforthetuna posted:Yeah, that's what I was getting at. If previously there were 3000 people able to make decent games, and now there are 300000 people able to make decent games, the market share captured by the games of those 3000 people is likely to be a lot smaller (along with corresponding downward price pressure, tougher marketing competition, etc.) It is now worse to be one of the people who could always make games than it was before. (Though it is also better in that you can probably make games quicker now, using someone else's engine-work, throwing away your sunk costs.) I don't think the number of people with the talent and drive to make games professionally is really impacted by the availability of game engines, and even to the degree that it is, I think it only benefits everyone in the industry to have a deeper talent pool. Also, if it does increase the pool of job applicants, that actually favors candidates with industry experience as that's the easiest filter for hiring, and the more applications you get the less time to spend looking at portfolios to try and identify untapped potential in people who otherwise lack experience. If anything it makes it harder to break in. Really I think all of this stuff is just awesome all around for everyone. edit: I realize I somewhat misinterpreted what you were talking about, you were talking about getting people to play your games and I was just thinking from a jobs standpoint. Oh well. Paniolo fucked around with this message at 08:34 on Mar 5, 2015 |
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Mar 5, 2015 08:30
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Paniolo posted:Really I think all of this stuff is just awesome all around for everyone. Time will tell. I think the main people to benefit will be the people who like to game but not too much. Purist gamers will sort the wheat from the chaff, the not too often gamers will only pay for and play games that rise to the top, and the devs will get shafted with lower wages and worse job security (generalising here) And just to be clear how relevant my opinion is to this thread... I'm a pharmacist
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Mar 5, 2015 08:35
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echinopsis posted:Shieet is that available to download anywhere, to run it on my pc? Wanna see that rendered in real time If it's anything like the elemental reel they used as the UE4 annoucement trailer, it will eventually come out as a UE4 project. My question is just how beefy a box they were running to get it to 30fps. Those are some super sexy trees though, that new foliage lighting is amazing.
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Mar 5, 2015 09:20
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pseudorandom name posted:The licensing scheme for Source 2 appears to be "you must sell your game on Steam and release simultaneously with any other platforms" echinopsis posted:The bigger problem overall is saturation. I guess the market will sort that out itself but it almost relies on legions of people with nothing better to do than try the latest offerings by a two brothers in russia making a game about microwaves, to see if it's worth paying for instead of your game Having an engine definitely doesn't remove the need for work, it just means the work is spent on new problems.
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Mar 5, 2015 10:07
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roomforthetuna posted:Yeah, that's what I was getting at. If previously there were 3000 people able to make decent games, and now there are 300000 people able to make decent games, the market share captured by the games of those 3000 people is likely to be a lot smaller (along with corresponding downward price pressure, tougher marketing competition, etc.) It is now worse to be one of the people who could always make games than it was before. (Though it is also better in that you can probably make games quicker now, using someone else's engine-work, throwing away your sunk costs.) You're assuming that the market for games is static. It's not. It's growing. As the cost of computers/devices comes down the market for games is growing very quickly in developing countries, and the market even in developed countries gets larger every year too. There are more people playing and buying games now than ever. The pool of people making games will definitely grow, but it's not going to become completely trivial. Even with really great game engines, making good games is hard and requires a lot of attention to detail. echinopsis posted:Well I guess you'd hope your experience gave you some kind of benefit over chumps like me. I think it's a bit silly to worry about saturation. Word processors have been available widely for like 2 decades at this point. How many people do you know that are novelists? HD cameras are also not super expensive anymore, and yet most people aren't becoming indie filmmakers. As well, having the barrier entry be high does not necessarily lead to higher quality output. Go look at any random game from the earlier console eras, and there's still quite a lot of absolute shovelware. ErIog fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Mar 5, 2015 |
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Mar 5, 2015 10:15
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Suspicious Dish posted:If anybody is in San Francisco, there's actually a public event on Vulkan that doesn't require GDC registration or membership at the SF Green Space near the Moscone Center. It's right by my office, so I was thinking of just playing hookie on work and attending. They have a video giving an overview of the debugger that also lets you see more of the API: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miZmas6sGqM
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Mar 5, 2015 18:23
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ErIog posted:I think it's a bit silly to worry about saturation. Word processors have been available widely for like 2 decades at this point. Hmm, there are a fuckload of ebooks on amazon for very small prices. More than there used to be when books where mostly released by publishers. I see your point however
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Mar 5, 2015 20:19
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The cutting edge is always moving in all creative work. Much rare and valuable expertise is trivially outmoded as time rolls on. Pressing the real frontiers is always a challenge and continues to be rewarded.
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Mar 5, 2015 21:52
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ErIog posted:You're assuming that the market for games is static. It's not. It's growing. As the cost of computers/devices comes down the market for games is growing very quickly in developing countries, and the market even in developed countries gets larger every year too. There are more people playing and buying games now than ever. Yeah I liken it to 'web design'. In the 90s it was an actual in-demand skill. Then it got really easy to do and automation tools are rampant (wix, wp, etc etc). But there are still 'web designers', some good, a lot bad. That said, I don't think the game industry will grow at the rate internet adoption did, but they're comparable circumstances.
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Mar 5, 2015 21:55
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I'm honestly a tiny bit worried about the direction I've taken my education with how things have been going with the industry for the past year or so. I tend to prefer working on low level stuff, so any chance to take a graphics course with C/C++/GLSL I've taken, which means I've passed on a lot of more generally useful software engineering courses. I'm not sure how to react to this, so if anyone with industry experience would oblige: Does this change the industry enough that I should seriously consider not taking anymore games related courses and salvage my education as much as I can?
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Mar 5, 2015 22:23
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Joda posted:I'm not sure how to react to this, so if anyone with industry experience would oblige: Does this change the industry enough that I should seriously consider not taking anymore games related courses and salvage my education as much as I can? [no industry experience] I have no industry experience but as a guy who has done software interviews, basically no one will ever read your college transcript don't get too bent out of shape. [/no industry experience] If you want to do a specific thing make some software you can demo and explain in depth. If you can say go to the app store/play/Steam/itch.io/whatever and download my game/app and then explain at length your difficulty and decisions that will matter 100x more than what classes you took.
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Mar 5, 2015 22:38
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Stick100 posted:[no industry experience] (worked on and off at EA for a couple of years in non-programming roles) Yeah this really. Your course selection isn't that important, your portfolio/reel is. At worst what I've seen while doing resume trawls with a team lead is what school it actually is, as in "Oh hey this guy went to (school x) that's where I went".
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Mar 5, 2015 22:43
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Joda posted:I'm honestly a tiny bit worried about the direction I've taken my education with how things have been going with the industry for the past year or so. I tend to prefer working on low level stuff, so any chance to take a graphics course with C/C++/GLSL I've taken, which means I've passed on a lot of more generally useful software engineering courses. Depending on the studio (ie. if it's a mobile studio), picking up C# and Unity knowledge would be a good idea pre-interview, but that shouldn't take you long at all. Build a funsies project over a few nights and weekends, add that to your portfolio, shazam, you're employable in mobile too. Besides: AAA studios still employ graphics programmers and core engineers (usually it's called the "Platform Team"). Even if they're using UE4, they need people conversant enough with the tech to dive in and do the handful of bespoke things that their game requires, or to figure out why X bug is happening in Y place so that they can submit an accurate bug report and possibly a fix back to Epic (or design a hack that circumvents it). Shalinor fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Mar 5, 2015 |
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Mar 5, 2015 23:19
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I have great memories of Software Engineering as an undergrad involved being taught UML with the lecturer starting out complaining how awful UML was, but that nothing else was as commonly accepted for the purposes UML was designed to fulfil than UML itself. It was an eye opening moment where many first came to realise before ever going into industry that the software industry might not have been a paragon of perfection and well oiled code and systems working in harmony, and just a bunch of hacks and kludges running at dangerous capacity. For what it's worth my degree literally says "Computer Games" and that is a loving hell of a title to carry into a web designing interview, but the degree title was never the factor that kept me out of software roles. No, the thing that did me in there was waiting too long to start going to interviews so all the recent graduate positions were taken, but yeah, I also had a portfolio of projects slung up on the web that helped me get my foot in the door on more than a few occasions too. I'm speaking for like some companies in the UK in like 2011 but what did me in was I actually came out of university with an atrocious C++ background (still not particularly good at it) which shut me out of a lot of avenues entirely, so if you're trying to go into the games industry then yeah your current skillset already sounds more useful than what I had from graduation. Either way, if a schmuck like me could get a job in a not-games-related industry with BSc Computer Games and a portfolio of games and games related projects, you're fine.
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Mar 5, 2015 23:28
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Joda posted:I'm honestly a tiny bit worried about the direction I've taken my education with how things have been going with the industry for the past year or so. I tend to prefer working on low level stuff, so any chance to take a graphics course with C/C++/GLSL I've taken, which means I've passed on a lot of more generally useful software engineering courses. I feel like this is a joke. But you're probably just a stressed student taking things too seriously. Dude, its fine. As they say in Brooklyn, "forgetaboutit". The industry is always changing. But the majority of CS and software engineering majors can't even complete a simple "Hello, World" even after graduating. The fact that you're interested in GLSL and C++ graphics puts you leagues ahead of most. If you want to go into games programming it is a very competitive field, but which courses you took in college isn't going to really make or break you. You've just gotta have tons of passion and skill. Honestly what matters most for getting jobs in the industry is experience in the industry. When you graduate you're kinda hosed regardless of what courses you took, and if you can manage to get your foot in the door, then college no longer matters. Not that getting a degree is worthless, (and hopefully you learned some things in those courses) but its not quite what you're making it out to be, I think. Shalinor posted:Software Engineering courses probably wouldn't have taught you as much useful stuff as you think. Those are often bullshit like compiler design, which is great if you're angling for the 0.1% of jobs that involve that kind of work, but totally useless knowledge otherwise. So long as you've taken a Data Structures class and know C/C++, and can talk your way around GLSL enough to impress a gameplay programmer, odds are very good you could pick any specialization of game programming you cared to. You'd be able to pass a jr interview in any of them. It'll be entirely down to your portfolio. If even. My Software Engineering courses were almost entirely a waste of time. The only practical things we went over were writing code specs and proper documentation, how to do some not-completely-lovely testing, and having our professor drill into our heads just how badly we were going to underestimate our own work schedules. (And I still did after graduation) And then yeah, stuff like Compiler Design, Operating Systems, etc. which doesn't really help in game software at all. I completely second Shalinor here that as long as you know C++ really well and your Data Structures and maybe some Big-O, and you have some experience in GLSL, you're doing great and you're ahead of most already. The stuff that you really need to learn from here is stuff that's not taught in university anyways.
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Mar 5, 2015 23:41
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If anyone else is trying to move from Unity 4 -> 5 and wondering why your texture mapped sphere primitives are hosed up, this is why: "Replaced the built-in sphere and capsule meshes with versions that are better suited for lightmapping. Because the topology has changed both UV1 and UV2 are now different." The docs still show and describe a UV sphere, not a quadsphere or whatever this is. Kind of obnoxious that it updated my objects with the new mesh. Why not provide both, like Blender does?
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Mar 5, 2015 23:43
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This wouldn't happen to take place in the North East of England would it? Sounds identical to my Uni experience.
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Mar 5, 2015 23:44
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Praseodymi posted:This wouldn't happen to take place in the North East of England would it? Sounds identical to my Uni experience. South East (not London), but really it sounds like it's pretty much the same story across the country from the people I've spoken to. EDIT: Or maybe it's an Eastern England thing. Yes. That makes sense, for a country this size, for there to be distinct differences between east and west.
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Mar 5, 2015 23:46
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As long as we're talking career and education stuff, I have a question for those of you who are pursuing industry work. I'm working on some beginner/funsies projects to get started, but I know sooner rather than later I'm going to want a portfolio. What are you using to showcase your work? Are there any particular public repositories that are suited for game stuff?
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Mar 6, 2015 00:13
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Joda posted:I'm honestly a tiny bit worried about the direction I've taken my education with how things have been going with the industry for the past year or so. I tend to prefer working on low level stuff, so any chance to take a graphics course with C/C++/GLSL I've taken, which means I've passed on a lot of more generally useful software engineering courses. I use C/C++/GLSL all the time, as an engine graphics programmer. Someone's gotta make the engines everyone's so excited about. All the different platforms that are popular now means there's a ton of work to get things to work on all of them. That said my education was a colossal waste of time and money.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:42
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What 2D frameworks are recommended for OSX/Linux? I know of Love, Gosu, and Pyglet, but they're not quite as full featured as I'd like. I know you can use Unity/UE4 for 2D games, technically, but they still have the complexity of a 3D engine, and I'm looking for the sweet spot between that and the former engines.
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Mar 6, 2015 01:16
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Evil Sagan posted:As long as we're talking career and education stuff, I have a question for those of you who are pursuing industry work. I'm working on some beginner/funsies projects to get started, but I know sooner rather than later I'm going to want a portfolio. What are you using to showcase your work? Are there any particular public repositories that are suited for game stuff? Always always always have youtube videos. It sucks but a lot of people that you would want to have to look at your stuff usually don't have the time to run through your projects. WebGL demos (i.e. exported from Unity/UE4) would be icing on the cake but Youtube videos should be a required minimum.
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Mar 6, 2015 01:25
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Pollyanna posted:What 2D frameworks are recommended for OSX/Linux? I know of Love, Gosu, and Pyglet, but they're not quite as full featured as I'd like. I know you can use Unity/UE4 for 2D games, technically, but they still have the complexity of a 3D engine, and I'm looking for the sweet spot between that and the former engines. I like libGDX for 2d, its java but i dont care  You can create native packages for all the platforms. You can make cool stuff with that, but engine it is not. Plenty of assembly is required.
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Mar 6, 2015 02:45
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Pollyanna posted:What 2D frameworks are recommended for OSX/Linux? I know of Love, Gosu, and Pyglet, but they're not quite as full featured as I'd like. I know you can use Unity/UE4 for 2D games, technically, but they still have the complexity of a 3D engine, and I'm looking for the sweet spot between that and the former engines. I've been having a great time with Phaser lately but then again it's a web game framework, so, well, it's Javascript and HTML5. There's bindings for Typescript but I for one am going absolutely insane over this new concept of 'duck typing' people have known about forever. I fully expect this insane outburst to screw me over and for me to either end up heading to Typescript or start using weird naming conventions for variables, but I digress, as usual. Related question: are web games inherently less valuable than standalone download games? Is the idea of packing up a web game for purchase totally laughable no matter what price point is set? I'm not very familiar with this field, I used to make dumb Flash games and I've seen those sell, but there were also ways to package those up into standalone things. I have no idea if there's any way to package up HTML5 things into a standalone package to make it seem more legit.
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Mar 6, 2015 03:11
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Cirrial posted:Related question: are web games inherently less valuable than standalone download games? Is the idea of packing up a web game for purchase totally laughable no matter what price point is set? I'm not very familiar with this field, I used to make dumb Flash games and I've seen those sell, but there were also ways to package those up into standalone things. I have no idea if there's any way to package up HTML5 things into a standalone package to make it seem more legit.
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Mar 6, 2015 03:29
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