Re: The entry competence level for graphics programmers

Unfortunately, having had no experience in the games industry, you will most
likely start at a junior level, even if it's just probationary. Games are no
different than any other industry; if you have had no practical experience
in an industry, you don't get to jump in at the mid- to high-level spots. 

 

As an example, if you had no experience at all in commercial
banking/finance, would you expect JP Morgan to let you start as an
investment banker because you do some stock trading on the side?

 

TBH, you probably need more than just holiday time to learn graphics
programming at any level that would be attractive to most game studios.  


Greg

 

From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tommy
Brett
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 10:24 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Sweng-Gamedev] The entry competence level for graphics
programmers

 

Thanks for the replies guys,

 

I actually wasn't aware of much of the goings on in the windows 8 world or
WinRT beyond the new interface, but after spending my lunch reading about it
it I'm interested, as long as c# is always an option over JS.

 

The reason I asked about the differentiation between junior and not, is that
if I do get into the games industry, I can't afford to be on a lower wage
than I am currently, and having spent no time at all on shipped video game
products (but oh so much on fancy flash sites for companies with even
fancier budgets) I really need as many cards as possible in my hand.

 

The other option of course would be to release my own little game on XBLA,
XB Indie or Steam. However I've already spent this year's holiday time!

 

- Tommy

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 1:12 PM, James Robertson <[email protected]> wrote:

Not that I'm jaded and bitter or anything, but...

A couple of years experience seems to be all you need these days to be
considered a senior in the games industry.

:)




Tom Nettleship wrote:

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Tommy Brett <[email protected]> wrote:

I graduated 5 years ago with the intention of becoming a game developer, my
career got sidetracked and although this sidetrack led to an ultimately
comfortable existence and a lot of life lessons learned, I'm now at the
point where my career as a Flash / Flex developer is stagnating. It may also
be coming to a forced end as more and more of my employer's clients move
away from Flash each month. I've been keeping up with the times, and doing a
lot of graphics programming on the side using nVidia's CG shader programming
language and OpenGL.


If you've got general programming experience, decent C/C++, an
understanding of lower level coding & knowledge of OpenGL/DirectX
you're already skilled enough to do a junior graphics programming
role. The only thing stopping you from a non-junior role would be
experience shipping products in that role.

For example, I know that one area I lack skill in is using shader functions
built for DirectX 10 and above - by virtue of me still using an XP machine
(GPU is DX10 capable though, reeeally need to upgrade), and I suspect that
not being knowledgeable about, say, tessellation using the GPU would swiftly
kill any application I would make for a graphics programmer role that paid
more than free lunches.


I don't think lack of a knowledge of a (rarely used in production
code) GPU feature matters at all. I've never used hardware
tesselation. DX11 (less so 10) experience would give you an easier
time of it, but not much compared to being able to demonstrate
knowledge and enthusiasm about general graphics programming
principles.

TomN
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