Hi guys! So, I''m a budding programmer at the age of almost 17 and since I looooove to program and I have a passion for games, I want to get a job in a gaming company in a few years (after College and stuff). Now, my question is: what do I have to know to get a job there? I''ve always read about job offerings for programmers with specializations like graphics programming, network programming or AI programming. The problem is: I''m not good enough in graphics programming to work on a top notch graphics engine and I have absolutely NULL experience in AI and network programming. But isn''t a game so much more than AI, Graphics and network? What about internal game mechanics? Now, what should I do to get a job as a programmer in a gaming company? Help? Please? ----------------------------- "Mr Sandman bring me a dream"

Uhm. Don''t do it. I just spend two days to the worthless effort to configure an unknown soundcard in Win 98 to a work in a DOS environment without having any DOS drivers and I have to state it very clearly: COMPUTERS SUCK!

I know something better. Why don''t you become a lawyer? 40% of law students are female and most are beautiful and very nice. Much better if you ask me.
However it can be that you marry and spend your lifetime to try to configure your wife to work in a low-level kitchen environment... (*says* *ducks* *runs* *hides*)
Sorry couldn''t stay serious this time.

The world does NOT need more lawyers! Take your foul advice and begone!!

-Ironblayde
 Aeon Software

Down with Tiberia!
"All your women are belong to me." - Nekrophidius

hehe. That's at least what I am doing right now. Becoming prosecutor is a great motivation factor for studying law at the university.

Edited by - Jester101 on March 12, 2001 11:00:08 AM

Well,
The thing is, I guess the trend goes more into specializing than just "being a programmer". I mean, yeah, I know C++ pretty well and I still got a couple of years to learn but I don''t know what to learn.
Currently I''m working on a demo involving particle systems and it''s a lot of fun, but then again a graphics engine is just sooooooooooooooo much more complex. I don''t know whether I could handle that. I mean I tried to start working on a little FPS engine buti gave up pretty soon. It just involves to much maths. All this calculating normals stuff. And you have to write super efficient code and always be ahead of the competition.

AI could be fun, I guess, but I''ve no experience with it at all. And how could I get experience? You can hardly program a game AI without a game? Should I spent months and months just to get a game working to test my AI with?
This whole AI thing is kinda tempting though...

And then network programming. Why''s that a seperate area? Well, I guess today''s multiplayer games kinda depend on high performance network routines. But I don''t think that would appeal to me at all.

What else could you do...? Utility programming. Naaaahhh. I hate windows programming and most utilities are made for windows. If I can get around that I sure will.

Well, what would you say? What direction should I go? Or which direction could I go?
I''m just a little all round programmer that wants to work in a gaming company.

Any help? Please?

-----------------------------
"Mr Sandman bring me a dream"

Do a degree, get a GOOD degree. My Boss has a double first in computer science from Cambridge, and thats about average where I work at the moment.
You will open so many doors for you if you have a really impressive Computing degree under your belt.


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