3 replies to this topic

[IHM]

Hey all!

I'm currently on a games development course at university in my second year. After I finish the course, obviously I plan to get a job in the games industry, so I need to start working on my portfolio. Can anyone give me some advise on what a games programmer should be looking to put in their portfolio.

Thanks!

[poita]

A game would be a good idea :)

Anything games programming related would be beneficial. It could be something as small as a simple game mod, or Flash game or it could be a small (or big) game written in C++ using DirectX/OpenGL/SDL. Of course, a full game would be more impressive than a Flash game, but obviously it will take a lot more time and effort.

[Nodlehs]

Anything that you create and finish. The most important thing is to have completed, and somewhat polished games in your portfolio. It shows that you can complete a game once started. If you show up with half finished pieces of games, that doesn't say a whole lot in your favor.

[Gaiiden]

Two recent posts elsewhere (you can find more by searching no doubt)

http://www.gamedev.n...topic_id=491636
http://www.gameinsti...y;threadid=7487

You're going to need an account for the second one, so here's my post from it:

Quote

Steve Jones:

They like to see a demo that covers most things in a game but on the other hand if you want to show off your graphics skills or AI skills or some other specific area then that should be highlighted in the demo.

Going back to what you said about the AI demo, this is very good advice. There are many programming disciplines out there today, be it AI, Graphics, Networking, etc. Create demos that focus on what you're strong in. So for that AI demo, use triangles for enemies and circles for the good guy and a simple 2D top-down world for them to move about in. Don't create sprite animations or 3D environments (it's easy to translate AI from 2D to 3D space since the ground in 3D is still considered 2D!). Dorvo also demonstrates this well for graphical demos:

Quote

dorvo:

If you want to get into being a graphics programmer, then develop a tech demo that shows off your programming abilities. As a programmer, the code is more important than the look. So, well designed code that can pull off decent performance would weigh more when the company looks at the demo.

While making a complete game is bonus, it's best not to try and learn how to do everything involved with making a game these days, because it's getting to be a lot. If you want to have a full game or few to add to your portfolio, go at it with a team for a completely ground-up project, or join a mod project (companies love seeing mods). Doing it this way is also beneficial because developing games these days is largely a team effort, and companies will want to see that you have experience working and communicating with other people.

MOST IMPORTANTLY OF ALL

It's amazing how many people overlook this one little fact: the person in charge of new team hires at a company will only run your demos ONCE. They have hundreds of applicants to go through, and they're not going to spend extra time trying to fix something that doesn't work. Whether it's your installer (and you should definitely have an installer if your demos don't come just as simple .exe files) or the program itself, if something doesn't work they'll say "oh well. Next." Test it test it test it test it test it!! Make sure you send it to friends and family to ensure that it installs, runs, and uninstalls properly. Even if the game installs and runs fine, you'll leave a bad taste behind if the game/demo fails to uninstall properly.

Also most important

Everyone who works in the game industry does so because of one thing: They love to make games. If you can not prove to them that you love to make games just as much or more than they do, they will not want to work with you - who cares whether you graduated top of your class with a Ph. D. in computer science or whatever. So make sure the majority of stuff you include in your demo are not things that were assigned to you, but things that you went off and did on your own time for your own reasons - cause you love making games that much.