rjuang

Yeah assembly takes longer to develop and debug, and it makes porting PITA. It's a necessary evil that I try to avoid at work. In most game development, assembly is mainly used in engine optimization so unless you want to be an engine programmer or console hardware engineer it's probably OK to ignore assembly. I've never encountered the need for any assembly in game play programming. Most of the things that need to be optimized are at the engine level anyway.

In my company the full time audio people are usually project-independent. When audio for project A is not started, they're working on audio for project B.

Most of the expensive development software packages have the Educational Version available in university bookstores. They're usually affordable to students, fully functional, never expire. More importantly, they're legal as long as you don't use them for comercial purpose.

We used to use Power Render 4 for our engine and one of the modules written in assembly didn't work the way we expected so our engine programmers had to modify that part of code. I have no idea what that piece of code does and why it was written in assembly the 1st place though.

Like mkreku said, learning one of the assembly languages is useful because it's a a good way to optimize your code. It also helps developing your low-level debug skill. You probably won't need to know how to write a program in assembly from scratch, but you'll need to able to read and modify assembly codes. In the professional world, programming in C and C++ are sometimes treated as 2 different skills. A friend of mine works in embedded system programming and at his work programmers who know C++ but have never done a project in C are not considered knowing C. Don't worry about C too much if hardware is not your thing.

I also want to add that there are other fields where C/C++ is preferred, if not used exclusively. This is especially true in the engineering fields. If you go with C# only, you pretty much limit yourself to the business programming with Microsoft. Another thing is, it will be easy for you to pick up C# if you already know C++ but the reverse is not always true.

Thanks for the advice Tarmack. Yeah I feel skeptical about the survey too because it includes all types of programmer and categorize by the year of experience. The engine team are usually the curve buster. How do I find out if I'm being treated unfairly? Is there a more detailed survey based on years at specific position in the game industry instead of just "programmers"?

Thanks for the input Aaron. I guess I'll keep my eyes open and be prepared when quitting becomes inevitable. I hope the day won't come too soon because leaving the project before gold screws my coworkers more than my employer and I really don't want to do that.

I hope you're not my coworker. :ph34r: My company was one of Vivendi's studios. We were sold earlier this year. It was pretty bad when we were under VUG. It's still too early to tell if things will get better.

I came home 11pm yesterday and it's not even crunch time... My wife is currently 3 month pregnant. When I got home she was already asleep. She needs to go to work early. I didn't get to talk to her the whole day. Be thankful? Maybe... I guess I'll have to try... Just curious, are you also a game developer? If so are you getting roughly the same pay as I am? Or how is it compared to the survey result? The thing is, I really don't know if I'm underpaid or not so I need to find out. If I'm not, meaning other programmers are treated about the same as I am, then I'll feel much better and thankful for what I have. If I am underpaid then I need to do something.. if I still do nothign about it then I really deserve it.

Hi all, Have you guys read the 4th Annual Salary Survey by Jill Duffy in April issue of Game Developer Magazine? I was wondering if I'm the only one being depressed after the reading the salary survey or if there is anyone who also shares my feeling. I have been a game play programmer for 5 years, but what I'm getting paid is less than the national average for programmers with less than 3 years of industry experience. To add to my frustration, I'm living in California, which is supposed to be one the highest paying regions. I know that the survey includes all types of programmers, and being a game play programmer means I should be getting less pay than engine programmers of the same years in position, but is 5 years on the job getting less than 3 years of national average reasonable? I doubt it has anything to do with my performance because I got highest review and raise this year, but none of my previous raise excceed 5%. Am I getting screwed by my company or is this about what a game play programmer usually getting paid? What do you guys think? Should I start looking, find out how much my coworkers getting, or just shut up and be thankful for having a job in the game industry?