J.Burke

I started at Obsidian as an intern. My experience here was very positive. I bet you 100 rupees that Feargod was holding a gun to your kneecap when you wrote that. I'm still here after 4 years, so there must be something positive about working here

They will be dearly missed... Who let you out of your cage, Roby?

That's very very dependent on the company and on the individual that is interning. I've heard horror stories of companies just throwing their interns at mundane tasks that no one else wanted to do for a few months and then letting them go. While the intern may have learned new technical skills, they did not learn much about working as a team. What I'd imagine is more common is that companies will ease you into things to start. If you do well and are proactive about being a part of the team, they will continue to give you more complex things to work on. You can't expect a company to hand you everything just because they hired you as an intern. It's up to you to prove that you're competent and that you want to be a part of a team. I started at Obsidian as an intern. My experience here was very positive.

Code. Today I eat code for dinner.

Stress while making games? neeeeeeeever

Glad that took care of it for you I'm sure other groups were wondering why it was busted, so feel free to spread the word on the change.

What discipline are you looking to get an internship in? Programming? Design? Art? Production? QA?

As a programmer: It is entirely possible to not use much math depending on what you want to do or what type of games you are making. The problem is that you are expected to know the material when taking your test and when going into an interview. The exception may be in the mobile or social frontier, but I have no experience applying for jobs at mobile or social companies.

If you're passionate about something, then even the "boring" or mundane work becomes a lot more interesting. Every bit of work you do contributes to the creation of something that thousands (or millions!) of people will see. Sure, there is plenty of work that you get "stuck" with that you'd prefer someone else do, but that's true with any job. By no means am I saying this industry is for everyone, but, personally, I find it very rewarding.

You're assuming that your job would consist of hooking up middleware all day. I work with middleware on a regular basis, but it is not what defines my job in the least.

I like Bethesda, Bioware, and Obsidian. We all make RPGs. Why all the hate? It's silly to hate on any company and/or their employees. (Now waiting on someone to hate on me for this post)

Also, sad panda.

Sad panda.

I hope you're not agreeing with me because I am saying the exact opposite: you don't need to go to university to learn programming. =p You need to go to university to learn maths, computer science, and critical thinking. Programming is something more primal and mechanical than those highly useful academic concepts things - and it is something which cannot be taught well institutionally without draining away the spirit of the profession. You learn programming by programming. Repeatedly. Over a long period of time (years). You are absolutely right. You learn programming by programming. You learn computer science theory, software engineer, software architecture, linear algebra (3D math), calculus, and physics in college. All of which will make you a more versatile programmer in the game industry. Some theory you learn in college is not directly applicable or useful in the professional world, but I was able to take something useful out of almost every class I took. That being said, there are always exceptions. I do know of a few very talented programmers in the game industry that did not go to college at all. it is rare, but it happens.

This one isn't bad either: http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/

Basic C++ tutorial and reference site. I used this website as a reference site through college, and it served me pretty well. -- http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/ NeHe openGL tutorials. A lot of assumptions that you are compiling for windows, but that's not a huge deal. -- http://nehe.gamedev.net/ dx tutorial -- last i checked kinda dated, but did the trick for learning the basics of direct x -- http://www.directxtutorial.com/ I'm pretty sure i have a bunch of other tutorials / reference sites bookmarked on my personal computer (at the office still), but in general, if you are looking for a more thorough / advanced understanding of things, you're better off going with a decent book. I have a pretty nice sized collection of textbooks on a variety of computer science / math related topics, and I'm starting to have a decent collection of technical ebooks that I reference from my tablet. I'll see about getting a small book list up on here sometime in the near future. -Burke

I believe Roby used XNA for his XBLA game. Ogre 3D is another decent open source engine for programmers. You get the benefit of full source code, and it has TONS of extensions made for it. I spent a lot of time playing with it in college.

Oh Roby... look what you started. That's it. You're dead to me (again).

Alpha protocol was made using Unreal, so we used C++ and unreal script. Fallout New Vegas was made using Gambryo -- programmers worked almost exclusively in C++ (including tools work), though some XML work was required for UI. Roby already went into Onyx projects.

http://kotaku.com/5942307/the-people-behind-fallout-and-planescape-are-making-my-dream-rpg

Oh hi, code talk.

I'm not a lead programmer right now. Nor am I working with unreal (C++, yes). Nor is my primary job working on F.N.V. mini-games. Nor do I have to be constantly excited to learn something new. <3 being misrepresented. I AM, however, working on South Park... just not right this second.. because I'm sitting on here instead...

You, sir, have made me a happy man today.