@\NightandtheShape/@

Laptop Sony Vaio P4 2.8HGZ GeForce 5600go 512meg RAM 60Gb HardDiskSpace Desktop (Just got this system) AMD Athlon AM2 Dual Core 4400 64 Bit Processor 1024MB DDR2 667MHz Corsair Dual Channel RAM 600GB(2 x 300GB) Serial ATA II Hard drive with 16MB Buffer Dual nVidia 7900GTX 512MB PCI-E Graphics Sony 16x Dual Layer +R/-R/RW DVD burner 8-Channel High definition Audio with Optical, Coaxial & DTS Connect Function

Can you say McDonnalds!

That is very much what it is! It wasn't a matter of saying "oh I'd like to do this course and this course", you either do CGP, or CS, the CS sudents don't do the games related stuff and don't have the option to as far as I am aware. But in the event of which naturally, one would choose such modules if desired, if the choice was availible. Tools, aren't really the same kettle of fish, they don't have the same requirements. Someone writing Tools to aid in the games development, Tools being often a little bit sensative, shattered, or in brief buggy, Unless it is a requirement for them to be released. So required coding skills, are dependant upon what the tool is intended to do, surely. It's not the same, but it share the common CS ground.

Java - Mainly used for mobile phone games. I can't think of a Java game that has ben released to success on a PC, certainly not under windows. C++ - It's the king, once you get your head round Java, getting your head round C++ is alot easier for alot of people. (I found java to be a destraction, I know alot of folks who love it, I don't like it so much, it's useful for making little tools quickly) I like pointers, not alot of people do, also it's usually relatively easy to use C++ with ASM inline. C# - To be honest from what i have seen of it, I have never actually used it, it looks alot like coding in Java, with the added benefit of Direct X, I'm not sure if its a contender, but I'm pretty sure it's not fast enough for cutting edge games technology.

In the United Kingdom there are a fair few, the University of Huddersfield where i attend is an example of a University which offers courses with a focus on games, while i moan alot about the CS stuff I do see how it fits with everything. The some of lecturer's at Huddersfield have worked in he games industry, one even runs a mobile phone game company based in Huddersfield, where he offers some students placements. Speed has always been a large priority in my CS program. So much so that you actually lose marks on projects if they don't run fast enough. The situation was emphasized even more in my AI courses, particularly because the course teaches you about heuristics, and wants you to use the heuristics to speed up your search. Getting the correct result in the end was essential, but if you did it too slowly, you lost marks. We also have courses designed specifically around 3D graphics applications. The most recent project that course had was to actually build an FPS style game. It seems as though it may be more of a "your mileage may vary" when dealing with CS degrees from a variety of schools. As you say i think it depends where you attend, naturally efficiancy is of major importance in anything one writes, AI is an interesting field where I agree speed is so important I can see why, especially with heuristics in regards, i assume to that of pathfinding, something I tackled in my first year and perhaps the most interesting thing I have coded to date, while I never fully completed the program as I originally concieved it to be I had a program that would effciantly run hundreds of bots in a maze, but as the assignment didn't require specifics in terms of efficiancy(so I never tested for it, I was lucky as it was an assignment I was allowed to set for myself), I can't be sure how fast, but it was an on the fly pathfinding algorithm, that figued out the next step per agent per cycle. A peer of mine tackled the problem in a similar fashion, accept he took a more tried and tested route of a typical A* algorithm, it wasn't anywhere near as efficient, but it was alot more accurate. I'm certainly interested in what you wrote. This may or may not be true I'm unsure, as my current degree is certainly a CS degree with Games Programming modules, its a very new thing, but I think the advantage is that you're made aware of alot of things in regards to that of techniques that you don't touch at all if simply doing a CS degree, not to my knowledge atleast, can't speak for all. You also get the experience of working with game engines, this isn't something a CS student couldn't do just as easily, but the experience can be helpful. for example here are a few things that I've covered which I don't believe CS students would touch upon, unless they took specific modules. 3D Programming with api's such as Direct X & OpenGL - Loading Models - Animating models - Object rotation - Time based movement - collision detection etc... Game engine structure. Application of CS techniques in games (Using graphs in AI springs to mind, and how to do it etc...) Shader languages such as HLSL. Spatial Partitioning techniuqes such as quadtree's and octree's (also used for collision detection) Mathmatics required for games.

I think you've got wrong expectations about your degree. It is supposed to be academic and is purposed ot educate, not train. You can learn specific skills by yourself, but a CS degree will teach you basic building blocks of every CS-related problem. I am in my seniour year of a CS degree and I have never considered it to be a waste of time. It helped me to develop the "right" way of thinking, now I can take unfamiliar CS problem and systematically solve it, be it graphics programming, operating systems, web applications or something else. It is not the issue of the degree, but of the people who do said degree. Some of them do not realize that university only educates, not trains. They may have good knowledge of lecture material, but they don't go beyond that to tackle problems in their free time. You have to be motivated to learn new things on your own to make a degree a worthwhile experience. Honestly, I think you are going the right way. University CS degree will give you the fundamentals, you can always learn specific skills by yourself (from what I can see you have already made a good progress in it ). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> *Sigh* I didn't choose to do a CS degree, I chose a computer games programming degree, had I chosen CS degree then I would agree with you but I didn't. Other than that! You're right, but our said questioner was looking for something to help him with Computer Games related problems. (CS topics are helpful, but you've never got the same issues to deal with). CS you never have to worry about, mathmatics, physics, or general speed in the same light. In games you care about speed speed and more speed and it's not easy even with the nice CS background to get speed, or understand the math for rotating 3D objects, nor even basic collision detection. This is why I mentioned Digipen to our reader as being the best option as you're more likely to learn required skills there.

I'd go for the digipen one personally (Currently doing a degree in Computer Games Programming myself), far as I was concerned and still am concerned from my current experience, you can slap "Computer Games Programming" all over the cover, if its not games related (The digipen one is I beieve) it's an irrelivant waste of time, the degree Im currently doing is, well lets just say it's CS with some focus on games, the academic side of CS winds me up something rotten, sure you learn about loads of basic and advanced techniques for general coding problems, which is great but they're certainly not so relivant as say solutions for scene rendering, and spatial partitioning? I've spent so much time learning how to code games from books that I've often asked myelf why i am even at University, then I am reminded that companies tend to want that piece of paper saying the applicant has done a degree. The result of the academic route is a comical one at best, I've seen folk who can barely code get themselves A's and B's in academic classes, while failing to achieve the basics in the games classes and that's when they're provided with a game engine!!! (A FPS style camera for example, I've seen people hand such things in as a 3 month project!) I really would go for Digipen you'll learn something worthwhile!

I didn't expect Joshes Voice to be quite so deep... Seems a nice chap.

Yes I own it, but it no longer runs on my system, it's probably my fav RTS of all time, multiplayer anyways.

Thanks for the info I'll take a read and a closer look! I do have one question, why use singletons at all? Most of the coding practice is sensible (Just read it on the wiki). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Seriously: I've got no clue. The main reason is that our old lead coder liked singletons and our new one likes them too. So I guess they're useful although I know that singletons aren't the solution for all problems and can become a real problem in certain cases. So if you really intend to discuss this with our developers: the mailing list is the right place for it: http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?title=Public_mailing_list <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Thanks....

Thanks for the info I'll take a read and a closer look! I do have one question, why use singletons at all? Most of the coding practice is sensible (Just read it on the wiki). Edit: Just to clarify I have limited WIN32 knowledge (but it seems I have more than the rest of the team from the wiki) I also have no openGL knowledge, but advanced DX9.0c. (The transfer from DX to OPENGL should be rather quick, but it would take me a while) Currently I'm awaiting information about a paid position at a company, so I don't want to confirm anything with you guys until I know more in regards to that. Here are some screen shots of a project I wrote previously, took me two weeks: DraupnirPic.bmp

w00t! MARO BROS!!! YAYNESS

A lot :ermm:/ I haven't counted the endless hours our coders put into the project but I can say that I'm (as project manager) working about 10-15 hours a week on it. And we're far from being finished. We're around for 9 months now and I thought that we start to get into a state where FIFE can be shown to a bigger audience. We hope to have the editor beta version ready in about 3 months; that would be around the first project birthday ) We're currently working on the map model code to be able to integrate scripting as next step. We've already added some map geometry code to allow modders setting up their own maps that are different to the ones from Fallout. So you can support diamond-shaped tiles like in FO: Tactics or the normal FO tiles. You could even support totally different tiles; that's why it is called Flexible Isometric Fallout-like Engine. We're still in the need of new developers to push FIFE forward. So if any of the Obsidian devs reads this and suddenly fell in love with the idea, feel free to contribute to this project ) The sourcecode can be found in our SVN public SVN repository, you can even browse it online: https://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engin...core/src/engine <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Give me a few days to mull over the source code, I'll get back to you... Not an obsidian dev mind Edit: EEK! Singletons! Is there a zipped version or a project file I can get my hands upon?

Total Man hours invested in the projects development?

Scripting ewwwwwww.... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Most of the work I do isn't specifically scripting based, though there is some code gen. The point of the program I work on is to allow people to create scripts without having to do the actual scripting. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Interesting.... My point was more that I'm not a fan of scripting AI, it has it's advantages, such as allowing designers a certain amount of control, but scripting languages are an ugly thing. I'm curious about this little project I assumed it was basically code generation, is it a more drag and drop based interface?

What am I? Hard to say currently fingers cross moving from one thing to another, going from student/lampy to student/games programmer.

Scripting ewwwwwww....

Crashday.... I usually hate car games.

Like I say folk like what they like, heck I like a certain bowling for soup song.... But that's because it makes me laugh.

Lets see, Nu Metal, or such bands often described as nu metal, are by en large of no interest to me. Far as I am concerned it's all brittney with guitars, sure the subject matter may be different but it's all pop. Don't get me wrong though I like what I like, and it's not some sorta metal elite type thing, mostly I like slow heavy dirges of metal. Nu Metal is too happy sounding, cheerful and weak, which is kinda ironic considering they're usually trying to show what are generally considered negative emotions, and I call it happy LOL. Perhaps it's that I find it to be dull, in that it doesn't touch me in the same way most pop music doesn't touch me. To me comparing Korn to Evoken, or deftones to Esoteric is pointless, it's like comparing liberals and conservatives they're opposites. I like alot of early Black Metal, Burzum for example, but Black metal is generally full of crappy bands, Doom metal is diverse. I suppose what I'm saying is, Nu Metal sucks because Idon't relate to it and it doesn't relate to me. I want Misanthropy, or I want something that screams something distant and ancient. No, I don't wanna hear about how some goon felt like killing himself because his g/f left him, and I certainly have no time to wastec contemplating John Davis's childhood, and how he's ****ed up.

Hades stop it man, everytime I read one of your posts I get a picture of an angry little man. On another note, it's about time that folks realised starforce and such copy protection is a waste of time.

lol more like $3800. I got the high-end version. It wasn't insured, but I am getting another one. Someday I will tell the tale of what happened to it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> We all know it was Ramza, in a last desperate attempt to get his hands on the design plans for Jefferson " <{POST_SNAPBACK}> LMFAO that's classic...

you let it out of your sight ?

I don't really have time to explain this in depth, fact is all games use a time based method, for animation etc... Proper programming dictates that you would attempt to limit the FPS to a reasonable limit cause'in the program to sleep if that limit is overshot.

Cirrus Logic VGA 512kb (First PC I ever Owned...) ATI Rage 128 (I think that is the correct card not too sure it was a long time ago) 3dfx Voodoo 3 (Loved it, I still think the old voodoo's has the best quality of colour) tnt2 (I had two systems) geforce 3 ti geforce 4 MX (Back to one system) geforce FX 5500 geforce 6600 Next update will be when the whole DX10 thing finally hits us.