Developer Question

[FoxURA]

I'm a college student planning to go into the gaming industry and am curious about what development tools are currently being used at Obsidian and which ones are considered to be the most useful and what they are each used for.

 

I am aware of things such as Maya and 3D Max but not aware of what, if any, upcoming things are set to take their place.

[Broadway]

I'm a college student planning to go into the gaming industry and am curious about what development tools are currently being used at Obsidian and which ones are considered to be the most useful and what they are each used for.

 

I am aware of things such as Maya and 3D Max but not aware of what, if any, upcoming things are set to take their place.

 

 

What position are you looking to get into?

 

Nothing is replacing Max or Maya that I know about. It's always good to know Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PPT, Outlook) and Adobe (Photoshop, Illustrator) software

 

From a producer standpoint you would primarily deal with MS Office and MS Project throughout the day

[Nightshape]

I'll add me 2 centworth.

 

For 3D artwork you're looking at 3Ds Max, and Maya, but you may also come across softimage's XSI at some companies. The concepts are pretty much the same for all, so there is very little change there.

 

Pretty much everyone use's MS office at somepoint, be it Outlook, or Word/Excel... Designers make extensive use of Excel for number tweaking, this is not so much a written rule just common particularly early on in development.

 

Designers will occasionally make use of Powerpoint and Flash for presentations etc...

 

Level design tends to be more specific but knowing UnrealEd and some scripting languages like Lua won't see you far wrong.

 

Programmers spend most of there time in Visual Studio, or similar environment, some companies (usually smaller companies) use solutions such as Codewarrior. Notepad++ is also often used.

 

[FoxURA]

Just what is UnrealEd? I'm not familiar with that.

 

In regards to what I will be doing, I will be coordinating the development effort while planning out the next project. I know that I will need a diverse set of skills to pull it off, from writing a plot out, planning the elements out, doing graphics, and managing the business aspect of it. Right now I am trying to get a firm grasp of it before I jump into it so I will know which areas I will need to focus on for improvement and skill development.

[Broadway]

Just what is UnrealEd? I'm not familiar with that.

 

In regards to what I will be doing, I will be coordinating the development effort while planning out the next project. I know that I will need a diverse set of skills to pull it off, from writing a plot out, planning the elements out, doing graphics, and managing the business aspect of it. Right now I am trying to get a firm grasp of it before I jump into it so I will know which areas I will need to focus on for improvement and skill development.

 

 

UnrealEd is the Unreal Editor - http://www.unrealtechnology.com/features.php?ref=editor

 

I recommend not trying to do everything. I came from running my own studio where I literally had to do everything besides art related material and at 20 people it was a 12-16 hour day + weekends. It is good to know to entire development process but not doing it all.

 

With any medium size developer or team you won't have time to everything. Most development studios are compartmentalized, even for producer (art, programming, design, ect). There are some exceptions like the work I do being in charge of gadgets and art (excluding DSS). With gadgets I am involved with their design, animation, programming, and sound but I'm not the one creating them. I have to make sure the overall vision for art/gadgets is met and we don't fall behind schedule.

 

"doing graphics"

What kind of graphics? UI, Character, Environments?

[FoxURA]

Things along the lines of character sketches and mapping out the interface for each game. For actual programming and a bulk of the in-game graphics I hope to have done by something else so I will have time to map out the next project while the first one is still in progress. The initial projects I want to do are rather small in scope to allow for an income stream to be built up more quickly and hopefully getting to the point around the third project to have enough revenue to go full time with it.

[Broadway]

If you're working for a smaller company you may need to do a bit of everything, but for most developers you only need to focus on one area of interest