SBURBDEV Forum

I asked this on the MSPA forum thread, but it's better here now that this place is official.

What are your individual experiences in game making? Taking a programming class in college doesn't count, I want to know your actual experience in game structure, engine programming, real-time programming, AI programming, graphics making and implementation, etc.

I'd really like this project to succeed, and before making grand plans for the future, the scope of the project has to be defined based on resources and feasibility.

I have a pretty holistic approach to things, so have experience across the board with game programming. I have written core game structures, pathfinding routines, state based AIs, light level calculations, raytracers, collision detection algorithms, procedural terrain generators... as well as gameplay logic.

Some examples of things I've worked on:
- Most recently added tileset rendering support to Goblin Camp, an open source Dwarf Fortress-esque city management game. The tileset rendering replaces the original ASCII graphics with sprites, with support for animation, paper doll equipment overlay on NPCs and some other things. There are both SDL and OpenGL + shaders implementations.
- This spaceship game I created. Is a bit rough, but demonstrates pseudo-3D graphics. Also the asteroids are procedurally generated.
- This terrain generation algorithm
- This rogue-like about a man who likes to throw safes: Mannapped. Mostly an experiment in shader accelerated rogue-like rendering.
- A Minecraft on a spherical world prototype.
- Also spent several years on a stealth-medieval multiplayer mod called Nightblade, although it was never completed. I do know the Unreal Engine pretty well a this point though.

Qualification-wise I have a Bachelor of Software Engineering and an Advanced Diploma of Professional Game Development.

See, this guy knows what he's talking about. One guy. Yup, just the one.

Not that I don't think this project could be done without additional experienced individuals, or that people with only basic experience in programming couldn't be useful.

The problem is, in fact, that after a week, out of the 7 people in the team's roster, only ONE person actually bothered talking about their experience. If you guys want any kind of development happening, you have to know what each other can do.

I was really hoping this project would succeed, but if you team isn't more motivated than that, good luck.

Probably no one has any experience... And that's kind of okay, with me. I honestly don't think this project will ever work but I'll stick around regardless and if coding gets going I'll try to join in. I have taken classes, but that's it. But there are so many resources on the internet about game coding that let's be honest here: The main problem is getting this off the ground and being willing to stick through the hard times ahead, which will include learning how to do the things we don't already know how to do.

That's fine thought. Really, that's all I want: people saying "Yeah, I only took a course in programming, but this project interests my and I'm willing to learn.", and you'll need at least that from you whole team if you want to get this started.

I'm demosthenes2k8, trollhandle is chronoCoder. I have four years of C++ coding experience, 6 years of overall coding experience. I am proficient in C and C++, with a working knowledge of Python, Labview, PHP, Javascript, HTML, Java, D, Lua, and AviSynth. I've coded robots for the FIRST robotics competition for four years, and have taken some summer classes at MIT about artificial intelligence. I'm currently taking calculus and physics. and have a working knowledge of at least calc - enough to write integral and derivative functions for a custom programming language I also designed and develop.
I have some small networking experience, along with string parsing in C++, and am more comfortable writing backend code.

Well that puts me to shame - I've no experience I consider worth speaking of, so I didn't plan to, but I figure I should give some background.
I'm a business student majoring in management (including project management), that's about as official as relevant qualifications get here.
I've spent several years working with Game Maker and I'd say I'm rather good at it, I am however self taught, because I don't know anyone else who works with it.
Additionally I'm good at both pixel, regular art and obscure forms of both, again self taught.
I'm willing and able to learn other programming languages, if only I knew what we were using, I've already started looking at java though. This means while I understand most of the concepts of programming, that knowledge isn't in the form of a "real" language.
I play a lot of RPGs, and a lot of indie games, and I have a need to critically analyze media that borders on the fetishistic. While I have done papers in media studies, nothing specifically focused on games, so again I consider my game design knowledge as being self taught.

I also have a compulsive need to design and prototype game design ideas, which has thusfar impacted my ability to actually finish a game project, hence why I really wasn't going to go into detail about that. In any case it means that while I'm limited in my ability to be of help initially, I'd love to eventually be able to do so more usefully.