Hey guys over my years as an Irrlicht hobbyist and programmer Ive noticed that I actually enjoy the designing part of things just as much as programming. This seems to be true in most of the community here as they are a swiss army knife of game developement attempting to take on mapping, modelling, programming, designing, story writing etc etc at the same time.This I find most enjoyable as opposed to being just a programmer, working for someone elses design. I don't mind so much the fact I am only programming, and no matter how flexible towards my ideas the designers can be, I would always feel dissapointed that it is not my creativity that is being spilt out onto the screen. (This is speaking from doing a few team projects.)
Also, and much more importantly, is that a programmer who designs also has creative ideas that are all pretty much half coded. Instead of thinking "Oh I want some pink elephants flying around and a big ocean.". They will think "Hey I could use a dynamically changing terrain node to simulate an ocean, that will look wicked!" or something. A better example is, say you are making a space sim and you think "I wanna have portal holes". Thanks your deep understanding of 3D graphics apis you will already have an image of a few sprites circling around and swirling out (Maybe a modified particle genrator?), a solid ray of light cone shaped and spinning out from the hole (A semitransparent mesh with a very bright texture on it that rotates on its axis perpindicular to the hole?) and a kool woosh zooming effect when you pass through it (Change the FOV smoothly to make everything appear as if it is stretching and you are going extremely fast?).
Ideas just sprout out onto the screen when you are a programmer that is designing also, the two fields of thought are subconsiously linked (I consider programming a creative act rather than mathematical or whatever, im sure most people that do not debug assembly code think so also )
So first off, are there any jobs where you can do this? Design/collaborate/program all in one?
I can think of 2, or 1.5.
- A freelance programmer that is just supposed to spout out a final product. (This one is 0.5 because sometimes the guidelines can be strict or the job or idea is boring and you dont have much fun/creativity, but most of the time you get to do the designing, drawing etc yourself even if it is centered around one idea provided by the employer (e.g. Make an instant messenger))
- The second one is to become a self employed game developer and market a shareware game over the internet (And maybe one day get lucky and get noticed and a big company buys your game for millions.) This one sounds like my favourite and it seems to be the favourite of most people here as project announcements usually say "I plan to sell this later on" or "I plan to market this online in the future." Many are already doing this.
So Irrlicht Community, give me your views, and job ideas for this interesting swiss-army-knife career/hobby.
PS: I have nothing against teamwork if it is a bunch of programmers collaborating and designing together with no heirchy or anything. Its just the programmer-modeller-designer teams with one person doing nothing but designing (Even if they are willing to pay money) that tick me off a little.
Cheers
Programming AND Designing
-
- Admin
- Posts: 3590
- Joined: Mon Oct 09, 2006 9:36 am
- Location: Scotland - gonnae no slag aff mah Engleesh
- Contact:
IME, far too many games "designers" are a bunch of fuzzy-minded navel gazing wafflers who aren't even competent at their own job, let alone anyone else's. They're either martinets who blame devs for not correctly implementing their badly communicated and ever-changing "vision", or ineffectual pussweeds who don't do anything at all about devs not correctly implementing aforementioned badly communicated and ever-changing "vision."
So if you can actually prototype what you want to see, and talk in the language of developers, you're far more likely to earn the respect of a dev team.
So if you can actually prototype what you want to see, and talk in the language of developers, you're far more likely to earn the respect of a dev team.
Please upload candidate patches to the tracker.
Need help now? IRC to #irrlicht on irc.freenode.net
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Need help now? IRC to #irrlicht on irc.freenode.net
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Hey I got the same perspective with you, Blindside. Although I'm a designer but I am also learning some programming stuffs so that I know the things behind a game/the ways we used to make this and that (for example the portal that you had mentioned).
Some designers who don't really know how their programmers made their game, are only know how to request for "great" features and stuffs. They don't know how much time was spent for a particular feature that they had requested.
Sorry I don't know how to express myself. Hope you would understand what the heck am I talking about.
Some designers who don't really know how their programmers made their game, are only know how to request for "great" features and stuffs. They don't know how much time was spent for a particular feature that they had requested.
Sorry I don't know how to express myself. Hope you would understand what the heck am I talking about.
My company: http://www.kloena.com
My blog: http://www.zhieng.com
My co-working space: http://www.deskspace.info
My blog: http://www.zhieng.com
My co-working space: http://www.deskspace.info
This goes for any SME( Subject Matter Expert ), Program Manager, etc. Not just for game design, BTW.rogerborg wrote:IME, far too many games "designers" are a bunch of fuzzy-minded navel gazing wafflers who aren't even competent at their own job, let alone anyone else's. They're either martinets who blame devs for not correctly implementing their badly communicated and ever-changing "vision", or ineffectual pussweeds who don't do anything at all about devs not correctly implementing aforementioned badly communicated and ever-changing "vision."
So if you can actually prototype what you want to see, and talk in the language of developers, you're far more likely to earn the respect of a dev team.
And, just so you know, I'm copying and pasting your comments and sending them to my boss, I love the way you worded this.
-
- Posts: 1029
- Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2006 12:45 am
- Location: Tennesee, USA
- Contact:
Haha yeah it is easy to begin disliking designers when they start bossing you around like that with their "naivity towards 3D programming" and ummm "condolences towards the ever-blissful patriarch"? Ok that one doesnt fit in.rogerborg wrote:IME, far too many games "designers" are a bunch of fuzzy-minded navel gazing wafflers who aren't even competent at their own job, let alone anyone else's. They're either martinets who blame devs for not correctly implementing their badly communicated and ever-changing "vision", or ineffectual pussweeds who don't do anything at all about devs not correctly implementing aforementioned badly communicated and ever-changing "vision."
So if you can actually prototype what you want to see, and talk in the language of developers, you're far more likely to earn the respect of a dev team.
I had to reread what you said a couple of times until I realised that you managed to sum up everything I had said into 2 or 3 sentences, well done! D
You got it exactly, thanks for reading the whole thing too, I woud've stopped way before the portals part you mentioned personally. You seem to have alot of trouble expressing yourself lately, have you tried tai-kwon-do or finger paints?Virion wrote:Hey I got the same perspective with you, Blindside. Although I'm a designer but I am also learning some programming stuffs so that I know the things behind a game/the ways we used to make this and that (for example the portal that you had mentioned).
Some designers who don't really know how their programmers made their game, are only know how to request for "great" features and stuffs. They don't know how much time was spent for a particular feature that they had requested.
Sorry I don't know how to express myself. Hope you would understand what the heck am I talking about.
@The Little Monkey, do you feel your designing has an infantile (or profound, or fetusional, or just plain remarkable) synchrosity (or parrelelism, or familiarity, or just plain similiarity) towards your code? If so, you are on the right track. (Y)
@EVERYONE, I can tell no one reached the end before becoming overcome by their urge to post their heated replys, and in-turn missed the closing question. Can anyone add to my list a job which allows you to utilize both skills simultaneusly? It will be remarkable if you know of a corporate position, because I feel you have to be self-employed or similar to achieve this kind of freedom.