Programming AND Designing
Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 8:57 am
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
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