In this weekly update I will cover what has been posted on the blog, which actually isn't much this week as i've been quite busy with University work, but I still have a few things to cover from this week that haven't been blogged about, namely an Aardvark Swift industry recruitment lecture I attended on Wednesday. This week I will also give an overview on what has been covered in lectures this week, namely programming and 3D Modelling. Finally I want to cover this weeks top game industry headlines, which like the past month has obviously been dominated by next generation news covering Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4, leading up to their launch later this month!
Whats been posted over the week?
Other than the delayed weekly update for last week, there has only been one post. That focuses on what I have been busy with over this week, Project Emperion. 'Project Emperion - UDK Third Person Camera' is a small post containing the embedded first video uploaded to our projects YouTube channel and a short description of what it shows, which is our complete 3rd person camera working in UDK, that has been completely scripted within Unreal Script. On a side note, when working with UnrealScript I have been using the Unreal X editor (can be downloaded here) as it seems the easiest to use and get running the quickest, also the free licence can be used for commercial use, compared to alternatives such as within Microsofts Visual Studio, which would be preferable as this is what we use in the programming unit of the course. But for it to be compatible with UnrealScript which is a variation of C++, Visual Studio requires a extension to be installed called nFringe that can only be used for non-commercial use on a free licence.
Aardvark Swift Industry Recruitment Talk
On Wednesday this week we had a representative from Aardvark Swift come in to the University to give students who are interested in getting a job in the games students a lecture on how to beef up yourself and be attractive to potential employers who you may apply it work for in the future. The two main ways that he covered were your CV and Portfolio.
It was really interesting to see how to change my bog standard generic current CV which is suited for every industry, to focusing on whats important to include for getting noticed in the games industry, by making your CV stand out as much as possible on the employers desk. This includes adding a short 'Profile' section at right at the start of the CV which should be the first thing the employer sees underneath your name and basic contact details. This profile should be a short and simple section spanning just a few sentences, written in a 3rd person perspective giving the reader a summarised version of your covering letter, including your best traits, to help make it easier to see if you fit the job description. It is important to change this for every employer and/or job you apply for to make it more personal for the employer, so that they can see you are perfect for the job and the company. With this he also discussed that its incredibly important to do research on the company you are applying to work for, as many graduates don't do this and look stupid in the interview when asked on what games they like, that have been made by the company. Also some graduates don't even research where the studio is located!
It is vital to get your portfolio looking amazing, since this is the only way that employers can see what your capable of, and see if you can really 'walk the talk'. Its best to make your portfolio online, so you can also build a online presence and get feedback from viewers, who could be not only employers, but people already in the industry. It is important to join social websites such as Linked In and twitter, as you can find game developer groups and post a link to your portfolio website asking people to give their opinion on it. He also noted that employers may not even use recruitment agencies to look people, but instead only post them on their website and social networks such as twitter, so its important to follow as many games studios that you are looking to work for in the future as possible. Your portfolio should be aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate to where your work is and how to contact you. You should only include your best work within your portfolio, or at least make this the most visible, also for programmers its important to possibly include a snippet of code that you are most proud about from a specific project, such as a inventory or camera system. Employers do like to look at how you layout your code and the style in which you write, such as camel case and adding comments where appropriate, because studios like to keep to a specific convention set by the lead programmers. Comments are good to include as it is important to show that other members of the programming team could easily understand what a specific piece of code does.
Finally he covered that a great way to get noticed in the industry is to take part in events such as game jams, which are usually sponsored by developers or publishers, and judged by developers, many graduates get offered a job after taking part in a game jam and making something good. This is something I will look at doing next year and beyond, once I know that my my game development ability is good enough to make a game from start to finish.
What have I learnt in this weeks lectures?
In my programming lecture this week I covered what are and how to use functions. Which I already knew a bit about after coding a few projects in Unity C#, but they are slightly different to implement in C++. Functions are used to break down tasks into smaller tasks, such as respawing a player, that would call a function similar to resetPlayerPosition() and resetPlayerHealth(). Including functions in long complex programs is vital, as it helps clean up your code, by writing less in the main() function. Repeating long sections of code is very time consuming and problems could occur due to miss typing. Also if you wanted to change a simple element of these long sections of code, you would have to go though each one and modify them individual. Functions are your best friend in this situation, as all you need to do is write out the section of code once when initializing the function, and then declare it with a simple line of code wherever you need it within your program. When you modify the initialization code it will automatically change for everywhere you declared it. You can also initialize a function with parameters, which are data types used within the function, this is shown below. Finally you can make the function return some data for the rest of the program to use, such as a result of a multiplication, this is also shown in the example below.
// Initialize an integer answer container to 0
int theAnswer = 0;
// Initialize a new basic function, to return an integer and have two integer parameters
int nameOfFunction(int x, int y)
{
theAnswer = x+y;
return theAnswer;
}
// Declare the function within main and output the return value
main()
{
nameOfFunction(5,5);
cout << theAnswer << endl;
}
This simple function would result in the program displaying 10 in the console.
What's going on in the Gaming World?
The first story I would like to talk about, is one which has been going on for weeks now, the xbox one 720p fiasco. This story has fired up the tension on the internet between the xbox and playstation 'fanboys', this is due to the revelation that some games, i.e. Call of Duty: Ghosts will be running at full native 1080p while the xbox one will only get 720p native. These numbers may not sound interesting, but the level of detail between them is defiantly noticeable, so I can understand the outrage. The fact this is for Call of Duty is irrelevant, its a real problem if many titles in the future display this difference between both consoles. Now this could either be difference could either be laziness by the developer, porting to different consoles and not individually optimising them. Or it could be far worse, and due to the fact that the xbox one cannot handle it, even though Call of Duty isn't known for its graphics quality, if this is true, then we may never see the xbox one match up to the PlayStation 4 in this aspect, which is a real downfall, not just for Microsoft but for the industry as a whole, as it is great to have healthy competition. In my opinion, this is due to the developer not spending enough time with the console to be able to properly optimise it, I still think they were focused on getting the current generation consoles looking as good as possible, since they have the largest install base for the foreseeable future. Some other games such as Forza 5 will be running at 1080p native, so its defiantly possible. Also both consoles won't be able to reach 1080p, with Battlefield 4. Anyway, I'm sure we we will learn all of the dark secretes about the next generation consoles once the embargo has lifted and we get our hands on them later this month.
The last story I wanted to mention another next generation story about someone who managed to get an xbox one early from the retailer Target. Before he's was eventually banned until release he managed to get enough hands on time to give out some interesting details about the console, these are listed below and can be found in the original story here
- A cold boot (from off to operational) takes 17 seconds. It was timed with a stopwatch.
- loading an installed game (Call of Duty: Ghosts) takes between 15 and 20 seconds.
- The console “looks solid, feels heavy, great quiet fan, good ports. Doesn’t look flimsy at all like 360.”
- The controller “is very interesting. The triggers are firmer and don’t go down as much as 360, LB and RB are bigger, thumbsticks grippier.”
- Downloading the day one patch took 2 minutes with Moonlightswami’s internet connection that features 65 Mb/s downstream.
- The update started as soon as the console was booted up.
- Clothing options for the avatar transferred over from the Xbox 360 seamlessly.
- Both the console and the power brick are very quiet while operating.
- After a few hours of operation the console was “a bit warm, but not hot,” still quiet.
- The power brick itself was “barely warm” after three hours.
- It took about 30 minutes to fully install Call of Duty: Ghosts, which is a 49 GB installation.
- Games are playable after they are past 50% installation.
- Installation started automatically as soon as the disc was inserted.
- Kinect voice commands are very responsive. Moonlightswami had to repeat them only when they were uttered too quietly or there was too much noise.
- Apparently it even detected correctly the voice of a friend via Skype on Moonlightswami’s PC.
- Holding the Xbox button on the controller pressed brings up options to turn off the system or the controller.
- There’s only Online and Offline status available, no busy or away.
- Music and TV Apps available are: Audio CD player, Hulu, Skype, Blu-Ray Disc, Netflix, Skydrive, NFL.
- Power brick label: Input 100V-127V 4.91 A, 50/60 GHz. Output 12V 17.9 A 5VSB 1.0A.
- Video options: Resolution: 1080p or 720p, HDMI or DVI, Color Depth: 24 30 or 36 Bits per pixel, TV RGB limited or PC RGB full
- Audio options: HDMI: Stereo uncompressed, 5.1 uncompressed, 7.1 uncompressed, DTS digital surround. Optical: Stereo uncompressed, DTS Digital surround.
- Kinect’s cord is 6 feet long, HDMI cable is 5 feet, the power cord is quite long as well.
- The start dashboard has three tabs: Pins, Home and Store.
- The customization options for the tiles of the dashboard have “every color in the rainbow and more.”
Notification of his console being banned from xbox live. Microsoft later informed him and the media that his ban would be lifted on the consoles official release. - Image Source
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