Canadian Games Conference 2011

So you want to be a game programmer?

Karl Schmidtkarl@karlschmidt.net

Video of presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kN5XIihh1Q

Canadian Games Conference 2011

Who am I?• Modding• Education• Career

Canadian Games Conference 2011

Obvious Stuff• C/C++• Somewhat obvious:• Lua, Python, C#, etc• Opinion: Degree or college almost always best choice• So important: Co-op and internships

Canadian Games Conference 2011

Not as Obvious• SCM• Perforce, SVN, CVS, GIT• Offline asset pipelines• AGILE (SCRUM, XP, etc)• Learning• Amazing amounts of resources

Canadian Games Conference 2011

Not Obvious (cont)• Specializations• Industry changes/diversity• Mobile, Facebook, Flash, XNA, Windows 7 Mobile, etc• Programming specific: Many-core, memory latency problem• Career management• Socializing

Canadian Games Conference 2011

Skills• Time estimation• Problem-solving• Bug-fixing/Debugging• Code reviews• Working with other disciplines• Low-level, usability

Canadian Games Conference 2011

Resources• Mods• Open-source engines• ‘Free’ engines (Unity, UDK, etc)• Platforms (iPhone, Android, GP2X, PS2, etc)• Books• Twitter

Canadian Games Conference 2011

Resources (cont)• Developer Slides• Blogs (so you want to be a graphics programmer? AltDevBlogADay)

• Developers directly• Free tools (Visual Studio, gcc, etc)• Demoscene

Big list of resources: karlschmidt.net/CGC2011

Canadian Games Conference 2011

Vancouver• All sorts of companies: www.techvibes.com/blog/biggest-video-game-companies-in-bc-2011-edition-2011-01-14• Other social game companies such as DES Games, and more hidden away

Canadian Games Conference 2011

So you want to be a game programmer?

Any questions?

Karl Schmidtkarl@karlschmidt.nettwitter.com/IonPulse