You can land a professional game dev job with niche tools

Started by MikeHart, September 26, 2021, 13:24:34

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MikeHart

Myself and some others got approached by a big game dev company to work on an existing very successful game.

I must say, working in a professional AA or AAA environment is a whole different level which can be overwhelming at times but also is fucking interesting and exciting. I never thought this opportunity would ever came but you never know what can happen. Never.

So don't give up. Keep working on your skills, use the tools you love and get your name out there. If you fancy a professional game dev job, it can happen.

col

Wow that's awesome!! Very well done  8)

Wish you all the very best of luck too!

It would be nice to share how things progress there, to give some insight to other inspired game programmers - you know, strip away all the glitz and glamour and say how it really turns out - good and bad!

I wish you tons of good luck and praise in your endeavour. Well done 👏
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Qube

Nice on, great news :) - Keep us up to date as much as you can. I know these things usually come with an NDA to keep things super hush hush :))
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Until the next time.

MikeHart

Yes Qube, the contractual restrictions are high and the fines you gotta pay when you go against them hurt big time. So I can't say much.

The most difficult task ATM is to understand the existing code base. Be it the game code itself or the frameworks. And it is a lot. I think everything I have dealed with in the past was child's play compared to this project. The company I got hired by is AppLovin. It's a part time job. So I still have my day job and after that I work on the second one.

Thanks guys for your wishes and encouragement.

iWasAdam

excellent news Mike (and your team). It's an amazing feeling when people come to you for your potential skills - a real validation of what you can do.

Take your time to digest everything they give you. And get comfortable with any new systems/way of working/dev environment etc. Then just continue to do what you think is best - that is why they come to you :)

Absorb any and all what they give you (codewise), you will be able to use the new concepts and 'stuff' later...

And keep us posted when and if you can ;)

GaborD

Congrats! Sounds like a great opportunity that can open up even more possibilities for the future.
I can second what you said about not giving up and niche languages sometimes being a good door opener. I had a similar thing happen with a big AGK project.


Pfaber11

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markcwm

Hi Mike,
exciting news, thanks for letting us know, hope it goes well.

RemiD

@MikeHart :
congrats ! and good luck for the next steps :)


i have a question :
how do you manage the fact that some employer / client ask for the full rights to use the code, but as you know many procedures, functions, systems, can be reused in different projects...

an approach imo would be to post the reusable procedures, functions, systems, as free to use (like on the blitzbasic forum), and give the full rights of the code specific to the project, to the employer / client.

any advices about that ?

MikeHart

Quote from: RemiD on October 02, 2021, 09:33:07
@MikeHart :
congrats ! and good luck for the next steps :)


i have a question :
how do you manage the fact that some employer / client ask for the full rights to use the code, but as you know many procedures, functions, systems, can be reused in different projects...

an approach imo would be to post the reusable procedures, functions, systems, as free to use (like on the blitzbasic forum), and give the full rights of the code specific to the project, to the employer / client.

any advices about that ?

Well any code I write for them is theirs. They have full rights to that which is totally fine by me. If I want to include OSS stuff, their have to agree on that first. So far I didn't had a problem with that. The code base I work on is so specific, that there is no danger in collision of interest. And I can't see that happen in forseeable future. The paperwork states what I am allowed to do outside of AppLovin and what not. We have covered our bases in the contracts, means working on Cerberus X is not harmed and also my existing other stuff I can still work on.

3DzForMe

QuoteSo don't give up. Keep working on your skills, use the tools you love and get your name out there. If you fancy a professional game dev job, it can happen.

Well done mike!
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RemiD

what if you use a GUI system, menu system, controls configuration procedures, graphics effect procedures, collisions / physics system, which can be used in many others projects ?

i suppose that you could include them as an external lib, but in this case, if you give them the full rights, to use, modify, dispose, sell, then there could be a conflict if you also reuse them in others projects (and there is not 100 ways to do achieve the same result), this is what i don't understand.
my guess is that many programmers don't care, and reuse code...