The best thing one can do when trying to obtain a gaming job, is to make your own game. But before going for the 3D-realtime-60fps-shooter, think about starting small. Having the experience that comes from writing a 2D platform game or a couple of 3D demos under your belt will be worth more, to a game company seeking new talent, than any set of degrees.
That is the best advice you can give. Also, try to network as much as possible. Make yourself known in various gaming communities, catch the attention of some current devs and designers. Make a name for yourself, no matter how small it may be... it will only help in the future.
And get used to not making a lot of money.;)
Tim "Drysart" Fries
Associate Producer, Fallen Age
Namely IGN - which shows no slow down in its Vault sections.
Sure it does. They just recently closed 10 Vault Network sites, and the company that owns IGN, Snowball (Nasdaq: SNOW), is being delisted.
Gamers.com is still around as is VoodooExtreme.
VoodooExtreme is on UGO, which is no longer paying affiliates and likely won't survive the balance of the year. Last time VE was on a network like that (GameFan) the network just suddenly went down one afternoon. I should know, my site was one of the ones that was thrown out in the cold along with VE.
And Gamers.com is likely in the same boat though I admit I don't know any details about their situation. Take a look at their site and see if they're selling anything. Think about how they're making money. Apparently, they're not (banner ads don't make money anymore). They likely won't be around much longer either.
And the worst part is... the more sites that go down, the more traffic it drives to the remaining sites, which increases their bandwidth costs and quickens their demise.
The VC has dried up. The end times for all the large sites are drawing near. You'll either be paying for quality content soon, or you'll be scrambling to find small, poorly-put-together sites that are the only kind that can afford to stay free.
If a big corporation wanted to use DeCSS and a lot of individuals were concerned that it would infringe on their individual rights (although it's difficult for me to envision right now exactly how that could come about, but please indulge me for just a moment), would Slashdotters be arguing the other direction?
Absolutely.
Slashdotters want unfiltered, uncensored access to the Internet. They are vocally against any form of censorware....
We're a fickle group, and not really different than any other interest group, no matter how much of an intellectual ivory pedestal we like to see ourselves as being on.
"if Microsoft doesn't know what's in its own terms of service regarding personal information, then what hope do its customers have for the privacy of their own information?"
What about a news site that unabashedly admits it doesn't fact check its articles completely and instead relies on other people to find their errors?
I knew there was a scuzzy underbelly to the Free Software Foundation. This whole Open Source movement wasn't an ideological thing at all, it was a method of collecting email addresses! DAMN YOU!
The DOM is well documented at W3C. At least if all you need is a reference.
To be blunt: the W3C documentation of the DOM is far too verbose to be a useful reference and it reads like a phone book. I'm sure its useful if you have a lot of spare time to sit down and read it all, but in the real world, projects need to get done. It sucked having to bite the bullet and not support Mozilla, but it was a done-in-my-spare-time project, and if I had held up the page until I'd figured out the crummy W3C documentation, it probably still wouldn't be up.
Microsoft's documentation for IE, on the other hand, is all nicely arranged, grouped by object, with cross-references to every other property, method, and object related, with code examples for pretty much everything. Not only that, but they also tell you when what you're using is a Microsoft-proprietary extension, or if it's part of the W3C standards. Think whatever you want about Microsoft, but nobody can argue that MSDN isn't very, very slick, and what should be expected in documentation for any OS.
It's kind of obscure, but I spent hours searching for images of the "totems" from Zork: Grand Inquisitor to no avail. They've got to be out there somewhere, but damned if I can't find them.
Plus, there have been numerous occasions where I'd remember a specific web page, and even whole phrases from the webpage, and couldn't find my way back to it from any search engine. That really sucks because you know its out there, you just can't find it. And it never fails this happens just after the entry from when you first visited it has expired from your history.
No offense, but if that's the case, you have problems
None taken, I came on to the project quite some time after the engine was well underway, too late to go back and have things done the right way. Their original goal was to target Windows with this engine, which they've done, to the exclusion of any other platform.
As a designer at a company with a title about to be released on the Windows platform (see our ads in the May issue of PCGamer and CGW), I've brought up a couple times in our meetings that we should at least try to see if we can easily compile our code under Linux with Winelib.
Unfortunately, it's far from trivial to do. On top of that, our market studies show a very, very minimal market for Linux games. Most Linux installations are running on servers, not "desktop" systems, and there's such variation between different Linux distributions that shipping binaries for Linux-as-a-whole makes shipping a binary that runs on Win95, 98, ME, and 2000 look easy.
In short, we haven't been able to justify spending a disproportional amount of time on Linux users compared to Windows users.
It reminds me a little bit of a webpage I put up (this one, if you're curious), which relies on some Javascript for the user interface. Unfortunately I had to make the page IE only because I couldn't find any decent documentation for Mozilla's object model, nothing nearly as nice as Microsoft's documentation for IE, so I had to end up dropping support for Mozilla. IE makes up 80% of my readership, and I had already spent well over half the time I spent developing the page just trying to get it to run with Mozilla. I had passed the point of diminishing returns.
So I can understand my company's stance on not being interested in putting the effort in to get the code to work with Linux, but I'm still rather interested in doing it myself. Which brings me to a question: If I'm able to get the game running stable under Wine, can we ship a copy of Wine and a Linux installer on the CD and advertise we're a game that runs on Linux, or is that cheaping out?
Then again, it wasn't CmdrTaco who posted this, but we're making strides.
I'm impressed with the comments I've seen moderated up so far. Usually stories like this are flooded with comments like "Microsoft sux0rz, this is why Open Source is better!"
Isn't it funny that when a bug is discovered in Microsoft software, it's a victory for Open Source, and when a bug is discovered in Open Source software, it's a victory for Open Source?
...intercept the checksum request and return the expected value that would correspond with the appropriate version?
I imagine because it asks for the response on different portions of aim.exe each time.
I don't think it's illegal to do checksums on a file, so why not just require the actual aim.exe to sit in the same directory as the clone, and just refer to it to get the checksum? Then you can still have your AIM without the sucky parts.
It can be used to provide constant telemetry by making a cell phone call using the Globalstar Network.
May I humbly suggest a cost-saving measure:
Rocket: I'd like to make a collect call please. Operator: Who may I say is calling? Rocket: Bob I'm-at-23.494923N-82.293823W-3042.4293-feet-below- sea-level. Operator: One moment please. *Somewhere in a control room, a telephone rings* Chart Plotter: Hello? Operator: I have a collect call from Bob I'm-at-23.494923N-82.293823W-3042.4293-feet-below- sea-level, will you accept charges? Chart Plotter: Wrong number. *Chart Plotter hangs up* Operations Manager: Who was that? Chart Plotter: The rocket. It's over Cuba.
A few months ago, eFront contacted me about buying my website, in exchange for some crazy stock option plan. I'm not a lawyer, but even I could see how out of whack their contract was. I mean, give them ALL rights and ownership to the site in exchange for stock that has no value, and has no real prospect of ever having any value?
But, I suppose enough people are just interested in the prospect of making phat cash that they'll sign anything stuck in front of their face. These people getting screwed over by eFront are getting screwed over because they leapt into it with a lot of unfounded faith. Someone once said (I think it was George Carlin), "Businessmen go into meetings thinking the other guy is going to fuck them over, so they race to fuck the other guy over first."
This type of thing happens in boardrooms all across the country, every day. It really isn't surprising that eFront is conspiring to screw their webmasters over, what is surprising is that they were stupid enough to do it over ICQ.
Re:I think we'd have more important problems
on
Rebooting The World?
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· Score: 2
They'd starve to death arguing about who was best qualified to direct the planting and who should actually do the work. The geeks would have already figured out crop rotation by discussing real questions.
Doubtful. Geeks, at least those that frequent Slashdot, would likely be arguing about whether they should plant their seeds in the shape of a footprint or the shape of a letter K, and whether they should name their farm "The BSD Ranch" or "GPLville".
All those pithy little arguments people have, about whether Britney Spears is a better musician than Ricky Martin, or what color looks best with their eyes.... we poke a lot of fun at them, but we do the exact same thing.
There are sites that do this via CGI, too. I deliberately didn't mention them in the submission, because they short-circuit whatever ad revenue these artists are making.
I did something like this a while back, it's still around, but it's fallen into a bit of disrepair since I don't have the time to update the scripts much anymore. Last I checked, it correctly indexed 70 or so comic strips.
You sign in with an account, and it keeps a list of strips you want to "subscribe" to, and it remembers the last time you've read each of them. When you log in, it presents a link directly into the archives of each of your subscribed strips for every new strip since the last one you read.
It's ad-revenue friendly, since it doesn't bring over the images, it links you to the full archive page, ads and all.
PlanetCartoonist's Top 100 list...
on
Web-Based Comics
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· Score: 2
...apparently doesn't have much turnover at all. My strip was #2 on the list six months ago when I removed the link to vote for me on the list from my site, and today I'm still hanging in there at #8, despite no votes in the past six months.
I still bring 9 to 10 thousand hits a day to my site, but something tells me if you can go six months and only lose six places in the list, there's a lot of dead strips in that "Top 100".
I don't know what I'd do without my daily dose of Copyright infringement! I'd hate to have to be resigned to decoding DVDs with DeCSS for cheap thrills.
Slashdot Mirror
The best thing one can do when trying to obtain a gaming job, is to make your own game. But before going for the 3D-realtime-60fps-shooter, think about starting small. Having the experience that comes from writing a 2D platform game or a couple of 3D demos under your belt will be worth more, to a game company seeking new talent, than any set of degrees.
;)
That is the best advice you can give. Also, try to network as much as possible. Make yourself known in various gaming communities, catch the attention of some current devs and designers. Make a name for yourself, no matter how small it may be... it will only help in the future.
And get used to not making a lot of money.
Tim "Drysart" Fries
Associate Producer, Fallen Age
and says the industry may be losing more than $1 million a day in related royalties
Yeah, and Ed McMahon and Publisher's Clearing House say I may have already won $10 million, but do you think I'm ever going to see a dime of it?
Its only lost royalties if they would have gotten them in the first place.
Namely IGN - which shows no slow down in its Vault sections.
Sure it does. They just recently closed 10 Vault Network sites, and the company that owns IGN, Snowball (Nasdaq: SNOW), is being delisted.
Gamers.com is still around as is VoodooExtreme.
VoodooExtreme is on UGO, which is no longer paying affiliates and likely won't survive the balance of the year. Last time VE was on a network like that (GameFan) the network just suddenly went down one afternoon. I should know, my site was one of the ones that was thrown out in the cold along with VE.
And Gamers.com is likely in the same boat though I admit I don't know any details about their situation. Take a look at their site and see if they're selling anything. Think about how they're making money. Apparently, they're not (banner ads don't make money anymore). They likely won't be around much longer either.
And the worst part is... the more sites that go down, the more traffic it drives to the remaining sites, which increases their bandwidth costs and quickens their demise.
The VC has dried up. The end times for all the large sites are drawing near. You'll either be paying for quality content soon, or you'll be scrambling to find small, poorly-put-together sites that are the only kind that can afford to stay free.
If a big corporation wanted to use DeCSS and a lot of individuals were concerned that it would infringe on their individual rights (although it's difficult for me to envision right now exactly how that could come about, but please indulge me for just a moment), would Slashdotters be arguing the other direction?
Absolutely.
Slashdotters want unfiltered, uncensored access to the Internet. They are vocally against any form of censorware....
Except when it's spammers. They cheer and rejoice when spammers are shut down, taken to court, and otherwise are restricted from the same freedoms we want for ourselves.
Why are we against spammers when we're supposedly rallying for free speech for everyone? Simple: we don't like spam. We are totally hypocritical when it comes to our own self-serving interests, just like other groups we often poke fun at for the same hypocracy. We see bugs in Open Source software as an example of why Open Source is great, but the same types of bugs in Closed Source software are seen as reasons why Closed Source software isn't great.
We're a fickle group, and not really different than any other interest group, no matter how much of an intellectual ivory pedestal we like to see ourselves as being on.
"if Microsoft doesn't know what's in its own terms of service regarding personal information, then what hope do its customers have for the privacy of their own information?"
What about a news site that unabashedly admits it doesn't fact check its articles completely and instead relies on other people to find their errors?
An 8 year old interview about a 33 year old movie? Slashdot's really putting the new in news with this story. ;)
... we at RMS are ready ...
I knew there was a scuzzy underbelly to the Free Software Foundation. This whole Open Source movement wasn't an ideological thing at all, it was a method of collecting email addresses! DAMN YOU!
The DOM is well documented at W3C. At least if all you need is a reference.
To be blunt: the W3C documentation of the DOM is far too verbose to be a useful reference and it reads like a phone book. I'm sure its useful if you have a lot of spare time to sit down and read it all, but in the real world, projects need to get done. It sucked having to bite the bullet and not support Mozilla, but it was a done-in-my-spare-time project, and if I had held up the page until I'd figured out the crummy W3C documentation, it probably still wouldn't be up.
Microsoft's documentation for IE, on the other hand, is all nicely arranged, grouped by object, with cross-references to every other property, method, and object related, with code examples for pretty much everything. Not only that, but they also tell you when what you're using is a Microsoft-proprietary extension, or if it's part of the W3C standards. Think whatever you want about Microsoft, but nobody can argue that MSDN isn't very, very slick, and what should be expected in documentation for any OS.
It's kind of obscure, but I spent hours searching for images of the "totems" from Zork: Grand Inquisitor to no avail. They've got to be out there somewhere, but damned if I can't find them.
Plus, there have been numerous occasions where I'd remember a specific web page, and even whole phrases from the webpage, and couldn't find my way back to it from any search engine. That really sucks because you know its out there, you just can't find it. And it never fails this happens just after the entry from when you first visited it has expired from your history.
No offense, but if that's the case, you have problems
None taken, I came on to the project quite some time after the engine was well underway, too late to go back and have things done the right way. Their original goal was to target Windows with this engine, which they've done, to the exclusion of any other platform.
As a designer at a company with a title about to be released on the Windows platform (see our ads in the May issue of PCGamer and CGW), I've brought up a couple times in our meetings that we should at least try to see if we can easily compile our code under Linux with Winelib.
Unfortunately, it's far from trivial to do. On top of that, our market studies show a very, very minimal market for Linux games. Most Linux installations are running on servers, not "desktop" systems, and there's such variation between different Linux distributions that shipping binaries for Linux-as-a-whole makes shipping a binary that runs on Win95, 98, ME, and 2000 look easy.
In short, we haven't been able to justify spending a disproportional amount of time on Linux users compared to Windows users.
It reminds me a little bit of a webpage I put up (this one, if you're curious), which relies on some Javascript for the user interface. Unfortunately I had to make the page IE only because I couldn't find any decent documentation for Mozilla's object model, nothing nearly as nice as Microsoft's documentation for IE, so I had to end up dropping support for Mozilla. IE makes up 80% of my readership, and I had already spent well over half the time I spent developing the page just trying to get it to run with Mozilla. I had passed the point of diminishing returns.
So I can understand my company's stance on not being interested in putting the effort in to get the code to work with Linux, but I'm still rather interested in doing it myself. Which brings me to a question: If I'm able to get the game running stable under Wine, can we ship a copy of Wine and a Linux installer on the CD and advertise we're a game that runs on Linux, or is that cheaping out?
Then again, it wasn't CmdrTaco who posted this, but we're making strides.
I'm impressed with the comments I've seen moderated up so far. Usually stories like this are flooded with comments like "Microsoft sux0rz, this is why Open Source is better!"
Isn't it funny that when a bug is discovered in Microsoft software, it's a victory for Open Source, and when a bug is discovered in Open Source software, it's a victory for Open Source?
...intercept the checksum request and return the expected value that would correspond with the appropriate version?
I imagine because it asks for the response on different portions of aim.exe each time.
I don't think it's illegal to do checksums on a file, so why not just require the actual aim.exe to sit in the same directory as the clone, and just refer to it to get the checksum? Then you can still have your AIM without the sucky parts.
Cuba is 3000 feet below sea level? Maybe they decided to take over Holland.
Nobody realistically expects version 1.0 to come out without any bugs now, do they? =P
It can be used to provide constant telemetry by making a cell phone call using the Globalstar Network.
- sea-level.- sea-level, will you accept charges?
May I humbly suggest a cost-saving measure:
Rocket: I'd like to make a collect call please.
Operator: Who may I say is calling?
Rocket: Bob I'm-at-23.494923N-82.293823W-3042.4293-feet-below
Operator: One moment please.
*Somewhere in a control room, a telephone rings*
Chart Plotter: Hello?
Operator: I have a collect call from Bob I'm-at-23.494923N-82.293823W-3042.4293-feet-below
Chart Plotter: Wrong number.
*Chart Plotter hangs up*
Operations Manager: Who was that?
Chart Plotter: The rocket. It's over Cuba.
See, that's the great thing about free software: There's no paranoia over making sure you're "legal," because there's no way to steal it.
Actually, you don't need to worry if you're "legal" because Slashheads will worry for you.
I think you can figure out why.
...and just as newsworthy....
Larry Wall thinks Perl is pretty cool.
A few months ago, eFront contacted me about buying my website, in exchange for some crazy stock option plan. I'm not a lawyer, but even I could see how out of whack their contract was. I mean, give them ALL rights and ownership to the site in exchange for stock that has no value, and has no real prospect of ever having any value?
But, I suppose enough people are just interested in the prospect of making phat cash that they'll sign anything stuck in front of their face. These people getting screwed over by eFront are getting screwed over because they leapt into it with a lot of unfounded faith. Someone once said (I think it was George Carlin), "Businessmen go into meetings thinking the other guy is going to fuck them over, so they race to fuck the other guy over first."
This type of thing happens in boardrooms all across the country, every day. It really isn't surprising that eFront is conspiring to screw their webmasters over, what is surprising is that they were stupid enough to do it over ICQ.
They'd starve to death arguing about who was best qualified to direct the planting and who should actually do the work. The geeks would have already figured out crop rotation by discussing real questions. Doubtful. Geeks, at least those that frequent Slashdot, would likely be arguing about whether they should plant their seeds in the shape of a footprint or the shape of a letter K, and whether they should name their farm "The BSD Ranch" or "GPLville".
All those pithy little arguments people have, about whether Britney Spears is a better musician than Ricky Martin, or what color looks best with their eyes.... we poke a lot of fun at them, but we do the exact same thing.
There are sites that do this via CGI, too. I deliberately didn't mention them in the submission, because they short-circuit whatever ad revenue these artists are making.
I did something like this a while back, it's still around, but it's fallen into a bit of disrepair since I don't have the time to update the scripts much anymore. Last I checked, it correctly indexed 70 or so comic strips.
You sign in with an account, and it keeps a list of strips you want to "subscribe" to, and it remembers the last time you've read each of them. When you log in, it presents a link directly into the archives of each of your subscribed strips for every new strip since the last one you read.
It's ad-revenue friendly, since it doesn't bring over the images, it links you to the full archive page, ads and all.
...apparently doesn't have much turnover at all. My strip was #2 on the list six months ago when I removed the link to vote for me on the list from my site, and today I'm still hanging in there at #8, despite no votes in the past six months.
I still bring 9 to 10 thousand hits a day to my site, but something tells me if you can go six months and only lose six places in the list, there's a lot of dead strips in that "Top 100".
I don't know what I'd do without my daily dose of Copyright infringement! I'd hate to have to be resigned to decoding DVDs with DeCSS for cheap thrills.
Viva la Napster!
Are Computers Stealing Your Memory?
My computer just got an addition 512M of memory. I could have used that myself!
Even though I despise Windows, I'd be happy if MS did follow Linux' model and released patches more often
I guess you're happy then?