I actually did go back for a master on top of my BS CS degree. I was very interested in 3D graphics and animiation, and I had a chance to work with some really talented profs, so I took the chance...
I've written animation and motion capture software and helped another company create a game engine from scratch - now I'm creating online games for the web and teaching videogame creation and history. All of my professional experience has been creating software for (or with) artists, and I've really come to appreciate the artistic side of things.
If I was going to go back now I would add an art degree to my roster... my exposure to art and design has helped me push my career to a place I never imagined it would go...
in 2003, sales of cosole games were $5.8 billion, compared to $1.2 billion for pc games. oh, and the ps2 version of madden was the best selling console game - and it's not even on the top 20 list of pc games....
i'm a pc gamer at heart myself, but it's a small market when compared to the consoles... this year should see an increase though, with all the good pc games...
i'll offer my opinion on this....i've been a gamer for
most of my life (starting with the early arcade machines, an atari 2600 and
my apple ][) and i have about 10 years of professional development experience
in games and related industries (animation programming and 3d special effects).
i'm
currently teaching two videogame classes at MCAD -
one is a history of videogames, the other is vs3370 : creating
3d virtual experiences / an introduction into 3d videogame design. basically,
this class is an introduction to creating 3D game environments -- emphasis
is on content creation tools and pipelines. for my class, i wanted
a general purpose 3d game engine that would serve as a nice introduction
to creating 3d game content and environments.. for this, i focused mostly
on first person perspective engines.
you'll need to evaluate what type of
game content you'd like to create (FPS, RTS, RPG, etc) and choose an
appropriate engine and toolset that will allow to focus on the type
of content interested in. increasingly, level
design and level
creation are becoming two different tasks -- if you are creating a demo
yourself, you'll be filling both roles.
after evaluating the games and
engines last summer, i chose Unreal Tournament 2003 and the ut2003 engine
for my class, for many reasons:
ut2003 is a derivative of the unreal engine - it's been out a while
and is generally stable and easy to install
the editing tools ship with the game (on the cd) and include decent documentation.
the editing tools aren't perfect (none are), but are certainly more polished
and professional than typical game editing tools. it's also very easy to
import 3D assets from 3ds max and maya, which allows you to leverage any
existing 3d experience you've got.
video editing tutorials from buzz3d are available for free online (slashdot
article)
the ut2003 game engine directly loads the files that are created by the
editor -- this makes things much easier in general, and also allows you to
directly inspect (in the editor) any level that you can play with the game....
if you see a cool effect in a level, you can check it out and see how it
was created.
level lighting and compiling is a relatively foolproof single step
process. it's much easier to setup and use than the quake engine based
games (quake 1/2/3 and derivatives, like half-life). the down side to this
is that visibility culling - determining what to draw and what not to draw
- is a manual process in the unreal engine. this can be good and bad...
this engine supports indoor environments as well as larger outdoor environments
- most games tend to specialize to one or the other.
the unreal engine is widely
used - many games, many companies, many platforms. the quake 1/2/3 engines
are also very popular - as are game engines like renderware (although renderware
and commercial engines like it do not have a standalone general purpose engine...)
Epic Games seems to be very committed to
helping people create content for this engine. a free
version of the engine is available (slashdot
article) - so you can
easily create a self contained demo of what you've done...
Slashdot Mirror
The tennis for two game was created in 1958...
I teach a class on videogame history, and this game of knots-and-crosses (OXO) in 1952 appears to be the earliest well documented computer game.
You can even download a simulator and play/modify it.
I actually did go back for a master on top of my BS CS degree. I was very interested in 3D graphics and animiation, and I had a chance to work with some really talented profs, so I took the chance...
I've written animation and motion capture software and helped another company create a game engine from scratch - now I'm creating online games for the web and teaching videogame creation and history. All of my professional experience has been creating software for (or with) artists, and I've really come to appreciate the artistic side of things.
If I was going to go back now I would add an art degree to my roster... my exposure to art and design has helped me push my career to a place I never imagined it would go...
"the only platform that matters -- PC"
check out the 2004 esa report "essential facts":
http://www.theesa.com/EFBrochure.pdf
in 2003, sales of cosole games were $5.8 billion, compared to $1.2 billion for pc games. oh, and the ps2 version of madden was the best selling console game - and it's not even on the top 20 list of pc games....
i'm a pc gamer at heart myself, but it's a small market when compared to the consoles... this year should see an increase though, with all the good pc games...
i'll offer my opinion on this....i've been a gamer for most of my life (starting with the early arcade machines, an atari 2600 and my apple ][) and i have about 10 years of professional development experience in games and related industries (animation programming and 3d special effects).
i'm currently teaching two videogame classes at MCAD - one is a history of videogames, the other is vs3370 : creating 3d virtual experiences / an introduction into 3d videogame design. basically, this class is an introduction to creating 3D game environments -- emphasis is on content creation tools and pipelines. for my class, i wanted a general purpose 3d game engine that would serve as a nice introduction to creating 3d game content and environments.. for this, i focused mostly on first person perspective engines.
you'll need to evaluate what type of game content you'd like to create (FPS, RTS, RPG, etc) and choose an appropriate engine and toolset that will allow to focus on the type of content interested in. increasingly, level design and level creation are becoming two different tasks -- if you are creating a demo yourself, you'll be filling both roles.
after evaluating the games and engines last summer, i chose Unreal Tournament 2003 and the ut2003 engine for my class, for many reasons:
for some more rom editing utilities, check out the graphic editing utilities section of romhacking.com: http://www.romhacking.com/utils/graphics.php