Imagine being halfway through your CS degree and the dot-com bubble bursts and everyone is freaking out about never finding a job even with a finished degree now.
When two years earlier career advisors were all HEY DO YOU LIKE COMPUTERS TANGENTLY AT ALL? WOW GOOD YOU SHOULD DO COMPUTERS.
+1
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I got my first job around the first bubble. I really don't remember it being a serious event outside of very particular areas where the startups were clustered. It didn't make computers any less important for regular business.
Yeah, I got my first job around the first bubble. I really don't remember it being a serious event outside of very particular areas where the startups were clustered. It didn't make computers any less important for regular business.
Yeah, seriously.
I've been a jerk about it before but I still stand by "if you're good you'll have a job." I've never been concerned at any point, when I hear down-on-their-luck-techs they almost always (a) didn't realize that printing money isn't a real business plan or (b) horribly inept stop talking god damn or (c) actually IT and that has totally different issues and industry.
A real developer is a problem solver and the world isn't running out of problems ever.
+1
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
Silicon Valley seems like a world to itself. Much different environment to "sell" yourself in. High pay, if you get the "good" ones, but I question the long term stability of most those gigs..
Angels, innovations, and the hubris of tiny things: my book now free on Royal Road! Seraphim
0
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Honestly, this last month is the longest I've ever been without a job, and that's just because I moved to a much smaller (but still thriving) market than I am used to.
Silicon Valley seems like a world to itself. Much different environment to "sell" yourself in. High pay, if you get the "good" ones, but I question the long term stability of most those gigs..
Silicon Valley is startup central. If you're not realistic about what a startup is (high risk and reward) then you're gonna have a bad time.
I'm not really worried at all about finding work wherever. The world never has enough engineers to meet up with the demand anyway, the biggest thing I think is being able to find work without moving and even there it's usually pretty good
Silicon Valley seems like a world to itself. Much different environment to "sell" yourself in. High pay, if you get the "good" ones, but I question the long term stability of most those gigs..
Silicon Valley is startup central. If you're not realistic about what a startup is (high risk and reward) then you're gonna have a bad time.
True for the most part, over 90% of the people who contact me are either contract work, or "great opportunity at a local SF startup". I opted for not-google level salary, but much higher chance of still having a job in the next 5-10 years. Even then the pay is still more than enough for me and my wife to live on (granted, no children).
Honestly though like you said, as long as you aren't complete shit then it really shouldn't be that difficult to hop from startup to startup.
So I'm starting my RPG project up again. I'm trying to, again, decide what tool/language to use.
I'm using Windows 7 with no plan to upgrade to Windows 8. My target audience will be PC.
I have RPG Maker VX Ace, but I don't think it's flexible enough to accomodate my project. In the end, I'd probably end up using/writing scripts that will overhaul the system to such a degree that it may be better to build my engine from the ground up.
I'm looking to basically create a 2D top-down turn-based RPG. Not too complex. Originally I was using XNA but it looks like Microsoft has abandoned it.
So I am trying to decide between MonoGame/MonoXNA, Pygame (which I know nothing about but people have recommended), or just trying to learn whatever the Windows 8 platform is assuming those games work on Windows 7 too.
I guess I could go the C++ route but that's probably overkill for my project.
Thoughts?
Switch: SW-7690-2320-9238Steam/PSN/Xbox: Drezdar
0
The AnonymousUh, uh, uhhhhhh...Uh, uh.Registered Userregular
So I'm starting my RPG project up again. I'm trying to, again, decide what tool/language to use.
I'm using Windows 7 with no plan to upgrade to Windows 8. My target audience will be PC.
I have RPG Maker VX Ace, but I don't think it's flexible enough to accomodate my project. In the end, I'd probably end up using/writing scripts that will overhaul the system to such a degree that it may be better to build my engine from the ground up.
I'm looking to basically create a 2D top-down turn-based RPG. Not too complex. Originally I was using XNA but it looks like Microsoft has abandoned it.
So I am trying to decide between MonoGame/MonoXNA, Pygame (which I know nothing about but people have recommended), or just trying to learn whatever the Windows 8 platform is assuming those games work on Windows 7 too.
I guess I could go the C++ route but that's probably overkill for my project.
Thoughts?
Have you made any other games before this one? If you have, just skip this spoiler entirely. It's pretty much one giant rant.
I don't recommend starting with an RPG, because there is a lot of complexity involved. Tetris is almost always recommended as a starter project for a number of reasons, a few of which I'll list here:
The rules are simple, clearly defined, and known to basically everybody.
Any and all required art assets can be made with your favourite image editor and a few minutes (at most) of your time.
Implementations rely on logic and programming techniques common to every game (i.e. you can apply the skills you learn from making Tetris to any other game you make).
Aside from the above, the problem is pre-defined. You have near total freedom in how you approach the problem and in how you expand on the basics, once those basics are done. Want to absolutely load the code with OpenGL calls and GLSL? Go for it! Want to add some form of online multiplayer? Make the world your oyster! Want to write the game in assembly? It's your funeral, but...sure!
Compare that to making an RPG, where:
You have to design the game mechanics from scratch. "Role-playing" is a nebulous term, such that it doesn't really have its own definition. You have to define it yourself. If you want to implement a combat system: how does it work? Is it turn-based, real-time, or something in between? What stats are there, and what do they affect? What actions can the player perform? What sorts of NPCs are involved, and what actions can they perform? Does the player have allies? Does the player control allies? How does the AI function? And so on and so forth. Remember, you have to program all of this, and...
You have to create assets. For every single background, menu, character, etc. Sure, you can side-step the drawing by opting for a text- or ASCII-based route, but you still have to write names, descriptions, things that may pop up for any number of reasons. Since this is an RPG, a plot of some sort is generally expected, even if it's only of the "storm the evil wizard's castle, defeat their army of dark creatures, and slay them!" variety that doesn't appear outside of the instruction manual. And if it isn't something that's only there as an excuse, it had better damn well be good, or the game had better damn well be fun to play. Games that emphasise their writing tend to live or die by that writing. And more often than not, they die.
For a genre as complex as an RPG, you are unlikely to be able to do everything by yourself in a reasonable length of time. You will definitely not be able to do everything by yourself if you game isn't purely text-based. Even then, if you're trying to write a good story, you need an editor: someone who is willing to sit down, look at your script, and tell you that it is completely unsalvageable and you need to start over. Granted, if you are a reasonable human being, that scenario is unlikely to occur (you'll only have to throw out most of the script), but you have to be prepared for - hell, you have to anticipate - that possibility.
The dreaded "T-word": testing. In more than one sense of the word. First, nothing is bug-free. There will be bugs. In an RPG, there will be many bugs. And you aren't going to catch them all. You aren't going to catch many at all if you don't have a good project workflow, which you will not have if you're only just starting out. And you might not catch any whatsoever if you don't have other people playing your game. Testers are vital. I don't just mean those poor souls who click one button 1000 times to make sure it doesn't break; I'm talking about people who are willing to play through your game and provide feedback up to and including, "this is an unsalvageable mess". This ties into all the points made in the previous bullet.
What I'm saying is: start small. Tetris is small. It's something that only you have to care about, that doesn't require other people nor a massive time investment. An RPG is the opposite of Tetris. Don't start with the opposite of Tetris.
Now, with that aside:
Avoiding RPG Maker is a good choice. It isn't inflexible nor without merit, but it does have a number of drawbacks.
MonoGame/MonoXNA will do exactly what you want, and is good if you're starting out.
Pygame is a Python wrapper around SDL, which has ports for a large number of platforms. It's also a good starting choice, because Python itself is easy to pick up and is also used in just about everything that is not a game.
If you want to start completely from scratch, another option is to start with a scripting language paired with something else, like SFML or SDL2 (the API is frozen and it's releasing next month). I don't recommend this for a first project for several reasons (the main one being you're, well, starting completely from scratch), but you can do it if you really want to. You'll have to write glue code in order to call native functions from your scripting language (or use a binding generator like SWIG, or use an FFI library if your scripting language has one - LuaJIT has it as a built-in feature), and then write all of the logic that other options provide "for free", in addition to writing the game itself. Following this through will be a task unto itself (even more so than other avenues), but you'll end up with something that does exactly what you want, that you made. And that's what really matters, right?
Fucking hate Eclipse over Netbeans. In Netbeans I can right click a class name and search for anything that extends it. In eclipse I can't do that at all.
I think you can right click on the class and click on References to find all uses of that class.
I've been starting out with some basic game making recently as well. I've got most of a basic Space Invaders clone. Re-did most of it in the last week because I actually read up on how to do object oriented programming, so you can probably call me rather inexperienced. I've been doing it in javascript to run in a browser, mainly because that's what I already know, but I think that might end up being a problem if I want to add sounds.
I'm not the only one thinking that being able to do inheritance like this would be super convenient, right? As it is actually done, I have a feeling I'll be looking it up constantly for a while.
So I'm starting my RPG project up again. I'm trying to, again, decide what tool/language to use.
I'm using Windows 7 with no plan to upgrade to Windows 8. My target audience will be PC.
I have RPG Maker VX Ace, but I don't think it's flexible enough to accomodate my project. In the end, I'd probably end up using/writing scripts that will overhaul the system to such a degree that it may be better to build my engine from the ground up.
I'm looking to basically create a 2D top-down turn-based RPG. Not too complex. Originally I was using XNA but it looks like Microsoft has abandoned it.
So I am trying to decide between MonoGame/MonoXNA, Pygame (which I know nothing about but people have recommended), or just trying to learn whatever the Windows 8 platform is assuming those games work on Windows 7 too.
I guess I could go the C++ route but that's probably overkill for my project.
Thoughts?
Are you publishing this, or just trying to learn? If this is a learning thing, pick the language that seems most applicable to where you want to end up. Games are great ways to delve into the inner weirdness of languages. Hell, do the whole thing on HTML canvas with an MVC backend talking through ajax calls. Or if Microsoft Office is your thing...
If you think this is something you'll actually distribute then something like Monogame or Unity are your best bets for portability and ability to find support.
Silicon Valley seems like a world to itself. Much different environment to "sell" yourself in. High pay, if you get the "good" ones, but I question the long term stability of most those gigs..
Silicon Valley is startup central. If you're not realistic about what a startup is (high risk and reward) then you're gonna have a bad time.
I feel obliged to mention there's plenty of the big boys here too.
I was surprised to learn we're the second largest employer in San Jose behind only the county government.
Wow weird, I signed up at guru.com like... forever ago and got a project invitation. Something tells me my hourly is going to be out of this guy's window.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
So I'm starting my RPG project up again. I'm trying to, again, decide what tool/language to use.
I'm using Windows 7 with no plan to upgrade to Windows 8. My target audience will be PC.
I have RPG Maker VX Ace, but I don't think it's flexible enough to accomodate my project. In the end, I'd probably end up using/writing scripts that will overhaul the system to such a degree that it may be better to build my engine from the ground up.
I'm looking to basically create a 2D top-down turn-based RPG. Not too complex. Originally I was using XNA but it looks like Microsoft has abandoned it.
So I am trying to decide between MonoGame/MonoXNA, Pygame (which I know nothing about but people have recommended), or just trying to learn whatever the Windows 8 platform is assuming those games work on Windows 7 too.
I guess I could go the C++ route but that's probably overkill for my project.
Thoughts?
I once made a very barebones single-player version of Set in Pygame. Pygame isn't too hard to use, but most of it's ease of use comes from the Python wrapper part, than the SDL part. At least for me anyway.
I also made a barebones Tetris clone in XNA a while later, and found it easier, even including the time spent learning C# which I'd never touched before, and it was the only C like language I'd used in about 5 years.
XNA is really easy to get stuff done in. Also, while MS is not developing it any more, it'll still work, even on Win 8, and is pretty powerful and feature-filled already.
Sidenote about Pygame: I was making all my cards through canvas drawing methods instead of having them predrawn. For learning such. Apparently PyGame has a quirk (which if I remember is actually an SDL thing) where if you try to draw an ellipse with line thickness greater than 1 pixel, you get blank spaces that kind of look like Moire Patterns in your ellipse. So if you want to make an empty ellipse with thick lines, do a filled ellipse, then draw a slightly smaller empty one top of it.
I know @Echo mentioned it before, but I really really like SASS.
Really.
Before for one of our sites we would add / amend styles to the massive master theme file, minify it, then keep a copy of the original and upload the minified version.
Now, with SASS, I've got a fantastic, legible, even human-readable master .scss sheet with comments up the wazoo that automatically minifies itself on compilation and drops into the correct place in the theme.
Silicon Valley seems like a world to itself. Much different environment to "sell" yourself in. High pay, if you get the "good" ones, but I question the long term stability of most those gigs..
Silicon Valley is startup central. If you're not realistic about what a startup is (high risk and reward) then you're gonna have a bad time.
I feel obliged to mention there's plenty of the big boys here too.
I was surprised to learn we're the second largest employer in San Jose behind only the county government.
Well yeah, we're just saying that there is a disproportionate amount of startups.
GET IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR, DRIVE FAST CARS AND FUCK BITCHES.
If you're not using SASS: what's wrong with you? Why do you punish yourself like that?
It's everything I've always wanted CSS to be and more. I've been saying from when I first starting using it (back in 2000) that CSS should have variables for commonly used colours. The mixins / mini-functions you can create to dynamically set colours / opacity etc are a nice cherry on top.
The one about the fucking space hairdresser and the cowboy. He's got a tinfoil pal and a pedal bin
Posts
I've got a **** filled **** located on the back of my ****. Its been there for * months and * weeks. Pain is a 10 out of 10. Prescribe me!
Also, if you could be nice enough to mail two pallets of opiates to my front door....that'd be great.
I graduated high school in 2007.
I'm pretty sure everything you just said is in direct violation of my conflict of interest agreement.
And here I was thinking you moved to the east coast and bowen and I could shiv you
Poor bastards...
When two years earlier career advisors were all HEY DO YOU LIKE COMPUTERS TANGENTLY AT ALL? WOW GOOD YOU SHOULD DO COMPUTERS.
Yeah, seriously.
I've been a jerk about it before but I still stand by "if you're good you'll have a job." I've never been concerned at any point, when I hear down-on-their-luck-techs they almost always (a) didn't realize that printing money isn't a real business plan or (b) horribly inept stop talking god damn or (c) actually IT and that has totally different issues and industry.
A real developer is a problem solver and the world isn't running out of problems ever.
Silicon Valley is startup central. If you're not realistic about what a startup is (high risk and reward) then you're gonna have a bad time.
True for the most part, over 90% of the people who contact me are either contract work, or "great opportunity at a local SF startup". I opted for not-google level salary, but much higher chance of still having a job in the next 5-10 years. Even then the pay is still more than enough for me and my wife to live on (granted, no children).
Honestly though like you said, as long as you aren't complete shit then it really shouldn't be that difficult to hop from startup to startup.
I'm using Windows 7 with no plan to upgrade to Windows 8. My target audience will be PC.
I have RPG Maker VX Ace, but I don't think it's flexible enough to accomodate my project. In the end, I'd probably end up using/writing scripts that will overhaul the system to such a degree that it may be better to build my engine from the ground up.
I'm looking to basically create a 2D top-down turn-based RPG. Not too complex. Originally I was using XNA but it looks like Microsoft has abandoned it.
So I am trying to decide between MonoGame/MonoXNA, Pygame (which I know nothing about but people have recommended), or just trying to learn whatever the Windows 8 platform is assuming those games work on Windows 7 too.
I guess I could go the C++ route but that's probably overkill for my project.
Thoughts?
- The rules are simple, clearly defined, and known to basically everybody.
- Any and all required art assets can be made with your favourite image editor and a few minutes (at most) of your time.
- Implementations rely on logic and programming techniques common to every game (i.e. you can apply the skills you learn from making Tetris to any other game you make).
- Aside from the above, the problem is pre-defined. You have near total freedom in how you approach the problem and in how you expand on the basics, once those basics are done. Want to absolutely load the code with OpenGL calls and GLSL? Go for it! Want to add some form of online multiplayer? Make the world your oyster! Want to write the game in assembly? It's your funeral, but...sure!
Compare that to making an RPG, where:- You have to design the game mechanics from scratch. "Role-playing" is a nebulous term, such that it doesn't really have its own definition. You have to define it yourself. If you want to implement a combat system: how does it work? Is it turn-based, real-time, or something in between? What stats are there, and what do they affect? What actions can the player perform? What sorts of NPCs are involved, and what actions can they perform? Does the player have allies? Does the player control allies? How does the AI function? And so on and so forth. Remember, you have to program all of this, and...
- You have to create assets. For every single background, menu, character, etc. Sure, you can side-step the drawing by opting for a text- or ASCII-based route, but you still have to write names, descriptions, things that may pop up for any number of reasons. Since this is an RPG, a plot of some sort is generally expected, even if it's only of the "storm the evil wizard's castle, defeat their army of dark creatures, and slay them!" variety that doesn't appear outside of the instruction manual. And if it isn't something that's only there as an excuse, it had better damn well be good, or the game had better damn well be fun to play. Games that emphasise their writing tend to live or die by that writing. And more often than not, they die.
- For a genre as complex as an RPG, you are unlikely to be able to do everything by yourself in a reasonable length of time. You will definitely not be able to do everything by yourself if you game isn't purely text-based. Even then, if you're trying to write a good story, you need an editor: someone who is willing to sit down, look at your script, and tell you that it is completely unsalvageable and you need to start over. Granted, if you are a reasonable human being, that scenario is unlikely to occur (you'll only have to throw out most of the script), but you have to be prepared for - hell, you have to anticipate - that possibility.
- The dreaded "T-word": testing. In more than one sense of the word. First, nothing is bug-free. There will be bugs. In an RPG, there will be many bugs. And you aren't going to catch them all. You aren't going to catch many at all if you don't have a good project workflow, which you will not have if you're only just starting out. And you might not catch any whatsoever if you don't have other people playing your game. Testers are vital. I don't just mean those poor souls who click one button 1000 times to make sure it doesn't break; I'm talking about people who are willing to play through your game and provide feedback up to and including, "this is an unsalvageable mess". This ties into all the points made in the previous bullet.
What I'm saying is: start small. Tetris is small. It's something that only you have to care about, that doesn't require other people nor a massive time investment. An RPG is the opposite of Tetris. Don't start with the opposite of Tetris.Avoiding RPG Maker is a good choice. It isn't inflexible nor without merit, but it does have a number of drawbacks.
MonoGame/MonoXNA will do exactly what you want, and is good if you're starting out.
Pygame is a Python wrapper around SDL, which has ports for a large number of platforms. It's also a good starting choice, because Python itself is easy to pick up and is also used in just about everything that is not a game.
If you want to start completely from scratch, another option is to start with a scripting language paired with something else, like SFML or SDL2 (the API is frozen and it's releasing next month). I don't recommend this for a first project for several reasons (the main one being you're, well, starting completely from scratch), but you can do it if you really want to. You'll have to write glue code in order to call native functions from your scripting language (or use a binding generator like SWIG, or use an FFI library if your scripting language has one - LuaJIT has it as a built-in feature), and then write all of the logic that other options provide "for free", in addition to writing the game itself. Following this through will be a task unto itself (even more so than other avenues), but you'll end up with something that does exactly what you want, that you made. And that's what really matters, right?
I think you can right click on the class and click on References to find all uses of that class.
PSN: jrrl_absent
In case they're really bad. Or good. However handicap works, I dunno.
edit: I have been informed that a handicap can be negative! Whew, crisis averted.
I'm not the only one thinking that being able to do inheritance like this would be super convenient, right? As it is actually done, I have a feeling I'll be looking it up constantly for a while.
function child() { this = new parent(); }Are you publishing this, or just trying to learn? If this is a learning thing, pick the language that seems most applicable to where you want to end up. Games are great ways to delve into the inner weirdness of languages. Hell, do the whole thing on HTML canvas with an MVC backend talking through ajax calls. Or if Microsoft Office is your thing...
If you think this is something you'll actually distribute then something like Monogame or Unity are your best bets for portability and ability to find support.
I feel obliged to mention there's plenty of the big boys here too.
I was surprised to learn we're the second largest employer in San Jose behind only the county government.
SE++ Forum Battle Archive
I also made a barebones Tetris clone in XNA a while later, and found it easier, even including the time spent learning C# which I'd never touched before, and it was the only C like language I'd used in about 5 years.
XNA is really easy to get stuff done in. Also, while MS is not developing it any more, it'll still work, even on Win 8, and is pretty powerful and feature-filled already.
Sidenote about Pygame: I was making all my cards through canvas drawing methods instead of having them predrawn. For learning such. Apparently PyGame has a quirk (which if I remember is actually an SDL thing) where if you try to draw an ellipse with line thickness greater than 1 pixel, you get blank spaces that kind of look like Moire Patterns in your ellipse. So if you want to make an empty ellipse with thick lines, do a filled ellipse, then draw a slightly smaller empty one top of it.
Really.
Before for one of our sites we would add / amend styles to the massive master theme file, minify it, then keep a copy of the original and upload the minified version.
Now, with SASS, I've got a fantastic, legible, even human-readable master .scss sheet with comments up the wazoo that automatically minifies itself on compilation and drops into the correct place in the theme.
And having:
.centre-col-1-col, .centre-col-2-col, .centre-col-3-col { h1, h2, h3 {is way more intuitive to people glancing through the stylesheet than:
.centre-col-1-col h1, .centre-col-2-col h1, .centre-col-3-col h1, .centre-col-1-col h2, .centre-col-2-col h2, .centre-col-3-col h2, .centre-col-1-col h3, .centre-col-2-col h3, .centre-col-3-col h3 {I don't know why it's taken me so long to realise that CSS doesn't have to be the way it's always been.
Well yeah, we're just saying that there is a disproportionate amount of startups.
GET IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR, DRIVE FAST CARS AND FUCK BITCHES.
Especially that San Fran and Oakland and most of the surrounding areas voted no. Like I can't even fathom that.
It's everything I've always wanted CSS to be and more. I've been saying from when I first starting using it (back in 2000) that CSS should have variables for commonly used colours. The mixins / mini-functions you can create to dynamically set colours / opacity etc are a nice cherry on top.
Yeah. Yeah. I'll let you guys see this beast when I'm done with it hopefully.
Lotta Hispanic Catholics down there.