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TheNut
07-26-2007, 08:08 PM
Just thought I'd stir the pot a bit, get some flow going.

I was getting bored at work so I came up with an idea to work on a quick and dirty game called "Bubbles". There's no concept behind this game and I have no idea what the hell to do. I'm just going with the flow on this one, heh. I haven't done much programming yet as everything thus far has been automated by my template game engine. I have quite a few fish models and textures that I am preparing to render animations with in Blender. I'm also compiling a set of puzzle tunes with my ultra sweet Yahama PSR keyboard :blush: I'm looking to spend a week tops on this "game", whatever that might be :lol:

http://www.nutty.ca/tmp/bubbles.jpg


Anyone else want to share their 2¼ cent story? :lol:

Frank Skilton
07-26-2007, 08:39 PM
So what's everyone doing?


Creating 3D models, worlds, textures and audio for a project myself and a small team are working on, named ADF.

Here's a picture of one of the soldier characters that will appear in the game, fully skinned and animated and light on poly count weighing in at only 2836.

http://www.bleedingcolourstudio.com/Images/Characters/IraqiSoldier/iraqi_Soldier_pose.jpg

I and the other team member who created that model are both learning to program in C++ so that we can actually get him doing something useful in-game. It's going to be a long journey however we're both very persistent.

Reedbeta
07-26-2007, 11:04 PM
2836K? That's not light, that's nearly 3 million triangles! Maybe you just meant 2836?

Frank Skilton
07-26-2007, 11:10 PM
:lol: Yes 2836!

Obviously those 3 cups of coffee didn't kick in soon enough. :blush:

anubis
07-27-2007, 01:35 AM
I'm currently digging around in what the demoscene does and try to come up with some nice procedurally generated models, textures and effects. No screenshots as of yet :|

SamuraiCrow
07-27-2007, 07:56 AM
I'm modifying an extensible programming language (http://xlr.sourceforge.net) in the hopes of making it backward comptable with the Amos Basic Professional language from the Amiga years. I may have to cross-develop from Linux as the makefiles are not working under Cygwin at this time.

-edit- fixed link

TheNut
07-27-2007, 03:17 PM
Frank,
Cool stuff. I bet you can't wait to get that bad boy running through heavy fire, blowing up vehicles, and gunning down the bad guys ;)

Anubis
Procedural content is neat stuff, I'd like to tackle that beast sometime. I like how one can generate infinite detail in textures and landscapes with only a couple formulas. I'm looking forward to seeing stuff like that in action with Spore when it comes out.

SamuraiCow
Looking to resurrect some old titles like Qbert and Grog's Revenge eh? ;)

SamuraiCrow
07-27-2007, 05:28 PM
@TheNut

Actually there is a Scorched Earth spinoff that I want to resurrect called Frontal Assault (http://apex-designs.net/frontalassault.html).

anubis
07-28-2007, 02:56 AM
I'm looking forward to seeing stuff like that in action with Spore when it comes out.

That's what really got the ball rolling for me. Currently I'm trying to form a diploma thesis out of the topic but I'm still al little vague on the details.

Dim_Yimma_H
08-18-2007, 02:17 PM
I'm working on a ninja game with semi-realistic physics, and 2D software rendering. Most of the game engine is implemented, and I'm adding some details to ensure stability, like adding a few collision detection tests in case of truncation errors, and adding type-safety to my script interpreter.

I've designed zones to travel, funnily though I've a way too relaxed story, I have background stuff but no serious dialog. It seems I'll have to be a writer for a moment, but programmer's art need to be accompanied by programmer's words, right? ;)

I have quite a few fish models and textures that I am preparing to render animations with in Blender. I'm also compiling a set of puzzle tunes with my ultra sweet Yahama PSR keyboard :blush: I'm looking to spend a week tops on this "game", whatever that might be :lol:
You have some gorgeous underwater graphics going on there, looks really nice, cozy style somehow. It might be just me, but with the Bubbles title it seems an underwater bubble shoot'em up would suit perfectly. Like, the fishes blowing bubbles on each other and bubble "ammunition" can be retrieved by sucking up air from much larger bubbles. Like a battle for bubbles.

I'm currently digging around in what the demoscene does and try to come up with some nice procedurally generated models, textures and effects.
Procedurally generated textures indeed seem nice. I'd love to use some procedural texture engine that could read procedure layers from an editor like Photoshop, the problem being of course that the editor must export its filter effect procedures to the format of the engine.

inigo07
08-18-2007, 02:39 PM
I'm modeling some capital starships for a 3D space shooter at the moment. Also working on updating an abandoned open-source special effects program for Mac OSX. Pretty simple stuff, just have to modify the code for Quicktime 7.2 (from 6.0).

Wernaeh
08-21-2007, 04:05 AM
Thread resurrection time ? :)

Well I'm currently doing an internship at a large German company, saving some money because I'd like to buy one of these (http://www.access-music.de/events/11-2004/virusti_details_keyboard.php4).

Apart from that, I'm still working on my webpage so I finally have a place to present my game idea testing bed, and I'm working on a small Visual Studio addin, which allows to regenerate projects from a given directory structure (since I'm slowly getting annoyed with manually creating new folders for >500 files projects).

Cheers,
- Wernaeh

darksmaster923
08-30-2007, 10:38 AM
http://img77.imageshack.us/img77/4619/m16vc8.png
a 1412 poly m16 for panda3d

Nils Pipenbrinck
09-07-2007, 02:18 PM
I'm doing dynamic code generation on a DSP for a general purpose graphics library at the moment. We have a OpenGL/ES frontend for it (so you can get an idea how complex that thing is)

Blits are already working and perform well. Nice hardcore coding stuff involving multiple DMA streams running at the same time as the CPU is doing the dirty work in parallel. I'm really proud of that part, and it performs well.

Today I've finished the prototype for texture mapped-triangles. Not really dynamic as it only works with a single texture-format and a fixed size. Don't even think about alpha-blending and anti-aliasing at this time. I'll tackle this in the next days. But: It works, and I got my first performance results..

Wisdom of the day: No need to worry about the cycles per pixel. The performance of a loop, even if it's far away from the theoretical optimum, is dominated by the memory throughput and cache usage. Just because the optimizing compiler generates code that needs 30% of the cycles per iteration as I need does not make a measurable difference in rendering performance.

Guys, dig this. Rendering a quad with an image 90° rotated is 14 times slower than rendering the same image unrotated. Cache effects are *the* performance-killer on the machine I code for.

Next thing to try is to twiddle the address-bits and get things moving.

.oisyn
09-07-2007, 03:18 PM
I'm working, among other things, on the occlusion culling system for the next Tomb Raider game. Obviously I'm not allowed to post any screenshots :)

TheNut
09-08-2007, 06:01 AM
SamuraiCrow
Wicked. I remember my bro and I use to fight over the computer (then 286 machine) to play that game. Although the version we had was called "Tank Warz" or some such. Heh, the good old days.

Dim_Yimma_H
Sounds cool. We programmers should be proud of our multiple skills. We are capable of so much more, and yet so gravely misunderstood :)

inigo07
Most people play space sims to build their empire or engage in battles. Me? I like sending in those massive capital ships and putting on a wicked light show! Nexus I think had the coolest capital ships, but the battles in Wing Commander and Descent Freespace were equally tense. What sort of theme are you using for your designs?

Wernaeh
Whoa, expensive gear! Are you a musician/DJ? I've been trying to produce some stuff as of late for my upcoming game, but my gear is pretty limited, heh.

darksmaster923
Nice model. I remember my first modeled weapon. I was developing models for a WW2 mod I wanted to make with the "Savage" engine. In the end it didn't work out though as my team were slackers and the work load for me was just to great. I'm kind of making up for that with my next game though.
http://www.nutty.ca/tmp/M1Carbine.png
~1000 polygons.

Nils
Whoa, sounds pretty complex indeed (far outside my reach, heh). What sort of hardware are you working on now and what's your desired target hardware? I myself would like to start seeing more 3D capabilities in portable hardware. Just to open up that potential.

.oisyn
It's ok oisyn, we won't think any less of you for just teasing us :lol:


As for myself, I finished up Bubbles and I have resumed development on Action - Reaction. I'm still having a tough time dedicating to it, but there are some days where I get a lot done, so I guess that makes up for it. I've mostly been working on the sounds/music and graphics for the game. I completed the intro cinematic (realtime 3D) just a couple days ago and I'm focusing next on the multiplayer design and lobby system.

Here's a load screen I whipped up for the game.
http://www.nutty.ca/rts/tmp/loading1.jpg

inigo07
09-08-2007, 08:34 PM
What sort of theme are you using for your designs?

Unfortunately under the terms of the NDA I can't say too much. I'm not even going to tell the name of the company for fear of releasing info...but the capital ship I'm working on now is inspired by Ferraris and other Italian sports cars...sleek, organic, yet with some angles. At least I hope it'll turn out like that.

_Pix_
09-09-2007, 03:15 AM
Hello, I am new on these boards.

I am currently developing a game engine called vieWTerra and making use of real-time 3D procedural algorithms combined with satellite data, running on PC OpenGL only ATM.

http://www.pourieux.com/images/vwt/indice25.jpg

http://membres.lycos.fr/sfgclan/v/s/a.jpg (http://membres.lycos.fr/sfgclan/v/b/a.jpg) http://www.vworld.fr/screens/VWP17.jpg (http://www.vworld.fr/screens/VW17.jpg) http://www.vworld.fr/screens/VWP01.jpg (http://www.vworld.fr/screens/VW01.jpg) http://www.vworld.fr/screens/VWP07.jpg (http://www.vworld.fr/screens/VW07.jpg)


This game engine allows the user to move on the entire surface of the Earth, seamlessly from below sea to space. I work with a satellite database engineer who provides the project with databases in natural colors, DEMs, landcover databases, meteolorogical databases etc...

Screenshots and videos gallery (http://www.monde3d.com/VIEWTERRA2/photos2.htm)

Wernaeh
09-09-2007, 12:28 PM
Guys, dig this. Rendering a quad with an image 90° rotated is 14 times slower than rendering the same image unrotated. Cache effects are *the* performance-killer on the machine I code for.

Woha, that's interesting :)
That's exactly the reason why I'm not too much into manually optimizing any code apart from basic algorithms. There's just too much to consider...


Whoa, expensive gear! Are you a musician/DJ? I've been trying to produce some stuff as of late for my upcoming game, but my gear is pretty limited, heh.

Well, I've been on classical piano for ages, and just recently, a few friends of mine wanted to start a band, and asked me in. However, I'm slowly getting sick of being played into the wall by the lead guitar, and decided to upgrade on a more, say, competitive instrument :)

Anyways, I don't know what your gear is, but there are very usable freeware software instruments out there, see for example http://www.kvraudio.com/. As long as you have some ability to send midi data to your computer, and have an up-to-date system, this works pretty well, actually, especially for composing needs.


This game engine allows the user to move on the entire surface of the Earth, seamlessly from below sea to space. I work with a satellite database engineer who provides the project with databases in natural colors, DEMs, landcover databases, meteolorogical databases etc...


Impressive screenshots, I have to admit :) How do you generate specific detail, such as the animals and buildings ?

I once tried implementing a planet scale renderer as well, but then decided that it would be too time intensive to properly fill a world that huge with the content it deserved...

Cheers,
- Wernaeh

.oisyn
09-09-2007, 01:56 PM
Guys, dig this. Rendering a quad with an image 90° rotated is 14 times slower than rendering the same image unrotated.
Guy, dig this: you should consider using a tiled texture format where texels are locally arranged in blocks, depending on the cache-line size. All major hardware rendering platforms are doing that already ;). That way, it doesn't matter if you fetch texels horizontally or vertically - you'll always cross the same number of blocks (and thus the same number of potential cache misses).

Cache effects are *the* performance-killer on the machine I code for.
I think that statement is true for most machines.

Nils Pipenbrinck
09-09-2007, 04:23 PM
Guy, dig this: you should consider using a tiled texture format where texels are locally arranged in blocks, depending on the cache-line size. All major hardware rendering platforms are doing that already ;). That way, it doesn't matter if you fetch texels horizontally or vertically - you'll always cross the same number of blocks (and thus the same number of potential cache misses).

I'm well aware of morton ordering for textures. That's something I will add as an option. Unfortunately It's not in my hands how exactly the texture is stored, but at least I can offer the application programmer to do things right. The DSP has an instruction to interleave a register bit-wise with zero-bits so twiddeling of texture-addresses is nearly a free operation.

I'm still a bit shocked how drastic the effect is. Factor 5 between best and worst case is something I've seen before, but factor 14 is by far the most shocking instance of bad cache coherency I've ever seen. I have other rendering routines (blits) that bypass the cache because I use DMA for them. These are limited by the DMA and thus the pure, uncached memory bandwith.

I thought the 90° bit would be roughly around the memory performance of the uncached blits, but they are nearly eight times slower. Now as I write these things down it even starts to make sense. I fetch two bytes per pixel, and a cache-line is 32 bytes in size. I do notice a pattern here :-). I bet I'm faster if I just disable the caching.

That's something I'm going to try tomorrow.

Some other strange thing is the peformance estimate I did. I measure a almost linear speed difference wether my innerloop takes 10 or 20 cycles as long as my caching is perfect (e.g. linear read), but as soon as I rotate my texture slightly I can waste around 50 cycles per pixels without much loss of performance. The performance goes down by maybe 5% since the DSP spends it's time waiting for the cache anyways..

On the DM6446 (my target hardware) that can be as much as 400 instructions that get executed per pixel. I see potential for some bad ass shader-stuff here.

.oisyn
09-09-2007, 05:14 PM
On the DM6446 (my target hardware) that can be as much as 400 instructions that get executed per pixel. I see potential for some bad ass shader-stuff here.
Interesting. Does the hardware allow for manual prefetching? Otherwise you're still stuck, as shaders are typically dependent on texture fetches (I suppose that DSP chip doesn't do any OOE either)

Nils Pipenbrinck
09-09-2007, 06:09 PM
Interesting. Does the hardware allow for manual prefetching? Otherwise you're still stuck, as shaders are typically dependent on texture fetches (I suppose that DSP chip doesn't do any OOE either)

No prefetching. Unfortunately. And no out of order execution either. For anything except memory accesses that misses the cache you just have to issue the instructions and count out cycles until you get the result. The DSP has no built in functionality to protect you from stalls or using results to early.

But that's part of the fun,

Nils

inigo07
09-09-2007, 08:34 PM
So it seems as if several guys here are musically inclined. I myself play fingerstyle guitar...a bit of piano...

I wonder if programming is so "mechanical" and "concrete" that we have to have other creative outlets? Art, music, literature, theater, etc....

Frank Skilton
09-09-2007, 09:17 PM
I wonder if programming is so "mechanical"...

Twisting the meaning of your quote a little, maybe that's the reason I haven't yet been able to convincingly reproduce a guitar digitally, using software based composers and synthesizers.

Drums are easy to reproduce; piano and strings are a little more complicated yet achievable. Guitars have so many variations in the way that they can sound as well as different playing techniques which are used to alter the way they sound. I find it hard to capture/emulate that through software.

Long story short, you can nearly always tell when a guitar piece is not real, even with sample based instruments. Maybe I need a bigger budget or maybe I should just use live recordings for guitars.

_Pix_
09-09-2007, 11:50 PM
Impressive screenshots, I have to admit :) How do you generate specific detail, such as the animals and buildings ?

I once tried implementing a planet scale renderer as well, but then decided that it would be too time intensive to properly fill a world that huge with the content it deserved...


Thanks!

Animals and buildings are classic meshes. Animals are placed on the Earth according to ecoregions databases which specify for each region what animal you are supposed to see. Result is that you will found elephants for example where they live. The system then procedurally generates billions of animals (including birds and fishes).

For the buildings, there are 3 options:

- autoextrusion by using accurate steroscopic aerial databases. The system works, but needs improvements. Anyway, databases are expensive.

- procedural placement: just as for the animals, you can ask the software to generate villages: interesting to get content quickly and no HD consuming. You need to define the correct rules which allow the program to generate coherent things.

- manual placement: in vieWTerra, there are 20 millions of terrain available to build your own area: you can plant trees (in addition to the ones the software generates), choose to deforest, change the nature of the ground and add objets including buildings.

Testers are helping us to test the engine with the goal to go for an MMO game development in the near future. They can travel everywhere making use of different transportation means (car, boat, submarine, aircraft, space shuttle, etc...) and build the world. So to me, content in not a problem.

A few tester screenies:
http://membres.lycos.fr/lfcsplaneurs/s/20.jpg (http://membres.lycos.fr/lfcsplaneurs/b/20.jpg) http://membres.lycos.fr/lfcsplaneurs/s/34.jpg (http://membres.lycos.fr/lfcsplaneurs/b/34.jpg) http://membres.lycos.fr/sfgclan/v/s/d.jpg (http://membres.lycos.fr/sfgclan/v/b/d.jpg) http://www.viewterra.com/gallery/vs003.jpg (http://www.viewterra.com/gallery/s003.jpg) http://www.monde3d.com/VIEWTERRA2/photos_gallerie/photos_gallerie_mini/94.jpg (http://www.monde3d.com/VIEWTERRA2/photos_gallerie/94.jpg)



and videos

Video 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlO7IJqipOc)
Video 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx50e_PiNdc)
Video 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgFGpvxvur4)

Procedural programming doesn't make the entire content, but it's a great help right from the start, rather than creating big worlds manually ;)

TheNut
09-10-2007, 04:22 AM
Wow, that is indeed excellent stuff there Pix. I loved the 3rd video with the space -> earth transition. It makes Google Earth and various flight sims look like prehistoric software :)

Haha, now I want to drop everything I'm doing and play with procedural stuff. Damn... :lol:

monjardin
09-10-2007, 12:55 PM
No, finish the damn tank game!

_Pix_
09-10-2007, 10:36 PM
Wow, that is indeed excellent stuff there Pix. I loved the 3rd video with the space -> earth transition. It makes Google Earth and various flight sims look like prehistoric software :)

Haha, now I want to drop everything I'm doing and play with procedural stuff. Damn... :lol:

Lol, I imagine your Bubbles game at an Earth scale! Could be an interesting stuff isn't it? Discovering all the wonders of the oceans.

Welcome in the PAA (Procedural Addicts Association) :)

TheNut
09-11-2007, 09:14 AM
"The game that keeps on giving" :lol:

Fret not monjardin, for I shall complete my tank game. It's only that I've been doing a lot of documentation at work plus on the tank game, which is starting to get on my nerves :wallbash: I need a quick fix, as the junkies say, to keep me going.

SamuraiCrow
09-11-2007, 07:35 PM
Twisting the meaning of your quote a little, maybe that's the reason I haven't yet been able to convincingly reproduce a guitar digitally, using software based composers and synthesizers.

Drums are easy to reproduce; piano and strings are a little more complicated yet achievable. Guitars have so many variations in the way that they can sound as well as different playing techniques which are used to alter the way they sound. I find it hard to capture/emulate that through software.

Long story short, you can nearly always tell when a guitar piece is not real, even with sample based instruments. Maybe I need a bigger budget or maybe I should just use live recordings for guitars.

If you want to examine the possibilities with sampling all of the possible guitar playing techniques, you might look into this old Protracker Module (http://modarchive.org/download.php/L/lunatic.mod) using MilkyTracker (http://milkytracker.net/) or some other tracker-style editor. (Note: I didn't write the music module so don't ask me for permission to use the samples.)

Dim_Yimma_H
09-20-2007, 10:21 AM
Guys, dig this. Rendering a quad with an image 90° rotated is 14 times slower than rendering the same image unrotated. Cache effects are *the* performance-killer on the machine I code for.
I wonder if iterating along the source scanlines but in the destination area, would make any difference, since that would let one continuously read smaller cached blocks (the scanlines). Assuming the write operations aren't as bad cache-wise, I've only read about basic cache behavior though, so I'm not sure.

Sounds like you're doing something interesting anyway.

We programmers should be proud of our multiple skills. We are capable of so much more, and yet so gravely misunderstood :)
Yeah, multiple skills are useful, let's just hope they're good, well-practiced skills as well. :lol:

I am currently developing a game engine called vieWTerra and making use of real-time 3D procedural algorithms combined with satellite data, running on PC OpenGL only ATM.
I watched the video, it looks truly amazing! I would guess that's some great technology you've made, It does indeed make Google Earth look old. Maybe make a deal with them?

I love the look of the ski resort scene by the way, pretty good modelling of the ski lifts especially. :)

I wonder if programming is so "mechanical" and "concrete" that we have to have other creative outlets? Art, music, literature, theater, etc....
I don't think programming is mechanical or concrete, it requires a lot of imagination to figure out different solutions, and find the ones of them that work in practice. It's the same with music and literature especially, imagining parts that may be connected to create a continuos and interesting flow sound- or storywise. That's what separates good music from bad music in my ears, unless the discontinuity is regarded as the "creative art".

Art, drawing is different I think, it's open for more improvization since you in practice do not put together several small drawings, but rather improvize during the process and maybe redraw the whole piece if it falls to far out of the imagined scope.

Everyone needs to vary what they do though.

Wernaeh
09-21-2007, 09:59 AM
I wonder if programming is so "mechanical" and "concrete" that we have to have other creative outlets? Art, music, literature, theater, etc....


Well call me conservative, but I still think of coding as some sort of art... You can do quick drafts, you can do more elaborate designs, it usually is the same thing you do when painting or cooking or well whatever...

I guess the only thing programming lacks is some kind of personal representation... after all you don't usually code about your emotions, do you ? That's where music and literature and theater and whatever kick in, it's not in the creativity involved, but rather in what you create :)

_Pix_
09-25-2007, 01:02 AM
I watched the video, it looks truly amazing! I would guess that's some great technology you've made, It does indeed make Google Earth look old. Maybe make a deal with them?

I love the look of the ski resort scene by the way, pretty good modelling of the ski lifts especially. :)


Thanks for the good words!
As to ski lifts, they were made by one of our testers and I do agree they look pretty good. I need to work a bit more on integrating them in slopes.


I don't think programming is mechanical or concrete, it requires a lot of imagination to figure out different solutions, and find the ones of them that work in practice. It's the same with music and literature especially, imagining parts that may be connected to create a continuos and interesting flow sound- or storywise. That's what separates good music from bad music in my ears, unless the discontinuity is regarded as the "creative art".

You are absolutely correct, I do share your views 100%. Programming is based on passion first and foremost. BTW currently in France there's a deep lack of C/C++ programmers: it seems that during the last couple of years, programming shifted to high level tools, and this is detrimental to acquiring knowledge of the machine. I miss fellow programmers who practised Assembly languages. :)
To me, this also affects the way people take their creation at heart.
Happy to speak with keen programmers around these boards!

Dim_Yimma_H
09-28-2007, 01:04 PM
I have to admit I'm not too used to assembly languages, but I do like the immediate control they provide. When starting out I tried some NES and 16-bit x86 languages, and certain things were actually easier because of the fewer abstract layers.

Programming is based on passion first and foremost.
I guess the most robust programming applications often do come from people with the most passion for creating a "beautiful" programs rather than only getting them to work. At the same time I realize the passion may be in different areas.

BTW currently in France there's a deep lack of C/C++ programmers: it seems that during the last couple of years, programming shifted to high level tools, and this is detrimental to acquiring knowledge of the machine.
I think I understand what you mean, it seems especially business programming is done in C# for example. Ubisoft shows that there are still some good C++ programmers in France though. :)

_Pix_
10-03-2007, 09:40 AM
I think I understand what you mean, it seems especially business programming is done in C# for example. Ubisoft shows that there are still some good C++ programmers in France though. :)
Sure, you are right, there are skilled programmers at Ubisoft in France (and of course not only in France since Ubisoft is now mainly an overseas company). The issue to me is that this is more and more difficult to find C/C++ programmers over here. But who knows, the trend might change someday.

karligula
10-03-2007, 11:28 AM
At the moment, I'm looking for a new programming job, and it's not going well... I've sent my CV and demos to loads of places but only had two interviews so far.

I'm beginning to wonder if my skills are past their prime. And that's not a good thought. Maybe I should get the C++ compiler out again and do something impressive... of course nowadays that would mean a photorealistic world beating MMORPG engine... ok give me a few months on that one...

Does anyone else think that studios wish lists for recruits are getting just a teeny bit too demanding? Ok so I'm not the next John Carmack... but I refuse to believe that there's no place for an experienced games industry programmer on a realistic salary to do the menu screens or installers.

Oh well...something will turn up... ;-)

J22
10-03-2007, 01:24 PM
Few hints:

Think carefully which domain (e.g. graphics, AI, etc.) you would most like to work on. If you have clear idea of your interest and state it in your resume (e.g. "I'm looking for AI Programmer position") employers can easily classify you and determine if they are looking your kind of programmer. Or if you just can't figure out the domain, just put "Generalist Programmer" in your resume. If you don't specify any objective in your resume employer (or at least I) will get impression that you have no clue what you really want and if you would even be motivated to work on the domain they have to offer.

If you haven't had any previous programming work experience precede the position with "Junior" (e.g. "I'm looking for Junior AI Programmer position"). It just implies that you do realize you have plenty of learning to do thus cause some overhead for the team, and because of that you are ready to start from lower salary bracket.

If you have demo, don't send it unless if it's really impressive. Many people judging demos just can't see past the programmer art. Furthermore, don't send sources and expect them to compile your code in order to run the demo. Also send all files required to run the demo, e.g. don't expect them to have all required OpenGL files installed if your demo uses that. Overall sending demo is quite risky business and I would suggest you to rather bring the demo with you to the interview preferably with your laptop, so you can actually explain what's going on in the demo and have proper environment to run it.

Overall have positive attitude in your resume and show that you are really enthusiastic about working in the game industry. Have your resume very well structured (preferably .doc or .pdf format) and try to put the most interesting and relevant stuff to the beginning. If you are out of luck this time, don't trash your resume but keep it around for improvements. After couple of months have a look at it and you'll find places to improve when you read it more objectively.

mmakrzem
10-06-2007, 04:55 PM
I'm making a game engine, and sharing the results in video tutorials that I make.