Programming in SQL?
Well, you could argue that SQL ain't no programming language.
And I would tend to agree.
But nevertheless it was the "language" I liked most, then.
Game Development Lecture from 2k Games
- Thread starter Lucky Day
- Start date
Well, you could argue that SQL ain't no programming language.
And I would tend to agree.
But nevertheless it was the "language" I liked most, then.
Lucky Day
Daywatch
@gg I'm not sure what you mean by "obviously biased" but I'm not going to take that as a negative thing because he's reflecting the realities of the game development industry (I'm sure if there was as much money in PC's as consoles the company would be focused there instead).
Plus your summary of the problems of 1000's of hw combinations hits the nail on the head to what problems these guys face all the time with PC development, explaining the other potential bias.
In other words, Standardizations fixing everything my butt, Alrik! You still can't even get Java to run the same on a PC and Mac - we had this problem all the time at the university.
His example was the dozens of Playstation hw configs that we don't know about (like the half dozen or so network cards its had) all have to be tested for potential quirks and that was a nightmare in of itself, despite all the so called standards.
Sure, you can just conform to theoretical white papers and what the documentation say it will do then hope the best, but then you get complaints about untested games being released. You have 100's of SKUs of video cards alone from three different companies on PC - the consoles don't have nearly that many issues - and there's not just one source keeping track of these things on PC's either.
As for what company he works for, GG, as I said it was 2K games and formerly with Sony as a tester. I brought up the developer/publisher business model that's more common and he said yes, they had more of advantage to reach milestones with a lot more flexibility in-house at 2K because they published their own games. (someone recently pointed out with 3DRealms where that didn't work with Duke Nukem. It clearly works better at 2k). He also did mention the occaisional crunch time with the fond memories of the work stress but this wasn't as common at his company.
Now, I can't say if he's playing this down of course, since he was obviously sent out to recruit as well. Lawrence Livermore Labs had previously stated in their lecture that commute from my hometown to the facility was a 1/2 hour at 8am. This, I knew, was a bald faced lie because my job was a block away from their facility (8am commute was about 1 to 1.5 hours which is why I worked at 9am to make it .75 to 1 hour).
Unfortunately, I have no basis to point to anything specific where he might have given us hyperbole but considering how relaxed he was, how straightforward his answers were, as well as his goofy and expensive white man dreadlocks (which made him look very unprofessional to everyone before he actually opened his mouth), nothing wrong stands out to me in his talk.
Plus your summary of the problems of 1000's of hw combinations hits the nail on the head to what problems these guys face all the time with PC development, explaining the other potential bias.
In other words, Standardizations fixing everything my butt, Alrik!
You still can't even get Java to run the same on a PC and Mac - we had this problem all the time at the university. His example was the dozens of Playstation hw configs that we don't know about (like the half dozen or so network cards its had) all have to be tested for potential quirks and that was a nightmare in of itself, despite all the so called standards.
Sure, you can just conform to theoretical white papers and what the documentation say it will do then hope the best, but then you get complaints about untested games being released. You have 100's of SKUs of video cards alone from three different companies on PC - the consoles don't have nearly that many issues - and there's not just one source keeping track of these things on PC's either.
As for what company he works for, GG, as I said it was 2K games and formerly with Sony as a tester. I brought up the developer/publisher business model that's more common and he said yes, they had more of advantage to reach milestones with a lot more flexibility in-house at 2K because they published their own games. (someone recently pointed out with 3DRealms where that didn't work with Duke Nukem. It clearly works better at 2k). He also did mention the occaisional crunch time with the fond memories of the work stress but this wasn't as common at his company.
Now, I can't say if he's playing this down of course, since he was obviously sent out to recruit as well. Lawrence Livermore Labs had previously stated in their lecture that commute from my hometown to the facility was a 1/2 hour at 8am. This, I knew, was a bald faced lie because my job was a block away from their facility (8am commute was about 1 to 1.5 hours which is why I worked at 9am to make it .75 to 1 hour).
Unfortunately, I have no basis to point to anything specific where he might have given us hyperbole but considering how relaxed he was, how straightforward his answers were, as well as his goofy and expensive white man dreadlocks (which made him look very unprofessional to everyone before he actually opened his mouth), nothing wrong stands out to me in his talk.
Last edited:
Lucky Day
Daywatch
As for languages, again there's always fads in languages, but I reiterate, C++ makes the best starting labguage in this day and age for launching to others.
In this thread we've been discussing popular tools such as C# (Which is both .Net based (Ms only) and not even OO when I worked with it) but no one else seems to have mentioned the engine specific languages such as the one with Unreal.
This was a major topic of the discussion as well, and dealing with the hacks that creep into your games, trying to port them, then dealing with the quirks of 3rd party tools. As I said, these languages tend to be "C like", or built with C to begin with, with tools and libraries built with their game in mind.
Sure, C++ is lousy with GUI's, but a way to do a GUI on one platform is not always the best way to do it on another, especially considering the differences with the processing on Playstation and XBox as he pointed out.
In this thread we've been discussing popular tools such as C# (Which is both .Net based (Ms only) and not even OO when I worked with it) but no one else seems to have mentioned the engine specific languages such as the one with Unreal.
This was a major topic of the discussion as well, and dealing with the hacks that creep into your games, trying to port them, then dealing with the quirks of 3rd party tools. As I said, these languages tend to be "C like", or built with C to begin with, with tools and libraries built with their game in mind.
Sure, C++ is lousy with GUI's, but a way to do a GUI on one platform is not always the best way to do it on another, especially considering the differences with the processing on Playstation and XBox as he pointed out.
GothicGothicness
SasqWatch
- Joined
- October 25, 2006
- Messages
- 6,292
As far as C++ goes, they are making it in C++ because of:::: Speed, very simple, and as far as GUI goes, it just depends on which GUI tool / library you use, it has nothing to do with the language there are absolutly great GUI tools and libraries for C++ too.
2K says nothing it is a big global developer, marketer, distributor and publisher, it would be in his particular office and his particualr project.
I've been at some different game companies, for example they have beds, and if you are near a deadline, you'll eat , work and sleep at the office until your bugs are gone. I think if he is out to recruiting he would on purpose downplay it a bit. But of course it could also be he is very fortunate and happend on a place with a calmer tempo and less strict deadlines, how long did the guy work there?
As in the way he trashed PS3 and praised XBOX 360, the graphics card is not so much worse in PS3 as xbox 360, however the development for PS3 is tougher, but it also depends if you use some of the major game engines you get the port "for free", with for free I mean the engine is already ported and you do not need to change any engine related code, just the code you wrote yourself, or some platform specific optz. It would not suprise me if the guy didn't do any PS3 devlopment, and just said what he heard through the rumor mill.
2K says nothing it is a big global developer, marketer, distributor and publisher, it would be in his particular office and his particualr project.
I've been at some different game companies, for example they have beds, and if you are near a deadline, you'll eat , work and sleep at the office until your bugs are gone. I think if he is out to recruiting he would on purpose downplay it a bit. But of course it could also be he is very fortunate and happend on a place with a calmer tempo and less strict deadlines, how long did the guy work there?
As in the way he trashed PS3 and praised XBOX 360, the graphics card is not so much worse in PS3 as xbox 360, however the development for PS3 is tougher, but it also depends if you use some of the major game engines you get the port "for free", with for free I mean the engine is already ported and you do not need to change any engine related code, just the code you wrote yourself, or some platform specific optz. It would not suprise me if the guy didn't do any PS3 devlopment, and just said what he heard through the rumor mill.
- Joined
- Oct 25, 2006
- Messages
- 6,292
Lucky Day
Daywatch
he was on a fine line about disparaging the company he admitted about the video card in the PS3 vs the XBox so he stopped. Clearly one of the issues later in the lecture was on the memory..
I said he was worked on Bioshock for XBox and PS3 and now he's working on Bioshock 2. That's as far as I'll say. If it was bad, why would he work there and try to recruit - I was making more money then EASpouses' husband was so its not the money. I'm inclined to believe his work environment was good - ie. they come and go as they please, they play their own games a lot, as long as work gets done (he cited several more reasons). I'm inclined to believe he likes his job.
The way he described the Cell processor and the way it offloads a lot of work into all the little subprocessors on it, on top of the rigid memory constraints, I'm inclined to believe that PS3 is harder to work on than XBox or even PC. I've heard Bio and other companies say the same thing.
I also mentioned the history of working with vendors MS has and its basis with Visual Studio and Sony's rigid standardizations. But that's not to say Sony won't work with you. Porting Bioshock may have been a nightmare but Sony was eager to make sure it was done right and sent people to the company to help convert the code.
I said he was worked on Bioshock for XBox and PS3 and now he's working on Bioshock 2. That's as far as I'll say. If it was bad, why would he work there and try to recruit - I was making more money then EASpouses' husband was so its not the money. I'm inclined to believe his work environment was good - ie. they come and go as they please, they play their own games a lot, as long as work gets done (he cited several more reasons). I'm inclined to believe he likes his job.
The way he described the Cell processor and the way it offloads a lot of work into all the little subprocessors on it, on top of the rigid memory constraints, I'm inclined to believe that PS3 is harder to work on than XBox or even PC. I've heard Bio and other companies say the same thing.
I also mentioned the history of working with vendors MS has and its basis with Visual Studio and Sony's rigid standardizations. But that's not to say Sony won't work with you. Porting Bioshock may have been a nightmare but Sony was eager to make sure it was done right and sent people to the company to help convert the code.