My Thoughts So Far.
12
2008
Recently I successfully transferred to Software Engineering over at Griffith University. It’s going to be a 4-year full-time course, on campus, and I’m quite excited. As one who has a strong background in fine art and visual design, I’ve been always intrigued by the amazing computer technology - especially in the Computer Graphics industry - and I really would love to program for a game one day. Game Engine Architect is a title I’m working for right now, a stretched-out long-term goal I want to reach as soon as possible.
So I took a friend’s suggestion over at Gaming Artist forum and bought Unreal Tournament III. Totally beat that game in three days, and started doing tutorials I found online about modding. Like a Mutator, or an imported model.
Over at ModDB I have discovered a series of quality tutorials written by the name of Ambershee. It’s absolutely fantastic - eventualy everything worked out beautifully. I had a great taste on the Unreal Editor for Materials, and although the control wasn’t exactly human-friendly (in order to drag a node, you have to hold down control), the real-time preview on the material, along with the calculations you can perform is simply exciting to see. Very different than my Hypershade in Maya, which takes a drastically different approach to 3D graphics.
So I thought, since I have to wait til around March-ish for my Student Visa here in Brisbane, Australia before I can start working, I have all the time in the world to expand my portfolio - my old one is a Compositor reel - and I am so going to love making games. (I already do.) The goal for now, is to make mods - several of them, as many as I can manage - for Unreal Tournament 3, and possibly other games I may pick up at some point. (Crysis, I’m looking at you!) I’m going to try out all the different things I can do, from small to large; from simple to complex; from easy to difficult. I could write a Mutator and create a simple rule that alters a certain rule in the game, or I can create a Total Conversion and you’ll have no idea you’re playing Unreal - it’s all about the effort and time!
Here’s a list I’m going to try out, and see which one I love the most:
- Write several interesting Mutators for challenging gameplay
- Make one or two Game Types for a refreshing experience
- Load in a handful of models, characters and weapons, or even vehicles, and toy with them in the game
- Create a few maps, have some interesting Level Design fun
- Eventually write out a small Total Conversion for the sake of knowledge
Eventually I’ll publish them from my site, as well as ModDB, which I’m going to eventually frequent visit. I always welcome comments, or interested individuals who would like to tag along and learn with me. As a believer of nothing is impossible and a person with a high ambition, I need to confidentally shout out that I am going to do this. Starting now.
Well, just one more thing, and then I’ll return to my modding fun.
I did a google search today on ‘Brisbane Game Jobs’. I browsed through the first page’s result, and discovered many recruiting sites and company profiles, as well as job listings. But guess what?
Out of ~5000 jobs, about 1800 of them are Engineering jobs.
That’s about 36% of all the opportunities! Go Engineeers. (Sydney has about triple that much. Crazy!)
For some reason that makes me feel really good.
All right, time to mod.
