Not sure if this is in the right place, if there is a right place to ask this, so I apologize if it's in the wrong section. After a series of rather interesting events which ended up meaning I've received my Bachelors Degree a year early, I find myself completely unprepared for the "real world." I was planning on developing a portfolio throughout my final year, however my final year has turned out to be a year too soon and I have nothing to prove my skill-set with. Any chance there is anyone about who may know what the game industry looks for in a resume/CV and portfolio? I have no idea and really need some help.

Are you applying for a position in the UK? UK and US CVs are very different.
My CV. The CV itself is unchanged from the one I used to get my first job, with the exception of the "Commercial Projects Worked On" section obviously. The projects on that site are also all from before I got my job, and that's what I used for my portfolio (Which to be honest, could definitely be better).

Portfolio stuff is usually more important than a CV. Assuming you're looking for a Junior Programmer position, you want to show that you have an understanding of most design patterns, C++ usually, if you have a working knowledge of tools like Photoshop, Maya, 3DMax, etc that helps.
You should also be able to show knowledge of 3D graphics techniques (Know what mip mapping is, how graphics are rendered, etc) and you should have pretty string 3D maths skills.

Quote: Original post by DerUnterMensch
Not sure if this is in the right place, if there is a right place to ask this, so I apologize if it's in the wrong section.
After a series of rather interesting events which ended up meaning I've received my Bachelors Degree a year early, I find myself completely unprepared for the "real world." I was planning on developing a portfolio throughout my final year, however my final year has turned out to be a year too soon and I have nothing to prove my skill-set with. Any chance there is anyone about who may know what the game industry looks for in a resume/CV and portfolio? I have no idea and really need some help.

Der, your CV is not the issue here. It doesn't matter what you put in your CV or if it's in the right format or uses the right words, that won't hide the fact that you're not ready. You've got lots of time to sort out your CV while you build your portfolio. Then maybe you won't need to advertise to the world that you're an "untermensch."

And this site doesn't have a "breaking in" forum. This forum seems to be where all the breaking in posts come. So don't worry about having posted this here.

I've been awarded with a Scottish BSc, having missed out on going to my 4th year of a BSc with honours degree, but I'm only over here on a student visa so will need to find out if a Scottish BSc is actually the same as a BSc in the US. Due to the degree, I've got a pretty extensive knowledge of advanced graphics theory, and have managed to teach myself to program most of it with OpenGL, and DirectX(Though I despise DirectX). My knowledge of C++ patterns is rather limited as we were never taught any of them and of the ones I've researched myself I've only found any use for Singletons. I also have very extensive knowledge of porting applications across platforms and writing cross-platform applications, would this be of any use for a games industry career? How would you recommend demonstrating my skill-set? Would providing the render engine I've written be enough, or should I provide some more visual examples? What sort of level of maths background is expected usually? My brain just doesn't seem to be wired correctly for most maths, so I've got pretty poor maths grades, though I have no problem with using the maths for things like vectors, matrices, and quaternions, and I've done some work with fourier tranforms for data analysis (though I probably wouldn't want to be asked any questions on it in an interview).

Edit: Hehe, thats the first time anyone has every commented on my nickname. I wouldn't exactly say I'm not ready, other then perhaps in the fact that I was expecting to be graduating with my portfolio finished. I'm more then capable, I'm just not sure what is expected as far as proof.

Edit2: Would a game I did on the PS2 make much of a portfolio piece, or would something that would be easy to run be better?

Quote: Original post by DerUnterMensch
My knowledge of C++ patterns is rather limited as we were never taught any of them and of the ones I've researched myself I've only found any use for Singletons.

Lets nip that one in the bud right now - it is generally agreed that singletons have *very few* good uses, perhaps less than any other common pattern.

Quote: Original post by swiftCoder
Lets nip that one in the bud right now - it is generally agreed that singletons have *very few* good uses, perhaps less than any other common pattern.

Well I never found any real use for any of them unless your seriously pedantic about object-oriented programming. I've always preferred C to C++, but find enough things useful about C++ that my programming style is probably not exactly standard.

Quote: Original post by DerUnterMensch
(Though I despise DirectX).

Tip 1: never say that in an interview - makes you seem inflexible and intolerant.

A PS2 demo is not a bad idea (assuming it's good - no demo is better than a bad demo). Include some video capture and/or screenshots with it in case they can't run it. In fact that's a good idea for any platform. We get loads of demos that don't run properly and without any screenshots or such to back it up it's useless.

Quote: Original post by Jerax
Tip 1: never say that in an interview - makes you seem inflexible and intolerant.

I wouldn't exactly call myself intolerant and if it meant a job I would use DirectX, but I would slowly die inside having to use such a pathetic API. I guess I still can't figure out why so many programmers bind themselves to making programs that only run on windows and use an API that only supports recent hardware extensions if Microsoft have rewritten the entire API recently instead of using an API that is limitless if a bit harder to develop with.

The PS2 demo is a fairly simple Dungeon Master clone in desperate need of graphics other then programmer graphics, but I've never been sure if it was good enough to include in my portfolio.

Quote: Original post by DerUnterMensch
I wouldn't exactly call myself intolerant and if it meant a job I would use DirectX, but I would slowly die inside having to use such a pathetic API. I guess I still can't figure out why so many programmers bind themselves to making programs that only run on windows and use an API that only supports recent hardware extensions if Microsoft have rewritten the entire API recently instead of using an API that is limitless if a bit harder to develop with.

Going a little off topic: I actually prefer this to the whole extenstion system of OpenGL. Although there's very little difference between the two APIs when you really get down to it, but DirectX is often more OOPy.
The API isn't changed any more, it's pretty fixed. DX7 is a different API from DX9, so there's no reason not to change the interfaces as much as they like, and it makes sense in many ways - No DirectDraw, better abstraction from the hardware, etc.

I also only completed a 3 year BSc, and a lot of English recruiters didn't recognise it as a degree at all, saying that if it wasn't graded (It was just pass / fail), then it wasn't a degree. I'm not sure how that relates to US degrees though.

Quote: Original post by DerUnterMensch

Quote: Original post by Jerax
Tip 1: never say that in an interview - makes you seem inflexible and intolerant.

I wouldn't exactly call myself intolerant and if it meant a job I would use DirectX, but I would slowly die inside having to use such a pathetic API. I guess I still can't figure out why so many programmers bind themselves to making programs that only run on windows and use an API that only supports recent hardware extensions if Microsoft have rewritten the entire API recently instead of using an API that is limitless if a bit harder to develop with.

That is precisely the sort of attitude Jerax is talking about. It *doesn't matter* what 3D API the company uses: D3D and GL are roughly comparable in features, and ease of use is merely a matter of familiarity.

Besides, very little work in game programming is done at that low a level anyway. Once the renderer for you game/engine is built, you never touch the underlying API(s) (and it really *should* be plural - there are a *lot* of 3D graphics APIs out there), and you are doing is writing shaders and calling Load() and Display() routines.

It is a bit like saying that CoreAudio is 'better' than ALSA - it may well be true for most things, but you use whatever works best on each platform, and abstract out the differences.