Quote: Original post by swiftcoder
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.

I understand that, and I specialize in making sure applications run equally well on multiple platforms(Though with nvidia's buggy drivers lately, the DirectX support even on Windows has become appalling, and OpenGL outperforms 200% every time on my Geforce 7900GTO). I only have a problem with the fact that most people use only DirectX, and if you sign on with Microsoft they enforce that behavior, but the core API is usually more the publisher's choice if the development company decides to sign their soul away like that.

But back to the topic at hand, you recommend just listing my skill-set in a CV as recommended everywhere else, and then just writing any old program or two that demonstrates them? Much of my first post was sort of written in a state of shock having just found out that I was going to have to go back to the states and start looking for a job having not had any time to prepare my portfolio, and I was kind of wanting more detail on what is actually expected in a portfolio.

Evil Steve: Was your supposed lack of a degree any way detrimental to finding a job? From what I've seen a degree only actually seems to matter when there are two equally qualified applicants for a job but one has more education.

Quote: Original post by DerUnterMensch
I understand that, and I specialize in making sure applications run equally well on multiple platforms(Though with nvidia's buggy drivers lately, the DirectX support even on Windows has become appalling, and OpenGL outperforms 200% every time on my Geforce 7900GTO). I only have a problem with the fact that most people use only DirectX, and if you sign on with Microsoft they enforce that behavior, but the core API is usually more the publisher's choice if the development company decides to sign their soul away like that.

Most people only need DirectX (and the various console specific APIs), so it's somewhat of a moot point. DX is much the same speed as opengl assuming equal skill at coding both, if anything DX has the edge as that's where most of the driver focus is.

Still going into an interview and bad mouthing DX (or windows, or whatever) would be a great way to lose yourself an opportunity. A good coder can code in whichever API fits the current project, so why limit yourself because of some foolish political bias?

I don't have a degree and have found no problem in getting work. In fact, I've never been turned down for a games industry job I've applied for (and yes I've applied for more than 1). ;)

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I would use DirectX, but I would slowly die inside having to use such a pathetic API

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I specialize in

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Though with nvidia's buggy drivers lately, the DirectX support even on Windows has become appalling, and OpenGL outperforms 200% every time on my Geforce 7900GTO

Just.. wow. Other have already said this, but you seem to be oblivious so let me spell it out.

You are just out of uni (a year early because your grades kept you from the final honours year) and you're arguing about which graphics API is better? You don't "specialize in" anything, you have no real experience, and have not finished any decent sized projects so you have no idea the kind of trade offs that actually matter between these API (hint: there are *none*, the only thing that matters is picking an API your target platform suports, everything else is syntactic-sugar).

Please, do youself a favour and stop spouting off the latest GL-fanboy rants about how terrible MS/directx are, especially if you are currently looking for work in the games industry. Many, many people who read this thread work at the companies you are going to be applying to, and you really couldn't be giving a worse first impression if someone links this to your CV.

On a more positive note:

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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.

Does it have a front end menu? And a working game (with a way to win/lose)? If so, congratulations, thats the best possible demo you could have. Dodgy graphics don't matter, a complete, playable game shows you can finish a project (and thats 100 times more important than having yet another shader demo).

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Evil Steve: Was your supposed lack of a degree any way detrimental to finding a job? From what I've seen a degree only actually seems to matter when there are two equally qualified applicants for a job but one has more education.

It depends, for some companies having a degree is one of those checkbox items (you must have it, else they don't even read the rest). With no degree you are going in on the strength of your work history and your demo. With no work history either its certainly going to be an uphill battle (theres not exactly a shortage of newly graduated programmers) but it is possible with a good demo and a well written cover letter showing enthusiasm (for games, not OpenGL :-)).

Good luck! (And sorry, I don't normally get drawn into these threads, but something just made me start ranting :-) ).

Alan

I wouldn't badmouth anything during an interview, that would just be stupid. My reasons for my API preference isn't really political, DirectX simply doesn't operate at a low enough level for many of my projects. OpenGL may have pretty slow fixed-function pixel level control of the depth-buffer but at least it's there. It's taking me ages to get my head around all the dynamic pipeline stuff coming out this last few years, but I can definitely agree there is no difference between the API's dynamic pipeline control (Until GL3 is released into the wild next month). I'm a pretty severe compulsive work-aholic and have therefore managed to pull together a formidable skill-set in the last few years to provide with my CV, but due to the range of my skill-set I'm not really sure what sort of portfolio work to do. I'm thinking of doing a 3d accelerated scrolling shooter which would allow me to demonstrate my knowledge of graphics programming, game programming, and 3d modeling/texturing, but I'd like to know if that's really the sort of thing their after in a portfolio, or should I do smaller more specific demonstrations?

Alan Kemp: Thank you very much for the oh-so-polite response. I may be just out of uni, but that doesn't mean I can't possibly know what I'm talking about. I do apologize for my obvious bias about graphics APIs, but I actually hate both of them. OpenGL is an outdated mess which though it has a far superior design philosophy just doesn't have the support it so desperately needs. DirectX is a much cleaner API, but was not initially designed around years of research in the area of graphics rasterization and has only as of DX9 really become all that powerful. I simply hate OpenGL less. If anyone links this post to my CV and considers it as mark against me, then I obviously wasn't missing their employment opportunities anyways. When I'm not programming, I'm reading up on every graphics related whitepaper and book I can find. As mentioned earlier much of it is a compulsive issue and I often forget to eat and sometime sleep which leads to very strong opinions about certain issues and for this I apologize.

To keep this post from going off topic anymore I simply will not respond to anymore comments about graphics APIs, my opinions will not change, but that does not mean I can't program in any of them equally well.

[Edited by - DerUnterMensch on August 30, 2007 1:20:46 PM]

Quote: Original post by DerUnterMensch
Evil Steve: Was your supposed lack of a degree any way detrimental to finding a job? From what I've seen a degree only actually seems to matter when there are two equally qualified applicants for a job but one has more education.

To a certain extent. I applied through agencies, and they only look at qualifications and do basic matches with skills on your CV to skills someone is looking for. So effectively not having a degree is a major down side there.

If you apply direct to games companies, then the degree counts for far far less.



EDIT:

Quote: Original post by DerUnterMensch
I wouldn't badmouth anything during an interview, that would just be stupid. My reasons for my API preference isn't really political, DirectX simply doesn't operate at a low enough level for many of my projects. OpenGL may have pretty slow fixed-function pixel level control of the depth-buffer but at least it's there.

Going back off topic again... [smile] DirectX is just as low level as OpenGL - do you have any examples of things you can't do with D3D? What do you mean "fixed-function pixel level control of the depth buffer"? D3D has lockable depth buffers, so long as the drivers support them (Which almost all do). Touching the depth buffer in any way on the CPU-side can be horrendously expensive because some cards will actually pack the data, meaning the whole buffer needs to be unpacked and then repacked whenever you touch the depth buffer. Anything else you need to do to the depth buffer in D3D can be done with various render states.

Quote: I'm thinking of doing a 3d accelerated scrolling shooter which would allow me to demonstrate my knowledge of graphics programming, game programming, and 3d modeling/texturing, but I'd like to know if that's really the sort of thing their after in a portfolio, or should I do smaller more specific demonstrations?

As far as I've seen, entry-level applicants who advertise that they are good at graphics programming above all else (you know, the kind who would lump "game programming" into a single line item next to "graphics programming") have an uphill battle ahead of them, since (a) there's a crapload of them and (b) a team doesn't really need very many of them. If graphics programming really is your one and only true passion then go for that, but if not then you should spend time honing your OTHER skills as a developer.

Oh, and unless you're planning to look for a job as an artist or technical designer, you can skip the modeling/texturing stuff. And if you are, you can skip much of the graphics programming stuff.

Quote: Original post by DerUnterMensch
I wouldn't badmouth anything during an interview, that would just be stupid. My reasons for my API preference isn't really political, DirectX simply doesn't operate at a low enough level for many of my projects. OpenGL may have pretty slow fixed-function pixel level control of the depth-buffer but at least it's there. It's taking me ages to get my head around all the dynamic pipeline stuff coming out this last few years, but I can definitely agree there is no difference between the API's dynamic pipeline control (Until GL3 is released into the wild next month). I'm a pretty severe compulsive work-aholic and have therefore managed to pull together a formidable skill-set in the last few years to provide with my CV, but due to the range of my skill-set I'm not really sure what sort of portfolio work to do. I'm thinking of doing a 3d accelerated scrolling shooter which would allow me to demonstrate my knowledge of graphics programming, game programming, and 3d modeling/texturing, but I'd like to know if that's really the sort of thing their after in a portfolio, or should I do smaller more specific demonstrations?

First off, whatever the API, throw out all that knowledge of the fixed-function pipeline you have accumulated, and make sure your knowledge of the 'dynamic' pipeline is up to scratch. Fixed function is dead, for better or for worse, and spending a lot of time on that now will do little good. If you are looking for a solely graphics programming job, be warned that graphics codes are dime-a-dozen, and there doesn't seem to be a huge demand. Otherwise I would tend to concentrate on the games programming side of thing - unless you wish to be an artist, in which case you wont need a whole lot of code knowledge beyond shaders/simple scripting.

Quote: Alan Kemp: Thank you very much for the oh-so-polite response. I may be just out of uni, but that doesn't mean I can't possibly know what I'm talking about. I do apologize for my obvious bias about graphics APIs, but I actually hate both of them. OpenGL is an outdated mess which though it has a far superior design philosophy just doesn't have the support it so desperately needs. DirectX is a much cleaner API, but was not initially designed around years of research in the area of graphics rasterization and has only as of DX9 really become all that powerful. I simply hate OpenGL less. If anyone links this post to my CV and considers it as mark against me, then I obviously wasn't missing their employment opportunities anyways. When I'm not programming, I'm reading up on every graphics related whitepaper and book I can find. As mentioned earlier much of it is a compulsive issue and I often forget to eat and sometime sleep which leads to very strong opinions about certain issues and for this I apologize.

Nobody honestly minds whether you regard one as better than the other, but bad-mouthing one or the other will not get you anywhere. They *are* roughly comparable, and a marked dislike for one will be interpreted as a lack of experience with the API. Again, it would be good to know if you are aiming solely at a graphics programming job, because if you are not, most of this API knowledge will be entirely superfluous. [smile]

Quote: To keep this post from going off topic anymore I simply will not respond to anymore comments about graphics APIs, my opinions will not change, but that does not mean I can't program in any of them equally well.

Your "200% slower" comment back there seems to invalidate that last point. Besides, who will want to hire a programmer who will "die slowly inside" when porting to Windows?

In terms of what to have in your portfolio, the more the better really. A full game is better than a heap of demos though, as it's a much larger undertaking.

Quote: Original post by DerUnterMensch
Your "200% slower" comment back there seems to invalidate that last point. Besides, who will want to hire a programmer who will "die slowly inside" when porting to Windows?

If it were a case of porting a program from one system to another, I could write millions of lines of code in straight COM if I had to. As said before, most of my research and work has been towards understanding everything fully enough to port anything and everything between systems. I love developers who can actually realize that Windows is not the only OS, or that there are a lot of people who will never play your games if you only release your game on a console. I will no doubt end up making a living off of indie development, as very few companies are as open-minded or as free as I would prefer.

Thank your all for your insight, though it was not nearly as useful as I would have hoped and only really reiterated what I already knew. I suppose I didn't really need to post anything on this forum and I was simply hoping for some useful insight. The first reply was very good and exactly what I was after, but of course the thread quickly wandered off track due to a very simple four word comment which I probably shouldn't have made at all, but would have been very easy to ignore as a harmless comment which only a complete idiot would put in a CV to begin with. I also realize that I may have been to blame for some if not most of the derivation, and for that I apologize.

Please don't reinforce my misanthropic views and comment on my remark about indie development. I know how to make a living off of it, and I already know it is only luck and/or good business sense when a person makes any serious money in it.

While I can't offer concrete advice in what a CV or portfolio should contain, it might be worth looking at others that have had received jobs recently (in the last year)?