Hello,
In June I will be finishing my studies in University and I would like to work in the games industry.
So I made a portfolio site (not on my own, using another website that has the tools to do so) and put stuff I made in it.
I would appreciate your opinions, critiques or anything else I can improve :)
http://minasm1990.wix.com/portfolio
Thank you.
Just some (Highly Unqualified) Feedback.
I really like that you clearly differentiate whats course work and course work in your CV. Maybe make that even clearer in the portfolio itself.
Its non-trivial to get to the project pages. I recommend you put a big link in the description below each thumbnail, and not have to open the image thingy itself.
In my Personal opinion, I would try to decrease the transition time when doing stuff, it just seems a bit slow and sluggish. (thats just nitpicking).
You should probably remove the flocking thing until you finish it (Or at least write a bit about it/show a code sample).
Definitely throw your Github Link somewhere on the front page since some of your projects are hosted there.
If you can remove the WIX branding. IMO it just makes it look slightly unprofessional.
© 2023 by Web-Designer. Proudly created with Wix.com ----- Pretty Sure its not 2023. :P
Overall I would say that its not bad but im not a big fan of the design. I am in the camp that portfolios should be very lightweight and unobtrusive and just be like "Hello, this is what I do and what i have done and why I know my stuff". I get a little agitated navigating the site because it reminds me a lot of a flash site with annoying transitions and slow as molasses. This is more just nitpicking and my own personal opinion so take it with a grain of salt. Content wise however I think its very good.
If you can remove the WIX branding. IMO it just makes it look slightly unprofessional.
Just putting a note under this point, at MINIMUM buy yourself a professional domain name + the custom domain Wix plan.
[unprofessional-username].wix.com/portfolio is plain unprofessional, in my eyes. Of course, if your work is amazing it shouldn't matter too much, but that URL is not the best first impression, shallow though that may be.
Unfortunately, I'm unqualified to judge the content you have up. So I can only comment on appearances. 
[unprofessional-username].wix.com/portfolio is plain unprofessional, in my eyes
-- Tom Sloper -- sloperama.com
Here is my experience, as a play-by-play.
I first attempted to view your site on my tablet and it did not display. I didn't reply to this until I could review it on my PC. This will be covered in detail below.
First screen: Page Blocked - Category: advertisement. (wix.com)
I'm rather paranoid about sites I visit so I have more blockers than normal.
Second screen: Page Blocked - Category: Tracking (js-agent.newrelic.com, static.wix.com)
{Sigh, click to unblock}
Then I see a bunch of flash stuff, ads for WIX. And a few seconds later I see your site.
FIRST ADVICE: Get a better host that doesn't wrap everything in ads, and get your own domain name. Both are inexpensive.
Flocking in unity... nothing to click.
Raytracing in D gives me an image that changes when I hover over it.
Middle click does nothing. I cannot open in a separate tab. Looks like you are breaking another fundamental rule of usability, commonly stated as DO NOT BREAK THE BACK BUTTON. More properly stated, do not violate the expectations of the web browser. By relying on flash to only handle a left click, you have violated my settings, and therefore part of my trust.
This is commonly cited as the #1 rule of web page design. The back button and tab buttons are sacred. They allow the user to navigate at will. Do not violate your user's expectation.
Some advice: go look at the "Web Pages That Suck" design checklist, and make sure you check them off. Note items like "mystery meat navigation", "breaks when visited with JavaScript turned off", "Breaks when tracking features blocked", "Our site is Flash-based", "Site doesn't work/work well on an iPad, or an iPhone, or other devices".
Remember when I said at the top that it didn't display on my tablet? Imagine you arrive at an interview and the interviewer opens a tablet saying "What was your web page again?" Do you want to tell your prospective employer that the web page can only be viewed on a PC?
... so I ultimately click the Raytracer link hoping it doesn't break things too much, showing me an image chooser, image 1 of 1. Not much to see.
Ohh, code!
... What Am I looking at? No readme that says "look here for the details".
... Poking around, opening lines of main are:
Not very promising. Looking at the code in depth I see a mix of beginner code, comments that make me wonder if this was ripped from a tutorial.
If you want to make this code better, add a big readme to the beginning indicating what to look for your best parts, and why I should look at them.
Moving on to River Cross, two images, get it on Google Play, so those are good starts. Clicking on the code.... same problem. I don't see where you want me to look.
So spot checking the github source... GPL license, makes me wonder what you included from elsewhere. ProGuard details? Not sure why you would want to announce that, but okay... Project history of 2 commits makes me wonder where you did your development, and since you are leaving me without documentation I can only make guesses. The source tree leaves me intrigued, but not in a good way. It is clear the code wasn't cleaned up.
Looking it up on google play, cross referencing a few details about your portfolio and about the developer of the app leaves me feeling less sure about you as a candidate. The reviews on Google Play are certainly revealing, and comparing the other apps by the same developer against your portfolio is also revealing. If I was reviewing this as a potential employer it would land you in the "no hire" bucket in favor of people whose information less suspicious. Going back to the main page...
Spread It looks interesting, but again it is part of a team project for school. Source is on pastebin rather than github? Another oddity.
Quest of Antheia look interesting, again with a small team. Source is on pastebin and game is on indiedb. Looking over game1.cs, screen.cs, and menu.cs doesn't exactly inspire me, nor demonstrate your skills in any notable way. I downloaded the game and tried it in a sandbox, it crashes on startup.
The c- (C-minus) language looks like it is more a student project copied almost verbatim from a book, and a few seconds on Google shows quite a few other github and codeforge projects with nearly identical source trees, along with similar source trees at various .edu web sites. It looks like a considerable amount of the material comes directly from the book's author and from the flex/bison tools output.
So then I look at your CV from your web site. It basically says "I am in school, I read some books, I did some school projects." Hopefully you intend on rewriting that, search the forum for lots of discussion on that. The waiter job actually makes me even more suspicious, perhaps fired after 1.5 months of holding a job? Or was it a summer job? Can this person attend work regularly, work under supervision, and do other job-related tasks? It doesn't particularly help or hinder, but it does raise questions. Since you are looking for an entry-level programmer job fresh out of school it is always a risk.
Ultimately looking over the web site leaves me feeling uninspired. Everything about it says "work of a beginning college student". Based on your CV, that is an accurate statement. Nothing on the site says "This is what Minas Mina has accomplished, this is the best work". It suggests more of a co-conspirator attitude, "When I work with other people, this is what the team did. I probably contributed." The site does not provide me with strong evidence that you can do the job of a game programmer. It does show me that you are interested in game development and that you might potentially be a good entry-level worker, but I would certainly proceed with caution.
First I'd like to thank everyone who has replied.
I first attempted to view your site on my tablet and it did not display. I didn't reply to this until I could review it on my PC. This will be covered in detail below.
First screen: Page Blocked - Category: advertisement. (wix.com) [...]
Wow, I didn't know that it showed ads or that it didn't display on tablets.
I used this wix site because it was a fast way to create my portfolio website. I had made a custom one (by myself I mean) using a css template some weeks ago but it turned out to be ugly, so I tried this "easy" solution. It is very restricting though (e.g I can't add links into the descriptions for the projects in the main page). And all these things about the back button not working properly (it takes you back to the top of the page :/ )...
And it doesn't let me change the code too.
I guess I'll have to find a good template, take some time and do it again. I can't really afford to pay monthly fees, as I don't have any income.
Flocking in unity... nothing to click.
My bad, I wanted to leave it last and forgot it. I'll do it as soon as possible (I'll record a video).
... What Am I looking at? No readme that says "look here for the details".
... Poking around, opening lines of main are:
* TODO:** 1) !!! Make triangle.hit() faster* 2) Make BVH.hit() non-recursive.Not very promising. Looking at the code in depth I see a mix of beginner code, comments that make me wonder if this was ripped from a tutorial.
If you want to make this code better, add a big readme to the beginning indicating what to look for your best parts, and why I should look at them.
Well this was a small personal project I did last summer in order to learn a bit of D and understand how raytracing works. Should I mention this?
After getting some results, I stopped working on it. I was not using github at the time, so that's why there are only one or two commits.
You are right though, I have to tidy the code a bit (or a lot) and change the readme file to something useful.
So spot checking the github source... GPL license, makes me wonder what you included from elsewhere. ProGuard details? Not sure why you would want to announce that, but okay... Project history of 2 commits makes me wonder where you did your development, and since you are leaving me without documentation I can only make guesses. The source tree leaves me intrigued, but not in a good way. It is clear the code wasn't cleaned up.
The GPL license is because I wanted people that might get the code to post any changes. I didn't get code from elsewhere. Thanks for mentioning it though. I'll change the license to a custom one.
ProGuard details where automatically created and I didn't delete the file. I will.
Project history of two commits is because we did the development on one pc - We didn't know how to use github at the time. I put the code on github some days ago so people can see the code. Is there a good way to tell this (in the readme file maybe?)
The source tree is bad, yes. I'll clean it up - and the code too.
Looking it up on google play, cross referencing a few details about your portfolio and about the developer of the app leaves me feeling less sure about you as a candidate.
What things made you feel less sure about me as a candidate? I'd like to fix those.
The reviews on Google Play are certainly revealing, and comparing the other apps by the same developer against your portfolio is also revealing. If I was reviewing this as a potential employer it would land you in the "no hire" bucket in favor of people whose information less suspicious. Going back to the main page...
What do you mean about "revealing"? Good or bad?
What information is suspicious?
Also I removed the other two apps because I think they aren't good enough.
Spread It looks interesting, but again it is part of a team project for school. Source is on pastebin rather than github? Another oddity.
Is it a bad thing that it's a team project for school? We changed it a lot - we are still developing it to put it in the market. It looked very different some months ago.
Source is not on github because we plan to make money from this application, so I decided not to show all of its code. What would be a better way to do this?
Quest of Antheia look interesting, again with a small team. Source is on pastebin and game is on indiedb. Looking over game1.cs, screen.cs, and menu.cs doesn't exactly inspire me, nor demonstrate your skills in any notable way. I downloaded the game and tried it in a sandbox, it crashes on startup.
By saying "again with a small team" do you mean it's a bad thing? Does it make you feel that I didn't do a big % of the work?
Source is on pastebin because I had an old version of the code because my external HDD's power cord broke. I will be getting a new one soon and put the code on github. I'll also upload a version that doesn't crash.
The c- (C-minus) language looks like it is more a student project copied almost verbatim from a book, and a few seconds on Google shows quite a few other github and codeforge projects with nearly identical source trees, along with similar source trees at various .edu web sites. It looks like a considerable amount of the material comes directly from the book's author and from the flex/bison tools output.
Funny thing is that I have no idea what book you're talking about 
I wrote all of the code by myself and didn't look any similar projects on github.
It's interesting though what you said. What can I change so you/someone else wouldn't think this?
So then I look at your CV from your web site. It basically says "I am in school, I read some books, I did some school projects." Hopefully you intend on rewriting that, search the forum for lots of discussion on that.
I will, thanks.
The waiter job actually makes me even more suspicious, perhaps fired after 1.5 months of holding a job? Or was it a summer job?
Yeah it was (late) summer job. If I put a "Summer job" next to it will it be okay?
Ultimately looking over the web site leaves me feeling uninspired. Everything about it says "work of a beginning college student". Based on your CV, that is an accurate statement. Nothing on the site says "This is what Minas Mina has accomplished, this is the best work". It suggests more of a co-conspirator attitude, "When I work with other people, this is what the team did. I probably contributed."
Hmm... You say "I probably contributed". Should I emphasize on what I did for the team?
Thank you for taking the time to actually look at the code, it really means a lot. I'll change things in the upcoming days (content first and then the site's design) and post here again
Imo its quite ok, and interesting, esp d-raytracing and c- compiler
(other i was not lookin at)
Hello again. I completely re-designed the site by myself. Now the back button works like it should :P
I have also updated its content. I would appreciate if you could take a look and post some comments about the design and about the content as well.
I also found a free host that contains my name in it.
I can't really afford to pay monthly fees, as I don't have any income.
FYI, in case you're interested it is actually pretty affordable to run a paid-for website.
My domain name from 123-Reg costs me about £4 GBP per year (But I only actually pay £8 for it every 2 years).
My hosting from Falcoda costs £10 GBP per year (and I pay for that as £30 every 3 years).
On a monthly basis that's only little more than £1 per month.
The GPL license is because I wanted people that might get the code to post any changes. I didn't get code from elsewhere. Thanks for mentioning it though. I'll change the license to a custom one.
The GPL is not a good license to use in general IMO. If you want a permissible license then look into the MIT license.
Is it a bad thing that it's a team project for school?
Team projects make it difficult for recruiters to gauge much about you. It is harder to discern what you contributed. They'll be more interested in your sole projects because that's 100% you.
Yeah it was (late) summer job. If I put a "Summer job" next to it will it be okay?
Yes you definitely want to indicate summer-only jobs. These short jobs could look suspicious otherwise.
Hmm... You say "I probably contributed". Should I emphasize on what I did for the team?
Definitely.
David Gill :: GitHub :: twitter .
