Hi All,

I'm 28, Electronics and Communications engineer by degree. I like game programming and embedded software. I have been interviewed before with Google, and they mentioned that my problem solving skills are limited.

I tried to clone simple games like asteroids, and space invaders. There are things in game play that I couldn't figure it out myself, I have to read others code to get how they did it. For example in space invaders there were green barriers, and when the bullet collides with it, there are some parts that get faded to black. What I figure out from my knowledge is, it's pixel to pixel collision detection, but I didn't get that they draw a bitmap over those pixels to let them get faded into block.

Another idea, I was looking at car games source code in unity, I couldn't figure out that to implement the back camera feature, it's just a simple camera that looks backward!

However I can figure things out in Embedded Systems so easily, I can look at any device there and I know how it's working and I can do it If I have the electronic components,..etc. Any device you can Imagine, even VCRs, TVs,..etc.

I wish I know where are my problems... Unfortunately, I used to get educated in Egypt, where all math problems, everything even in university, you get the solutions to the problems without even thinking :S I think that was a bad habit

It takes years of experience before you can pick up the "tricks of the trade" in application or game development.

Even than, sometimes it is still impossible to figure out how some one did something.

Here is an easy example: How did they make both "5 Nights At Freddy's" games with out including any 3D models in the game ?

It is simply expierience, man... just keep doing what you do, find a project that kindles your interest and keep that flame burning until you finish the project. Then move on to the next... before you know it, you will be a problem solving wiz when it comes to game dev.

When I started fiddling around with Unity years ago it was all black magic and black boxes to me. I read about shaders and the different components that make up the engine, still, when I looked at how people did all this magic in code, I was stunned. Couldn't have come up with it myself.

Fast forward some years, and I am finally at the point where I start get used to come up with solutions to problems myself. It is a mixture of intimate knowledge of the engine, having worked with it for some time, and having had to solve many problems while trying to develop some prototype or game yourself.

Years ago I tried to build a zoom camera for a game prototype... only to find out the terrain would look all blocky and ugly in it, textures where blurry and all.

Of course today I know that by "zooming in" when lowering the camera FoV, you are just blowing a small part of the screen up to a bigger size, without telling the engine you need a higher terrain LOD and higher Mipmaps at this location. With that knowledge, I might be able to find a solution to this problem.

Without it, I was completly lost and gave up on my zoom camera.

Don't give up yet... problem solving is a skill like many others, it can be learned.... and even more than others, it comes with expierience.