Helo there,

I'm interested in how much further knowledge would I need to have an entry level position at a game development company or even if what I have counts.

I have been doing self-thought C++ OOP programming for about 3 – 4 years now during my spare time. I have also been using Ogre3D Graphics Engine quite extensively and I have some experience with DirectX, which I was using for at least a year.

I have made a 2D game with DirectX and C++ and a 3D game with Ogre3D and C++. I've used Blender to make models and manage the scene.

There are some screenshots for the thrill of it:
http://s27.postimg.org/ao0f2n9lv/pong_screenshot.png

http://s1.postimg.org/i544pcnxb/snake_screenshot.png

Any advice/comment is appreciated. Thank you.

P.S. Apparently I cannot use jokes, exaggeration, sarcasm, depression and doom and gloom like sentences. This is a repost from my last thread, hopefully now it's compliant with the rules.

Nobody could say for sure. Having two working demos shows that you are able to code, but if it is enough depends on the company you want to join. I saw a lot of artist trying to get a job at eg. blizzard and often they made it by pushing out art which hit the art style blizzard preferred and surpase it. To increase your chances you should try to build up a portfolio which displays your skills, your two games are definitly a good start. It could be useful to specialise in a certain area (AI,rendering, tools, networking etc.) and to push out some cool demos in this specialised area.

Any advice/comment is appreciated.

My advice is that you read the forum FAQs, as was pointed out in the thread that was closed.

Many of the links in sections #3 (education and preparation), #4 (getting good answers and dumb questions not to ask), and #5 (applying for a job) apply directly to the questions you asked.

Section 3 talks about what you can do without a degree, why getting a degree is important (tl;dr: you are not the only job applicant), and what you can do if your life circumstances prevent you from getting a degree.

Section 4 about getting good answers and dumb questions not to ask covers most of your old post and part of your current post. In this post "I don't think I have what counts", in the last topic "I have anxiety and depression from exams", "I am tired of being in this state of mine", and the wonderful line "A decade ago when I was ten I had a bad experience." If those are true then you need psychiatric help as you would be unlikely to hold ANY steady job. The FAQ covers frequent things like "Am I good enough?" "Am I too old/young/stupid?" "Is it possible?" and so on.

And section 5 covers actually moving along to getting a job, applying for jobs, talking to people, and so on.

These are frequently asked. You are asking them yet again. The answers have not changed since the last time they were asked.

Nobody could say for sure. Having two working demos shows that you are able to code, but if it is enough depends on the company you want to join. I saw a lot of artist trying to get a job at eg. blizzard and often they made it by pushing out art which hit the art style blizzard preferred and surpase it. To increase your chances you should try to build up a portfolio which displays your skills, your two games are definitly a good start. It could be useful to specialise in a certain area (AI,rendering, tools, networking etc.) and to push out some cool demos in this specialised area.

Replying just to thank you for the post, exactly what I was looking for. Really helpful insight.

Any advice/comment is appreciated.

My advice is that you read the forum FAQs, as was pointed out in the thread that was closed.

Many of the links in sections #3 (education and preparation), #4 (getting good answers and dumb questions not to ask), and #5 (applying for a job) apply directly to the questions you asked.

Section 3 talks about what you can do without a degree, why getting a degree is important (tl;dr: you are not the only job applicant), and what you can do if your life circumstances prevent you from getting a degree.

Section 4 about getting good answers and dumb questions not to ask covers most of your old post and part of your current post. In this post "I don't think I have what counts", in the last topic "I have anxiety and depression from exams", "I am tired of being in this state of mine", and the wonderful line "A decade ago when I was ten I had a bad experience." If those are true then you need psychiatric help as you would be unlikely to hold ANY steady job. The FAQ covers frequent things like "Am I good enough?" "Am I too old/young/stupid?" "Is it possible?" and so on.

And section 5 covers actually moving along to getting a job, applying for jobs, talking to people, and so on.

These are frequently asked. You are asking them yet again. The answers have not changed since the last time they were asked.

I never said 'A decade ago when I was ten I had a bad experience.' whatever that implies. I never asked whether I should go for a degree or not and I'm not asking whether I need psychiatric help or not.

And an answer 'It's never enough' to a question 'Is it enough?' is just plain stupid.

From all this, I was expecting something along the lines: 'No this is not enough, you should do this and this and that and with what you got you may have some chance in getting a job.', which is what Ashaman73 said.

With your attitude, your technical skills are probably the least of your worries, frankly.

Working well with others is a far harder skill to develop than something like programming. And the lack of this is a far greater no no for employers.

I'll leave the attitude issue alone, but I'll also reinforce that you really do need to know how to work with others -- and I don't mean getting along with them, I mean working in a group setting collaboratively.

Firstly, you need be conversant in programming, which simply making some games doesn't prove on its own. It means when your mentor or lead says "Here's what I need you to do. I'd like you to use the Visitor Pattern." or "We don't use Singletons here." Those statements actually mean something to you, and aren't just giving you keywords to go look up. Extra research is fine when implementing things, of course, but you need to be able to talk about those kinds of things around a boardroom table in front of the studio head and not look like a fool.

Secondly, programming in a team is very different than programming solo. You need to know lots of little skills -- You need to know how to file a well-structured bug against another programmer for instance, how to use source-control software in general (Hopefully you are using one yourself already) but even with those basic skills, working in a repository with multiple people making changes and merging them together is much different than you making and merging changes all on your own. You also need to be able to deal with schedules, make good time estimates, and keep to them as well as you can -- when working solo and it takes longer to do something than you anticipated it sucks enough, but when you do that on a team you might be holding them all up too (protip: don't be the guy burning hundreds or thousands of your employer's money by holding everyone else up).

Thirdly is baseline skill set, knowledge base, and good coding style. These are the table-stakes of getting in, and if you don't have them, no portfolio will get you in no matter how good the results are. This basically means that you can talk intelligently about code and about design problems, that you have a good overview of contemporary and appropriate technologies, approaches, design patterns, and idioms -- that you can talk about them and recognize when to use them or not use them, and that you have a natural grasp of what good code looks and feels like -- and not just the code you write, but also the interfaces your code provides for others to use, and that should enable their code to look and feel good too. This also includes relevant areas of mathematics -- mostly linear algebra, and a smattering of quaternions, geometry, statistics, calculus.

If you've never collaborated on a project before, I suggest that's a good place to start. You can attempt to spin up your own project, but its probably easier to find a project that's looking for help and offer your services to them. Depending on what your skill-level actually is, you'll want to find a project that's at, or somewhat above your skill level if you can -- if your skills aren't entirely developed yet, you might find that some projects with a high-caliber team might not want your help, even for free. Just take that as something to aspire to, and a clear sign that you're probably not ready for an industry position anyways. Something at your level will let you develop the kinds of skills I talked about above, something a bit above your current level will do that too, as well as challenging you to grow your solo skills.

And an answer 'It's never enough' to a question 'Is it enough?' is just plain stupid.

It's actually not, it just means that you should keep working on projects and whatnot as long as you're not in, and probably after too.

With your attitude, your technical skills are probably the least of your worries, frankly.

Working well with others is a far harder skill to develop than something like programming. And the lack of this is a far greater no no for employers.

Yes, if I disagree with a dude on the internet, that tells a lot about my attitude.

If multiple people think you are coming across with a bad attitude, you might want to consider that you either do in fact have a bad attitude, or alternatively, are having communications issues.

Either way, the problem is yours. You are the one trying to break into the game industry.