Hello everyone,

I am a student majoring in Game Programming and Development. I will be honest; I have never used a game develop community (outside of my courses) during my studies because I felt everything I asked could be considered a dumb question. I understand this was a missed opportunity for me to get better overall in my field of study. Thankfully, as of late I have found some courage to ask the community for help and perspective.

Gameplay programming is the specialization I have chosen in the course I am currently taking because I am more comfortable with coding than anything else that was listed. I would love to get some perspective from professionals, students alike, and even hobbyist in this field regarding their developing process.

I also have a few questions if you guys wouldn’t mind answering:

Do you have to be exceptional at every level of math in order to succeed? If not, what would you consider the bare minimum?

What approach or resources do you use for prototyping to show proof of concept?

What advice would you give to someone that may have a tough time communicating with their peers because they may not be privy to all the jargon in the field?

Thank you!

9 minutes ago, TK7 said:

Do you have to be exceptional at every level of math in order to succeed? If not, what would you consider the bare minimum?

This depends on what you're doing. Not all programming tasks require the same level of math. You'll find different levels of math are required depending on what you're working on, such as: UIs, tool-kits, 2D games, 3D games, a custom physics engine, graphics programming, AI programming, ect... I would say the bare minimum would be your high school math. You can make a simple 2D game just by knowing arithmetic and algebra.

14 minutes ago, TK7 said:

What approach or resources do you use for prototyping to show proof of concept?

I will usually pick an engine that can output the results as fast as possible. Using Unity for example will output results on the screen faster than coding a custom engine from the ground up. Also, it's possible to have already developed such tools in house for RAD.

24 minutes ago, TK7 said:

What advice would you give to someone that may have a tough time communicating with their peers because they may not be privy to all the jargon in the field?

 

Have patience, and ask lots of questions. Do research in your spare time to learn more each day.

14 hours ago, TK7 said:

What advice would you give to someone that may have a tough time communicating with their peers because they may not be privy to all the jargon in the field?

Use normal words when you don't know the jargon. If there's jargon, you'll hear it. Don't be apologetic about not knowing the jargon - just be eager to learn when someone tells you the jargon term, say thanks, and move on. 

On 7/17/2019 at 1:06 AM, TK7 said:

Thankfully, as of late I have found some courage to ask the community for help and perspective.

Please continue doing so. If you don't know, and you honestly tried to find out about it and failed, you're not the only one with this problem.

On 7/17/2019 at 1:06 AM, TK7 said:

I would love to get some perspective from professionals, students alike, and even hobbyist in this field regarding their developing process.

I first figure out how to solve the problem, first in big steps then checking for all the edge cases, on paper, in my head, or on a white-board. Then I code the steps. The latter isn't very interesting any more at that point in time, since I know that my solution is solid and will work. Coding has become just a lot of typing to to show that it works.

If it so big and complicated with so many details that it's not possible to first think things through, there isn't much else you can do but start coding, and see where it goes wrong. The most important information there is why does it go wrong, ie what step did I miss in my design? You integrate that information in the design and try again.

On 7/17/2019 at 1:06 AM, TK7 said:

Do you have to be exceptional at every level of math in order to succeed? If not, what would you consider the bare minimum?

Yep, everybody here is a math wizard!

Nah, just kidding   The minimum required is of course enough such that you can do your work. However, as time progresses, work will change, computers will change, your interest will change, etc. Embrace the life-long-learning idea, don't stop learning ever. I have been doing that for 35 years or so, and still having fun reading about new ideas, discovering new things, and doing new computer tricks.

I am still puzzled how math is a problem for a programmer though. In programming you restrict yourself to a small artificial world with concepts like variables and control flow, and its own rules, where you can express solutions to problems. Math is exactly the same in my view, it's also an artificial world with its own concepts and rules, where you solve a problem within that rule set.

On 7/17/2019 at 1:06 AM, TK7 said:

What advice would you give to someone that may have a tough time communicating with their peers because they may not be privy to all the jargon in the field?

For understanding jargon you don't know, for 9.9 out of 10 cases, any jargon is explained at wikipedia. That covers trying to understand what someone is trying to say mostly. If you're not 110% sure about it, explain how you interpret it in the context of what you're discussing, and ask for confirmation. It's extremely important that everybody has the same ideas about a topic, or things will derail later due to different assumptions and reasoning steps. Programming is engineering work, highly complex, where things only work if everything is correct down to literally the last bit. A simple confirmation check can easily save hours to days or months of work.

As for using jargon, use only what you know is correct, and what the other person is understanding. For all other cases, use normal words, as Tom said. It's a bit longer to read or say, but getting the correct idea across is what counts, using fancy words doesn't count.