I have two unrelated questions: 1) My high school has absolutly no good programming classes, and not even any bad ones I haven''t taken already. So for a while I''ve just been working on games by myself. But I was thinking about maybe next year taking a CS class at a local community college, maybe for some early college credit, and for some more formal programming education. However, I have been told by an owner of a game company who I know that when they are hiring, they mainly look for experience making games, and not college classes. If I were to take a CS class, and forsake game programming for a while, do you guys think that would help or hurt my chances of getting hired somewhere? 2) When working in 32 bit color modes (a 2D, not 3D game) is alpha blending the only way to do color fades? If so, or if not, where can I find some info on doing color fades in 32 bit modes? (Not including the articles on this site, I''m looking at those now) ------------------------------ Jonathan Little invader@hushmail.com http://www.crosswinds.net/~uselessknowledge

I guess my answer to number 1 would that it depends on what class you''re going to take!

In my humble opinion there isn''t really any class that''s going to teach you all you need to know. Go for it and take a class and perhaps you''ll get a nice intro to a language. When it comes down to it though nothing will replace the experience of working on you''re own, especially since you can''t really get a good command of a language without 1) the desire to work at it on your own time and 2) the short time you are actually in class. Not to say a class wouldn''t be useful but don''t expert to be an expert walking out of it.

Sieggy

My answer to number one:

This only applies to you if you are definitely going to college. Take the course at the local community college. If you''re in the same situation as I am then there are no kids around you that have the same desire to make a computer game as you do. This means your most likely working alone, and there for you''re game programming ventures have probably been somewhat limited. If you are clearly going to college then spend the time now developing your skills with the language and take the early credit. Most colleges allow independent research to be done for credit. By taking that class now you will set yourself up for the chance to possibly make a game for credit in college (I’m not guaranteeing this). More importantly, in college you will have more people like yourself that want to make games. Usually working in groups yields better and quicker results and we all know that to get a job in the game world you need to have completed projects to show off. I suggest you build strong fundamental skills now and make games in college where there are more resources to do such a thing.

My answer to 2:

I forget how to do it exactly, but you can adjust the gamma levels for DX. This brightens up the screen. There is an article somewhere that uses this trick.

Yeah, I am in the situation where I work alone. Basically, I can find friends only to do art and levels.
I wouldn''t be taking a class to get into a language, I''m already pretty proficient in C/C++, about 2 years into it now, and also a little work in QBasic and Pascal.
I think I''ll look into an algorithm class or something like that... Although I do like the experience of actually writing my own code instead of what a teacher assigns (that is, an actual game instead of a demo program).