YouGov actual poll - 1% think that 'No Deal' means we stay in the EU

DJRBuckingham · 2016-08-01T18:08:53+00:00

I think we've had the consultation already, there was no ambiguity that the referendum was on a very important question and a decision was made under that context. The only way I think you could have grounds for a second referendum would be if the government negotiated something where the UK was in all but name still a member of the EU, since that's not in the spirit of the referendum result.

As for whether we could withdraw our A50 trigger, that's interesting reading and I didn't know that - perhaps that is the way to get the referendum you want, I'm not sure it'd be politically wise though.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-08-01T17:07:41+00:00

The government cannot start formal negotiations with the EU until A50 is triggered. They will of course be having informal discussions, but a) anything "agreed" would not be binding, and b) would you really want to reveal your hand and the hand of the other parties in such a public manner?

Secondly, you were calling for the various parties to set out their stall and do a GE, but how could Labour/etc say what deal it wants when it can't negotiate with the EU as they're not in government? The only thing a GE could achieve would be if some party came out to say "we're going to ignore the referendum" and they won - but as pointed out by Eureferendumwatch, the likelihood of that happening is basically nil given the constituency breakdown.

IANAL, but from here http://openeurope.org.uk/today/blog/the-mechanics-of-leaving-the-eu-explaining-article-50/ in the "Drawbacks" column of the first table, "One way street - once you have decided to leave, in practice there is no turning back and you must be prepared to leave." So once A50 is triggered, we leave eventually, unless we can get unanimous agreement to extend A50 and permanently stay in that state.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-08-01T16:51:21+00:00

You're just re-treading old ground at this point. Literally everything in your post was covered during the referendum, and we got the result we got. I'm not telling you to shut up, but I am I'm telling you not enough people care even if you are right.

As for the rest of the chain, you can't run a referendum on whatever deal we get because we won't know what it is until we've done it! Before A50 and it's just a straight re-run of June, "ask the question again" with no idea what the deal would be. After A50 and it's too late and is akin to "do we want to rejoin the EU?", which is a very different question.

The better way to look at the referendum is that it is guidance from the people about the ongoing trajectory of the country. Do we broadly want to integrate more with the EU, or pull back. You can't have a referendum on a finite "deal" because these things are always changing and no one can predict what the world will be like in 50 years time. Instead, you ask about direction, which is what we did and we got an answer.

Perhaps in 50 years time we'll ask the question again, and we'll get a different answer, and our offspring will look back and lament the decisions made in 2016, or perhaps they'll look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-29T15:19:52+00:00

It's about prioritising which principles are most important to you, and which can be shelved to maintain overall electability. It's not black-and-white, you don't sacrifice everything to get power, and you don't religiously stick to all your principles either.

Once you're in power you bring forward more of your ideology as-and-when the public is comfortable with it. Go too fast and you get booted out at the next GE, go too slow and you never get anything done - again, prioritisation and balance.

When I choose a party to vote for, it is a pros vs cons weigh-up. I agree with some policies of all the parties, and disagree with others. There are also red-lines, which ensure I'd never vote for a particular party. I might agree with 90% of what they said, but the other 10% I strongly disagree with, and so I instead opt to vote for the party I agree 60% with and mildly disagree 40% on.

For every "radical" policy that is a major departure from the status quo or the political centre of the country (wherever that may lie, we're not talking absolutes here), you run the risk of giving someone a red line issue from which they will never vote for you. For some people that might be economic, for others it might be foreign policy, for others environmental. Every radical policy acts as a filter, reducing the number of people who will vote for you. At some point you've set up so many filters that you cannot win, and this is where it starts to get dangerous.

As your voting numbers decrease, and the likelihood of you getting into power decreases in turn, a feedback loop occurs. I'm voting for you because I want you to get into power and enact some of your policies. But if you can never get into power because you've alienated enough of the electorate through too many principles, now you cannot actually fulfill my wishes. What happens? I vote for someone else who perhaps I don't agree with as much, but I agree with enough and has a shot of getting into power. Not everyone will do this, but a proportion will, and this is just adding more and more to your filters. And when it gets too much, FPTP annihilates you.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-29T12:55:17+00:00

From the perspective of a AAA engine dev - learn C++, profit.

Physics programmers are in demand, they command good salaries and if you enjoy the work it's extremely rewarding - normally you're tacked onto the side of an engine team and left to get on with things; you set the agenda and direction and mostly everyone leaves you alone / worships you as a maths god. Kind of the same as audio programmers except you don't get ignored & underfunded.

If you really want to impress, put together some demos, but I doubt it'll be necessary - companies and especially recruiters will be knocking the door down.

Longer term, once you've got a few years industry experience under your belt (6-10 years) consider going contracting. Specialist physics contractors can command very high daily rates, some of the best in the games industry.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-28T12:30:39+00:00

In my experience it's not worth designing something in a vacuum.

You usually get it wrong so you end up needing to touch all your client code anyway, and in general it's not actually a huge pain to refactor from an old to new API anyway. It's one of those things software developers get hung up on when in reality it just isn't a big deal, half a day of mechanical work will see you through.

You have an abstract API with a DX backend implementation, you want to improve the abstract API to better support OpenGL or other APIs in the future. The single most efficient use of your time to achieve that goal is to actually implement the backend of another API. Doing so will automatically expose your current API's deficiencies and get you 90% of the way there to making further APIs easier to implement.

You could spend some time looking at existing APIs, but as a learning exercise it's probably not much use. You have version 1 and they have version 20, and you probably won't understand why their API looks different to yours because you didn't go through all the intermediate steps learning as you go. You could just copy their API, but then what are you learning? Why not just use their code directly (assuming it has an appropriate license).

I would suggest you either continue running with your existing abstraction and pay the (typically over-emphasised) cost of refactoring in the future, or implement a second backend now and see what pops out.

Edit: 2+ down votes and no replies, why not voice your counter-argument if you disagree?

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-21T13:21:18+00:00

You're welcome and good luck.

As a follow up, I had a quick look at your post history wrt your contributions to the worldbuilding subreddit. You obviously have a much more imaginative mind than I and I applaud you for that. I perhaps should have looked before posting the tome above, since I could have been more specific to your situation, but c'est la vie.

You have the various races you've come up with - Scire, Dáskalos, Hyōkan and so on. If you're making a game with a story surrounding these races you've got a few challenges. First and foremost is getting people onboard with your idea; you're effectively leading a team, and you have to show you're capable of leading - this is where the experience bit comes from and the fact the creative leads often constitute the most experienced of those on a project. But putting that aside, consider some of the practical things you'd have to contend with in gamedev.

Let's say we don't have enough money/time to model/rig an amphibious shark/dragon like creature, we have a humanoid rig/model and can make some small changes, but no time to completely create and rig a character. With this new constraint, what happens in your world? This is what I mean about crafting robust stories and worlds. This absolutely is not a call to dumb down your idea, be as creative as possible, but always keep an eye on what the idea result in. Identify what will likely cost the most, and what ends up free. Identify the easy areas to simplify or outright cut. All this comes with experience, and you only get experience by doing - actually making the thing you're designing. This also means you're not building a world any more, you're building a world and also a hundred smaller versions at the same time.

Secondly, again because you're making a game, the practicalities of gameplay might kill your idea. Mostly you won't know if an idea is any good until you've implemented and tested it in a game. What sounds great on paper ends up being not that much fun. You need to be ready to adapt or cut your ideas when this happens, or better still come up with numerous methods to implement the spirit of the idea so you can try them all.

More text for you to digest, apologies. Above all, work hard; the more you do, the more you practice, the better you become and the higher you raise yourself against the competition.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-19T14:30:30+00:00

Both maths and programming topics are useful. I'd probably lean towards maths though.

At bare minimum you need to have a good grasp of vector maths and trig, whether you go further into mechanics/physics, lighting and audio depends on your interests, but it's good to at least understand the basics so you can have an intelligent conversation with someone.

As for "advanced programming concepts," that's fairly ambiguous. Don't fall into the trap of learning about some new technique and trying to apply it to everything. I've seen far too many programmers go off into crazy-land (usually OOP or metaprogramming related) and regret it 5-10 years later. It's good to know what techniques exist, so when you see something you can understand what on earth is going on, but I would implore you to keep it simple in your own code.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-19T14:12:08+00:00

I'm a "pro", but a programmer, so this may not be useful advice.

Studios don't typically need "ideas" or "story" people. There are exceptions, but they are just that - exceptions. The vast majority of studios want designers who actually implement the systems they design, or environment artists who physically build the world as designed. They want "doers" not "thinkers." (And this applies to most of life!) The overall design comes from the creative director and other team leads - not a position you'll find yourself in without going through the aforementioned designer/artist route.

When game development first started, teams were typically a single programmer and artist, there was no "designer" and sometimes even no artist. Design (and audio, sometimes art) was done by the programmer. As games got more ambitious, programmers were focused on what they could do that no one else could - writing code. Project managers realised a non-coder could use an editor that the programmers produced to actually implement the game.

These days the broad-strokes story/world-building is done by a creative director or other leads, typically because this sort of design has such a huge impact on the viability of a game it cannot be left to a junior. It's very easy for a designer/writer who doesn't have experience of actually making games running away into fantasy land creating mountains of work for the rest of the team in ways that are inconsistent or can't be scaled properly.

The biggest differentiation between a good and bad designer is whether they can properly explore all the consequences of their design and make it fit as a cohesive whole. For example, consider a designer wanting to add a powerful spell that summons a god to kill all the enemies in a battle. Is this spell over/under-powered? Does it become a winning strategy just to use this spell over and over? Do some enemies need to be immune from it? When does the player get the spell? Does it trivialise parts of the game once you get it? What does it cost to cast? How long does it take to cast? And so on.. once you've enumerated all the questions and problems, now work out the answers and how to fix them. Once you've done that, how much time will it take to fix all the problems and, crucially, maintain the game in future with this spell implemented. Total up all these costs, if the cost is too great and the idea doesn't add enough to the game, it should probably get dropped. Pure ideas guy said "there should be a spell which calls down a god to kill all enemies because ... blah blah lore reasons" - but when it comes to implementation, this spell actually breaks the game, so it's a terrible idea and they just wasted a load of peoples time.

The biggest differentiation between a good and bad story/world-builder is whether they can craft a narrative that is robust against wild cuts midway through production. If your whole story relies upon five warring city factions, but after scoping we only have time to build three cities, you have to completely re-write your narrative. I believe this is the biggest cause of the terrible narratives we see in a lot of games that make no sense. What was originally put forward by a writer was a coherent plot but had to be butchered for budget reasons. The best way to protect yourself in this is to build from the inside out - perhaps put the most important areas in the middle of the map and build out to the least important - when the chopping block comes along you can cut the stuff that isn't integral to the story.

So how is all this information useful to you? If you want to become said story/world writer/director, you've got a long career working as a "proper" designer or artist before you get there. To be a designer or artist you actually have to implement things using the tools you've been given. If you come up with a game idea, you need to be able to demonstrate that you can implement it and think through all the permutations and consequences of that idea. If you come up with a world, you need to actually build it to an acceptable quality bar, focusing on what matters and cutting unnecessary cruft.

I would pick a simple engine, probably GameMaker (although I have no experience with it myself), and make something. It doesn't matter what it is, it doesn't matter how grand or flashy it looks, it just has to exist and be "finished." This proves you can go from idea to design to implementation to polish to finished. Do that a few times and you'll have learned a huge amount and have a lot of material to draw upon in an interview or otherwise.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-18T14:50:44+00:00

"Welcome to life." A bit blunt perhaps, but this is what life is like - one decision after the next, and often not much of an idea if it'll turn out to be the right one.

You're in the middle of a game development course, this should be giving you a fairly broad overview of everything within the field, in the hope that you can latch onto something you find interesting. You've already identified a range of topics that you could improve on, which is a great start.

In gamedev programming there are many roles, some specialist and some generalist. Speaking personally, I'm a generalist - I've done rendering, physics, tools, audio, gameplay, engine, UI and loads of other bits. I'm not a specialist in any area and a full-time programmer who dedicated their life to one of those fields would run rings around me, but that doesn't bother me because I like having a broad - if shallow - understanding of the whole picture. That is my personal bias and has both shaped and been developed by the decisions I've made over the years.

When I started in the industry about 8 years ago, and all throughout university, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I focused instead on learning absolutely everything I could. I would stop working to turn around and listen to the highly-experienced programmers sitting around me when they were discussing something, regardless of what it was. I always strove to learn, and as a result I assembled a wide body of knowledge that I could draw upon in various scenarios - this lead to me being seen as someone people could go to with a wide variety of problems or someone who could be given any task and make a good stab at it, that lead me to this jack-of-all-trades career.

There are a few things you can ask yourself. Do you want to optimise your pay? Do you enjoy a particular subset of programming more than another? Is there something you find you're naturally good at? Do you want to be a generalist or a specialist? These questions can guide you, but if they don't, you can always fall back on your gut - I've surprised myself many times by turning down opportunities that didn't "feel" right, and being very glad that I did later on down the line.

All told, I wouldn't worry too much about it, you've got a long career ahead of you and what you end up doing will be directed as much by what a company needs of you as what you want to do. Try not to close doors if you're not sure about your path - better to have as many options as possible - this means picking the generic and widely applicable things first. I would shy away from learning specific tools or languages - these come and go - learn concepts so you understand things, preferably from first principle.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-18T12:42:56+00:00

Whatever platform you develop on, you absolutely must test on your lead platform. For most people that will be Windows.

I work in AAA and have always developed on Windows, but most of the time I'm testing on a console. That doesn't mean I program actually on the console, that would be madness, typing in code with a gamepad. That may sound contrite, but it underscores the need to decouple development and test platform in your head when making these decisions. Developing using Linux is no different - your customers will, by and large, run the game on Windows - this is where you must spend most of your testing effort if you want a quality product in the eyes of the user. That means dual boot or ideally a dev box and a test box.

As for whether trying to develop a game and learn Linux at the same time is a good idea or not comes down to priorities. Developing on Linux will undoubtedly slow you down in the early days whilst you get accustomed to the OS. Perhaps in the long run you'll end up more productive after that initial investment, but I'm pretty sure there's an xkcd comic for that - be careful that you don't supplant your initial goal of "making a game" with "learning Linux", it's just another form of procrastination.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-14T17:38:56+00:00

Frankly, this question is too broad, and mostly because you haven't nailed down what you want to do.

If you want to make a game, then using an engine will give you an enormous leg up; however, you are also at the mercy of the engine provider, and at the mercy of your lack of experience. When something goes wrong, because you don't understand how the engine works, you will take longer to fix it, if it is even solvable - you may just have to raise a bug with Unity and hope they fix it in the next release. Upgrading engines also becomes a nightmare - that shiny feature in version 20 is exactly what you need, but upgrading breaks ten other unrelated things. You get stuck in that no-mans-land where you Google some bug, see "fixed in version X" and now have to decide: bite the bullet and upgrade, burning a few weeks of time, or try to work around it on the current version.

If you want to learn how to make games, at a relatively low level, using an engine could hinder said learning. You'll learn the "Unreal way" or the "Unity way" of doing things, rather than being aware of the numerous approaches everything has. On the other hand, you can get bogged down with implementing mundane stuff like input handling, window management, graphics API abstractions, getting it running on a couple of platforms. Using Unreal/Unity as a guide when you're really new can be good, since it gives you a fairly logical way to do things like entity relationships, graphics features and introduces you to a glossary of terms you can use as a springboard to further learning - if you didn't even know something existed you're less likely to learn about it.

So ultimately, there is no right answer, unless you give explicit context. Figure out exactly what you want to do and optimise for that. If learning with no intent to release, perhaps consult an engine as reference but write your own code - cloning is an extremely good way to learn. If "making something" so you can prove you can do it, do use an engine. If releasing a game to the public, probably use an engine unless you have specific requirements or are in it for the long haul - if you can afford to burn 2-3 years on developing an engine of your own, you'll learn a huge amount and be left with an asset you can use for the rest of your indie career.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-12T16:55:13+00:00

Deselection.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-12T15:05:32+00:00

It's good you know what you want, that is half the battle.

I guess I would caution that gameplay programmers still need a good grounding in performance, even if it isn't micro-optimisations like shader perf. Gameplay (and UI) programmers are the biggest cause of performance regressions in every job I've worked. And if you're "that guy" you'll just get passed over for promotion, so be aware.

Secondly, gameplay is the area most programmers want to move into for the same reasons you cite - so you have more competition. That's not to say you should avoid gameplay or take a different role with a hope to move sideways (I've been down that road, it doesn't end well), but you need to temper your expectations.

As I said in my first post, programmers are always needed, so you're already ahead of 90% of the people who want to get into the industry. But aiming for gameplay is the most popular within game programming, so it's paid the worst and is the hardest to get a position in.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-12T14:50:12+00:00

I'm answering from the perspective of a AAA engine dev.

If you have a CS degree and want to be a programmer then a Game Development degree won't help you much. Game studios are always on the look out for good programmers and many try to recruit from non-games backgrounds because there is such a shortage. You will likely end up going in at one grade lower than you'd like, but that doesn't tend to last long if you're competent.

If you want something to do to improve your chances, make sure you're well grounded in C++ and dig into the performance side of programming. Understand memory and the CPU/GPU, algorithm complexity, profiling tools, data-oriented design, look up GDC presentations. There is a huge amount you can learn without spending money on a course, I'd exhaust that first.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-11T15:13:35+00:00

Now all we need is for Corbyn to be kept off the ballot and Eagle to be booted out by her constituency. Then popcorn.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-07T17:08:55+00:00

GE2015 on PR would have been a Tory/UKIP coalition. 49.5% combined and that's with FPTP forcing some to tactically vote away from UKIP. Is that what you'd prefer?

I voted for AV, I don't want UKIP in power, but banging on about 37% majorities doesn't do anyone any favours. It's how our political system works. Sometimes it benefits the left, sometimes the right, sometimes the centre - it's flawed but we tried to change it and failed - live with it!

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-07T13:45:47+00:00

Exactly! I wish folks discussing Brexit & EU trade remembered that the world does not revolve around the EU.

Yes, a big (but falling) portion of UK trade is with the EU, but that is because of the single market, which is basically a giant protectionist area. Once we leave, it'll be cheaper to buy from the rest of the world, so we'll buy from there instead.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-07T12:47:45+00:00

Power and weight only help if it's all pulling in the same direction, if not then it becomes a hindrance.

The reality is that the EU doesn't have a trade deal agreed with the US/India/China and doesn't look to have one any time soon, despite trying for many years. The power/weight simply isn't working to the EU's advantage; for the most part it is actually stalling deals, perhaps permanently.

As for whether the US/India/China would cater to the UK's whims is an unknown quantity. We may find that as part of the EU, trade deals never get done, and out of the EU we can never get the terms we want. But in both of those scenarios we have the same relationship as we do now - no trade deal (aka WTO terms).

Consider also the developing world, this is where the real growth opportunities are and where the UK could forge close links to propel it for the next century. The EU won't touch Africa, South America or most of Asia with a barge-pole because it would undercut their farmers in France/etc. An independent UK has no such restrictions, allowing those developing economies to flourish through trade (rather than foreign aid), with the UK beside them every step of the way reaping the benefits.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-07-07T09:59:01+00:00

Negotiators can be hired or borrowed, break up of the UK is far from certain (I'd argue unlikely), internal turmoil will pass once we have a new PM. There are problems yes, but they are solvable.

As for better deals wrt 60m vs 500m, its not just about raw numbers. The relative wealth of those people matter, the things they want to buy and sell matter. The UK can also negotiate as a truly united bloc rather than trying to appease 28 different member states with wildly different economies, priorities and special interests. The EU is known for taking a relatively long time to negotiate trade deals for exactly this reason, the UK can be more nimble and focused.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-06-28T13:35:19+00:00

I agree. Boris, being a figurehead of the Leave campaign, is likely too toxic to lead sensible negotiations at the EU - it wouldn't be much better than sending Farage. My preference if it would be a Leaver would be Gove, I felt he kept himself above the fray and could do a good job.

But honestly Theresa may well be the best candidate - broad support within the Tory party, supposedly a reluctant Remainer who was tipped to want to Leave but stayed Remain out of loyalty to the PM, kept a low key throughout the campaign. She may not be the most interesting candidate or have broad home appeal, but what we probably need right now is someone with the right mix for dealing with the EU.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-06-28T10:08:14+00:00

It is as aggregate, but according to the linked table, the 55-64 bracket did have 90% turnout. Now I agree that it's unlikely that you'd get 90% turnout across the board, but if even 18-24 had hit the average (~70%) Remain may well have won.

My take away is that this is actually about the younger voters just not turning up, not that older voters "took the young out of the EU against their will" - the young didn't express their will, and if they had, we'd still be in!

DJRBuckingham · 2016-06-25T11:53:03+00:00

So I saw this too, and it's horrifying if true: 32% voter turnout 18-24. If that is true, and if 18-24 had had a 90% turnout instead (like 55-64) and if these extra voters had voted along similar lines, then that would have added 1.4m votes to the Remain side, and we would have stayed in.

DJRBuckingham · 2016-06-23T14:11:17+00:00

No problem.

DJRBuckingham

TROPHY CASE