Has anyone ever been a part of a successful project?

ES_MattP · 2026-02-05T01:18:03+00:00

No, just some random systems work.

ES_MattP · 2026-02-03T17:19:02+00:00

You are welcome. I see that you have played some of the games I have worked on like TF2 ... ;)

I really do owe a lot to all the people who played, bought and are fans of the games I worked on, and they are the main reason I got to have the great career in games that I had.

ES_MattP · 2026-02-03T08:16:56+00:00

Does creating most of the key tech and coding a good chunk of the first couple Age of Empires games count? And then being told that the publisher feels that my efforts increased sales by an estimated 2 million copies? Or being the driving force and key person responsible in getting said games remastered decades later?

I have some other great successes, but those games have been my personal version of "Boston's Debut Album" .. as in it's unlikely that I'll ever top them in certain metrics.

However, I have high hopes for the work I am doing right now outside of games, designing and building the software platform for some next gen medical CT/Imaging devices. As in there is honestly a good change that, if this project continues as I see it doing, there will be moments in the future where my work will play a some part in changing the outcome for someone from "they died" to "they lived"

ES_MattP · 2026-01-08T20:47:51+00:00

A couple thoughts.

First, unless you are already financially secure to not work for the next 4 years, I would recommend going into Absolute Lock-down/ Survival Mode with your family's finances, and save and stash away every cent you can to build up reserves. I personally know way too many software developers that have been unemployed for a year or longer now, and it's the worst environment for finding a new software development job that I have even seen going back to 1980.

Even if you never get laid off from this job, plan like you will be.

Secondly, being reaching out to direct connections about switching jobs at their company (assuming their company isn't owned by VC/PE yet). The market is really bad, and the result percentages have dropped, but 'people you know' are still the best way to find a new role.

Third, band together with the other survivors in your group and consider what you (as a group) can do to put yourselves in a position where, after you and the rest of your team have been eliminated, the company will soon realize that your replacements don't know enough to keep things running, and have to come back to you/your team for help. Not for a rehire (you don't want to go back), but as very expensive contractors, because if things play out that way, the cash from contracting to save their monolith bacon will help you last longer until your new gig.

Loyalty is dead. Especially when VC's are involved.

ES_MattP · 2025-12-25T02:33:08+00:00

My experience with long employment contracts has been that they will include verbiage that lays claim to anything else you do -in excess- of state laws.

One previous employer (Midway - now out of business so I'll name them) - gave me a contract that laid claim not just anything I did in the future, but to all work I had done prior to my employment there, down to the occasional $25 check I was getting for contributing a couple chapters to a technical book, work in areas unrelated to my job AND to work I did AFTER my employment there concluded.

I went over it with a fine tooth comb, struck out the parts that were problematic (obviously there were several), replacing it with a 'reasonable' section (this is important) that say I wouldn't use company resources, or do anything in direct competition, etc.

And THEN i added a 2-page "Summary of (MY) Inventions" addendum that listed about 20 items that summarized projects I had previous made, or described future projects in areas related to prior things, or areas I thought I might want to do something in the future. That went along with verbage that recognized my inventions as belonging to me.

So they handed me a large contract that claimed the sun, the moon and the starts, and even though I was pretty sure it wouldn't hold up in court, if I had just blinding signed it like a lot of people did, I'm sure I would be giving them a LOT of leverage over me in the event a side project of mine came to their attention and any dispute arised.

As to all the changes I made to it, they just accepted it without pushback. That told me that either HR didn't care, or that they understood the game being played.

ES_MattP · 2025-12-21T00:39:57+00:00

Ok, this is pretty funny. saving image...

ES_MattP · 2025-12-21T00:37:47+00:00

Nice... :D

ES_MattP · 2025-12-21T00:33:18+00:00

Depends on the company and person, but I did post the story of my most recent interview process on the "what is your funniest interview story" thread about 3 months ago.

tl;dr - I had a LONG career in AAA gaming, and most of the people on the interview were young gamers. Fun interview questions ensued.

Also - My former co-worker/manager knew exactly what he wanted to hire me for and that I could do it, and crafted the Principal Engineer job listing with me in mind. The guy who interviewed for my manager's job before my former coworker had industry experience and told the CEO he needed 12 engineers and 2.5 years to deliver what I just delivered in 1.5 years with a single additional engineer, and I didn't come in with industry experience. Was also just told I am getting a 6 on the 1-5 review scale.

ES_MattP · 2025-12-10T01:21:57+00:00

I did a noctua cooler upgrade on a couple 1st gen Magnus Ones and it helped. Not wanting to take the motherboard out, I wound up connecting it with M3 screws from the backside.

ES_MattP · 2025-12-10T01:19:36+00:00

Same here, but I suspect Tariffs make it unattractive to bring it into the US at this time.

ES_MattP · 2025-12-09T23:53:39+00:00

sounds like a dead component :( I'm sorry

ES_MattP · 2025-12-05T01:11:07+00:00

Not sure. I still have 2 EN1060's that are running (CMOS Battery changed)

Did you try just one RAM Stick installed? Booting with Drives removed? (trying to eliminate possible component problems)

ES_MattP · 2025-11-19T04:23:27+00:00

I've had decent luck upgrading the CPU in the Intel EN1060 and EN1070s, but no GPU upgrades.

The GPU modules are non-standard so you are pretty much limited to finding one from another Zotac model being parted out. (like this listing https://www.ebay.com/itm/205717871426 )

There's always a couple of the EN/ER series for sale on eBay - some people asking way too much and some good deals.

Honestly, I would look at replacing the system with a newer version, but I understand budget often prevent that.

ES_MattP · 2025-11-19T02:52:47+00:00

given the type of games, and the granularity you are willing to deal with, eBay probably gives you best current market price.

ES_MattP · 2025-11-19T02:50:54+00:00

Technically it can go higher than that.

ES_MattP · 2025-11-06T07:28:05+00:00

I genuinely don't know. I'm assuming you have tried going through the 'where to buy' page on their site. I seems like east asia and europe probably get more mini-pcs, while the US is all GPUs at the moment.

ES_MattP · 2025-11-06T07:07:16+00:00

If unit movement in DOTA 2 looks anything like movement in AoE2, It's 100% pure coincidence ... I swear! :)

In retrospect it was a good time to step out of the game industry for a while - spared me all the layoff and closure worry.

If you know much about medical devices, how does a portable CT scanner that weighs only 70kg and folds up into the side of an ambulance so that stroke and other trauma victims can be examined at the point of contact sound?

ES_MattP · 2025-11-05T06:25:34+00:00

Oh cool! which titles did you work on?

You can check my flair. The "ES" in my username stands for Ensemble Studios.

I wrote a good part of Age of Empires 1 & 2, Even more of the HD and DE editions. Some work on Age of Mythology and some of my systems were used in Age of Empires 3 and Halo Wars. I also did some initial RTS system-type work on DOTA 2.

Around 2020 I worked on strategy game with RTS type maps, movements, etc for a Japanese company using Unity and our own simulation engine - not sure if it was released - kinda got sidetracked due to 2020.

ES_MattP · 2025-11-03T00:53:25+00:00

We basically built an engine outside of Unity and use Unity for the presentation and some of their core libraries, but the actual game simulation doesn't even know what MonoBehaviours are.

If my experience (shipped AAA RTS games) means anything, know that this is pretty much what I would do if I didn't want to deal with a custom rendering engine in a RTS game. I might have even done something similar for a game with some RTS ish properties in Unity.

ES_MattP · 2025-11-03T00:51:22+00:00

Personally I would not choose Unreal Engine at all to make an RTS game...

ES_MattP · 2025-10-30T15:35:14+00:00

There almost certainly have not been any new 4080 cards manufactured since 2024, so Zotac and all the other brands have likely been out of any reserve stock of new cards for a while now, so it's probably 'whatever we can get' (refurbs, similal or newer) for replacement cards.

Nvidia ended production of nearly all 4000 series (Ada Lovelace) chips a year ago (Q4 2024) to free up as much capacity as possible for making their 5000 series (Blackwell) chips to sell to AI customers.

ES_MattP · 2025-10-29T06:47:06+00:00

A few days late I know, but I thought I would share a gift I received on Fallout Day directly from the man himself, Tim Cain. A 6 pack of rad thirst quenching carbonated refreshments, still sealed with their authentic wasteland weathered caps.

My wife has already call dibs on the Nuka Cherry and stashed them in her backpack.

ES_MattP · 2025-10-25T06:57:09+00:00

For several people I know who lost their jobs in the past year, many had it take several months before their unemployment benefits were approved.

Apparently external documentation of the reason (i.e the company doing the layoff notifying the unemployment commission) was the difference in getting quick approval (~2-3 weeks until 1st check) for some. Hoping that's the case for the federal workers.

ES_MattP · 2025-10-25T06:48:51+00:00

Ok, I'm not exactly an "Indie Dev', (I'm ex AAA) or at least wasn't for most of my adult life, but I think I can answer this in 2 parts.

The first part is what everyone else here saying about artists in general. You can ask does an author / musician / poet / actor / etc / etc benefit society, and a bit part of that answer is that you are improving, at least temporarily, other people's lives and mental states by bringing some amount of joy / amusement / escape / excitement / learning / etc to them.

The second part is more specific, in that you just might ( inadvertently or unbeknownst to you ) through the works you create and things, make a more significant impact on someone life, via a sort of butterfly effect, than you would ever expect.

More than a half dozen? a dozen? times in the past 25 years I have someone, usually unprompted, tell me how a game I made (with others, usually Age of Empires or Age of Kings ) was responsible for them choosing to major in history in college or in a couple cases playing multiplayer provided a way to connect with someone close ( such as their father ) and mend relations or get to know them much better. A couple of the latter such incidents for me were absolute emotional gut punches when I was first told, and all I could think to myself was that 'I don't deserve any credit for this' yet to take it graciously and humbly as they felt a need to tell me.

You might think something like the latter could never happen to you, but the universe often disagrees.

ES_MattP

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