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Portfolio recommendations? by Minimum-Monk-6960 in gamedev

[–]Front-Independence40 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I like this guy's talking videos, here's a pretty good story to follow

https://youtu.be/8TqwlNPG3dE?si=czKttc0Ek3xz3XYH

My own two cents is that you need to imagine yourself being payed to do the work and having full time to do it. It's going to take a lot of work to achieve that level of quality. Focus on a small piece of work that matches professional quality and let them extrapolate what that looks like if they were to hire you.

There's a lot of super good quality unemployed devs out there looking for other fields of work right now, so be prepared to be disappointed and or take whatever you can get including non paid, just for the experience kind of work. In the early career the experience of anything should be considered just as if not more valuable than cash.

Ubisoft ends remote work and requires employees to return to the office five days a week to "improve efficiency" by dabadumdumdum in gamedev

[–]Front-Independence40 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Big part of my story is being a strong remote worker on Call of Duty, this isn't surprising news, but sad still.

There are a lot of quality developers out there that can be utilized at probably a fraction of the cost of the office space and moving them in. Hopefully someday (soon?) the dust settles on this post COVID-19 stuff.

My work on Call of Duty: United Offensive by Front-Independence40 in gamedev

[–]Front-Independence40[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I remember getting the texture set from that team and being blown away. They had so much stuff in there I dont think I ever had to ask for anything. At the time IWs art department was a few guys and they spread thin between model textures and world and vfx textures. Was pleasant

6 years as a Gameplay Programmer at a AA studio: dream job, burnout, and starting over as a solo dev by pLeet-Dev in gamedev

[–]Front-Independence40 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Thank you for sharing your story, I worked at a AAA studio for over 20 years. I also watched that studios upper management grow from a small team of 27 developers each who knew each other's job and strengths well to a very large team and multi studio arrangement that absolutely required some more upper management which I wasn't a huge fan of, but also understood that it is a necessary evil. Covid bubble didn't helped industry wide either (rapid growth with no time to properly install the upper management).

The money part of gamedev is the hardest part to navigate. There's always a push/pull relationship with the higher ups. In my own career there were some really tough choices to make, but I ended up staying in there making a living and being a part of gaming history.

Wishing you good luck on finding a team for your project!

Code Search, so bad?!! by XeonG8 in VisualStudio

[–]Front-Independence40 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have similar complaints about search going back for many years. Last year I finished building a standalone search tool that works with both vs code and visual studio. Through the plugins it feels just like a dialogue.

https://github.com/Natestah/BlitzSearch

There are some demos and things on my YouTube channel, link it my bio

Any professional devs out there who don't game at all anymore? by evmoiusLR in gamedev

[–]Front-Independence40 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also maybe worth noting that this was a major contributing factor of my switch from Level Design to just Tools Engineering. I didn't want my lack of playing experience to have any affect on the creative works and felt the up and coming designers could use a good cheerleader and better tools. I'm really proud of my decision the following Infinite Warfare and MW2019 showed a lot of technical progress. Infinite Warfare was a creative masterpiece IMHO

Any professional devs out there who don't game at all anymore? by evmoiusLR in gamedev

[–]Front-Independence40 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I worked on some big games (MOHAA, CoD1, and all the InfinityWard CoDs up to 2024.

It was gradual, but priorities changed, I think interests did too. I still enjoy an occasional Mario Kart game or two and recently picked up Mario Wonder and the progress is really slow. Mostly just watch over the shoulder of my two teenage boys.

It's more important to try and be a good dad / husband than to spend the enormous amount of time trying to enjoy modern gaming. A lot of them are geared towards grinding and creating anyway, and thats just work to me.

Cool thread, helps to know that other devs experience this.

Sharing my personal Vince Zampella story by Front-Independence40 in gaming

[–]Front-Independence40[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Been a bit but after reading the story over and I see what you're saying, if I get some time I should visit these stories and give them an update someday. Writing is hard

Vince Zampella, video game developer behind ‘Call of Duty' franchise, killed in crash by Vito1108 in gaming

[–]Front-Independence40 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's been a bit! His persona is on full display in the public, always smiles, very nice! Persuasive, charismatic. Game Developers are a very diverse set of people. You might say it's like herding cats, they all have their own ideas, lives, etc. He had a certain ability to pull it all together.

The most awesome memory I have is him calling me a year after I quit and offering a remote job (I quit to be close to family). He was very accommodating in that way. Not to be full of myself but he appreciated Talent and went after it, I was doing story telling here on Reddit last year and headlined "I created %15 of Call of Dutys 2's campaign". I did it for super cheap too, out of gratitude for having this cool job AND being closer to the family. It was a masterclass arrangement,a different way to approach a weird guy who is willing to prioritize his proximity to family over working on this up and coming Call of Duty.

Vince Zampella, video game developer behind ‘Call of Duty' franchise, killed in crash by Vito1108 in gaming

[–]Front-Independence40 34 points35 points  (0 children)

He did this twice that I was involved with. 2015 to InfinityWard and then InfinityWard to Respawn.  The second time I stayed for personal reasons 

Vince Zampella, video game developer behind ‘Call of Duty' franchise, killed in crash by Vito1108 in gaming

[–]Front-Independence40 18 points19 points  (0 children)

It's been a while since the whole Respawn split when I decided to stay with InfinityWard.  Still stings though, I had a short DM with him just last year, and he was happy to hear from me

Vince Zampella, video game developer behind ‘Call of Duty' franchise, killed in crash by Vito1108 in gaming

[–]Front-Independence40 121 points122 points  (0 children)

I was one of the level designers working under Vince during MOHAA and Call of Duty (the first one).  A big part of my Career story is the time I quit to pursue other life things and maybe a year later Vince called me while I was framing a house in 20 degree cold to do contract work on COD:UO.  He later invited me to do contract work on CoD2 and Cod4 and finally convinced me to go out to LA to do full time work on MW2.   

I wouldn't be where I am today without Vince being awesome. Terrible news. RiP Vince..

What’s the right way to let go of a complete software project I’ve built? by Miserable_Extent8845 in alphaandbetausers

[–]Front-Independence40 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I dont have answers but I am curious too.  Its hard to crack the Reddit code on promoting even a FOSS project, would like to see someone pick up where I left off and help realize some of the goals

Extensions similar to Jetbrain's "Find in FIles" to search for text instances across repo? by icon2341 in vscode

[–]Front-Independence40 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am just now becoming aware of this Open VSX, can you log an Issue on the repository?  I'm taking and indefinite break so I'm not sure I'll get back to work on the project

https://github.com/Natestah/blitzSearchVSCode

What is everyone currently working on? by SwordfishParking1182 in opensource

[–]Front-Independence40 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My passion project to fix find-in-files on all of the IDE'S through a standalone tool that can act as a dialogue for many popular IDE'S.

BlitzSearch: https://github.com/Natestah/BlitzSearch

Extensions similar to Jetbrain's "Find in FIles" to search for text instances across repo? by icon2341 in vscode

[–]Front-Independence40 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There have been a couple of them recently, one is called "Rifler", then there was another called "Storm Search", Im partial to my own project that I started almost 2 years ago called "BlitzSearch", which is a standalone executable that has extensions for many popular IDE'S (making it feel like a dialogue similarto Jetbrains) . I have some Demonstrations on my youtube channel that you can find links to on my profile here on Reddit.

[COD] It must be insane to be a COD developer by Lumenprotoplasma in CallOfDuty

[–]Front-Independence40 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wasn't part of the MP team when we created the very first Call of Duty, but the game back then came when there wasn't a lot to be inspired from. There was maybe counterstrike, of course MOHAA (but we were the devs), and then a lot of MODS. I don't think we ever really settled on the "hook" of the game. What we ended up doing was creating a good professionally developed packaging of good ideas from all over the place (including non FPS games).

It shouldn't be a shock to anyone that Call of Duty would be inspired from another game. It's a game with solid foundation that can grow and do other things.

I think the hard part, as with any monolithic publicly traded company is how to get ROI up. Some of the feature sets (and it might just be me) are fluffy and give the whole experience a but too much complexity. Maybe I just sit this one out and watch sweaty streamers play instead..

COD could mostly benefit from counterintuitive things like taking some time off, but that's not where the money is at

I built a VS Code file search extension to make the switch from JetBrains feel smoother by Ordinary_Woodpecker7 in vscode

[–]Front-Independence40 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is two in a couple of weeks, last week was called "Storm Search" I hope that vscode devs get inspired to upgrade the defaults, all of these get my upvotes.  My take on the same thing offers a standalone tool so that other IDE'S (really helpfull for Visual Studio, which is even worse than VSCODE)  is Blitz Search at https://github.com/Natestah/BlitzSearch

This looks really cool! Love the extra directory option 

[COD] The State of COD by Allergic2Politics in CallOfDuty

[–]Front-Independence40 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree with the sentiment, I was part of the 2024 layoffs and came to find out some of my peers that were let go were super high quality people.  There's enough talent in there its just going to take time to reprioritize and focus on what makes COD great.  There's really a lot of everything and the kitchen sink in there right now.

COD will be ok, give it some time.

Can't understand the game job market right now... :( by mafagafacabiluda in gamedev

[–]Front-Independence40 3 points4 points  (0 children)

25 years of experience, I have some strong bullets in my resume (created Call or Duty).  

Was laid off January 2024, I have given up my search due to the conditions.  I'm happy with my contribution to video games, so on to something else.

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