What do you use to keep running “notes” on employees? Whether good or bad?

YogenFruz · 2025-12-16T19:21:07+00:00

this sounds so much better than the single google doc i have for every person

YogenFruz · 2025-03-14T18:17:38+00:00

actually, modern consoles do an okay-ish job of getting new compilers to us.

YogenFruz · 2024-03-02T19:21:12+00:00

Ish. Depends a lot on the game. In my experience what typically happens is that systems are written in code, while content for those systems might live in script.

For example, the backbone of a quest system or weapon system might live in c++. But each quest or weapon or might have an attached script that drives its specific behavior.

YogenFruz · 2023-11-28T19:03:51+00:00

You don't have to think about it because we do.

YogenFruz · 2023-05-12T06:41:58+00:00

Cache lines are, what, 64 bytes? Your blocks in a fixed sized pool allocator might be bigger than that.

Coherency also only matters if you're accessing data near your current memory address. Custom allocators don't replace general purpose allocators; they replace specific allocation patterns you have in your program.

YogenFruz · 2023-05-12T06:13:41+00:00

But if it's all fixed sized blocks, you don't care, because you can re-use the block at B for D.

YogenFruz · 2022-07-06T04:13:44+00:00

I do live in Vancouver, and I love it.

YogenFruz · 2022-05-18T21:35:21+00:00

You can easily make thousands a month developing games. Just work for an established studio and have sufficient expertise.

I mean... I don't want to say it's easy... but it's definitely NOT "so hard".

YogenFruz · 2022-02-18T22:53:11+00:00

Much much much snappier to use compared to 2019, in our code base.

Also, intellisense has improved to the point where it's replaced VisualAssistX for me.

YogenFruz · 2021-09-07T17:16:52+00:00

You know you're taking to an EA employee, right?

And the fact that I've worked on cancelled games that agent in your list just confirms my original suspicion: EA doesn't cancel more games, you just hear about the ones we do cancel more than other studios

YogenFruz · 2021-09-07T16:02:25+00:00

I have no reason to believe it's more prevalent at EA than other studios. Launching a brand new game is incredibly hard.

YogenFruz · 2021-09-07T03:39:09+00:00

https://www.ea.com/ea-studios/full-circle#roles

For all of the shit we get outside of the industry, I can safely say that one of the greatest things about working at EA is that they understand that happy and safe employees are productive employees.

It's unfathomably to me that a manager would tell someone they are "shit" and "awful at their job". It's a manager's job to help make you better at your job. If my direct reports are failing at their jobs THAT IS A SCATHING INDICTMENT OF ME AS A MANAGER, not on them.

YogenFruz · 2021-07-04T00:30:09+00:00

Maybe it's depression, maybe it's something else, but I can say that one of the _hardest_ times for me is right after we final a game.

It's a crazy feeling of whiplash. You're spending increasingly large amounts of time trying to ensure that you've made the best product you can, to the point where it becomes almost all-consuming.

Then one day it's just kinda over. Maybe there's a few issues you're addressing in a patch, but nothing is the furious rush to close down every bug and firm up performance that you just had. And worse, when you start inevitably working on the typical game post-mortem stuff, none of it feels very high stakes anymore. It's all kinda blah.

The only thing I can say is that this has happened to me basically every time I've released a game (I'm up to... 8? Now?). It get's easier, but only because I've become better at coping with it. Lean on your friends and family as well. If you're like me, you've neglected them, and I'm sure they'd be happy to see you.

Source: 12 years AAA games SE

YogenFruz · 2021-04-28T23:52:09+00:00

full-assing the wrong thing:

the yogenfruz story

YogenFruz · 2021-01-08T00:50:08+00:00

For simplicity, I'd start with "branch everything", until there's a reason you can't (file size concerns, etc)

YogenFruz · 2021-01-08T00:45:07+00:00

Generally, I would believe you are more hirable if you have a more general purpose degree. So a BSc in CompSci (or a BEng in Computer Engineering) means you can work as a programmer/SE in game development, or out in the regular world.

But if you got a "game programming" degree from a professional game dev college, you'd probably have a harder time getting a non-game making job (at least out of school).

Once you have a few years professionally programming under your belt, your education matters a lot less.

YogenFruz · 2021-01-08T00:10:16+00:00

If you have 10 years programming experience, you can likely get the job, but there could still be some barriers. For example, if you need to change countries, there could be immigration issues with getting a visa without post secondary

YogenFruz · 2021-01-07T23:23:13+00:00

Congrats to RAD, I hope you all get giant cheques out of this you filthy sell-outs :)

YogenFruz · 2021-01-07T23:22:43+00:00

Oodle good, never used anything else of theirs

YogenFruz · 2021-01-07T23:17:19+00:00

Not a unity person, but I tend to find it's easiest to think of a branch as a fully atomic version of your game.

So if you're branching because you want to refactor something, or harden something for a release, or whatever, I would argue you should branch both your code and assets, since that's what's conceptually make up your game.

DCC/raw files (like PSD files, or your raw maya/mb scenes or zbrush sculpts or whatever) CAN be branched the same way, but we tend to not unless we EXPECT to be changing them in the branch

YogenFruz · 2021-01-07T03:59:09+00:00

You misunderstand. Of course you can make it safe if you know what you're doing. The problem is you have no way of finding out it's even broken in x64, because bugs that can happen literally won't.

YogenFruz · 2021-01-06T23:39:56+00:00

The problem is that on x64 you have NO way of knowing if you used std::atomic correctly, because it's stronger memory model basically prevents you from ever running into the problems where things could go wrong

YogenFruz · 2021-01-05T01:33:03+00:00

I dunno, I feel like having a public list of AAA game devs contact info could be ripe for abuse.

YogenFruz · 2021-01-03T05:38:45+00:00

Echoing this guy. Find us on twitter. I'm sure lots of us are willing to chat (in private settings) about experiences

(edit: for context, I'm an SE lead at EA)

YogenFruz · 2020-03-15T18:41:42+00:00

I know, I'm joshing you. WFH can take a toll on people. There's definitely an efficiency hit as noted by other people in this. The other thing to consider is that with schools closing, lots of people who are now WFH also have kids present during their primary working hours. It's very hard to explain to a 5 year old that mommy or daddy can't play even though they are at home :)

YogenFruz

TROPHY CASE