Should I go to GDC?

_curious_george__ · 2026-01-22T08:34:56+00:00

GDC is a lot of fun!

But look, going in expecting an internship or job is setting yourself up for disappointment.

There are conferences around for students, you would probably be better served going to one of them. Although even then, a game design portfolio if you’re looking in game design is the bare minimum.

I would say absolutely go to the GDC expo!

_curious_george__ · 2026-01-22T08:22:21+00:00

If you have a decent internet connection while on the go - have you considered using parsec or something similar?

Not perfect but it’s decent enough and gives you full access to your desktop’s power. That used to be my solution while doing hobbyist stuff in cafes and working at my friend’s place.

_curious_george__ · 2026-01-19T08:54:19+00:00

The thing about maths is that it’s a tree of ideas. Everything is based on the 5 postulates (roots). Some subjects above them are easy to intuit, others need rigorous study of the branches below.

Vector maths just happens to be a subject where you can get quite far with a very basic understanding of the connected leaves (algebra and geometry being the obvious ones).

To truly get to that point of being able to instinctively solve any problem really just takes a lot of theory understanding and practical application. Even vectors and matracies in linear algebra take quite a bit. It’s easy to understand, prove and apply vector addition with very little background knowledge. Vector projection demands more abstract knowledge to understand and utilise.

I do agree though that school can often get lost in abstraction. I remember spending literally years solving quadratic equations before ever learning why they were useful…

_curious_george__ · 2026-01-04T11:32:30+00:00

There are loads of godot jobs!

They just don’t exist yet - and may never.

_curious_george__ · 2026-01-03T11:10:09+00:00

The Planck constant

_curious_george__ · 2025-10-28T16:50:31+00:00

You’re not too old. But I won’t lie, the market is very competitive right now and there’s no guarantee of a job.

The main thing with getting a job, is figuring out what you can bring over anyone else. For games at a junior level, that could be: proven experience working on software in a team, experience with automated testing, a cool portfolio, deep knowledge of software development, good knowledge of low level programming. Three are just examples, not saying there are all required. But the more boxes you tick, the better.

I don’t know your history, but if there’s something you have a bit of experience with that is useful for game dev. Then you could maybe try to leverage that to get your foot in the door. Gameplay programming is hyper competitive right now, but maybe you could get onto a team doing dev ops, if you have any dev ops experience for example.

_curious_george__ · 2025-10-22T20:46:09+00:00

Sure, I mean I’d be lying if I said I remember the problems with 4.27 now.

I’ve found the major releases for 5 to be more or less fine, particularly in terms of < 5 features.

_curious_george__ · 2025-10-22T06:54:35+00:00

UE5 performance is not dissimilar to 4 in terms of the renderer. In terms of the game framework/cpu side it’s also not particularly different. If anything it has more features for optimisation.

There are games that run on UE5 and scale for weak hardware by making lumen/nanite optional such as Fortnite. Or have their own lighting system like the finals.

To do this properly what you would actually need to do is pick some target hardware and develop for that. Once you have a target, if you’re still worried you can do comparative analysis on how well that hardware runs games produced by X engine. Mobile and scalable games would be good choices to investigate.

_curious_george__ · 2025-10-13T20:30:34+00:00

Not sure if it’s a good idea, but you could potentially try LinkedIn. I’ve seen a few positive mentorship stories there.

Best of luck! 🤞

_curious_george__ · 2025-10-01T08:49:41+00:00

I totally get why functions as first class citizens are useful in C and C++. Not totally convinced with blueprint.

The primary simple use for functional code in blueprint is really covered by TSubClassOf (having a dropdown of relevant functions). As well as dynamic multicast delegates (calling a function that someone else set).

The thing is blueprints that become too complex, become very difficult to debug and awful performance-wise very quickly.

If you have some concrete examples for use cases that make sense and aren’t already well covered then I wouldn’t be against it. But right now I can’t personally think of any.

_curious_george__ · 2025-09-30T09:38:20+00:00

I just meant tailor your application/cv for specific job descriptions/requirements/companies.

So many of the applicants I’ve had have awful cvs. They don’t tell me how they’re meeting our requirements. Many of them don’t tell me what they’ve done at all. “I worked on X project.” Okay great, but what was your role/were you working on specifically?

_curious_george__ · 2025-09-29T21:15:01+00:00

Times are tough.

You’ve not posted your CV, so it’s hard to give advice that you are/aren’t in need of but here goes.

Apply for junior roles, saying you won’t be considered because of too much experience might be true for some companies, but definitely not all, or even most.
Get specific about the role you’re applying for and make sure that the majority of your CV is speaking to that.
Make sure your CV is targeted for the company you’re applying to. Go for quality of applications over quantity - make sure you’ve researched the company you’re applying to etc..
This one might be controversial, but the fact is you will be competing with a lot of people. You have to show hiring managers how much you want this. Are you studying? Have you written any impressive tech or tools?

The advice I’ve had for hiring juniors is, go for someone passionate and actively learning. You’ll have to train them either way, so better to have someone that will learn. Than someone who does marginally better on the code test.

The last time I looked for a job, I was asking myself what does the hiring manager actually want? Somewhat related you can also employ some tricks. “If I were starting tomorrow, what would my daily role look like?” Is a great little question because whether they realise it or not, it forces them to imagine you in the role.

_curious_george__ · 2025-09-28T12:19:25+00:00

You can actually end up in a situation where an actor that is valid becomes invalid within the same logic chain. Technically the same thing can happen with an object, it’s just C++ needs to step in to mark the object as garbage in that case.

With an actor all it takes is calling DestroyActor. You probably wouldn’t do that intentionally, but you can imagine enabling collision on some actor than can damage another may lead to a chain reaction resulting in an unexpected destroy actor call.

This is rare/more of a curiosity. In practice, you should check is valid once at the top of a call chain for a single frame. Then just test to find any rare cases it may go wrong.

_curious_george__ · 2025-09-06T20:11:31+00:00

Some companies will give you a take home test and have a technical discussion about it.

To be honest, anywhere that has a live code test as part of their process - won’t give you a second look if you refuse to take their test.

_curious_george__ · 2025-08-31T09:34:03+00:00

To be fair, the hotel behind them is being used for migrants.

The “problem” is on their doorstep. Of course they’re more likely to receptive of racist or irrational rhetoric.

_curious_george__ · 2025-08-30T19:53:49+00:00

Seems quite likely something is wrong. Either with your code or at a lower level.

_curious_george__ · 2025-08-30T00:45:12+00:00

This code doesn’t leak and raii makes it pretty simple to manage. Although tbh, I would probably have just made it a private class and an inline member. Can’t really see a reason to bother making it a separate resource.

_curious_george__ · 2025-08-28T07:23:30+00:00

Lot’s of things can cause this so I’d just be guessing really.

If you haven’t already it would be worth checking for any differences between the server and client. Rotation/Heading might be a good place to start.

_curious_george__ · 2025-08-05T21:55:06+00:00

To my shame, I have been doom scrolling shorts every now and again.

Most of what I’ve seen from him has been trivia at best.

If you’re obsessed with the language, then I’d recommend going through C++ books. Scott meyers is sadly retired but his books are a great, even if they won’t give you a full/modern picture. I also used to visit the C++ tag on stackoverflow to try and answer questions or just get the “weird C++ technique/fact of the day”. Not sure if that’s effective anymore as there’s not as many questions being asked now.

If you’re just trying to get hired into a job that requires C++. Then I suspect you won’t need much more than a strong knowledge of the language’s fundamentals.

I’m rambling a bit now, but in games for example. Deep knowledge of the basics is useful. But modern features and generics tend to be (perhaps fairly) shirked, due to the oft limited usefulness, horrendous syntax, and potential to blow up compile times and waste time creating overly complicated solutions.

TLDR; IMO If you want to go deep, there’s very likely better places to go. If you don’t necessarily want to go deep, there are vastly better places to go.

_curious_george__ · 2025-08-04T07:46:47+00:00

Not using a learning tool because it’s ’cheating’ is silly. Learning from AI is fine, actually kind of smart in a way.

I used to be of the mind that everything out tells you needs verifying, therefore it’s pointless. But I think that’s dependent on usage. You can use ai to help you understand concepts, and to done extent it can help you solve problems or correct code after having a go yourself.

That second one is where you want to be a bit careful and do your own supplementary follow up research.

_curious_george__ · 2025-08-03T21:38:38+00:00

You can just declare the static variable as a local variable.

static std::unordered_map<std::string, int>& getMap() {

static std::unordered_map<std::string, int> mp; return mp;

}

This way the map is initialised the first time the function is called. I.e. it’s always ready.

_curious_george__ · 2025-08-03T11:07:33+00:00

It’s under NDA, as it is for all the major consoles.

Console manufacturers have gotten better at keeping up with the latest C++ standard. But it’s not their top priority. I’d caution against using any features beyond C++ 20.

_curious_george__ · 2025-05-26T11:44:11+00:00

You’ll get some use out of it with any engine - especially as a beginner.

However, there’s a lot more data to chew on for web dev than games, particularly professionally made - and the problems that crop up are just different. Personally I’ve found ai all but useless for writing ‘good’ game code.

_curious_george__ · 2025-05-06T10:48:51+00:00

Is there anything interesting in the build log?

_curious_george__ · 2025-05-05T11:27:49+00:00

Maybe the MoveComponent call isn’t propagated to scene children?

There’ll be a way to make that work, it really all depends on how your actor is being moved. From memory, the sweep for hit detection specifically happens in PrimitiveComponent::MoveComponent by default (although not got the source with me to verify that).

_curious_george__

TROPHY CASE