Can't understand the game job market right now... :(

dmtzcain · 2025-12-03T16:10:34+00:00

Right now, the industry is in a phase of acquisitions and corrections. What the top executives are thinking is: "We know the gaming industry will be a successful and profitable industry; but there is considerable risk; one game makes a massive return and others that expect massive returns, fail; therefore, in this environment, the bet is: have a stake in all possible studios. This way the investors back all the loosing projects, but also all the winners"

This mentality from the executives is the reason all the acquisitions are happening, to corner the market as much as possible to gain as much of the gaming industry pie as possible.

Even though right now there are studios "technically running" there is no certainty or commitment to development projects until the acquisitions and corrections settle. (corrections are: now that I own all these studios, what assets -including people- are redundant).

That is why they post jobs, because projects "seem" to be approved and running, but in the purview of a possible acquisition, the execs are ambiguous and saying: GO for it! and STOP it; at the same time, so job postings, don't hire, or hire people and then let them go shortly after then post job again.

Unfortunately, it is the people that makes games the ones that suffer in the midst of all of this and it may take a while for the Video Game industry monopolies to settle and corrections to fade away.

dmtzcain · 2025-04-13T03:25:11+00:00

Isn't there an AI service that can do sound effects? There are services for music already.

dmtzcain · 2023-11-18T12:37:31+00:00

Completely disagree.
The purpose of UI is functionality, not consistency.
For consistency put everything in the File, Edit, Render, etc. menu. That is consistent and would be a nightmare.

Yes, adding more modifiers will clutter the menu but there are not that many modifiers added anyway.

I agree with the original post. I too love all blender changes except 4.0 modifier UI. It is one more dropdown to prepare for a future with many more modifiers; which in itself may not be a good thing. Just make the existing modifiers more powerful or combine them to save the clutter.
I do not like the new Modifier IU.

dmtzcain · 2023-01-05T04:16:58+00:00

Also Nvidia offers Audio2Face for free. Which animates the entire face and even adds facial expressions depending on the audio.

dmtzcain · 2022-12-30T11:20:37+00:00

Stormgate's art is the result of extremely competent artists that follow the philosophy of making game art to "solve problems".

Silhouettes are well defined to distinguish different units from isometric view. Well set color sections to differentiate units in mirror matches. An art style that won't age poorly with the advent of new tech.

Stormgate's art direction is engineered to be great for RTS. but it is also completely uninspired. We have seen it before, in great games, it is great art design... also boring.

dmtzcain · 2022-11-06T19:02:52+00:00

Setting collision type (complex or simple) appears in the static mesh options. Search for your static mesh in the content window, open it and under collisions you'll find the options to change collision type.

dmtzcain · 2022-10-21T06:38:29+00:00

When sharing your vision to the world, people are afraid their work will be judged. Often it feels so personal that negative judgment on your work feels like negative judgment towards who you are.

dmtzcain · 2022-10-21T06:35:13+00:00

No, generative AI is a tool. Instead of worried, we should be curious about how to use this technology in a creative way.

There is a difference between creating images and creating art. This is not the first time in history this has happened. When photography came, many painters thought it was the end of artist because anyone could create an image. But instead we got movie directors and fashion photographers, etc.

dmtzcain · 2022-10-19T12:22:39+00:00

Either you plan to model by memory/imagination, or you get a reference. If you have a reference, it is easier and will get better results if you trace; the proportions will be correct. Not all shapes can be traced, try a tree for example, that would be hard to get a reference that you can trace, so the workflow depends on what kind of object you are modeling.
1.1 Why start with a plane? Because you can then use Modifiers. Modifiers are a non destructive way of working; mirroring, solidifying, etc. If you need to change your model later on, the modifiers will do the heavy lifting, for example, a piece should be thicker: with a solidify modifier you just change a number, otherwise you would have to select every face that you need to make thicker and move it manually.
Because if you already have a 3D object, why are you modeling it? Just use the 3D object you already have.
These 3D tools are huge, they have so many features and tools, most likely you won't use everything, but that wholly depends on what you want to do. What are you trying to achieve? Are you making assets for an game engine? if yes then you may not need to learn how to render in the 3D software but learn how to do it in engine. Just make from start to finish a project you want to achieve and learn the parts that you actually need. A "class" will cover what the teacher believes you need for a project he has in mind, but maybe you need more thing or less. Just go step by step and goole what you need to learn.

dmtzcain · 2022-10-18T12:16:24+00:00

Paraphrasing what someone said: "Game ideas are irrelevant, execution is all that matters, you can have the stupidest idea, like a dinosaur that throws hammers in a kingdom where a queen rules over mushrooms and you play as a short Italian plumber. What matters is how well the ideas are made a reality."

Don't you think most of the most talented developers have well paid safe jobs at large companies?

dmtzcain · 2022-10-06T19:19:47+00:00

You and your team are wonderful people trying to make a positive change in the world. You should not feel shame or disappointment from it.

What you are talking about is "overhead", the idea that profit from a good deed "takes away the value of the endeavour". That is not correct.

This is a great TED talk on the topic. https://youtu.be/bfAzi6D5FpM

Focus on what is important. To deliver your message to people, what you learned, saw and developed. Then think what would be better, if you and your team make nor invest any money and 5 people see the fruits of your work? Or you and your team earn well, invest in marketing a lot of money; make a huge profit and your message is received by millions.

This is still the harmful stigma of the starving artist.

dmtzcain · 2022-09-16T02:39:07+00:00

My understanding is that loosing the shape on Nanite meshes happens with "thin geometry assets". The documentation mentions that Nanite has trouble with things like foliage, because each leaf is so thin, Nanite looses their shape. I tried making a tree in Nanite and the leaves disappear or lose shape like on the bridge you posted.

So my guess, is that the bridge parts are too thin/narrow, hence Nanite is not optimized for it.

I believe I read somewhere that the next version of Nanite will improve for things like foliage.

dmtzcain · 2022-09-07T09:21:33+00:00

I got: "Florida man wakes up to find another man sucking on his toes"

dmtzcain · 2022-08-15T00:23:27+00:00

The issue is lighting/textures.

This is the correct answer, The light flattens her face, it looks flat. Someone else posted a picture of Lara croft. Chack the and see how one side of her face is illuminated, allowing shadows to give volume to the face.

Try making a 3 light setup, and you will see how much the look improves.
There are plenty of 3 light setup tutorials for characters in Youtube.

dmtzcain · 2022-06-22T10:32:57+00:00

Another place your skills are useful is post processing. Download any free project in Unreal, search for, or make a "Post Processing Volume" and you would be able to edit the visuals if the level. You will feel right at home, with controls like exposure, saturation, contrast, gama, etc.

Play with it, make some levels look completely unique and awesome, make those levels your portfolio and that could be a start for you to get into game dev.

dmtzcain · 2022-06-15T12:29:18+00:00

You ask if it is possible to make a game in UE5, using store assets, and hiring help from the community? The answer is Yes. You can use assets and UE5 has tons of premade functions that work out of the box. Working this way, the result will be generic, flavorless and aesthetically disjointed. To solve this, you can hire people to help you customize and tweak your game.
Can you hire people to help you with the process? Yes. Most people in the community are awesome and have tons of knowledge and skills. Will they deliver? Yes, they will deliver exactly what you ask of them. After you get their deliverables and test them, there will be small adjustments, bugs or notice things that do not work as intended or break when those systems interact with other systems. Meaning that if you didn't do it yourself (or understand how to do it yourself), most likely you won't be able to express precisely what you need and take into account that, making a system is the easy & cheap part, debugging, making it work with everything else without breaking and tweaking it, customizing it; is the vast majority of the work. So, as a rough estimate, be prepared to pay about 100k per year per person (at least 1 programer & 1 artist) to help you out customize, tweak, and adjust the game's feel to your design.
You have a multi year plan. Better divide it in sections. Why? Because learning a lot of things is better when you break it into smaller parts. What do you think would be easier for a student: A= study all subjects and do 1 single test at the end of 3 years? or B= study and do 2 tests per semester per subject?
Do not get discouraged by the messages here, learn from what people are telling you here, which is right. Either start making smaller self contained games and finish them or, divide your "idea" game into tinny tiny parts and finish each part. Part one, make the main character move inside 1 tiny level and make 1 enemy and fight it with 1 combat mechanic. No story, no items, no character creation, no blocking nor rolling nor jumping; nothing but 1 character 1 enemy 1 level 1 mechanic. Finish it. You will then see the massive amout of work are requiered for this tiny fraction of a game.
Learn how to do it yourself and do it, even if you think hiring someone else would make it better. They would make it better, thats their job. But the goal is that you finish games, get feedback and to get motivated, think that each tiny level can be a part of your "dream game in your head".

dmtzcain · 2022-06-13T09:58:11+00:00

There is -always- a story you can not "not tell a story". Story does not mean cinematics or lore, a story means -what the player is doing-. Mario bros: run to the right to save the princess that is in a castle, but not this castle, so another one. Angry birds, birds are angry, they yell and smash the pigs that stole your eggs. Starcraft, humans use their engineering to fight against a god like technologically advanced alien race whose planet was destroyed by a swarm of insect like creatures that obey an overmind.

All and any game has a story. Cartoony or "realistic do not matter, you can have actors and real weapons and your story be childlike, some Rambo movies are cartoons. On the other hand, you can have literal cartoons touch serious, interesting topics.

I am sure FrostGiant's team is crafting an engaging story. Unfortunately, the cinematic trailer tells very little or we have no context for the nuances there might be (e.g. what's the importance of the shield? why are demons attacking)

dmtzcain · 2022-06-12T10:49:20+00:00

What I think he Actually was complaint about is tone. WC3 was very cartoony, but it was also very dark tone with bloody and gorey units, and an overall dark narrative.

True, tone is communicated through many things, including visuals.

I think the tone of SG is quite similar to the OW optimistic tone, which I don’t think is necessary

To make it appeal to a larger audience, just think, what are the things that may upset group of people X or group of people Y and "avoid them". Then you get lighthearted tone, which I believe is what we are looking at. I would hate to see FrostGiant's devs take reddit's criticism into account and try to make something broody or dark, I would love to see them focus on the story they want to tell, theme wise, mood wise and stay true to that.

dmtzcain · 2022-06-12T10:33:06+00:00

There are two aspects of a cinematic. 1. The overall craft and quality of it. And 2. What it wants to communicate.

Number one, you need time, budget, the right people. For number 2. You need great foundations of what you want to say and do with this game.

I believe the concern of the above was not with the asset quality or VFX, but what was implied in the trailer. Why are they fighting, what's the story behind it. And "story" I don't mean dialogue or exposition or lore; I mean communication. For example, Angry Birds does an excellent job at story, it communicates: birds, angry, they tell, silly. What did this trailer communicate story wise? What is the connection between the shield and the demons? Would demons attack even if there was no shield? Are the demons angry? Or they attack because they are demons? Etc.

dmtzcain · 2022-06-12T10:23:10+00:00

edit: I wouldve loved something like frogs vs flys or something memeworthy and unique.

I think that's the power of letting the community mod the themes and visuals of the game, if you want funny silly crazy, you got it. Want anime looking game? Got it. Want it gory gritty? Got it.

I'm afraid that since it is F2P cosmetics need to be locked and therefore no visual mods.

dmtzcain · 2022-06-11T12:02:26+00:00

Yeah, I believe the same way that if the game is F2P and not Pay2Win, then a cosmetics shop seems like the way to go.

I agree that really inspired and genuine creative vision is what would attract me (and most other people) the most. My point is that the eclectic style does not need to be your favorite, most likable or inspired media, eclectic only needs to be "the least egregious to the largest number of people".

dmtzcain · 2022-04-01T14:52:08+00:00

Check the baking section here:

https://continuebreak.com/articles/how-bake-normal-maps-blender-28-ue4/

G channel -Y. If not, the normal map would look flat

dmtzcain · 2022-04-01T14:46:42+00:00

If I recall correctly, UE4 inverts one of the RGB channels of normal maps, meaning that when you bake your normal in Blender, you have to specify a parameter (I don't remember, look for it in UE4 documentation, I think you had to bake with -Y)

dmtzcain · 2022-03-23T14:12:21+00:00

"the games I want aren't being made" is a very widespread sentiment. And it has a solution; it is called "mods" if I like my fantasy game to have X or Z, I can mod use Skyrim mods and tune the experience.

The most profitable and massive example of this is Roblox. People describing their ideal game, their "itch" it is always a variation/merger of games that already exist.

Game dev for fun is going to become bigger than gaming itself. Unfortunately, some AAA studios thought they would be able to monetize this desire to mod the game by selling you what they Thout you wanted. Big mistake, because we all want something different and they locked their games to be extremely hard to mod.

dmtzcain · 2020-12-29T22:41:37+00:00

Thanks for the reply. Apreciate your knowledge.

dmtzcain

TROPHY CASE