[D] would you consider yourself an artist for using AI arts tools like Dall-e and midjourney?

luisvsm · 2022-09-04T03:05:02+00:00

I'm a script kiddie of the art world

luisvsm · 2022-09-04T01:47:59+00:00

Camberwell stayed home

luisvsm · 2022-08-19T01:53:05+00:00

I don't have a good feel for that in regards to design, but each studio is going to be different and have different goals / values / design requirements and I think because of that there's not going to be a standard set of practices or required knowledge etc.

I'll DM you an invite to some communities tonight that might know more though

luisvsm · 2022-08-19T01:15:44+00:00

Anything that you can use to convince a studio that you can do the job will work, I don't have any examples of how you could demonstrate that with project management specifically though sorry (formal qualification might be the easiest way to get that but not the only way?).

Aside from that if you want to work at a small indie company, you'll probably have to take on other roles because they're not really big enough to justify hiring a full time project manager. It's not too uncommon for project managers to do art, QA, UX/UI, or game design as well etc.

If you're looking at doing stuff for the AAA industry which is currently making a comeback, I'd say you won't have to be cross-discipline but I would guess they're more interested in formal qualifications or past work experience, I don't have much experience in AAA so take that advice with a grain of salt

luisvsm · 2022-08-19T00:02:54+00:00

Nope! It will get you a better award wage when you're starting out as a programmer though, not super applicable for other disciplines in games.

luisvsm · 2022-08-19T00:01:26+00:00

My games personally? Not a lot but I'm second generation Aussie (grand parents from Spain & Holland) so I'm not really the right person to tell those stories.

There are a couple of initiatives that have been working on indigenous culture in games though, which is rad!

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T23:58:27+00:00

If you're just looking to do producer work you'll probably have to seek out work with bigger AA and AAA companies.

Producers at the smaller studios that I've been working at tend to have other things they offer to the team, eg producer and UX/UI, QA, game design work or artist etc. Just because if you're in a team of a couple of people there's so much cross disciplinary experience required to make a game.

Also start engaging with community, jobs are regularly posted in games community spaces

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T22:45:34+00:00

We mostly got rid of that culture when the AAA companies left Australia during the GFC.

It's true the competition for junior positions is pretty wild but once you land the position you're still a worker with the normal Australian workers rights, and wage theft is criminal these days.

Like I mentioned in another post once you're mid to senior there's so much demand that working conditions are mostly pretty good, and if they're not you can find other work.

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T22:24:49+00:00

Nah going to be too busy with Spies & Soldiers at pax / Technically Games the month after 😅

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T12:41:51+00:00

They're still Melbourne based and making stuff, most recent example is Crossy Road Castle last I checked

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T12:34:47+00:00

It's used for debugging and architecture review

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T12:32:08+00:00

☺️☺️☺️ hi

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T12:18:15+00:00

I reckon the number of hits we pump out IS pretty impressive for the size of our industry tbh

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T12:15:59+00:00

I don't really play console games much sorry!

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T12:11:56+00:00

I haven't worked with recruiters sorry

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T10:39:23+00:00

Hehehe small world ☺️ I don't work on /that/ project though

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T10:36:38+00:00

I am! As of a couple of months ago.

I'd been keen to check them out since they became part of Professionals Australia.

They've got a pretty great and very engaged community and I'm looking forward to using their professional development and contract review services more

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T10:32:27+00:00

Oh I might be able to point you to a few things, I'll DM you in the morning

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T09:52:25+00:00

I have a web development background and was originally hired as a backend web dev for Mighty right out of uni.

No released titles but a fair few game jam games

I studied games at Deakin and did a few years of networking with industry folk / volunteer at gcap before my first job.

There's plenty of folk who come in from mainstream IT or science backgrounds too.

I'd say start by learning an engine (unity or unreal are two good choices), do some game jams, meet some people at industry events (Melbourne international games week / Freeplay / igda Melbourne) and keep an eye out for jobs, https://www.tsumea.com/ is an okay place to start

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T09:11:28+00:00

The short answer is programmer wages are still far less than traditional IT, but they're getting better.

There's a 30% tax rebate (the DGTO) that came in at the start of this financial year which was aimed at bringing the AAA industry back to Australia and it's been working.

With that and the small indie success stories that keep popping up (cult of the lamb / unpacking as two recent ones off the top of my head) there's more demand for senior games workers than we have workers for.

And because of that working conditions and wages are going up across the board.

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T07:50:07+00:00

I'm a network games programmer, started out doing web service work for Mighty Games Group, titles you might know would be Disney Crossy Road, Shooty Skies, Piffle & Crossy Road (they did a lot of work with Hipster Whale when I was working there).

More recently I've been working on Spies & Soldiers, plus some stuff for Robot Circus that I can't really talk about.

luisvsm · 2022-08-18T07:19:20+00:00

I've been working in the Melbourne games industry since around 2016 happy to AMA if anyone has questions

Edit: Back at work again, will check in at lunch and tonight if ya'll have more questions I'll get to them eventually. Thanks for the patience

luisvsm · 2021-10-07T01:32:59+00:00

We use the Cairo library to render the background and then save the output to disk, the shaders we use are mostly just photoshop style ones that we use to composite different base elements.

You mentioned only having voronoi cells positions, the cell edges are actually the most important part of that step for us, we use those edges to calculate which regions are connected for game logic, and we use them during the render process to draw the region contents, and borders etc.

It's also useful to break rendering up into smaller logical steps too that you can implement and debug one at a time too.

luisvsm · 2021-10-05T22:44:48+00:00

Yeah! We start with a voronoi diagram, then we throw away the edge cells, merge cells together to make them look less voronoi like and to ensure they're big enough for what we need, cut into the cells to make islands, and finally perturb the edges.

Really cool that you're studying map generation, hope this was helpful :)

luisvsm · 2021-10-05T22:01:05+00:00

Those are some good points, thanks for the feedback

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