What i need to become a game designer!

i saw another post asking how to become a web designer so i was wondering how you become a GAME DESIGNER!! liek a person who makes counter strike and stuff from like blizzard entertainment and stuff like that!!

so i was wondering what programs you needa know and everything i know its real hard and everything (i think)…?! yea so anyways that was my question thx

Well I know that models for some games such as Hitman2, Splinter Cell, Neverwinter Nights, GTA 3, etc are made by 3D Studio MAX! So that’s a good program to know…(-:
And also! You should know a bit Milkshape 3d!
Well these are for making models!
I don’t know much about making games… :-:nerd:

I’ve doen some extensive research on this because I “infact” want to become a video game designer…

-=- Coding -=-

If you would like a company to notice you…They suggest one of the 3 things…

  1. Go to college for computer engineering or programming… 4 years… And get your names around with a resume thta has a “slip” of paper to go with it.

  2. Create a cool looking mod… Mod’s like Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat get game industries attention and they think… Wlel if these guys can do that… What else can he do… And for whom? Us? Getting on a mod team is a sure fire way to gte to the top without going to college…

  3. Great Portfolio… Create an excellent portfolio… Now the game doesn’t have to be an artistic mass or greatness… It only has to show that you “as the coder” know what the hell you are doing…

The one thing they look for in a coder is passion… It’s that passion that drives a coder to program an extre 5 hours in a night to fix one small bug…

-=- Graphical Arts -=-

They highly suggest a great portfolio of artwork to get through this one… College isn’t totally necesary but is suggested… Just create a massive portfolio of excellent stuff and have them look through it.

-=- Level Editting -=-

One of the easiest ways to gte in the gaming industry is to go through level editting… No college is necesary… Just a lot of stuff in your portfolio… Lots of good work that you have done in StarCraft or Half-Life.

Those are the 3 main areas of game developers… Their salary sets…

Coder : $60,000 - 120,000 / year
Artist : $35,000 - 75,000 / year
Leveler : $15,000 - 40,000 / year

So as you see… The money award is extremely beneficial… but the long hours you work help to increase that yearly salary eh?

If you wanna know more about a certain area of the 3… Just reply with the area you wanna hear about.

Peace Out

Ohh… programs to have… lol

-=- Coding -=-

Visual C++
C and C#
Visual BASIC
Borland’s C++
NotePAD (laugh if you must… but it’s highly used)
(and a good knowledge of networking helps as well)

-=- Graphical Arts -=-

Adobe Photoshop

  • Photoshop Plug-Ins
    – Eye Candy
    – Kai’s Power Tools
    – Xenofex
    Paintshop Pro
    3D Studio Max
    Milkshape 3D

-=- Level Editting -=-

Umm I forget what that prohgram is claled…

BUILD but… Worldbuilder or somehting like that…

Hope this helps out man.

*Originally posted by playamarz *
**

  1. Go to college for computer engineering or programming… 4 years… And get your names around with a resume thta has
    The one thing they look for in a coder is passion… It’s that passion that drives a coder to program an extre 5 hours in a night to fix one small bug…

**

Passion…yea good word…or determination…faling asleep at/on the keyboard/computer desk is okay as long as the problem as been solved…IT MUST BE SOLVED…or there is no sleep :sleep: :sleep: i know many people who would nod their heads in agreement with you playa…then they just might fall asleep in mid nod

er… maya 4.5 is actually becoming more and more popular… its been used in most of the new movies and games… more people are moving to it basically because its available for windows, mac and linux… i’d say you browse their gallery… it has some kick-*** animations=)

starbreeze is a big game production company and they had on their website (starbreeze.com <–designed by FI) what kinda experience you need to work for them… all the job openings needed knowledge of C++… their site is currently under reconstruction… :crazy:

cheers
:A+:

I learned Pascal, COBOL, C, C++, Visual Basic, Java and assembly language while I was doing my A-Levels and my degree, as originally I wanted to get into games. There was even a couple of modules at my old University where they taught you Yaroze - PlayStation programming. But that was in England obviously. :slight_smile:

umm… I think you guys scared him off.

Well C++ scared me. :slight_smile:

yes it did actually but the pays look pretty nice :slight_smile: espcially the coding salary :stuck_out_tongue:

although they look pretty tough but i’ll see if i can work on them thx for all the replies by the way :slight_smile:

oh by the way, whats the easiest way to start learning the coding stuff? i know theres not easy way but is there an EASIER way apart from reading books and stuff?! cause i have no clue where to start…

and if i dotnm’ like the coding, i’ll move on to the graphics :slight_smile: (i’m still young, i think…!?)

Playa Marz gave some excellent advice. BUt another big thing you have to have is creativity and the ability to feel your audience. I know that sounds weird but at my job sometimes I do case studies and everygame has a ideal user and you have to appeal to that. I dont think they can teach that in college. This with the other stuff mentioned here will get u in

Yeah… Good points added…

Basically… If you wanna get into it… I’d do what I did… it was the easiest and everything seemed to flal in order then…

  1. HTML - Started with this basic programming interface… But I only used Notepad… No website builders… This will get you started on grouping things and putting theories into place…

  2. DHTML - Throwing up a little dynamic HTML… This will touch in some basic javascripting and add stylesheets to the mix with it…

  3. JavaScript - Those of you who know C++ will agree that JavaScript uses a syntax similar to C++… Therefore I’d suggest learning JavaScript to gte you use to if’s and while sand stuff like that…

  4. PHP - Adds depth to JavaScripting I think… And adds more reaction to it I believe…

  5. C++ - Try it out now… Get Borland’s C++ (newest version) and start looking through books and stuff learning… The syntaxes will be basic and you should be able to carry out some of the ideas you had on the other languages to get you use to this…

I hope this list helped you out… but yes… PASSION… COmputer Programming is PASSION in it’s solid form… It’s just incredible what you have to do sometimes… I know already… I’ve spent countless hours lurking over a computer screen trying to figure out what my 10,000 lines of code is screwing up with… hehehe…

Peace Guys