Go your own way

The best advice and sites for those wanting to get into the games industry.

Every time we've spoken about how one goes about getting employment in the games development industry, we've mentioned that experience, initiative and a demonstrated ability to not only be creative - any old silly sausage can come up with an idea for a game - but to realise one's creative thoughts are jsut as important, if not more important, as a qualification. To be sure, almost all institutes that offer games development courses have a couple of group projects that see students develop a working game, but such projects are mandatory. Having worked on something in your own time simply because you wanted to is one of the best demonstrations of enthusiasm there is.

Developing a work of entertainment, though - whether it's a standalone game or a modification for an existing, commercial title - is difficult. That's why, when we've discussed this issue in the past, we've emphasised how important it is to keep your project simple. There's no point drafting a design document for an epic adventure game if you're not capable of developing such a thing. Developers don't expect you to have developed a Crysis-style first person shooter on your weekends while you were studying at QANTM.

If you're already at TAFE or university, some great resources for helping you teach yourself the mechanics of games development can be found in the campus library. Thomson Learning (www.thomsonlearning.co.uk) has published a series of books covering everything from game design fundamentals to artificial intelligence. There are plenty of brilliant books available. Even if your library doesn't stock a particular title you've heard about, there is an inter-library loan system, allowing students of Monash University, say, to access the catalogue of RMIT University.

One of the best places to find information is, naturally, the internet. But where to go? The internet makes every person a publisher, but the problem with that is 99 per cent of folks don't publish anything of worth. A lot of websites purporting to be helpful are crap. Here are some websites that aren't crap.

Garage Games
http://www.garagegames.com/
There's no way we could've excluded Garage Games from this line-up. Garage Games is not only where you to go acquire the Torque Engine, popular with amateur developers for its affordability and accessibility, but to socialise with like-minded geeks. There are forum sections dedicated to the discussion of, among other topics. DirectX, developing for Linux, sound effects, animation and hardware issues. There's a ‘marketplace' in which skilled individuals can seek out existing projects that require extra hands and recruit help for their own projects. A considerable chunk of the forum is focused on the Torque Engine, of course. Handy if you're considering using it for a standalone game. Garage Games also features an extensive catalogue of tutorials that have been penned by community members. The community rates tutorials out of five, so it's easy to see without evening opening a particular tutorial if it's going to be worth your time.

3D Buzz
http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/sv_home.php
3D Buzz is another site we just had to include. It's been around for years and has always been held in high esteem. Some may remember that the collector's edition of Unreal Tournament 2004 came complete with a number of 3D Buzz's video training modules - Epic's way of encouraging the game's fan base to develop massive amounts of custom content. 3D Buzz's videos cover a wide variety of topics, from UnrealEd to 3ds Max, Delphi to Photoshop. They also produce boxed sets of videos relating to specific topics - XNA, for instance - that you can order and have shipped to you. The box sets aren't cheap, but again, 3D Buzz is known for the quality of their work. The site features a considerable number of free samples, so you'll have a good idea of what you're getting before you punch in your credit card number.

10 Steps to Great Game Design
www.xyzzynews.com/xyzzy.1e.html
This is an article. A single, short but very good article that is essential reading for anyone looking at designing and developing their own game. It's old, too - you'll have a serious nostalgia trip as author CE Forman talks about the Zork series and acquiring text-based adventure games by FTP. The article sort of assumes you're developing a text-based adventure, even, but most of Forman's ten points are still relevant to the developers of the next big first person shooter.