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Developer Diaries


Now playing: Chapter 1 - The Beginning
Why listen to us when you can hear it from the developers themselves. Get all your burning questions answered by the team at Iron Lore. These are the guys that made the game, including all the creatures, weapons and characters you'll find throughout your adventure. Don't just sit their, feed your hungry curiosity and view a few of these in-depth and eye-opening diaries.


Developer Diary Videos (Click to play)

> Chapter 1 - The Beginning

> Chapter 2 - World Editor

> Chapter 3 - Sound & Music

> Chapter 4 - Equipment

> Chapter 5 - Skills

> Chapter 6 - The Story

> Chapter 7 - Epilogue








An Introduction to Game Development
By Marcus Hays, Engine Programmer

I'm Marcus Hays, an engine programmer at Iron Lore Entertainment. I'm going to talk a little bit about how I got into the industry and then just touch on what it was like to start out for the first time in game development.

Unfortunately, when trying to break into the game industry as a programmer you have a lot of company. The most important thing to do is to distinguish your application in some manner from the masses. You need the basics such as a CS degree or something along those lines, but I think the most important part is to be able to show that you are really passionate about programming and that you love it so much that you do it a lot outside of class. Writing a demo or small game is a great learning experience as well as a good way to get your foot in the door. Another nice thing about having a demo program to bring along on an interview is that it gives you something interesting to talk about. It's always better to be able to talk about something interesting you have done in an interview than to just be grilled on the nuances of C++ and data structures until the time is up.

Basically that is what I did to get my job. I spent several hours a day outside of class working on a simple 3d game, burned it onto a CD and sent it with my resume to quite a few game companies. I sent out a lot of resumes, got a several phone interviews, got a few in-person interviews, and then found one place which was really great and I fit into very well: Iron Lore.

The first thing I learned when I started working here is that no matter how much you think you know when you get out of school, the learning process has really just begun. I have easily learned ten times as much in the last two years working here than I did in all four years of school. That might be a small exaggeration (I've been known to make them), but that's honestly how I feel. It helped that Iron Lore was a very supportive place to start out at and the people were (and still are) really great.

In the last two years I've had the chance to write a lot of cool stuff. Things such as: sound/music systems, special effects, pathing systems, editor tools, and UI have taken up most of my time. I've also gotten a chance to work a little bit on (it seems at least) almost every other part of the game.

Game Development isn't quite the romanticized profession I had imagined. It is a real job after all. However, I still think it's the greatest job you could ever have and nothing beats actually looking forward to coming in to work in the morning.

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