Evilsmevil

Although it's easy to jump to the conclusion that these are firings due to the poor sales of ID titles, (remember that although RAGE is the last title ID released they have proven very successful at monetizing their back catalog) if you look at the wording of the press release it states that the layoffs were part of a standard business practice to ensure that they have the right kind of workforce. This could as much mean that they getting rid of the dead weight (read: bad) developers as that they need less people because they can't afford to pay everyone. They then go on to say that they are looking for qualified developers which would make perfect sense if they were trying to replace poor performers people rather than downsize. Firing people and hiring others as a means of reducing payroll spending isn't unheard of (you can start the new guys off on a lower salary) but frequently it's far more likely that a company would instigate a hiring freeze at the same time that they proceed with 'rightsizing'

Professor Layton

I think I've got it!

@BulletproofMonk said:

I loved everything about the demo. The controls felt good, it looked absolutely gorgeous and the music was catchy as hell. Definitely buying this at some point.

The music gets better and better. When you get underwater the music turns into these melancholic Gregorian chants which perfectly compliments the flowing nature of those levels. Also the Bonus pick up ditty when all the elums are worth 2x has been rattling around my head for the past two days - I want that thing as my ringtone.

@Fobwashed: Haha well you had something interesting to say so I thought I would chip in!

I think that jumping right into the deep end and succeeding like you seem to be is an incredible achievement! Most people would probably get overwhelmed and it might put them off so I would still suggest starting small and working your way up (you will always learn something that will make your next project go more smoothly) but what you're doing seems to be working for you and I wish you all the best!

You're right about people joining and then leaving projects after a short amount of time. Especially in the indie scene it's common for people to bail when the going gets tough (to be fair most of the time people aren't getting paid so I don't blame them) but even if they only contribute a small amount it's still something you can use in some way or at the very least learn something about. I absolutely agree with your point about being organised, people think they will remember everything that they wrote without documentation and clear commenting but coming back to a piece of undocumented code after only a couple of days will still leave me scratching my head if it's not well structured/meticulously commented. Also a great tip I learned about commenting - Your comment should say why it's doing something not what it's doing. it's usually pretty self evident what a particular call is doing but when you come back to it in a month you might not remember why you did something that way (I often put a reason I took a particular approach, esp if it's to work around a bug or quirk in the design) - I also keep a google document with a list of features and tasks (both things I've yet to do and things I've recently completed) that helps me remember what the hell I was doing if I don't get any work done on a project for a few weeks.

Also as for the copy and paste stuff. If you find a snippet that works but you don't understand it, don't worry about it. you can figure out whats going on later (or ask someone else to explain it to you on the xna message boards or something). Learning to pick suitable code to re-use is an incredibly good skill as it teaches how to find the key functional elements in a program and extract them (this can be alot harder than it sounds with large code-bases)

I work in the industry and I agree with almost everything you've said. The only things i would add are. 1. Don't be afraid to copy and paste other people's stuff, it's one of the fastest and best ways of learning new tricks (and remembering old ones!). 2. Once you have the basics down don't jump into coding that open world online rpg that you've always dreamed of. You will never get anywhere close to getting anything you can show anyone. Try and think of something really simple that you think might be fun to play or get working, then make it even simpler. Then make it even simpler again. You will find as you go that even that super simple concept has a bunch of subtleties that are harder to get working than you thought! The first game I made was a game where you had to jump fences that came at you faster and faster. Took about 10 times longer than I thought it would... Also look into game engines that already exist such as unity and udk. They often have a much lower barrier to entry than things like xna and they let you get to the interesting stuff faster (personally I prefer unity as it allows you to learn c# at the same time and had a very friendly and helpful community) Also, try and find a friend or two to make a game with, it's much more fun working as a team and you can keep each other motivated when the going gets tough!