I am currently in a small team and we are working on a unity game, But I am looking at colleges as that is coming up for me very soon, and I have pretty much been sold that I want to be a Level Designer. The only courses I can find are for game design, and then It just says that it is coordinating a team and writing design documents. I love to make maps for games and I love to place stuff in the world, work in the editor ETC, but is there a special degree I need for level design? Does it fall under game design?
Level Designer is usually the entry level design job before moving up to have responsibility for the entire game. I don’t know if game design courses cover level design because I’ve never worked with a games designer who had a games design degree. They all came via other routes, such as moving across from art or code, or are from the modding community.
I like programming but can anybody tell me what its like to be a full time programmer? I mean I can make good but basic stuff in unity, nothing very complex at all, but if I were to go to school for programming and go into a full time job for it, does anyone have any experiences that they can share?
I imagine it is very hard and you are ripping your hair out all day because of compile errors, but it can’t be that bad becuase people do programming and they love it. Just want to see what actual programmers say about how the job is.
for me game design would be the highlevel concepts, level design would be the implementation of these concepts.
For example:
Gamedesign: 2d physics based game in which the player shoots birds from a slingshot to destroy pigs and surrounding environment.
List of different types of birds, pigs, construction elements that the game would have. etc.
Level design: well, build 100s of levels from these elements (by placing different building blocks, pigs, deciding on what birds to give the player, make sure level is not too easy but still possible, etc.)
So, for me, they are definitely not the same thing. Level disign is a lot more tedious and laborious task if you ask me. I don’t see what classes you can take to teach you level design though… The courses will probably focus on game design like you said. You don’t need a degree for level design, you need practice.
You have to like programming to do it. I worked as programmer for the past year. I went to school for Computer Science and thought it would cover more than programming, but the majority of what I learned was programming. I didn’t like it at first, but after 6 years (4 in college and 2 years in high school) I have grown found of it. I wouldn’t mind doing it full time, it’s just a matter of training your brain to think like a programmer. You have to be able to abstract real world data and convert it into what the computer can handle. This is the fun part for me. I love thinking of creative ways to represent and manipulate the data I need to process. Currently I am working on coding a gun script and accompanying magazine(“clip”) script that the gun will use for my Unity game. In this process its making me think about how to abstract the data for efficiency and deal with bullets and how all the objects will interact. Its great fun, for me anyway :).
Game programming, that’s not like Unity scripting, I imagine is terribly difficult and not something I would want to do. Lot’s of math for rendering and physics which I would not want to touch. AI is complicated as well. I don’t mind programming applications or what Unity requires of me.
Oh, and yes, you learn how to debug being a programmer. If you are good at programming you will make lot’s of errors when you are just starting. Why is that good? Because then you learn where all the common errors occur and makes for fast debugging once you are experienced at it.
A level designer is just that - someone who designs levels. Often the duties will include creating the level layout, scripting events and setting the level up using assets created by the art team. Sometimes lighting the level, sometimes making art assets for it.
Game designer is a rarer job and will likely be responsible for slightly higher level things - things which affect gameplay. Character movement, interaction mechanics, balancing, etc.
The exact title and duties of these roles change from studio to studio - some may not even have one position that covers these roles and some may have even more specific roles (like a dedicated lighting artist, for example).
A game design course will likely cover level design in some way, but it’s unlikely to focus on it.
In responseto your programming question - most studios that are medium-large in size will have dedicated programmers for certain roles. Network programmer, physics programmer, tools programmer, graphics programmer, AI programmer, etc…
If you’re only at intermediate Unityscript level, I wouldn’t look into serious programming unless you’ve a lot of love for doing it. It’s a very deep, twisty rabbit hole
Before i started unityscript I have learned the basics of lots of languages and I have a pretty good understanding of programming in general.
I know it is a very rigorous thing, and it can get very very complicated at times, But I am pretty heart set on doing it.
You should work programming or scripting into whatever regimen you take. Take programming as your elective courses or something. You will always have a leg up on people that have no programming experience, no matter where you go in the gaming industry. Its a technology driven business, and if you know your way around some Lua/XML/SQL/C#/JS/Whathaveyou, you’ll always be a tiny bit better than the guy who will have a meltdown when he sets his eyes on the squirly brackets.
Even level design implies a bit of “programming” or “scripting” nowadays. Rarely will your job as a level designer ever be just placing objects around on a map. You will be using unity-like editors that require at least some technical knowledge. You’ll also be likely working with game scripts like triggers or be inputting data into some kind of DB. You’ll need to communicate effectively with the programmers and communicate to them the features you need in the tools you’ll be using.
In my eyes, someone who knows a bit of programming is just going to be more effective at their job – no matter what that job is – than someone who doesn’t. In our day and age, I don’t think programming (or atleast high level scripting) is just in the domain of “programmers,” but its way more of a general concept. I feel like in 10 years, knowing how to program is going to be like knowing how to use a spreadsheet or word processing software – an absolute must for any sort of job that doesn’t involve flipping burgers or digging trenches.
To add, I sort of agree with Reahreic. Schools like ITT and Full Sail market very heavily to attract students. Atleast in the United States, there have been many cases of downright unethical behavior by these private for-profit organizations. I know a former counselor from the University of Phoenix that basically quit her job because she felt like she was lying to prospective students. Their compensation model is also truly scary – commission based counseling… eeek. They also work very aggressively with both the federal government and private lenders to get you loans – which is NOT a good thing. You will be in a fair amount of debt by the time you graduate.
Furthermore, many of these ‘game specific’ degrees have only popped up in the last 5-10 years. Most of the guys in the industry never got these degrees and come from more ‘traditional’ backgrounds. I’d stick to a state school and get a nice CIS/CSE degree. It’ll pay the bills and then some, I’ll tell you that.
There is no such thing as ‘game programming’ as much as there is such a thing like ‘space shuttle programming,’ ‘sex toy programming’ or ‘ATM programming.’ Game specific programming, I believe, is mostly marketing hype. Hell, I started out as an electrical engineer by programming hardware and MATLAB. Now I work as a full time backend/database developer.
Its hard to advise someone over the Internet, but I also think so many people have been getting piss-poor advice from their counselors in highschools and colleges. I had several friends who were basically told ‘study what you like in college, and you’ll get a good job when you graduate!!’ so they went out and got degrees in such fields as political science and philosophy, only to find out that not many companies need philosophers. Now they feel like they’re behind – many of them ended up going back to school to get more practical degrees, or had to work their way up.
I would think your best bet is to get a degree in CIS (if you are scared of math) or CSE (usually the ‘tougher’ choice) from a state college. You may later find out that video game programming is really not what you want. After speaking to a lot of people working for major publishers, I basically came to the conclusion that it wasn’t for me and the only way I’d ever be “in the industry” was through independently publishing something. Luckily, the choice of my career provided me with the knowledge and flexibility needed to pursue something on my own.
I started on my local community college taking computer science which gets me a associates degree in about 2 years. Ill be wrapping up this year and be ready to transfer to a 4 year university for another 2 years to get my bachelors.
Ive been told by many people, including my professors and even students of full sail type places that this is the way to go.
With my financial aid i actually end up getting paid to go to school. My financial aid checks cover my whole tuition, books and leave me anywhere from 700-1400 (depending on what im doing that semester) to do what i please with. Most i put into new software, or hardware.
Of course everyones experience is gonna be different (especially when it comes to financial aid) but im very happy i choose to go this route instead of a itt or full sail type school.
I am really not sure, I will probably learn more about the whole college thing as I go on with high school, But I know that I want to make games, and i’m pretty sure I want to be a programmer.
See all the job openings for “Software Engineers?” They mean it. Colleges like Full Sail simply do not have the accreditation or staff to pump out ‘engineers’ by any stretch of the imagination. That is just the cold truth.
To summarize: If you want to be a level/game/mechanics designer, you can probably get by with something from Full Sail. Still, you will want to take any programming courses you can in order to be worth more to your future employers. If you want to be a programmer (engine, network, database, etc), then its CIS/CSE at a 4-year, non-online campus.
You do realize that (unless this is a grant), you have to pay this back, right? This does not mean that you are “getting paid to go to school”, this means that once you are finished with school you are now saddled with huge amounts of debt to pay back, whether you are working in the industry or not.
