Of all the tools and languages we discussed with members of the videogame industry while putting this feature together – including indie developers, course leaders and studio managers – nearly everyone mentioned C++. The object-oriented programming language is ubiquitous and continues to underpin the game industry, despite a broadening range of available platforms and development environments that compile code on your behalf and are lowering the barrier to entry.
Most studios will expect a strong knowledge of C++ from programmer candidates, backed up by a good grasp of maths, and will want to see examples of work you’ve created in your own time. But in an increasingly diverse industry, C++ is not the be all and end all of professional development, nor should it necessarily be your primary focus when looking for a route into the industry.
“Naturally, of course, we are looking for a talent that knows the platforms that are most important for us,” says Karl Magnus Troedsson, vice president and general manager of DICE. “But if you have a really good candidate that perhaps knows another language or tool, as long as they have the right commitment, engagement and everything else and they are as good as everyone wants them to be [then] they shouldn’t have a big problem learning another platform.”
One of the easiest first steps into game creation, GameMaker 8.1 is an IDE (integrated development environment) application published by YoYo Games that allows users to build their projects through a drag-and-drop interface without needing to write any code. Available for PC and Mac, the software costs just $39.99 ($99 for the HTML5 version). With little prior coding experience, it was the ideal choice for Gunpoint creator Tom Francis.
“I heard that it was easy to use, but assumed it was just for making throwaway stuff that wouldn’t be any good,” he says of his decision to use YoYo Games’ tool. “But then I heard that Spelunky – one of my favourite games ever – was made using it, and I figured that if you can make something that good in GameMaker then there was no reason not to be using it.”
From left to right: DICE general manager Karl Magnus Troedsson, Gunpoint creator Tom Francis and Unity Technologies CEO David Helgasson
GameMaker includes its own language, called GML, which offers a simple way to get your hands dirty when you’re ready to graduate from drag-and-drop menus. “There are two ways of doing everything,” Francis adds. “As your project increases in complexity and you start to nail down exactly what you want to do with it, that’s when you start to learn code, which means there is no big barrier to getting into it.”
Similarly intent on easing the process of learning to code is Unity Technologies, whose freely available development platform, Unity, combines a powerful engine and editing tools, and enables easy publishing to the web, consoles, iOS, Android, PC, Mac, Flash and even Chrome’s Native Client. It’s a tool that’s in wide use across the industry, and one that most higher education courses now include in their curriculum.
“Unity levels the playing field between small and large developers,” says Unity Technologies CEO David Helgason. “It provides tools that would typically be cost-prohibitive to many studios, and helps both indie developers and veteran designers to radically reduce the time and effort of making games.” It’s worth noting, too, that Unity’s Asset Store not only provides community-built plugins for the platform, but also offers a potential revenue stream to those who augment Unity, or simply provide models or graphics for other users to place in their games.
Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, now on its third version, is one of the most widely used thirdparty engines on the market, powering Gears Of War, Mass Effect and BioShock to name just three examples. While rarely named as a requirement, prior experience of the engine will count as a huge plus at interview time. While a fully licenced version of UE3 is an expensive proposition, the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) offers the exact same feature set at no cost, simply removing access to the C++ source code.
“UDK offers access to a professional game development engine for anyone wanting to start games development, or even anyone curious about how it is done,” says Epic EU territory manager Mike Gamble. “We have 1.4 million users worldwide, so there’s a fantastic community ready to help out and offer advice to budding game developers.”
Autodesk senior product marketing manager Greg Castle (left) and Epic Games European territory manager Mike Gamble
Most of your project can be written in UnrealScript, a proprietary object-oriented scripting language, while a commercial UDK licence costs $99 if you do decide to publish. Unless you earn over £50,000, Epic won’t ask for royalties, either.
For budding artists, Autodesk provides a range of middleware, development tools and art creation software – most notably Maya and 3DS Max, two industry-leading products for modelling and animation. The full art creation range is rounded out by Softimage, MotionBuilder, Mudbox and SketchBook Designer.
Both Maya and 3DS Max came up in our discussions with developers and lecturers as often as C++, and both are mainstay elements in the majority of art-focused degrees. Students are able to download their own free three-year licences for Autodesk’s products from the company’s education community – which boasts over four million members – at students.autodesk.com.
“Both our art creation software and Gameware products are widely adopted across the industry,” says Autodesk Gameware senior product marketing manager Greg Castle, “so newcomers to the industry can expect knowledge of Autodesk products to be an asset when they are looking for their first job.”
There are many more programs and technologies used in game development, of course. And, as audience demographics shift, that list continues to grow. Web technologies such as Django, PHP and HTML5 are all becoming increasingly relevant, along with scripting engines such as Python, and it’s also worth being familiar with established standards such as DirectX and OpenGL. And then there’s a whole host of freely available engines – such as CryEngine – and modding tools with which to demonstrate your abilities.
Whichever technologies you choose, though, the consistent message that came back from those we spoke to is that the best thing you can do is get really good at using a small number of them. If you can demonstrate excellence with any tool, you’re off to a flying start.