I’ve been really busy over the last few days so I haven’t written anything about work but I’ve finally got the time to do so. It’s a really fantastic place to work and I’m really lucky to have gotten the position. Since Monday I’ve been reading over the Havok documentation, asking questions to some of the (very patient) guys sitting around me. Every morning just after 9am we have a teleconference with the Developer Relations team in Dublin and discuss how we’re all getting on and I’m really starting to feel like this is the sort of job for me. These guys are all different to “developers”, or at least the stereotypical (though often true) developer. That would be the hot-shot, proud, stubborn, maverick, leather-trench-coat wearing developer. I’ve met a lot of the type and they’re usually extremely intelligent and absolute experts in their field and if you give them an objective they’ll meet it with really creative and clever solutions, but to be honest I can’t stand being around them. But the guys at Havok, (the couple of developers included) are much different. Developer Relations requires not just being able to understand and produce code, but being able to communicate with clients and help them work through the problems they’re having. Obviously it’s going to be a while before I’m at a level where I’m qualified enough to interact directly with clients, but the more I learn about the role of the Developer Relations Engineer, the more I think it’s the job for me.
Working in a company that’s part of the games industry is really exciting for me. I’ve studied game programming a good bit over the last couple of years and I’m seeing all that actually being used now. In the meetings, I always get excited when I see the names of clients come up and realise “wow, I’m really involved with these people!”. And it’s worldwide! All the great games companies in the US and Europe keep popping up and that’s one of the things that really makes it real. It’s like working in a recording studio and knowing that the people around you are working with all your favourite artists and that some day you’ll be able to interact directly with those people yourself.
Another benefit of working for a company that’s part of the games industry is the fact that there are games and everyone’s into them. I’m just after registering a World of Warcraft character on a US server that some guys at work are playing on so we can play together, and after work yesterday I spend about an hour or so messing around with Rock Band with the boss and some other guys from the Dev Rel team. I got to play guitar, vocals and drums. The drums seem simple until you introduce the pedal and then it gets hard. Once I hit that pedal once I totally lose rhythm and mess up the game! Vocals was ok though and I managed to get 99% in one of the songs (granted it was on Medium) and with my Guitar Hero experience I could do well enough on the guitar, though not as well as Guy, one of the Dev Rel guys who’s helping me out with learning Havok.
Lunch is always fun and Dave, another guy who helps me out a whole lot, has been showing me around the local restaurants. We’ve gone to Quizno’s, where I had a meat-packed sandwich sub thing which was really really delicious but huge, Flame’s where I had a pretty nice burger sandwich thing, and today we went to Teriyaki Ichiban, a non-Japanese-owned Japanese restaurant around the corner, where I had a pretty good Beef Bowl (or “Gyudon” 牛丼).
Other stuff, in short:
- I found a Whole Foods on 4th yesterday and got some real bread and cereal with no sugar.
- My cable was acting weird but Karen spoke to Comcast and they came out and removed the box so now the picture’s fine, but I don’t have my fancy DVR features. They said, as I suspected, the signal is just too weak for the box to handle correctly.
- I spent a short while sitting outside the house petting Little Boy, the cat of the house, today. All I can think of is Hiroshima when I hear the name though. I wonder if that’s what he’s named after?
- Gonna get my Social Security Number sorted out in the morning on the way to work, hopefully.
I can’t believe you joined a US server!
Next thing you’ll be making a horde character.
Remember, they’re barbarians likely to chimp out at any moment.
I am sorry to learn about the problem you are experiencing with your DVR. I will be happy to offer my assistance in getting this resolved for you. Please feel free to contact me if you still need assistance on this.
Thanks in advance for giving me the opportunity to assist!
Regards,
Mark C. Comcast Executive Offices We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com
sounds great so far. That description of developers is amusingly accurate.
I impulse bought a PS3. That’s my weekend in a nutshell.
Are you joking?? That’s a lot of money for being able to play no games. Any good games on are Xbox too, and way more stable.
Yeah but it can play Blu-rays and the upcoming games are going to rock.
I don’t know what you mean by stable. Xbox 360 is loud and frequently fails.
The Xbox 360 is also a Gaijin console, which is enough to override any potential goodness in my book.
Final Fantasy XII will. And MGS4. What else? And how many Blu-rays does Niall have?
The Xbox 360 is a way less stable console in that it fails more often, but the games run more stably. The PS3 is much more difficult to develop for and because the Xbox 360 just plugs into Visual Studio and doesn’t all those PSUs to worry about, the code produced is often way more stable. Assassin’s Creed is one of a few games that had a lot of strange PS3-specific glitches.
Here’s a quote from Hagakure, telling you the importance of where you come from:
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A certain person spent several years of service in Osaka and then returned home. When he made his appearance at the local bureau, everyone was put out and he was made a laughingstock because he spoke in the Kamigata dialect. Seen in this light, when one spends a long time in ado or the Kamigata area, he had better use his native dialect even more than usual. When in a more sophisticated area it is natural that one s disposition be affected by different styles. But it is vulgar and foolish to look down upon the ways of one’s own district as being boorish, or to be even a bit open to the persuasion of the other place’s ways and to think about giving up one’s own. That one’s own district is unsophisticated and unpolished is a great treasure. Imitating another style is simply a sham.
It’s how many Blu-rays he will have. Since the defeat of the vastly inferior HD-DVD, Blu-ray’s prominence is assured.
This is the first I’ve heard of stability problems, though I haven’t played Assassins Creed. The GPU in the PS3 is a piece of junk admittedly, but the added complexity of the Cell is more than worth it for the power that can be gained from it. In fact I’d say the Cell is what’s saving the PS3 from producing inferior graphics to the Xbox 360, as alot of stuff that the GPU usually handles has been offloaded to it.
The developers will whinge, but in the end they’ll get good at coding for the Cell just as they did with the Emotion Engine in the PS2. The PS3 will win in the end I think, and I mean by that it’ll sell more than the Xbox 360 and the Wii. It’s the only console built for the long run. The Wii will lose because almost every game for it is Shovelware, and everyday that passes more people get HD TV’s and the expected standard for games rises. The fad will also die and I think there will be a backlash against the system. The Xbox 360 can’t win, because it has already lost in Japan and even in Europe the system is too American to succeed in the end. And by American I mean the vast majority of games on it are build to appeal to an American market.
As for the thing about where you come from, I strongly disagree. To hell with the place, a dump’s a dump. A dump I’m more than willing to disown.
Mario Kart for Wii rocks!
And the Wii actually has games and tons more in the pipeline. Can’t wait for Smash Brothers.
Your PS3 went to the Castle Age too quickly and has ruined its capacity for building an army of games.
As well as that I just don’t see Bluray taking over from DVDs.
I’ll hold you to that last point.
I spent hours yesterday playing Resistance, it’s brilliant! The run-in-all-guns-blazing speed of it is very UT and I suits me perfectly.
I have 2 Blu-Rays but any movie I buy from now on will be Blu-Ray so won’t be long before I have more.
In any case it’s not like I chose the PS3 over the 360, I have both! I always said I’d get a PS3 when I could afford it and I had the money. Only €399!