Would this online course be worth it?

actuallylike

How do,

I've been trying for the last while to create an angle to get into game development. My background is engineering so I wanted to apply the things that I was best at from that (coding, maths, physics, 3d modelling) into something and game development seemed like the ideal path. Now after much research I was advised that only indie developers really need a grasp on everything above and I should focus on one thing. Coding was what I settled on. Unfortunately I used VB mainly (not too applicable in this field) so I've spent the last while going through C++ from scratch. I've got a good handle on it now (up to inheritance and everything that comes before that), able to create basic programs but confident in what's going on. Looked at examples of Tetris, Pong, etc. in C++ and it's becoming very clear to me. Hoping to have a completed game of my own maybe by Christmas to send out to studios.

Now, I heard that a portfolio of games trumps any CV but I would still like something relevant on it. The only development thing on it is a year of QA testing for a software product last year. I want something that I could do quickly just so I could print it a top of the CV, no matter how short. The course below looks pretty good. Mainly though I think it would be good to learn some of the things that's in it. Learning by myself has lacked the direction you get in university/school. So what does anyone think? Waste of time/money? I've googled reviews of the course giver and can't find anything good or bad.

http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/cgame2.html

Kilgore__Trout

Hello there,

Hard to say without having done the course, but it does cover a lot of the fundamentals. I guess it boils down to how happy you are to pay $240 to learn these skills.

There may well be tutorials covering these topic for free.

Depending on what you are hoping to get out of it, it might be worth looking into using an existing game engine, as a lot of functions (such as physics, collisions, particle effects) will already be built in and well optimized.

Daawaa

Maybe check out these sites:

www.udacity.com
www.coursera.org

They offer free courses in somewhat related areas from acknowldged universities around the world. AFAIK if you successfully complete certain courses you can apply for official credits (maybe have a read of this https://www.coursera.org/signature/college-credit-guidebook)

DesperateDan

Na screw that man, anything you can learn about programming for games can be done for free or much cheaper. A little qualification like that won't be worth anything to a potential employer. If I was going to go down the route of learning quickly with a "qualification", I'd start with the most esteemed college sites in the world, Berkeley, MIT, Harvard and the University of Texas (home of C++ and Stroustrup) are releasing free courses in programming and graphics rendering often

Google around and I'm sure there's plenty of other free and useful learning resources out there. At the end of the day a tangible game demonstrating your coding ability is much more important than anything

actuallylike

Cheers for the replies. I'd saved up a little money and wanted to put it to good use. I guess the advice I receive over and over again is right though, a demonstration is better than any CV, I'll keep plugging away at that and save my money for something more worthwhile. I'll also check out the free courses and see what I can get out of them. Thanks again.

gizmo

Demonstrations. Plural.

Also remember to keep your demos focused. If you want to be a gameplay programmer, then make sure your demos are geared toward showing off different gameplay mechanics. Graphics your thing? Hit DirectX 11 / OpenGL and hit it hard. See yourself as an engines or tools guy? Then start putting together your own engine and building it up by degrees.

Obviously as a newbie to the industry you won't be expected to have a laser focus on one particular area but a fairly clear direction always helps.

There are also plenty of great books that will help you along your way from general game-orientated engineering books to engine books and graphics books. Examples like these won't teach you how to code but they'll give you some great insight into some of the different areas of development.

Oh yea, and don't forget a decent maths book.