Anybody here got any experience with doing iphone apps? Currently messing around with xcode and i want to do a traffic light app where everytime the user clicks the run button it cycles through from Red to Green and then when the click run it cycles from green to yellow and when they click it again it cycles from yellow to red. Trying to figure out how to start this up.
My iphone experience has been with Unity engine, it takes c#/jave code and converts it to xcode for you. This has the added advantage of your program working for the computer and android devices as well. I got VERY little objective-c experience while I was working on it(and I hope it stays that way forever, objective-c looked SUPER ugly). Iāve also heard good things about cocoās 2d for 2d iphone developement.
nice. Need to try that.
I believe unity has a base version that is free, but you get most functionality you could possibly need in the base version, it was pretty rare when I was researching stuff to find anything that said āpro version onlyā.
edit: and literally the only thing I had to change to make the iphone game work on android was the asset loading method, and even then only because I was doing something in a weird way.
Man, I forgot you can use Unity to make iOS games. I needed a way to make an iPhone version of the game Iām working on. As an added bonus, Iām currently using XNA to make my game, so converting it shouldnāt be a headache.
50K huh. Where I live(ATL) they starts usually around 40K entry for computer programming.
Of course the area of cost of living I heard was a bit on the low end around here. I hear from friends.
I still on my first job tho. Going well. I got hired off a phone interview but it was quite an intensive phone interview with multiple ppl on the phone. Good stuff. Had good grades and explain my answers in thorough and detailed fashion.
Are your college class mates working for startups making less, or making a LOT more?
less, but advancement opportunities are much more readily available. Also they tend to give out stock for startup companies because itās essentially worthless unless they succeed in which case they donāt care about paying you with it, which can make you a ton of money.
Ok, yeah thatās what I thought.
40-50k, have you guys thought about changing location? Like Austin is SUPER hot right now for software engineers. I donāt know any entry level dudes, but I know that an engineer with a year of current experience can ask for 70-75 and get it. Thereās a really high demand right now, like even just on austin.craiglist.org there are dozen solid leads every day.
Whats the cost of living like out there?
Right now my company just got bought by IBM, so as of April 1st Iāll be officially an IBMer, unless I leave before then. Iām waiting to see what the situation is going to be like. I currently work from home for a bay area company (Iām in so cal) since they shut down our office after buying us out. Should be interesting to see, they should pay pretty well, not to mention they have some cool policies (3 weeks vacation a year you have to use, so they want you to take it, and no sick time. your sick time is an on your honor thing)
Also this saturday me and my friend (ex coworker who left after the whole shit of them closing our office down) are doing a saturday all day programming fest, with the goal of making an Android game. Both our goals is to be able to land a job or make a living off the game industry somehow
Last time I looked into it the cost of living is about 30% less. I have a lot of friends whoāve recently moved from so cal and they say the big thing is housing costs in Austin are a fraction what it costs down there. IBM has a huge plant out here too, you could prolly transfer easily now that you work for them. I have a buddy who is a software lead out there I can hit up if youāre ever interested.
There is a pretty big game industry presence out here too, but itās kinda crappy. They donāt pay as much as everyone else and very insular, usually they only want to poach employees from each other rather than hire from outside the industry. Game jobs are 100% networking, I have a bunch of games published on the XBLIG service and even that isnāt enough to get a foot in the door, indie exp ādoesnāt countā.
Making indie games is super fun though, I highly recommend it for anyone. Good luck with your android game!
Most game jams are 2-3 daysā¦Iād shoot for that instead of one day. Speaking of game jams, I recently completed another one. Overall, Iām happy with the game, but I wish I had more time to eliminate that one bug where the cash doesnāt accumulate after each round. One piece of advice I can offer to anyone who does a game jam is to approach these games as *prototypes, *and nothing more. With the amount of time you have to make these games, thereās no time for polish/lots of features.
My internship begins in two monthsā¦Iāve made my choices for potential hosts: XMG Studio, Ubisoft Toronto, and Capybara Games. Iām hoping I end up with the latter.
Average Texas house: $263k - $322k, California, only listed as $410k and up. I lol at $410k because thatās like the cheapest of cheap shit unless you live far away from a big city, which means you probably wouldnāt be able to work as an engineer. Itās bullshit. When I think of a reasonably priced house in Santa Cruz where I live, $700k+ for a house worth staying in, maybe $600k in a not so quiet neighborhood. And then over the hill in Silicon Valley, also complete bullshit. $650k in the middle of suburbia, houses to your left and your right, strip mall down the street? At least in Santa Cruz you have nature behind you, but in the valley, youāre in between freeways. Also, $650k plus the cost of living. Water heaters more expensive, food more expensive, electricity, and the pay difference does not cover the cost of living difference.
50k is pretty good for ATL, but itās not all that impressive. I would say ATL cost of living is pretty low, depending on where you choose to live. If youāre going to stay on the East Side, then youāll find places to rent 600-800 a month, and those are decent places. However in the Buckhead area places can cost 800-1200 dollars a month. In midtown Iām seen some apartments for rent that are something like $1800-$2200 a month. In any case, $50k is low end for a development job, but after a few years of experience, you should be able to turn it into 6 figures. I myself am not a developer, but a System Analyst, so it would be harder for me to reach 100k. Pretty easy as a developer though.
I wouldnāt suggest working for a startup either. I use to think it was a good idea, but startups have a lot of issues. For one, they promote the āgunslingerā mentality. IF something is broke you just fix it. I know that sounds good, but itās not. You need to plan better fixes, and put some sort of process in place. Smaller companies donāt seem as concerned by that, and just do what they can to get by. Smaller companies sometimes have a goal of getting big a fast as possible, so they have no real system in place, they just rush through deadlines, and put half ass products on the market. Another big issue with smaller companies is that they donāt document their work. Iāve seen countless big companies actually develope large systems and software, and documentation is nowhere to be found. They pretty much base things on the strength that founding members will stick around (which they rarely do). So you have new people coming in trying to figure out what the fuck the previous developer was trying to do. Quality control? Non-existent. Things seem to rarely if ever get QAād, and they donāt hire qualified QA staff. Just some meak 20 year old who just email charts with stats everyday.
In startups itās very easy to pick up bad habits. I think itās the best place to go later in your career, as opposed to earlier.
Iām in seattle, 10 minute bus ride away from my job(the stop is literally right outside my house too and brings me right next to work) in a good sized 3 man duplex, 1450 a month with all utilities but electricity included. Iāve always found it strange that texas was actually a pretty decent hub for gaming jobs, I definitely applied to a few companies out there when going for my first job.
Game jams/prototyping is a fun excersize, I think the coolest thing Iāve done is prototype a platformer with the mechanic you make the platforms yourself. You could wall jump and wall slide, holding left click created an immobile horizontal platform at the mouse point(releasing destroyed it), right click for vertical. Made a simple level which is just a room of spikes with a small starting platform and you had to catch a gem that would teleport every three seconds. It took me about 7 hours to get directx, direct input, and writing my own physics engine to put it together. Itās great to do stuff like that because you can figure out in a day whether or not a mechanic is fun or needs work or just wonāt work.
startups are awesome. working for one was one of the happiest times of my life. we got acquired by nokia and a few years later they laid everybody off. ever since then iāve worked for big companies and they are fucking soul-less pieces of shit. do a startup while you are young and have no financial obligations. sure youāll get paid less, but youāll learn a helluva lot more. since youāre on a small team youāll have a shit ton of responsibility. while at the startup i did everything from front end, back end, web services, and everything in between. I got to touch the entire code base. Its really served me well ever since.
Once you are older, its much harder to take risks such as working for a startup so do it young.
thatās my two cents
Iāve had nothing but good experience working in the game industry so far, my company isnāt huge but itās not small either(weāve got multiple floors with double digit people and are working on several projects with big publishers etcā¦). Itās been very fun and I enjoy the work environment a lot, and my team has been largely devoid of horrible crunch times, I have worked a couple weekends, 14+ days of work with no break is crappy.
I totally agree with fishjie, Iāve gone from a small startup to a medium sized company and soon to be a behemoth company, and I really miss the old days. I learned so much more, never got pidgeonholed, never felt bored with what I was doing, and best of all your contributions actually matter. You feel like you have a hand in the final product, a say, and you cared that much more to get it done. Now? Hardly the same feeling, and I havent even been swallowed by IBM yet. And sadly I wonāt be reloacting anywhere, I have a wife who teaches and a small son with lots of family around. We want to go to Seattle but thatās probably just going to be a retirement thing now.
As for the gamejam, weāre really planning to do this over a short time, but this saturday is just a get the ball rolling, brainstorm ideas kind of thing. Weāve always talked about doing it but we never really did get started, so by setting a date and a time weāre really gonna push ourselves to get it started. Then weāll continue to work on it. Itād just be nice to make a finished project rather than always having the idea but never following through.
As far as so cal houses go, your estimates are a little off. Iād say 450k gets you something decent where I live (Long Beach). But other areas are all different. Iām in the middle of buying a 5 bedroom, 3 bath 2 story house (about 2k square feet) with a two story garage and a decent sized backyard for $400k, just because the market is that good for buyers right now. I could get a 3 bed 2 bath 1400 square foot house for 300k right now. Of course rewind time 3 or 4 years and these houses are closer to 600k, but thatās why everything collapsed in on itself isnāt it?
IDK how that works. I working my first job at a rather big company now. Working out pretty well.
Quite organized actually.