New Mod Programmer

[Orannis]

Hello everyone!

Before I begin I would like to say good job on the forum, I like it!

Anyways, hi again, as you can see (from the title) I'm a beginner. *sigh* goes all the experienced modders of the world but fear not for I will not fail you!!!!! Jokes aside, I have been seriously looking into programming and specifically modding (coding) the HL2 source engine for quite some time. I have been reading around a bit so I'm not gonna ask you a whole lot of stupid questions, the answers of which lay one topic below. No. I would just like to hear some opinions etc, so here we go!

1) In general how much programming experience is required compared to knowledge of the source engine? I have been having a lot of semi-amusing C++ self training time to get all in shape after dropping other languages I knew about a year ago. WAIT! I NEVER learned OOP I merely used some PHP XHTML SQL JS and a few other mainly web related languages, so this may be a problem be that's just another question to Google. (input however, despite the horribly over asked question, may be nice!)

2) As a student I look to the future as most do and I was wondering what the positives of having completed or at least worked on a mod are? (Like job application wise.)

3) Lastly If their was one cool ACTUALLY ACHIEVABLE modification you would like to see made what would it be? (This is for game play idea purposes of course!)

I probably have more questions to ask so watch out, I just forgot about them (smooth right?) Oh and I know sometimes you feel bad about smashing peoples dreams because there too ambitious. DON'T BE! If I hadn't gotten talked to like that I would have never come back down to earth (for I'm quite the ambitious person) make sure not to smash them to hard though. Just kidding SMASH the noobs like the bugs they are!!!! MUHAHAHA!

Peace everyone, :smoking: (but don't smoke)

~ Orannis

 

[Crispy]

2) As a student I look to the future as most do and I was wondering what the positives of having completed or at least worked on a mod are? (Like job application wise.)

If you have some working examples of work you made for the mod, chances are good for securing a position, but not high.

If you have completed work on a mod, including multiple releases, chances are high. From what I understand, it's one thing to program a feature, it's quite another to have experience bug-fixing, or creating workarounds when an issue arises with how you originally coded something, and all the other problem-solving that goes with programming on a full game.

From what I hear Source is one of the hardest engines to learn to program because it goes about things in odd or backwards ways where other engines keep it very straightforward. Unreal experience will make you more employable, but most modern 3D engines are C++ anyway so there is some crossover that wouldn't make Source experience irrelevant.

Are you formally a programming student, or are you a hobbyist student? If you are studying computer programming in higher education, you should get a lot of your portfolio done through the course, but it will help to work on a mod through to completion, partly because it shows you've worked on a full game concept, but also because it shows you are motivated to work on games in your spare time to learn as much as possible.

 

[Shinobi]

source is a huge bitch at first, but if you read through　the sdk for weeks and weeks it gets easier


that said, if you value your sanity, youre better off with unreal