October 2008 Meeting Recap

We were also treated to an excellent series of speakers consisting of industry veterans and an aspiring game developer from Penn who recounted his first steps in the industry.

First up was Ted Aronson, a junior in the DMD program at Penn, who talked about his experiences as an intern at EA Los Angeles. He detailed a typical day of programming, as well as the exciting events he attended when he wasn't working. Ted didn't understate the value of his entire internship experience, and recommends it to anyone interested in the game industry.

Next was Chris Jurney, an AI programmer from Relic Entertainment. Chris explained a series of AI problems that plagued him for the entire summer. In porting the Essence engine over to Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II, melee combat provided a challenge that was not faced in Company of Heroes. Chris described problems with "sync-kills" and group AI which gave insight into some of the design decisions made in programming AI for real-time strategy games. Chris has given great AI presentations for our IGDA meetings before, and again he did not disappoint.

We were also lucky to have two speakers from Big Huge Games, Bill Podurgiel and Richard Jose. Bill talked about the role of a technical artist at Big Huge Games, which is a job title that means many different things across the industry. He offered a great deal of helpful advice for those looking to pursue such a position. Richard focused more on programming jobs, and gave tips regarding skills one should improve before applying for any programming position. Richard has generously provided his slides for download.

Thank you for all who attended and we hope to see you at the next meeting.

--posted by Ian Perera