Having a hard time picking between different courses within programming

[inux94]

I'm currently having a hard time deciding between these 4;

Games Artist and Animator course
I've always liked watching people drawing on the computer/making art, one of my old classmates used to have a mouse-ish pencil powered by usb and draw during chemistry class/physics class and it seemed like he enjoyed doing it.

Games Developer
Programming, c++, flash etc etc it all seems like endless programming applications to me, I've been thinking about trying out programming with either flash or c++ for some time now, since I've always wanted to learn more about programming but didn't have the balls to try it.

Games Designer
I've always got an idea about how x vs y can be balanced in a game in the back of my head, or how great things would be if ie. the slice n dice blockade was re-redesigned, because at this moment of design it'll be either too weak or too strong.

The 4th course is the Games QA (Quality Assurance, you know, the lazy guys at Treyarch who took 3 weeks to test a new perk-a-cola with a patch) which I've got no interest in, unless it's much needed in the industry.

If anyone got any information whatsoever;

Which of these are most needed in the gaming/programming industry? < Very important.

Which yield most income?

Which would appeal most to me if I'm primarily interested in hardware, programming & balancing/designing?

Any information is appreciated

/inux

[Fuzzykins]

I'm an artist, so I'm inclined to say the first one. Here's my opinion on it.

You cannot ask someone to pick your major. That's absolutely stupid. Pick something you're interested in and go with it. I'll assume you know the differences. You're my age. You have time to think still. Don't worry about it right now. (Assuming you were born in 1994.) [I derived the 1994 statement from your username.]

[inux94]

I made the thread in hope of people to provide me for some information.

I don't have any more time, this is my last resort before getting hauled in the same ****hole as 50% of my country is in (uneducated)

I couldn't complete the high school/university of Greenland/Countinuation school in Denmark due to concentration problems, my biggest fear in life is ending up as an uneducated f***er, and I don't want to start taking pills against it.

I can only study something I'm intersted in, when I went to school I've got A in English, Danish & B in math, while getting E's and F-'s in other classes.

I am out of time, I can't study college about computing in England since I have to be an EU resident or pay thousands and thousands of pounds of year per term.

[Sephiracle]

Developer. But keep in mind that programming is a very difficult and specific skill to learn and enjoy, in addition, I fully agree with Fuzzy, don't let us pick it, pick something you will enjoy and make your wallet happy.

For example, I went for CS and didn't do well, the programming classes i faced gave 6 assignments on a biweekly schedule, the tests they gave you a sheet of paper and you had to write the code to do what the test wanted.

Not fun for me since I'm a very visual person/learner.

[Latitude]

Heh you might want to read up on the longevity of flash. C++ would be better but its a personal choice.

[Adorada]

I am a computer programmer (aka a developer). I do agree that it can be very difficult, but it's what I have loved to do and so it's like I get paid for what I would be doing at home (only difference is I have a work space. Even then, my company allows me to work remotely if I so want to. Yay for VPN). It can be brutal when you just don't know why something doesn't work but when you find out what the issue is and fix it, it can be such a relief and a pretty damn good feeling too.

The main issue with programming is that there's so much you can work with in terms of the languages (I work with mostly C#/VB/ASP.NET/Javascript/Jquery/SQL/CSS/HTML). Working with 10000+ lines of code is *always* fun. Especially when there's no comments in the code and all the labels are left as 'label1'.

I have also learned a good amount of graphic arts. I do it in my spare time (outside of work) and it's okay. It's always nice to actually be able to *see* what you have done (versus programming where you don't really see what you did, you just know that the website works because you made it work).

I don't do much in the design department, that is pretty much a group effort where I work and each day we do our daily scrum in which we talk about the issues and what works, what doesn't and the best way we can go about a certain situation.

I have done some QA in the past for various companies and it is always a good feeling to know that a product was improved because of a suggestion I made (though, it can be also said in reverse when a product I QA'd gets released with an issue still not resolved). QA is no easy task and to hate on QA is pretty disrespectful. Sure, every single item will have bugs, but it's prioritizing the bugs and getting a stable product out. Some issues may arise and some may have slipped by, but believe me, QA has a extremely difficult job (it looks easy, but it is not, and by far one of the most stressful jobs out there). The reason why people go into QA is because that is 'the way in' to the game industry. It's quite difficult to get any other job in the industry without a lot of experience or without proof/portfolio.

Personally, I' am not going to answer your two questions because I feel that you are going into this situation with the wrong intentions. A simple way of figuring out what you should go into is by playing any game out there. What goes through your head first and stays with you while you play? For myself, every time I play a game I am always trying to figure out how something works (in programming terms) and how I could recreate something in Visual Studio (granted without any major graphics, but the code behind).

[Fuzzykins]

Heh you might want to read up on the longevity of flash. C++ would be better but its a personal choice.

Flash is useless in GAME design. It's not meant for gaming, people just use it to make flash games on.

Right now, app programming and javascript are all the rage.

[Adorada]

Flash is useless in GAME design. It's not meant for gaming, people just use it to make flash games on.

Right now, app programming and javascript are all the rage.

Well, Scaleform uses flash as the main application. Artists use Scaleform for the creation of the UI. So, no, flash is not useless. Without flash, there would be no Scaleform. Scaleform is used in UDK, which a lot of game companies use.

See here: http://gameware.autodesk.com/scaleform

[Sephiracle]

Well, Scaleform uses flash as the main application. Artists use Scaleform for the creation of the UI. So, no, flash is not useless. Without flash, there would be no Scaleform. Scaleform is used in UDK, which a lot of game companies use.

See here: http://gameware.autodesk.com/scaleform

But not many people actually use Flash, and I mean Flash by the base program, not Scaleform. Just because one program bred another doesn't make this original program better as a result. Scaleform is more of a plugin to make Flash work wonders in games, but you don't want to create a game entirely in Flash.

[Adorada]

But not many people actually use Flash, and I mean Flash by the base program, not Scaleform. Just because one program bred another doesn't make this original program better as a result. Scaleform is more of a plugin to make Flash work wonders in games, but you don't want to create a game entirely in Flash.

Of course Flash is terrible for games but not completely useless, as was stated. Flash was *never* meant for gaming, it was to create graphics for websites. Sure, people found out ways to creates games using it, but that wasn't what flash was designed for, thus it's pretty bad for games. That's like trying to create a 3d model using Photoshop. Sure, it's probably possible (seeing as there is a 3D menu for it, but that doesn't mean it's any good for creating 3d models. Actionscript (which is what Flash uses) just doesn't have the abilities that a standard programming language (like C) has and that is why it's pretty bad for gaming.

[Sephiracle]

Of course Flash is terrible for games but not completely useless, as was stated. Flash was *never* meant for gaming, it was to create graphics for websites. Sure, people found out ways to creates games using it, but that wasn't what flash was designed for, thus it's pretty bad for games. That's like trying to create a 3d model using Photoshop. Sure, it's probably possible (seeing as there is a 3D menu for it, but that doesn't mean it's any good for creating 3d models. Actionscript (which is what Flash uses) just doesn't have the abilities that a standard programming language (like C) has and that is why it's pretty bad for gaming.

And that's what Fuzzy was getting at, sure I guess it's not 'completely' useless, but it's one minor step up from that in game design.