Why I'm here (career change), and which direction to go if I want to get in to game development?

Development Programming & Scripting C++
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OK. If you had 12hrs a day to work on developing a career, obviously your going to say…get going on the programming. I can handle that.

At what point do I begin to see graphics, program a drone, a ship, a jeep, a plane? Are the parameters for all of these systems in the engine?

The reason why I’m asking is that I’m a fork in the road and changing careers. Looking at straight up developer(Python, C++, …) or DevOps(Python developer & operations in VMware/Linux/MS, a glorified sys admin). Some moves look reasonably easy, and others, as in game developer, I don’t have a clue. I do not game, but think development in military games/technologies would be very interesting and I could do it for a decade. Of course if I go down the game path, I’ll be buying games to see what the expectations are.

My background is that I have a degree in MIS, MS/Linux system administration, been tooling around with VMware, and Python. Related courses that I’ve had are in C & C++. The problem is that the virtualization gig does not look plausible due to costs in training. I can go in any direction from here and I’m pretty excited to get going. Today is the first day that I’ve spent in the gaming path looking at what is around and what languages or technologies I’d have to learn.

I’m a member of Safari Online and Pluralsight. I have several great C (7 books), C++ (7) books (along with the online materials) and should be able to pick up any language in a reasonable amount of time. I also have systems: Alienware Area 51 (6cores, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 980, SSDs) and a server that can be used for anything(Delll T-410, 10 cores(6 + 4), 64GB RAM, 6 drive bays). I’ve looked at some of Unreal Engine’s documentation and the reason why I’m here is that it is not leading me in to C#, and Javascript, but C++, which I already have books available for and am interested in learning.

Can you give me ideas on what I need to do, step 1, step 2, step 3, …

Thanks!

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Hey,
That is a hard question. first of all the choice of unreal is a difficult one. Unreal documentation have become more and more accessible in the past year, however there is still far less tutorials and documentations than in unity. and as a result of that and that the engine is massive the learning curve is hard and steep, but I am here because I think Unreal is the better choice for the future. unreal programming is divided into two: Blueprints and C++. both can do almost anything. you can also edit the source code of the engine in c++.
if you want to add new stuff and not edit the game engine itself the documentations are more than sufficient, editing the engine however is most difficult because there are no documentations over their designs and you will need to read huge amount of code and try to understand what the hell they did there.
to start I would go with the c++ programming guide (the video ones) in Unreal site to begin with.
It is a hard road, but if that what you want it can be rewarding. Good luck.

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Hi Thomas, sent you a PM with some questions :slight_smile:

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Hey Thomas, You should know some basic tips and ideas to follow for changing career. Here are some ideas http://www.how-to-change-careers.com/career-change-ideas.html