[Unpaid till funded] (Port Elizabeth) Coder, some graphics / games experience, 0-5 yrs experience

NickWiggill

Arcane Ingenuity is a small games and apps development company that has run successfully for several years outside of SA, and has now reached a growth phase. Nick is AI's director and lead developer. His gamedev.stackexchange profile ranks him no. 12 out of 36000 users, worldwide. Graduated PE Technikon more than a decade ago, before it became NMMU, and operating in Europe for the last several years. Arcane Ingenuity is splitting time between client's work for funding, and development of a new first person RTS/RPG.

You'd be working with Nick face to face in Port Elizabeth, and you'd be AI's first recruit. AI is seeking someone with the following skills:

-JS games experience - PRIMARY
-C or C++ experience - SECONDARY
-C#, Java or Python - desirable for tools development.

2+ years industry experience ideal. Graduates will be considered.

You will need to be:

-truly passionate about code
-full-time
-in PE long term
-willing to work in an informal environment, at least initially
-super keen on learning, because there will be a heck of a lot to learn
-OK with working on a one-to-one basis till we have more team members onboard.

Look forward to hearing from you. Please send a message discussing what you are currently busy with, and what games-related areas you have dabbled in.

POSITION STILL OPEN AS OF NOV 2014.

EvanGreenwood

Great Jebus! #12 on all time reputation on Stack Exchange!

TheFuntastic

Welcome to the community. Seems like you've got a wealth of experience, great to have you around. PE is a bit of a limiting choice, but I hope you find a suitable candidate. Out of curiosity you considered someone remote? Working over skype is frustrating but you would have access to a larger talent pool.

NickWiggill

@TheFuntastic Greetings, thanks for the welcome, it seems like a great community you guys have got going here.

PE vs remote: For the present, I'm confident that a suitable dev can be found locally, as I've connections here. While not averse to remote working in general, this first hire needs to be here, given the degree of knowledge transfer required on the technology front. It just minimises early risk.

NickWiggill

Bump. PE lads & lasses, if you're there ;) (I can hear you breathing in the sea air...)

Also happy to hear from non-PE folks who might work remotely for a short period initially, with a view to moving to PE longer term.

BigHairDan

Hey Nick!
Just a heads up:
NMMU's School of ICT innovation day is on the 29th of October and there area few game projects being demoed by students (myself included)

If you're still looking for people, you should definitely check it out (or come any time, we have informal weekly game dev meetings during lunch)

konman

@NickWiggill I've been back in PE for almost 6 months now. It would be really cool to meet up, have a beer or 3, hang out and discuss making games. Somewhere, someday :)

@BigHairDan Is the NMMU event open to the public or is it students only? I would love to attend! I am having withdrawal symptoms after the monthly CPT community nights since moving back to PE. It's like a desert out here, game dev peer wise! :0

BigHairDan

I think the NMMU event is open to the public. More details are here
http://news.nmmu.ac.za/Events/Student-Activities/School-of-ICT-Innovation-Day
A PE game design meetup sounds like a really awesome idea! I know a few people who'd definitely be keen.

NickWiggill

@BigHairDan Appreciate the heads up for the ICT Innovation Day -- attendance was productive.

vintar

If the "potential unity work" ever comes to fruition and you don't mind remote, then I'm your guy. I would love to learn and grow with the company

NickWiggill

@vintar It's C11 + OpenGL. The rest is out the window for now. Voxel engines require speed, specifically cache coherence, so no Unity I'm afraid. Thanks for the interest in this and that other thread, nonetheless.

Anyone in PE looking to volunteer (UNPAID for now) on low level stuff i.e. engine building, renderer, GLSL shaders, networking (ENet) and the like is still welcome to get in touch, though TBH, I see Unity / C# / Java are the common skills which doesn't bode well for engine-building. It's gcc/valgrind all the way, so linux coders may be interested (game cross compiles for win/lin/osx).

Things sure have changed at the university since my day when 4 years of C / C++ were a requirement for a BTech IT. I think only the EE graduates are now proficient in C.

Eric

@NickWiggill Just out of curiosity, why wouldn't C#'s automatic volatile writing and optional volatile reading solve your cache coherence problem?

NickWiggill

@Eric Suffice to say that I prefer the complete and absolute control that C offers. With C there is nothing hidden except what the compiler applies, which can be turned off at will. Close to the metal. I don't mind C#, but it isn't my ideal world.

I also love the degree of insight into cache and memory access, that valgrind provides.

Now that there is a running Android build I'm seeing the benefits of having written everything in C and having set up my own build processes; a couple seconds to compile, a few more to deploy to mobile means extremely fast iteration times... I don't know about C#/Mono more generally, but Unity is abysmal in this regard. Not to mention performance in-game.

Unity, even OpenTK & Xamarin were not ideal for this project. I've seen some not-very-flattering performance statistics comparing native with Mono on older mobiles I'd like to support. As noted elsewhere , I expect to extend the codebase for a long time to come, and don't ever want to end up being limited by non-native solutions. Whether or not you believe such a situation may come to pass depends very much on your view of and approach to developing games.

P.S. I've heard from other members of industry on this site (no names mentioned) recently who have equally needed to go back to native to maximise performance. It's just the way things go on certain projects. For 95%+, I'm sure Unity is enough.

Eric

@NickWiggill Fair enough. I wish you all the best. This seems like a big undertaking.

NickCuthbert

@NickWiggill, UCT still requires C++ and GL

dislekcia

NickCuthbert said:

@NickWiggill, UCT still requires C++ and GL

So did UP. Many years ago.

I note that neither of those faculties is known for producing games, optimised or otherwise ;) So yes, while a university has specific software/code recommendations, there are many factors that go into that decision that have little to do with actual game development. Maybe I'm misreading your comment, but I'm not really sure what it's trying to point out.

NickWiggill

@NickCuthbert Good to hear not everyone has lost their mind. Thanks.

@Dislekcia Err... not really sure what you're trying to achieve, actually. Nick provided worthwhile info, in summary, "If you want possible candidates for engine dev, look at grads from universities that still mandate C or C++, here's one such". No one's saying they'll be top notch game devs to start with, but then I believe the post title included "0-5 years".

dislekcia

NickWiggill said:

Nick provided worthwhile info, in summary, "If you want possible candidates for engine dev, look at grads from universities that still mandate C or C++, here's one such".

Ah, right, that's the context I was missing then.

I guess now you know that UP would offer similar candidates? A quick Google search for SA universities that listed OpenGL courses showed that Rhodes seems to have students publishing papers around OpenGL stuff, so it seems that there's yet another university that fits the bill? Closer to you too.

I'm actually really surprised that any CS degree at a local university wouldn't have a C++ bent. I reckon the difficulty you're having finding people is mostly geography combined with a lack of financial incentives.

NickCuthbert

@dislekcia I don't want to encourage a flame war. I didn't mean to imply that UCT's program is necessarily superior to any other in the country, just that the focus of our course is focused on an understanding of low level graphics along with the ability to effectively use game engines. The course is more technical and less design oriented. It is a trade-off UCT decided to make. I know without context that perhaps it seemed as though I was denigrating other universities, I apologise if that was the case. I just wished to provide an exemplar indicating that there was indeed students in SA with suitable low-level knowledge for engine development. I know that TUKS also uses C++ and has a module on WebGL.

dislekcia

NickWiggill said:

While it's great that there are several teams a year now doing games work at NMMU, the fact that Unity / C# / MonoGame are all they can do doesn't really help hireability for students who are already at a disadvantage in coming from PE. It's different for grads elsewhere, CT, JHB, even DBN, in that they're right there where the opportunities "spawn", so to speak; if they aren't headhunted at open day at their uni, they're in the position to go for interviews and make face-to-face connections in their own city while the best opportunities are still open (late in the preceding year).

Just pointing out that you're talking about "hireability" from your own personal standpoint. In terms of local games companies offering coding jobs, the vast majority are Unity-using positions (there are currently 2 active Unity job openings in CT, for instance). I understand that you're not hiring that way, but you have to understand that you're also not paying either ;) I'm actually pleasantly surprised that universities are focusing on things like Unity and C# in order to go where the jobs are.

As for students being at a disadvantage due to location, that's exactly what this forum exists to try and solve. I've seen many members move across the country to work at specific places that needed their skills. I'm not going to argue that physical meetings are great for job interviews, but I do caution against assuming that anyone hiring students in the local games industry actually goes to university open days at all. If you're worried about those PE students getting jobs, help them out by pointing them at this forum so that they can be exposed to the local companies that are hiring that skillset.

NickWiggill

@dislekcia, your last comment has achieved absolutely nothing in terms of furthering the stated purpose of this thread.

If it's going to remain open, let's keep this thread free of clutter.