Student interns at Luma Animation

edited in General
Hi Guys,

I want to share our experience with two student interns that we had working at Luma for the past 2 weeks. They are Nathan Duker and Reahile Lekoape.
They came to learn about game development and to spend some time with our developers to get a feel for the industry and people.

As grade 10 students they had no previous exposure to programming and were ripe for our brainwashing.
We showed them some of the tools that we use and gave them a desk to sit at. The first week was spent learning Game Maker and watching tutorials.
The seconds week we provided them with a basic design and some tight deadlines. This is what they produced:



We are very proud of the work that they did here and hope they got a satisfying taste of our industry.
We wish them the best of luck with their studies and hope to see them at the community meetings.

Johan van Staden
Game Producer @ Luma Animation

Comments

  • Nice work, they putting it online. Say on indiedb or something?
  • I really really really wanna know how indiedb works. I don't see any way how it contributes to eyeballs cos there's no forum no feedback opportunity, it seems.

    How does it work??? How are you using it?

    (I remember asking about this before XD)
  • Well effectively we using it along side Desura when we ready to release something. We get many eyeballs there when we blog or post news and a lot of feedback directly from people. Don't know what else to tell you. Oh one thing if we didn't have our game there no indieroyal sale no indieroyale sale no greenlight (well not that soon)
  • Also @Tuism IndieDB allows people to comment on your blog posts. So thats something.
  • IndieDB allows you to setup forums for your game if you want them. plenty of feedback opportunity.
  • Where do you start with Indiedb to get to using this exposure you speak of?

    Just add your game here?
    http://www.indiedb.com/games/add

    Does that create this dedicated forum that you're talking about for your game?
  • Yeah you can add your game like that, or make a group/company page and then add the game to that. Once your game has its own page you will find a forum tab where you can create and manage your forum.
    Thanked by 1Tuism
  • Really liked their explosions and the Metal Gear Solid font they used for the "Game Over" screen.
  • What about game programming? Lets start with 2D game programming? are they really interested? I mean real game programming like "Game world, Maps and Tiles, Time states, Animation frames, Scrolling, Point collision, Circle collision, rectangle collision, Basic physics, Isometric rendering, only to name a few! I also mean did you tell then that they have to go through things like computer science data structures before they have understand that knowledge, or have you only told them that its possible to become an astronaut even though you don't know physics?
  • @SkinnyBoy: I'm not sure what you're trying to point out here. It sounds like you're annoyed that 2 kids spent 2 weeks at an actual game studio learning the ropes. What's the issue?
  • Two kids in grade 10 with no programming experience nogal.

    "Real game programming"? hahahahahaha.
  • edited
    In China, America, Kenya and some parts of Europe are preparing primary school kids for "Real Programming", Why are we leaving our kids behind... Search for hour of code and code.org on you tube
  • edited
    @SkinnyBoy I can't do most of what you list as "game programming", and I'm a full time game programmer. So I'm also a bit confused as to what you're objecting to.

    I'm sure we can all agree that Luma allowing Grade 10 kids to job shadow is a good thing (even if we can't all agree on the details of how to prep them for their careers).

    Personally I think those kids probably got a lot of awesome experience out of their very brief time at Luma. I think making a vertical scrolling space shooter is a great entry point into game programming.
  • edited
    Wait, so kids with no programming experience at all went and built their first playable game while interning at arguably South Africa's most technically skilled game studio, and we're supposed to be upset about that? I don't even...

    Well done to Nathan and Reahile! I hope they enjoyed making their game and are inspired to keep learning, hopefully they'll even come post their next games here and take the opportunity to learn even more :)
    SkinnyBoy said:
    In China, America, Kenya and some parts of Europe are preparing primary school kids for "Real Programming", Why are we leaving our kids behind... Search for hour of code and code.org on you tube
    @SkinnyBoy: Okay, I can understand your frustration at the feeling that local kids get very little support when they want to learn programming. Heck, very few of them even have the opportunity to find out that it's something that they could do, let alone get the chance to find out if they enjoy it or not. That's a huge problem and something that I agree we need to do more about. However, I don't see how disparaging the efforts of two kids that grasped a really cool opportunity helps address that problem, nor do I see how implying that a successful local game studio knows nothing about teaching game development is a useful thing to do either. If anything, Luma should be commended for allowing Grade 10 kids the run of their offices, that's actually very difficult to do in a production environment.
  • Then maybe we should introduce programs like hour of code to our local schools. I mean I wouldn't mind in making set of scratch videos tutorials introducing programming concepts to both teachers and learners. But this is something that both government and educational department must have interest in.
  • SkinnyBoy said:
    But this is something that both government and educational department must have interest in.
    Well, yes.

    MGSA has been trying to host workshops in schools, motivating for game programming as a great introduction to programming and lobbying both the Department of Education and the Department of Science and Technology for better curricula (especially during that whole Delphi debacle).

    I'm not sure where your negativity comes from, or why it's so poorly aimed.
    Thanked by 1tbulford
  • Glad to see people in SA starting so young.
  • @SkinnyBoy I agree with you that it would be great to see more, and better, programming education in our schools.

    However that wasn't the point here. This was two grade 10 kids who just knew they wanted to "make games". They didn't really have any programming or gamedev background, and had no idea of what's involved in the process of making a game. These two weeks gave them a taste of the wide range of skills needed, and gave them some useful background to help them decide what part of the game development process appeals to them and would make sense to persue. I wish I'd had an opportunity like that at their age.
  • I don't mean to sound like a party pooper, but this is basically the 2nd tutorial for GM:Studio, using different sprites. I know this because I'm just starting to learn GM and currently busy with said tutorial.

    But other than that I'm super stoked about kids starting out much younger! I wish I had started at school! :(
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