@DMGregory Thanks for the upvote; at least I think it was you? :)

The origin of individual votes is not something the system displays. 😉

Good morning everyone!

Good morning. 🌞

How’s everyone doing?

A little slow, but the coffee is helping. ☕

How's your day?

Pretty good. I was gonna try to work on my game and maybe get an enemy UI and enemy mechanics, but instead I just ended up animating the player some more and answering 5 year old questions on stack.

Thanks for helping to answer old questions. We have so many that never got fully addressed.

I’m just finding stuff that I don’t even know about. Like I don’t know what Cocos2D is, but the internet has some great tutorials that I can sum up :)

Just be a bit careful when writing answers you haven't tested. Sometimes, tech we're unfamiliar with can have hidden gotchas, that make the approach presented in the tutorial not quite right for what the asker needs.

@DMGregory Ok, I see. C# is probably more up my alley actually

The issue with the OpenGL Blender question was he said “I want something like this”, which led to a dead link.

@noobprogrammer We usually try to repair / recover from dead links by looking them up at the Wayback Machine. Doesn't always work though, esp for things pasted up to temporary web sharing clip board type sites.

@Pikalek Apparently, it isn't an archived website.

bummer, sorry

Oh well, maybe it will be recovered someday

If the question is not intelligible now, flag it and we can close it as "unclear/needs details" or "lacking a minimal complete verifiable example". That will stop it from automatically recirculating to the top of the feed periodically.

Yeah... every time we get a wave of "let's just forgive the authoritarian right for literally killing people", my search results for gamedev topics get temporarily worse. 😣

yeah

I agree with Joe and prefer Unity

But in all seriousness, I’m more libertarian right and definitely dislike authoritarian beliefs if you guys know what I mean.

ew. Ancaps.

No, not ancaps. I’m not an anarchist.

I just believe there needs to be government, but not to an extreme where it then would be taking away the freedoms of the people.

@DMGregory What is it like working for Ubisoft?

I like it. 🙂 Out of the big studios, they tend to rank highly in terms of work-life balance. They're not known for crunch or burning through talent. A lot of my coworkers have families, and clock off at 4 or 5 on the dot to pick up kids (pre-lockdown), or work modified hours to be able to care for their family at home (in our current situation).

They definitely invest in people over the long term. Myself and quite a few of my coworkers have been with the Toronto studio for about the full decade since it was founded. It's not too rare to find folks who've been with the company for 15, even 25 years.

So, compared against other studios that tend to go through boom-bust cycles with layoffs between projects every 3-5 years, it offers good job security and peace of mind.

Because we have a worldwide network of studios and a diversified portfolio of games, we don't have to worry too much about a weak game launch killing the studio. We do a lot of support work for other studios in the company, so there are always a lot of opportunities.

There are downsides too though. Our process is fairly hierarchical, with directors and ultimately our Editorial department calling the shots. Depending on how well the directors on a particular project/team share that power with their team members, that can restrict some creative freedom.

We also tend to make super massive worlds, spreading the workload across large teams in many locations. So coordinating all of that can be a challenge, and it means a lot of the core aspects of the game need to be set in stone early on so that all the production teams can get working in parallel - making it difficult to shift direction later.

That’s really interesting. I always wondered what it was like working in a triple A company, and always wondered whether they really worked the employees to their limits or not. Do you get any special perks as a developer?

Oh ok, that last bit makes sense. What games did you help create?

Splinter Cell Blacklist, Starlink: Battle for Atlas, and Far Cry 6, in addition to some non-commercial games/prototypes.

Perks-wise, we've got pretty good benefits (health coverage, retirement savings, mental health support, discounts on transit and some local retailers/restaurants), and the free/discounted games I described earlier in the week.

Also good travel opportunities. Since we have offices in so many places, a lot of my coworkers move around the globe, without having to start all over again in a new place.

Pre-COVID, the company also threw some pretty great parties. 😉 We had the monthly "UbiBash", an Annual General Assembly and after-party in the summer, a summer BBQ, and a holiday party in December, always with elaborate themes and amazing food. 😁

This year they channeled that energy into a kind of mini gamedev conference for the studio, which was also pretty neat.

@noobprogrammer at ubi MTL when I was there it depended on the project

r6 vegas was 9 months of scheduled overtime with people working every other weekend

lots of those people left the studio shortly afterward

the projects I was on weren't like that

@noobprogrammer the problem is defining "freedom" without those freedoms infringing on others' rights. Such as the whole gun issue. Those clearly need more regulation. worldwide stats clearly show that more guns in peoples' hands don't make the society safer.

@DMGregory That’s really, really cool! Man, Ubisoft sounds like an amazing company!

I don't want to oversell it. I'm comfortable there, but I don't want to diminish the real problems we have. We're in the middle of reforming our company culture in the wake of some major instances of workplace harassment, for one.

Re: overtime, I've been lucky that the Toronto studio has never (to my knowledge) scheduled mandatory overtime. That said, that's not the same as "no overtime" - I've definitely put in more hours than was healthy at times, because I felt it was what the project needed. Even without an official requirement, a feeling of pressure can creep in.

Culture-wise, we're making improvements. In the past couple years we've started building Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), focused on supporting marginalized demographics within the studio - women, 2SLGBTTIQQA+ people, Black people, and other racialized people.