The Goldsmiths Game Engine is an incredible coursework where the entire class unites to produce a software framework and a demo. This blog will be particularly useful to the Masters class of 2012-2013 as we (the class of 2011) were scratching our heads on what the previous year had done. If you’re still an undergraduate and you’ve read this far: then fear not! I’ve kept the details pretty general and it should give insight into the level of difficulty a Goldsmiths masters will throw at you.
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Work on our game engine, appropriately called the Nightmare Engine, was split into two teams: the engine and the demo team. It’s an interesting split because a relationship is established between hardcore backend guys (the Dark Side) and those whom are approaching it from a more artsy game scripting side (the Rebels and in this metaphor your lecturer Andy Thomason is C-3PO).
My favourite lesson from Goldsmiths is that the programmers must abide to the will of the artist. Unfortunately, disorganised artists can be a real thorn to the matra. My personal advice would be to choose a role that you’ll stick with. As the worst thing you can do is brag about how you’re going to pwn component X, then proceed to slack off committee meetings and show nothing for it come deadline time – you will let both teams down and the entire class will suffer when the Game Engine is extended further for the Animation coursework. We were very lucky going into this coursework to have an exceptional leader (who now works at Splash Damage) and the rest of the class are there to help you with the dirty work, I hated going to committee meetings (especially the 1 hour 20 minute commute to New Cross) but they’re important in uniting the two teams, the different fractions within these teams and after every meeting I always left with a sense of direction and purpose.
As you can see from my level design work for this coursework, the committee meetings helped me understand why my levels could not be implemented into the engine and adjustments were made accordingly:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQWjnU_x0wg]
sorry about the jazz
It’s fairly difficult to go into the technical’s of the engine itself without snoring you into death but I am aware that the team stuck closely to the layout layed out in this incredibly useful book.
If you’re on the demo team it’s incredibly useful to befriend someone who works for the Sith as he’ll be able to give you an overview of his work on the engine (Andrew Dyer gave an incredible lecture on his scene manager) and basic knowledge of the rest of the architecture. Viceversa, if you’re in the engine team – it’s worth bugging the demo team for a crash-course lesson in Unity and Maya/Max as they’ll need to know it for AI and every game job/ GameHack event.