Mobile Game Programming Help

bum · 16 Sep 2010 at 14:02

A bit help on mobile game development...

Hi guys,

I've recently applied for a 'junior game producer' role at a company. I've received some pre-interview questions, which I have a bit problem with.

Just before we start, I have to explain myself clearly here. I come from a creative background and in my previous job, I was a producer on featured animations and films. As a producer, the job involved mainly with the managment of development team (project development, artists, post-production and upper management team).

My experience on the creative side and management side is good, hence I've landed an interview with the game company. Now that's where the problems come in. I have basic programming knowledge, but when it gets to specific progrmming, I am unexperienced.

When I was filling out the interview questions, it also contain questions that're related to programming, rather than just the creative/management aspect. This is where I stuck and where I seek the help from fellow ocukers.

I've been searching and reading the forum for entire afternoon, learned a lot of stuff but there are still some questions remained unclear in my mind.

My life is depending on this job, so any help would be greatly appreciated!

Here are the questions:
1. You are porting a 3D game from iPhone to Nintendo DSi, what would the biggest challenges on the programming side?
My current answer: the changes in the coding language, the OS system and the hardware capabilities.

2. Imagine porting a 3D 3rd person game from iPhone to Nintendo Dsi, how many members will you have in your team? What are the job positions of each member? How long will the project last?

3. You are a producer at XXX company. You just realized that one of your programmers have been stuck on a bug for 2 days. He is wasting his time and this may make your project late. Give at least 3 ideas to solve the problem.

4. The time needed to port a game for phones with different screen size, heap size and jar size. (game designers need to make different level design, different graphic resources)

Well, here are the 4 questions I'm stuck on. I am currently researching for the correct answers, or rather standard answers. I hope someone could guide me in the right direction over this.

*EDIT* The questions are mainly regarding to the time/people/resources needed for each of those tasks, so the producer can develop a schedule for development.

Thank you.

NVP · 16 Sep 2010 at 14:14

Did you accidently some of that post?

Your answer to the first question needs to have a lot more detail and specifics to each platform.

As for the other two questions, surely your previous position in management has given you enough knowledge to answer those? Don't give a specific answer but say what variables will need to be considered before a proper answer can be determined.

To be honest, if you can't answer them then this job is not for you. First rule of programming, go with what you know or learn what you need to before hand, you don't want to get in way over your head.

bum · 16 Sep 2010 at 14:17

NVP said:
To be honest, if you can't answer them then this job is not for you. First rule of programming, go with what you know or learn what you need to before hand, you don't want to get in way over your head.

I understand the situation, hence from a producer in feature animation/films, I've applied for junior producer in game industry. Just because I want to get into the gaming industry. I know there are much to learn and, I suppose I am unexperienced in the programming part of things, as in how long would it usually take etc. I could give you specific details on how to manage a creative team when it come to film production/3D animation production. But not on the programming part.

TheCoder · 16 Sep 2010 at 14:51

As NVP said 2,3, and 4 you will have to answer for your self using the knowledge you already have, tbh I personally have an issue with question 2 anyway as the answer depends on what staff resources you have available too you, and how complex your 3rd person game is. The simple answer could be 3, one programmer, one artist and one designer.

For question one, the major challenge is hardware differences rather than the actual programming lanaguge, both will be written in C++ (apart from the iPhone where about 10% of the code will in in obj-c). I do not know if this applies to the DSi but the DS does not have any hardware FPU (floating point unit) support. If this is the case for the DSi all your games maths library's would have to support fixed point arithmetic. Don't quote me on this as I am not a engine coder by nature. I would do a bit of research on the hardware specs of the DSi.

Its a bit of an odd question to ask a producer anyhow. A more producer type answer well at least in my experience of producers would be, training your staff to understand the ins and out of the DSi and its capabilities and retooling your staff to use the new hardware each will need a dev kit, this of course costs money then the time to set the systems up which is never really that straight forward, anyone who as worked on the PS2/PS3 will understand this.

At least it something else to think about when answering the question. I hope it helps but eek don't take just my word for it I am just a code monkey

bum · 16 Sep 2010 at 15:00

TheCoder said:
As NVP said 2,3, and 4 you will have to answer for your self using the knowledge you already have, tbh I personally have an issue with question 2 anyway as the answer depends on what staff resources you have available too you, and how complex your 3rd person game is. The simple answer could be 3, one programmer, one artist and one designer.

For question one, the major challenge is hardware differences rather than the actual programming lanaguge, both will be written in C++ (apart from the iPhone where about 10% of the code will in in obj-c). I do not know if this applies to the DSi but the DS does not have any hardware FPU (floating point unit) support. If this is the case for the DSi all your games maths library's would have to support fixed point arithmetic. Don't quote me on this as I am not a engine coder by nature. I would do a bit of research on the hardware specs of the DSi.

Its a bit of an odd question to ask a producer anyhow. A more producer type answer well at least in my experience of producers would be, training your staff to understand the ins and out of the DSi and its capabilities and retooling your staff to use the new hardware each will need a dev kit, this of course costs money then the time to set the systems up which is never really that straight forward, anyone who as worked on the PS2/PS3 will understand this.

At least it something else to think about when answering the question. I hope it helps but eek don't take just my word for it I am just a code monkey

Thanks for your help mate and to NVP as well! That's exactly the direction I need and I've pretty much summed up the answers for other questions. Much appreciated!

Mr Jack · 16 Sep 2010 at 15:47

Oddly, the DS is the only current gen platform I've not worked on.

bum said:
Here are the questions:
1. You are porting a 3D game from iPhone to Nintendo DSi, what would the biggest challenges on the programming side?
My current answer: the changes in the coding language, the OS system and the hardware capabilities.

Not a good answer. The programming will probably be done in the same language (C++). Abstracting the OS is a basic part of any port, and should be pretty easy.

The big problems are these:

1. The DS is slow, slow, slowity slow slow. Did I mention it was slow? It's in a whole different league of speed to the iPhone. 3D is a big problem, due to the lack of a GPU.

2. The DS and iPhone have very different control/display capabilities. A good DS game will take advantage of both screens. A good iPhone game will take advantage of the touch screen and (possibly) tilt controls. Translating these across will be a significant problem.

2. Imagine porting a 3D 3rd person game from iPhone to Nintendo Dsi, how many members will you have in your team? What are the job positions of each member? How long will the project last?

Insufficient information to provide a meaningful answer.

3. You are a producer at XXX company. You just realized that one of your programmers have been stuck on a bug for 2 days. He is wasting his time and this may make your project late. Give at least 3 ideas to solve the problem.

Firstly, this shouldn't be the producer's problem. Draw your Lead Programmer's attention to the issue and get them on it. They're much better placed to deal with the problem than you are.

The rest depends on what the bug is, and how much of a show stopper it is. Talking about it in the abstract like this is silly.

4. The time needed to port a game for phones with different screen size, heap size and jar size. (game designers need to make different level design, different graphic resources)

Is the bit in brackets your answer?

What's jar size? Never heard of that... (googles)... oh, JAR size. Right, Java development

I wouldn't expect different level design for the different phones, unless they're dramatically different. Variation in screen resolution is more common. The time taken depends on which direction we're going; low spec to high is going to be simply a matter of getting some more polished assets done (assuming you want to take advantage of the better phone). Going high to low will probably involve considerably more effort, and probably in all three areas (art, design and programming). Sounds assets may also want to be reduced and/or dropped in quality.

The exact time taken depends on the size of the game so it's meaningless in abstract.

Hope that helps?

bum · 16 Sep 2010 at 17:00

Mr Jack said:
Oddly, the DS is the only current gen platform I've not worked on.

Not a good answer. The programming will probably be done in the same language (C++). Abstracting the OS is a basic part of any port, and should be pretty easy.

The big problems are these:

1. The DS is slow, slow, slowity slow slow. Did I mention it was slow? It's in a whole different league of speed to the iPhone. 3D is a big problem, due to the lack of a GPU.

2. The DS and iPhone have very different control/display capabilities. A good DS game will take advantage of both screens. A good iPhone game will take advantage of the touch screen and (possibly) tilt controls. Translating these across will be a significant problem.

Insufficient information to provide a meaningful answer.

Firstly, this shouldn't be the producer's problem. Draw your Lead Programmer's attention to the issue and get them on it. They're much better placed to deal with the problem than you are.

The rest depends on what the bug is, and how much of a show stopper it is. Talking about it in the abstract like this is silly.

Is the bit in brackets your answer?

What's jar size? Never heard of that... (googles)... oh, JAR size. Right, Java development I wouldn't expect different level design for the different phones, unless they're dramatically different. Variation in screen resolution is more common. The time taken depends on which direction we're going; low spec to high is going to be simply a matter of getting some more polished assets done (assuming you want to take advantage of the better phone). Going high to low will probably involve considerably more effort, and probably in all three areas (art, design and programming). Sounds assets may also want to be reduced and/or dropped in quality.

The exact time taken depends on the size of the game so it's meaningless in abstract.

Hope that helps?

That was sooo good. Thank you so much

You are a star