Game Programmer looking for Team

Business and Project Management Discussions
#1

Hello, my name is Jake Gordon and I am a desktop game programmer, familiar in Java (more specifically the swing library). I am 14 years old and looking to join a development team interested in developing a desktop game.

Hold your horses Jake, did you say your 14? I have children older then you! Yes, I didn’t lie, I am 14 years old. I am, like I stated above, fluent in Java and the the swing library, and very interested in joining a team (also stated above). I work very hard, though humor is, after all, running through my blood.

In all seriousness, I am very interested in joining a team to create something truly special and unique. I have tried to develop a game with the “unique” and “special” characteristic before, however the lack of art and ideas made it come crashing to the ground in a very, very, very early state.

I am not specifically looking for an established team, but I would prefer someone closer to my age level because working with a bunch of 30 year old’s would just be…weird.

Adding on to my established team comment, I would be very interested in joining a team with the staff members currently enrolled and an envision in progress, but I also wouldn’t mind starting something new. I don’t specifically have any incredible or great leadership skills, so if “we” are making a team, we would probably need someone to manage all of our monkeys.

To make this all clear, this is what I am looking for:

  • An established team looking for a Java programmer OR
  • A team looking for members specifically a Java programmer
    • I am NOT a leader, we need someone to control all of our code monkeys
    • I am only a Java programmer, not an artist-musician-wizard
  • Notes:
    • I am also interested in a team with a pre-established game, though I would rather build a game from the bottom up with some great individuals

I hope you enjoyed my little short essay!

If you want to contact me, leave a comment below and I will send you further contact information OR email me at ilovefuge@gmail.com The preffered method is a comment below.

Peace,

  • Jake

Also, I am new to this site, so I may have posted this in the wrong folder. Oops!

#2

You can have a mod to move this post. Other than that, I don’t think this post is written by a kid, it seems somewhat professional (not in the details, but in the style). And one more thing, swing is not a game library and isn’t tailored for making games. Before all this, I recommend to learn some game engine like LibGDX, it help’s you a lot.

#3

Moved topic - to respond to the post though, a couple of things. First, it’s highly unlikely that any team you find will be willing to use your engine especially when it’s written in java2D. Besides this, please don’t try to emphasize your own age because you think you’re young to be programming, it’s unprofessional in contrast to the rest of your post.

#4

Yeah that’s fine, I just see a lot of high schoolers like you and me try to use their young age as a selling point, not realizing that, if you join a team, it’s because of your skill, not your skill compared to your age.

#5

He didn’t really use it for a selling point, I’m pretty sure he was just warning people,

Even then, he went on to his experience shortly after. But I do agree with you, skill > age while looking for team members.

#6

Greetings Jake, and welcome to JGO!

Many people come here looking to join a team on their first post (I did as well :P). While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it would be helpful for you to tell more about your coding experience. You said before that you aren’t a master of art or music, but you need to show that you can work independently. You could perhaps show off some of your memorable projects, or tell us how long you have been coding.

Trust me when I say that working with a team is much more difficult than working on your own. Showing people what you can accomplish individually will make more people consider you a valuable team member.

-wes

#7

I hope you’re not serious about that. ::slight_smile:

On a different note: You seem to know a lot compared to your age, and it’s never too early to get experience in working with a team - I’ve been programming for almost 7 years now (started at 11 :slight_smile: ) and only recently got into a team. Ever since then I experienced that working with other people is truly a skill on it’s own and something that you will have to learn if you want to work in this field. Make sure you know Git well, your coding style is clean and get ready to document your code a lot. Hope you’ll find a team.

#8

Now I’m interesting in that game engine of yours :smiley:

#9

Have you made a game before? If not, maybe join to weekend’s Ludum Dare gamejam?

I guess it will be easier to find a team when you have something to show.

#10

Have you completed any projects before? If not then I suggest you work on one then show it off in the WIP forum area so people can guage your work and your code.

#11

Hi

Sorry to disappoint you but you have to learn a lot before making something “unique”, “special”, … You have to start by … the beginning, very simple non graphical games probably alone. I’m not sure that looking for a team is the best way to start. I agree with lcass and JVallius. At first, prove that you’re able to code, become quite autonomous and then you might work within a team. Don’t look for a team to learn something, don’t assume that some developers have pedagogical skills.

#12

We are not trying to put you down , we are trying to stop bad things from happening , if you rush into it too quickly you will end up with useless spaghetti code that you will look at and be dispointed you cant add anything else. Its best to learn and fail but learn from it than rush into it fail and not learn a thing.

#13

To add onto that, Swing isn’t exactly the most used… Library? In the Java games field. I am part of a team and I have never seen Swing used in an actual game. Why? Its very high level, so it takes a way a lot of the abilities that other libraries have (shaders for one), and its nor designed for games. Its designed for programs centered around UIs.

I’m not trying to tell you what you know is useless, but you would be better off telling us what you know about LibGDX or LWJGL + OpenGL. Those are the libraries generally used in Java game development.

#14

Wow! It’s great to see how many of you gave feedback! Thank you for all the great reply’s and helpful comments.

You guys really helped me decide my next step in developing games. I am going to learn LibGDX first and create a few basic games, and then do the same with LWJGL. I am planning to learn them well, as well as keep my code clean and well documented. Along with that I am learning git a lot better. On a diffirent note, I am also learning other scripting languages and getting more fluent in other big languages like C++ and C#.

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction!

  • Jake
#15

Hold ya horses for a minute. If I were you I wouldn’t get so overwhelmed because it isn’t good for anyone (but mostly to you). Managing your freetime is up to you, but first of all learning all this at once takes up an enormous amount of time; Second: You’re going to get confused with the termonologies. I would much rather concentrate on a single language and learn all that before I go to the next one, although I understand that it’s hard to not get impatient when there’s so much to learn (that’s not an insult, a good programmer learns till the end of his life :)). Make sure you understand the OOP and the main design patterns first, only then should you try to expand your knowledge.

#16

Totally agree with this. It seems you are learning a lot right now which is great that you do want to gain more knowledge but I think you could see more progress if you focused on a few things, become comfortable and then add new languages, libraries etc.

I also recommend LibGDX as other members here have suggested already. It’s a great library and pretty straight forward. I’ve attached some links below which are great for learning about LibGDX. The first link just teaches you about what the basic stuff does in the library such as cameras, screens, rendering etc. The second link goes into more detail about certain things such as animated tiles with the Tiled software or learning about Box2D. I personally used the first link when getting started with the library and still use the second link every now and then.

The documentation is also great and straight forward. I always find myself quickly flicking through it to find out something new or to refresh my memory. Use it as your bible :smiley:

LibGDX basic features(Linked to the first tutorial with LibGDX) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i78aqugqds&list=UUnxxWLsLD24gMWkPFj7RPVg
LibGDX in-depth(Linked to the page as there are so many tutorials!) - https://www.youtube.com/user/dermetfan/videos
LibGDX documentation and Javadocs - https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/wiki - http://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/nightlies/docs/api/