Comparative differences between games design and simulation design - Part 6: 5 months in, A designer in an engineering world.

So This Isn't All About Technical Similarities

So this post isn't about something about the difference in technology.. This is a talk about mentality and what I have learnt and adapted over the 5 or so months that I have worked within the new industry so think of this as kind of like a milestone nudge to show to me what I have learnt.

I know it may be a bit weird to talk about the mentality behind the idea of working in a different industry but there are important points specially with mentality theory and stress and issues with frustration.

What Have I Learnt....

Coding *Future blog post*

Although I had coding in my background with learning C# to make a side scrolling game where I made a baby joey deliver his assignment to school with bad people trying to stop him.  That was a years worth of development as well as a year of C++ development and 6 weeks Python development time.  I had a strong understanding of variables and structure but briefly, relearning coding is making me feel like I want to do some research into coding within unreal and see the response breakdown within unreal with possible C++ coding attachments.

Engineering Work Ethics

Engineers work in a different context wise to thinking, problem solving and plans of action to designers.  From observation of members of my team to seeing how they work on things and fix things is strangely different in how they compute and process problems. It's very much a computational thinking process to breakdown issues. From observation, it's a big problem broken into smaller with each section looking for possible solutions for the most optimal and then to work and fix them efficiently without wasting much time but to that, the process won't be stopped until the fix is complete.

Its interesting to watch and process the thinking process especially as in a designer process is to try loads of different variations until one works more efficiently, an example is in regards to UV's and light maps.  Light maps taught to me was to keep every UV side as separate as possible but Epic devs state that it's better to have them close and as big as possible.

Simulation Engines

I have had the fun time of working with one engine for around 4 months (VR Forces) and another engine for about 2 weeks (VBS3) and although there are other engines, there are clear interesting points to each one *I discussed this in a previous post*. I would like to get more practise with these environments but the big factor I learnt is that although they do what they do well; they are poorly kept and badly optimised with issues like memory management (VR Forces) or bad interfaces (VBS3).

Although they are frustrating to work with sometimes and that they are still heavily reliant on CPU processing for processing data which the GPU can do, it is interesting to see what can happen in the future but specially with possible use of other engines.

Agile Meetings Process (worked well and worked badly)

One thing that is very similar to games design processes is the use of Agile meetings was seen to be used every so often in two different projects.  One was implemented and used but the team presented that they were not into it which was interesting to see.  It was also specially apparent when others who had to cover the main role person in the agile meetings was not there and the speed of the meetings doubled which made it torturous to be sat in.

That said, I have noticed a good use of Agile process lately with quite meetings daily done effectively which is quite useful but as it is a very theory based project to practical, I can understand why its so effective but it does demonstrate that the use of it is a two way thing both within the team and the project they are working on.

Overall, meetings to me personally is incredibly difficult as I hate meetings especially long ones as it means in some cases being sat which can be incredibly long and arduous discussions that you have no input in and although it happens a lot, it makes me miss being a teacher as those meetings take less than 20 minutes which is so comfortable.  It is something that I am going to have to work around and really try to get my grips as it can be so horrible being in a room doing nothing for long durations of time.

What I Still Want To Learn...

VR / AR design

In both training and simulation, the use of AR and VR is becoming more apparent and more advanced in previous years.  Such things as advanced in retinal sight and features like controllers would allow advancements in training and development to colleagues and customers is somewhere I really want to get into.  I am always on the prowl to see what I can get my hands on project wise that allows me to work on this.

Frustrations That Come Along With The Industry:

Now this may sounds like me complaining (This isn't by the way!), As always there is concerns of mine.  Now this is a set of concerns as my skill set is not one that is commonly used in this industry which can be bothersome but it's not problematic that makes me hate my job *I don't hate my job* but it's stuff that I need to keep an eye on in the future if I want to keep my skill set up to date.

Project Situations and choices

My concern in my field is that my skill set will be used irregularly and with that, I become rusty and pointless.  I don't want that to happen but it'll frustrate me to be on projects that don't allow me to improve or work on my skills to make them the best I can be.  One concern is that I am going to be on projects that will restrict or be used as a "grunt" in projects that are not useful and with that, I am fed up not being utilised efficiently.

Although this is not a massive bug bare right now... but if it carries on, it will make me think of what I want to do as I joined my new industry on the basis that my skills would be utilised for that reason.

Overall feeling 

Overall I am happy where I am, I work on some unique industry projects that allow me to diversely work with some unique people.  The feeling though is that although I have this skill set and that's what they want, I am concerned that I am going to be shoved into a position where those skills are not effectively going to be used as well as I want them to be.

I get to work and keep up to date on industry standards with learning and adapting my skills to work with future software as well as learn new software but the need to know that I am not going to turn into a "Grunt" will become more apparent in the future.  The idea that it may happen concerns me right now but not dramatically.

I have been told that there are unique projects being pushed and they know what I want to do.  Only time will tell but I will say it's a definite positive.