_joe_
Hehe hey all, i would first like to thank kareem_nasser for his enthusiasm about this topic and suggesting to start this Topic.
To start all of this i will write a small paragraph answering all of those questions briefly and then in later posts i will go in depth and adjusting to questions or detailed sections.
I will start by introduction myself: my name is Joe Hannouch i'm 23 and i live in Ballouneh.
I had my bachelor in computer science concentrated in computer graphics and animation at NDU. this major is basiacally a big "makhlouta" ranging from art to science , 3d graphics and artificial intelligence. it has everything you can ask for, but nothing you really want. basically it's an "attempt" for an interesting major where you learn about everything but end up with nothing (i know that most majors are like that but this is an extreme), i joined this program interested in 3D graphics and CGI at first back in 2005 and it all started smoothly. the major was interesting. untill i started to feel a bit detached. CGI is huge, interesting, but the aspect i wanted in it was non existant in lebanon (film compositing and visual effects) remember i'm talking 2005, now compositing is taught everywhere. i was top of my class in 3D graphics, but lost interesting seeing no real outcome out of it. so i invested in 3d programming, where i took the 3D computer graphics courses at NDU using OpenGl and java (JOGL) creating basic shapes and animations. that felt more interesting working with the core instead of using a software to create smth (like 3DsMax, Maya and others), and in some way, it felt more rewarding, programming graphics, especially that there was a friend of mine (also a web developer now but graduated from NDU with a game engine as a senior project) who was always pushing the gaming concept and we spent endless hours discussing games, programming, game design and what we will do in the future so I already had this idea in mind but never took it too seriously. By my senior semester I had a lot of questions, i didn’t really know where to go, what to do.
Meanwhile I used to be the keyboardist of the Lebanese melodic metal band Void, and we had contacts in Canada back then and we just released an album in 2008, so the whole band was really excited to travel and to seize this opportunity, and each member tried to find something following up his education in Montreal.
So I basically started searching for 3D graphics masters, which obviously don't exit (art in Canada is only in schools and never in universities) so a Masters in art is either Fine Art or conceptual, nothing related to 3D graphics nor computers. several hours of research on Google ended me up on Ubisoft's Campus website.
At first i wasn't really interested i was saying to myself: Ubisoft has it's own school, big deal, just another "school" as in "ma3had", i didn't want to go to a college, i wanted an academical masters degree, and knowing that education SUCKS in Canada, it was really hard finding something. But when I went and read the website it appeared that Ubisoft Campus is just a campus endorsing several universities offering a gaming related major. ie:
Universite de Montreal offered a masters in game design
Universite de Sherbrooke offered a masters in game development
Cegep de Matane a certificate in level design, game modeling, texturing..
Dawson College an english certificate in game design
note that cegep in canada is a college (secondary school) and that all those programs (except the Dawson college one) are in French... yes pure fucked up QUEBECOIS french. but that's the only program i found, and hey i'm french educated and i speak it fluently (phew or else.... quebecois is like khaliji to a lebanese).
so to wrap it up, Sherbrooke University offers a Masters in game development at Ubisoft Campus(sherbrooke rents a class room inside Ubisoft campust where sherbrooke provides the teachers and Ubisoft the room and the computers)
I wouldn’t apply for the game design since it’s too theoretical, it’s basically writing, I prefer doing philosophy instead of game design so the other masters was game development and here is when my old dreams of game development and my conversations with my friend were possible (noting that I wasn’t thinking of coming back after so short).here i am applying to Sherbrooke University for the game development program (which is in Sherbrooke(2 hours from Montreal) but Ubisoft Campus is in Montreal), and was chosen (not sure about the criteria) but i think that my transcript was the key, remember my major was a salad of courses, and upon checking the Masters program of Sherbrooke, I already had all of them on my BS degree, of course on a lower level, the level 4 AI course I took in NDU vs. the level 7 masters AI course at Sherbrooke. Image processing level 4 at NDU vs level 7 image and sound processing game oriented at Sherbrooke. To keep it short, all the courses that were offered at the masters were already on my bachelor transcript (Thanks NDU:P). oh I forgot to mention that they sent me a C++ exam that I have to do in 24 hours. Let’s say that the exam was like C++3 in our Lebanese universities I had to revise a bit and get some help since c++ 1 and 2 were old to me (2005= 3 years ago) and that all the courses I took after my first year were in java.
So you guessed it: I got accepted and later I knew that they only accepted 15. As a Lebanese I had to go through all the process of an international student, apply for the CAQ (certificate of acceptance of Quebec) get accepted to study, get the acceptance of the uni, the acceptance of Quebec, go to the embassy apply for a visa, wait, get the visa and travel, go to the student affair get my study permit and finally, enter Montreal :P wouhou.
I can detail the Masters in a different post, but it’s 16 weeks long and we have 2 full games to develop in groups of 4 or 5 (12 weeks the first one and 17 weeks the second one), that was the best experience we can ever get in an educational environment, it was too technical, too extreme, too hard, too sexy. I believe it’s one of the hardest majors one can study, just for reference; I finished my BS at NDU with a gpa of 3.82, and that with no prior studying, 4 active musical bands, a girlfriend and having fun all the time. In game dev, I actually had to study a lot, read a lot, u can never be too geeky in gaming, and there is always something to make you feel behind. Like I’m saying I can detail the masters upon request. I personally was a deseloper designing and developing at the same time, I modeled the characters, rigged them and textured them, I worked on the terrains, the light maps, I worked as a 3D programmer first using pure DirectX 9, in the second project we used OGRE which is a rendering engine (using DirectX) which made things a bit easier, I worked on the GUI, the physics using physX, the sound using Fmod, the network (we could connect up to 24 players at once) using Rakknet, did some shaders in hlsl and glsl, my main shaders(or signatures) were the parallax occlusion mapping and differed rendering, I worked on the gameplay creating my own scene graph and scene manager, OGRE was an amazing tool, I recommend any gaming amateur who wants to play around to get the OGRE sdk and go to the forum, it’s a very active community and everything is open source. That’s the education part. Here comes the work:
Since we’re in Ubisoft campus, we have like the green light for an interview and after several interviews, exams and shit they took 10 developers out of 15, we all started on a trial contract for a couple of months we started working on far cry 3 , some of us on iphone games such as prince of Persia 2, 2 friends were on Shawn White and the rest on far cry 3, they gave us the positions based on our experience and CD (which includes the 2 big games) I was a game play programmer. And the project was WAYYY BEHIND. The release is still scheduled for I dunno when (2011). As a gameplay programmer on a huge game, I was literally a number, I had to manage an nGB of code that used to take up to 40minutes to compile on Ubisofts servers (and that’s just the gameplay part) when I started gameplay was kind of finished and nothing important to be mentioned here (I only stayed a month…. Read below)
Now comes the ugly part, I actually HATED the corporate system, and I was wondering: if in gaming I’m hating it, what will it be in other fields, I hated how they think, act, communicate, they’re like machines seriously (will get more into details in another post also). So since it’s a trial period, I started looking at other “smaller” studios in montreal such as A2M, Gameloft, EA, Eidos and many others (smaller studios were producing much more immersive games and I’m not a big fan of AAA games) but it was the economical recession back then and I hardly had an interview. That phase was probably deadly to me, since it made me go in invisible circles, I loved the community, but hated the society.. that’s bad. And after months of agony, I visited Lebanon for vacation during Christmas vacations (5 months ago) and I just couldn’t resist, I know it’s all personal and you would tell me: I would have done this or that. But believe me, you can’t really judge me if you didn’t go through what I went through or had a similar experience. In 3 days, out of pure chance, a guy offered me a job here in Lebanon as a developer (web) in a boutique style agency, and me (who hates corporate) loved the place and made me stick to my choice. So that’s how a 10 days vacation turned to be this radical choice (can get to details later too) but I didn’t have anything, just a couple of clothes. Checking the prices and quality of electronics in Lebanon, I later on shipped everything from Canada which I received 10 days ago (so happy) including my screens, tower, gaming gear and sound. I would love to write my spec sheet, and give some advices and tips for gaming computers I got really involved in hardware and gaming optimal performance, but will do in a different post also: p
AS for me being a gamer or not, I’ll just say that I have both the Razer Destructor and Razer ExactMat, so go figure out what kind of games I like hehe. I won’t talk much about that right now.
I really can’t talk about everything in a single post; I just threw all my thoughts and ideas, feelings and 5 years story. Please do note what you want me to explain, stuff you want me to detail, advices, anything and I’ll be ready to answer (maybe more technical questions, I’m at 1926 word so I’m kind of tired hehe).
I salute you all and hope to open a nice discussion.
Cheers
Joe Hannouch
_joe_
Dark_angel wroteVery interesting story. But if you can please write your posts into readable paragraphs it would be better. It seems you've copy paste things you have already written.
Hello, well i wrote this late and i just threw everything i was thinking of, i never copied anything nor pasted. i don't go writing about myself everyday you know it was just upon Kareem's request.
Dark_angel wroteI am wondering though how UbiSoft would show you Far Cry 3 or let you work on it since you are in a trial period. I can't dig that.
As for the trial period. i meant contract trial, and not intern, the 3 years contract i signed has a 6 months free to cancel policy, that way they protect themselves in case they want to let you go (cause after those 6 motnhs they cant, even if you dont deliver as promised). They made me sign on numerous confidential papers and secrecy documents. but hey i'm not in Canada aint i ;) and i want to share everything i can (even my friend who was working on a different project didnt tell me about it, that's one of the things i didnt like felt like the CIA or smth), after all : "Nehna l Lebneniyye mna3mol yalli baddna" no?
Dark_angel wrotePlus smaller studios doesn't have the money to innovate they needs strong publishers Like EA or other gaming developers Like 3DREALMS to produce and help them funding the game.
That's not true, smaller studios and especially "garage companies"(indi) are the ones that are innovating, creating immersive gameplay and story lines, and the big companies are hitting the big cash with already written stories and massive production. of course big publishers are always here for them but if you check steam you would see a huge number of self produced indi games.
Dark_angel wroteAs for AAA Titles I can't see how big studios can't create AAA titles. We have seen Remedy entertainment developing Max Payne series with the help of 3DREALMS.
you got me wrong on that one. AAA games are the hollywood of games, meaning only big studios are able to produce them, what i mean by my post is that i didnt really like the AAA workflow, it's like producing a mass production item, you lose any feeling, assasins creed 2's crew was over 420 employee (imagine the work of 1 programmer) it's like a worker putting the metal pieces , the second one screwing, the third one cleaning. that workflow, I joe hannouch, didnt like it and was looking for smth smaller, more personal; games with 20 to 30 people, you work more, get to learn more, you'r not just a number. at least this is me.
Dark_angel wroteComing here and working as a web developer after reaching the level of Ubisoft and the experience you will get expose too is a very bad decision.
Like i said this is just me, and i dont think anyone can judge my decision, of course im not just another webdevelper in lebanon i just got here and i'll be having my own projects and hopefully in gaming.
I was the first to leave lebanon, cursing it and hating it. And the first to come back (remember i traveled with my band), knowing that it has the biggest potential and that was enough to ignite my motivation.
i thank you all for your comments, i know that i wrote a lot before and like Dark_angel said, it was all in 1 paragraph, i apologize for that.
If any of you have a detailed, more in depth question about gaming, development, how/where and why to start or any point concerning my previous post. just post it and we will have a nice conversation.
Joe Hannouch
