Mark Craig guest lecture report

 

In mark’s lecture he discussed the different coding languages each role needs to know. I mainly took interest in the languages the games/level designers needed to know. When talking about the languages designers need to know he mentioned mainly game engines such as the unreal and unity engines. These are the biggest game engines in the industry that are 3rd party software, although most developer that use “in-house” engines are just extremely modified 3rd party engines.

 

The coding languages mark recommended level designers learn where the popular ones such as java script, c++ and c sharp. He stated that level designers don’t have to be extremely skilled at the languages just capable enough to create the functionality of the level and help complete the basics of the game, this means that for people like me who study multiple aspects of games development we have good knowledge of how to perform this role as we are taught how to make levels functional.

 

I read one article where someone asked how important is programming to a level designer which had a variety of responses. Some people stated that most companies don’t look for programming skills in level designers, then some people stated that it’s best to learn simple languages. So I think that when it comes to programming for level designers it all depends on what sort of work environment and company you are going into as if you are going into a big company programming isn’t that much of an issue for level designers as they will have programmers specifically for it but on the other hand if you are going into a small games company it would be expected and very useful if you know basic scripting to help get the game functional and working quickly.