There's been a lot of good advice in the last 30 or so posts.

Basically, getting a job in the game industry boils down to creating something new (art assets, code, scripting, level geometry, sounds, fx, whatever), polishing it up, getting it into some playable form, and letting a potential employer experience it, in-game. If it's cool, and makes someone say "Wow, nice, can you make us some of this?" then you're in. It's actually pretty simple.

(Note that the "in-game" part isn't always 100% necessary, but it always helps.)

There are a whole lot of other influencing factors (breadth and depth of your game-related skills, education, background, social skills, interview skills, and so on), but it's mostly just about Making Cool Shit and impressing someone with it. 

Willem and others are quite correct: No one starts as a "game designer". You may start as a level designer/scripter and be given a certain degree of freedom to make decisions about gameplay in your current corner of the game, but the actual design of the game as a whole is almost always going to be handled by one or more senior people who have been at that company and/or in the industry for quite a while. 

s00ry mate, but it says I have run out of invites too, and I havent invited anybody!
Maybe they just dont need anymore testers ATM. I'll try again tomorrow.....

thanks for the encouragement guys, given me stuff to think about. 

There are easier ways to learn programming than C. Since you already know some BASIC, the basics are not that hard though so you might go to C directly.

But. It's maybe not so relevant for a game designer / mapist. It's very fast to run but a bit of a pain to make stuff with.

So I'd say LUA / Python or some script language like that would be nice. Lua is very easy and nice but I don't know how the environment works, ie I've only used it in context of where it has been built into games, not created anything standalone with it.

I don't think you will have much trouble learning all that Ricky, it just requires work.
It's good if you have some people or friends to ask if you're stuck on a problem or the tutorials etc are ambiguous. This is where college helps somewhat. But stuff depends. Some people study better on their own than others. 

what I meant by 'some programming' is more of a basic intro course to a language. No most designers don't need to know how to code, but it's helpful to be familar with how something is programmed.

And if you happen to be good at it, or like it alot, you can pursue it further and be more of a scripter or technically oriented designer. Level designers as a whole in the industry tend to be either enviroment artists or scripter, so having a wide amount of knowledge is good. 

if you want to be a scripter or level designer who mainly focuses on doing gameplay implementation, learn LUA. It's used everywhere, except the studios who use Unreal3/idTech/Source. 

Curses! Cheers anyway though... if they turn up again let me know! :) 

Unreal3/idTech/Source

Im confused. Thats like most of them isn't it?

Also what is LUA? Is it used in Blacksite? Nope, that was UE3, I think? Army of Two? GTA4? (I know that used Rage engine)
Maybe Fallout 3/Oblivion? Crysis?

Heh - I should really try another engine as some point if I'm serious though, but Source or idTech would seem like a logical stepping stone for me. Cause (with the exception of idTech5 AFAIK) they use a brush based system. Actually didnt I hear that UE3 used a brush based system, unlike UE1/2 which used a subtraction system? 

Brush based and subtraction are not really dualities. In the first Unreal editor, you cut out a space and build brushes inside that space. It is possible to approach Quake editing with this method if an editor designer so chose to do it that way.

Also idTech 5 uses brushes, but model implementation is very well integrated, where you can drop a .lwo model created in a modeling ap (it certainly wont hurt to know how to use one), and the id bsp compiler will process it as easily as if you had used brushes. Still, the typical approach in idTech 5 is to create the frame work with brushes and
use modeling for detailed objects (all that wicked pipe layout in Doom3).

If you are still interested in C, the Quake 2 game dll is a good place to practice the skills you'll learn on. It is not a sandbox like QuakeC, or even Quake3's virtual machine (though there are few restrictions on C usage with Q3), but a straight up dll made in C. There are a shit load of tuts for it.

http://webadvisor.aupr.edu/noc/ 

Thats like most of them isn't it?

Anywhere doing FPS/Action games. But there are lots of places that do casual games or downloadable games or RTS games or RPG games or MMO games... and for the most part don't use idTech or Unreal or Source. 

I see what you mean. Soory, I've just got fps on the brain :D 

Ricky, it's very simple, you'll learn the basics in a few hours and most of it in two days.

This 3 line program should output the squares from 1 to 10 (haven't tested it myself):

for i = 1, 10, 1 do
print(i*i)
end


When you know one normal language, you know the basics of most languages as they are really just slight variations of the same ideas. Hence if you have made some games with BASIC you're already most of halfway there... 

How likely are you to survive?

http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/worldwarz/index2.php 

Was a good book. I recommend it. Nice tapestry of zombie tales from throughout the zombie apocalypse. 

36% survival rating.

Not bad considering really. 

i had never chance to thank Frib personally, but i wanna thank you for the BEST dm map ever
pkeg(fribdev1) you rock dude :) ok. i finally did it 

i'm stuck with that map since ~2000 

36% hmph. I reckon I could up that, based on me consuming Scampie to survive.

Was a good book yeah. 

good questions :) 

being that you live on an island, and could potentially swim/boat to safety, rather than myself who lives in the central of America and would need to escape to the frozen tundra of Northern Canada. 

Hahahahhah!

Yes, I'm drunk. 

but only after skewering the results by stealing my neighbor's boat. 

Had to adjust based on not being in the US (live near coast, etc), but got 43% survival chance apparently. I can (probably... well, maybe) live with that 

exaggerated my wilderness survival abilities. It pretty much comes down to, are you will to eat a squirrel? I never have, but rabbit is pretty tasty, so probably could. 

motherfucker