by PaulH on Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:10 pm
Firstly, Hypey, Habboi is right in a way. Picking those courses is a good step, but they wont neccessarily teach you anything useful regarding games design. I for example did my A levels, then did one year of a HND in computing, which was more about putting computers together, and didn't teach me anything relating to what i wanted to do with my life, so i ditched that and went to uni to do a proper games design course instead. To get into the uni computing school they did want some evidence of me having done computing before, so doing this at GCSE and A level is good.
Basically GCSE's and A-Level's are all well and good, and its beneficial to do subjects related to what you want to be, and get good marks in them, but the way into the industry is to work in your own time with your chosen tools (Hammer, Unreal, Max, etc) and build your skills up solo, as school won't teach you that stuff. Is it actually Games Design you want to do, or Level Design?
@Habboi
I started by designing some of the tracks on paper, these were then drawn up into proper 2D's in Photoshop. Then i created (modelled) the tracks i was asked to (but these weren't the tracks i had done the 2D plans for, we swop and change around).
Basically what you drive on in game on the tracks i did is the actual 3d mesh i made for the road surface, unchanged. The textures on it and the environment around it were added in by the art team and made to look pretty, though i made a basic version of all that before it was handed over too, to give the artists an idea of how i wanted the track to look, where objects and trees were, key features etc
And the portfolio was a big help in getting into codies yea, the degree helped to catch their attention also, but at the end of the day if you submit an application and it has an interesting and varied set of images/videos on it, with evidence of your skills, they will overlook the fact that you haven't gone to university. A degree is just a plus point on your CV, and shows you are commited to your craft i guess.