EPTThat said, I have two potential projects available for me to pursue and I'm not sure which would help push me towards my goal of being a game programmer more.
1) Student game
A few college students were doing an educational game for a library, as part of their senior project I assume, and left the game incomplete. After looking over the code, it looks to be about 80% complete and now the library wants someone to finish it.
Problems:
- Has a large list of bugs that result in undesired behavior or crashes.
- Completely missing a mini game.
- Mac vs PC incompatibilities. Some functions work on one but not the other. (would be tough as hell for me to test, since I don't have access to a mac)
The code is largely uncommented and commented poorly in the few cases it exists. The library wants to game complete in a few weeks. Also, the game is written in C using SDL to display graphics.
2) Hobby project
A friend and I are in the process of designing a game using C++ and DirectX. The guy is a stellar programmer who felt like making a game for fun in his spare time and I'd really like to work with as I think it would be a good learning experience.
So direct comparison of pros and cons: (student proj vs hobby proj)
- Paid (hourly, to be determined) vs unpaid.
- C and SDL vs C++ and DirectX.
- Finishing/Debugging a game vs starting from scratch.
In the end, what I'm most concerned with is which I can bring to an interview and actually have the potential employer be more impressed with. The hobby project would obviously be more technically demanding, uses the industry standard tech (C++/DX), would show project management/planning abilities (we're writing up design/tec docs), and show I can collaborate with other programmers. However, the student project is paid and has a real client so perhaps that makes it more professional and thus carries more weight?
So in closing, if you were an employer which would help convince you to give me the job more?
P.S: The money from the student job isn't really a factor, as I'm not in dire need of the money. Living at home keeps costs down. I don't think the library will pay much either, since they approached the college students to do it for free originally.
