Interns at Our Machinery: Frank

Hello everyone, my name is Frank and I’m a programming intern at Our Machinery.

I study game development at the Breda University of Applied Sciences with a focus on engine/graphics programming. I’ve been wanting to work on game engines ever since I started programming. It’s mathematically challenging and it requires a lot of optimization, which was something I was missing when I studied normal application development. So now I’m here, the challenge has never been greater and the joy of finding out efficient solutions has never been more exciting!

Currently, I’m learning under Tobias and working on smaller rendering features. These will hopefully become bigger features as I get more experienced with The Machinery. I also try to solve some of the issues that pop up on the public issue tracker, it’s a good way to learn more about every nook and cranny of the engine and to directly help people.

Getting a year-long internship isn’t easy in the games industry, especially in engine/graphics development. I did an internship 5 years ago in application development and I asked my then supervisor (who was a game industry veteran) what steps I should take to learn how to make game engines. His response was simple: start making them right now, you will make a lot of mistakes, but your experiences will help you with future engines. So that’s what I did in my free time. None were ever completed, but they got a lot better with every iteration. I’m really thankful for that piece of advice, it taught me the importance of being proactive in my learning. Since then I joined a university that specializes in AAA game development, complete with low-level console development, and being able to work in big teams of 20 to 30 people. Those resources are rare and incredibly valuable. Sharing your knowledge is also very important, I’m not much of a blog post writer, but I was quite good at giving presentations and sometimes even lectures at my university. I think there is no better way to become an expert on something than to try to teach or inspire others about it, you will get a lot of feedback along the way that will only strengthen your skills further down the line. So if you want to join the game industry as well then my advice is as follows. Start doing stuff now and take every opportunity you can get to learn more!

You can reach me at [email protected] or on the Our Machinery Discord server if you feel like talking about engine/graphics programming, optimizations, EU4, hiking, or anything else.

Catch you later!

Frank