Aaron Rich

Academic Background: Digital Production, Design and Development T-Level @ St Thomas More (Gateshead)

Industrial Placement: 130 hours with PROTOGÉ (Gateshead) + 182 hours with I N F I N I T Y 27 (Gateshead)

Areas of Interest: Unreal Engine Blueprint Visual Scripting; 3D Modelling in Blender; Multi-Platform Deployment

Challenge

The challenges for me were learning to design and code a playable game, learning to code inside a game engine and the background of what goes into making a game, such as the roles, the tech used and the industry as a whole.

Outcome

I have gained the ability to code in Unreal and be able to design a working system through prototyping which I have found really fun. Missing things due to illness was challenging but I  caught up and managed to make up for it. I learned how the pipelines worked in terms of how the different parts of the engine interact with each other. I learned how the different roles communicate and how important they are, what they need to tell each other to make things work properly for the end result to be what is envisioned. When programmers talk to designers about player model (code to move) that the designer doesn't know the code but they need to still communicate what things go where so that things function as intended, while being understandable to the programmer.

Impact

The placement has been monumental in improving as a coder and learning how the engine works hands-on will help in the future. Learning all the skills here was brilliant and without the placement wouldn't be as proficient or qualified as I am now, despite my sleep schedule being a challenge with attendance.