Trinity versus DIT

Now isnt Trinity one of the most famous colleges in the world? like Harvard and eh…others Cool.Would this help me get a job if I choose to go over seas? Also, while I was reading through the DIT course I liked the fact that you could go and choose a game programming stream.[/quote:b88d82dbf5]

I wouldnt say trinity is like havard (havard being mostly a law school). At the end of the day the college you go to makes little difference. Its what you can do and the demo’s you can do that makes the difference. I think you’ll find the majority of people on here who actually work for games companies didnt go to trinity. Omen, Kytokid, myself etc.

A universities reputation will only get you so far, and is generally more important at postgraduate level when who you choose to supervise your work and where you do it is really important.

look at the course content, find out about the labs and facilities and talk to people who have done the courses. I suspect in many traditional computer science courses there is very little actual focus on games but sometimes the lecturers are very supportive and allow people to do relevant projects. You will only find that out from talking to grads.

Aphra.

I think the name Trinity has meaning in Ireland, and considering, chances are you won’t be working in games in Ireland, this isn’t a big thing. The Trinity Games course may garner a better reputation ( has there been grads yet? )
Do the course you think you’ll get the most out of.

Go to Trinity*. You can look down your nose at all those bit part programmers from other universities, and help found the next generation companies like Havok and Demonware. Trinity FTW :)

Dave
(*I may be biased, snotty and arrogant, but…)

Go to Trinity*. You can look down your nose at all those bit part programmers from other universities, and help found the next generation companies like Havok and Demonware. Trinity FTW :)

Dave
(*I may be biased, snotty and arrogant, but…)[/quote:9c73a70af6]

Any also dont make ps3/360 game titles ;)

Sorry :)

I forgot the slew of other universities that outputted AAA game studios around Ireland :)

Dave

i did one so you can PM me if you like.

At the end of the day the college you go to makes little difference. Its what you can do and the demo’s you can do that makes the difference. I think you’ll find the majority of people on here who actually work for games companies didnt go to trinity. Omen, Kytokid, myself etc.[/quote:eb978dca5d]

Couldn’t agree more! College is what you make of it yourself, not where you go to. Heck, Bill Gates didn’t even finish college and look how far he went. Not that I’m advising anyone to do that, but it just goes to show..

Anymore postgrads? so I can get the best of both worlds.
Cheers.[/quote:83031a5a18]

Aye, I went to DCU and then Abertay.

I am thinking to go to that university the next year. How was it?

Thanks

Which uni?

Go to the one with the most hot women, when you start working for a games company you won’t be seeing any more of their kind.

Thats right, I said it.

I would like to do for next course (09-10) in Abertay (Dundee, Scotland). And I was asking the guy who has done in there.

Because I teach there, but I’m also a graduate. We have worked very hard to make an interesting, challenging and relevant games stream and have several students currently doing work placement in a significant Irish middleware company. You can check out some student work here:

http://seriousgames.ie
http://www.comp.dit.ie/website07/news.php?id=64

Also we have just invested 80K in a new lab, complete with HP workstations, XBOX 360’s Wii’s, PS3’s etc. The lab is being commissioned at the moment and we’ll make an official announcement shortly. Feel free to PM me and I can put you in touch with some graduates…

Bryan

Also we have just invested 80K in a new lab, complete with HP workstations, XBOX 360’s Wii’s, PS3’s etc. The lab is being commissioned at the moment and we’ll make an official announcement shortly. Feel free to PM me and I can put you in touch with some graduates…

Bryan[/quote:6d5b2592dc]

Presumably, 360 is the only programmable console of those mentioned (ps3 can install yellow dog linux but you cant program RSX ), unless ye got ps3 devkit but AFAIK they are not for retail to anyone who isnt a registered sony developer.

Skooter500

When you say you have 360’s, Wii’s, and PS3’s, do you mean you have them in the lab for student’s to play, or that you have the actual development hardware?

For me, the choice of post-grad would be strongly influenced by the (programmable) hardware that is available to me.

And by programmable, I don’t really count homebrew, XNA, or hacked hardware, I mean full support forums, docs, updated libraries, etc. and direct access to the metal.

But I might be alone in this view.

Congratulations to DIT if they’ve managed this one. Very well done.

B.

When you say you have 360’s, Wii’s, and PS3’s, do you mean you have them in the lab for student’s to play, or that you have the actual development hardware?
[/quote:4eabcd427c]

I’d say this is the case.

Doubt its development, you’d have to be a games studio to get access to full resources. I dont think any game development courses have actually managed to get a developer license from any of the three. I heard abertay have ps3 but just with yellow dog installed for cell stuff(but doesnt give you access to the metal), they have got ps2 (but who cares really.lol). The cost of getting kits runs at approx 15k each last time i checked, but maybe cheaper now.

As for XNA i would agree with Jediboy, its not real world development experience (no one uses it for games) but it does give you a quick way to demostrate game concepts etc. but xna and a 360 is better than no console experience

Its homebrew stuff. We are a college (a big one), but dont have infinite resources. We have students working on XNA games and also running Linux on the PS3’s. They are also for demoing stuff in class and getting students to play and evaluate games. We teach XNA in 3rd year and fourth year is C++, directX. We also teach middleware (last year was ODE, FMOD, various free networking middleware, this year we will probably throw havok into the mix because of the competition) and Java MIDP games programming.

Anyway IMO its as much about just providing stuff for students to play with, explore, be inspired and just see what they come up with themselves.

Bryan

Apologies.

I think I assumed from the thread title that this was about the graduate courses on offer.

I think Bryan is bang on the money, when he says undergrads should be about exposing the students to as much tech as possible.

Where as grad/post-grad should (in my opinion) be more of a specialisation, that’s where my comments regarding real hardware were aimed.

SCEA’s Mark Danks is crying out for colleges/uni’s to play embed Sony hardware into their courses, just FYI…

Brendan.

Nice to see the move to XNA in third year :D

As far as development for the 360 goes, I think the need for students to get their hands on dev-kits is minimal at best IMHO. If you learn DirectX, XAudio and XInput on Windows then you’ll be in a pretty good position to code for the XBOX.

The only major thing you’d be missing out on is experience of the hardware itself and it’s characteristics. That can be bridged however by a little experience with XNA.

For instance, gpu vertex buffers are pretty much pointless on the 360 because of it’s shared memory architecture; you also have a fixed 16MB framebuffer to work with, which must be kept in mind with MSAA and HD resolutions. XNA can be good for finding out all that sort of stuff..

I would like to do for next course (09-10) in Abertay (Dundee, Scotland). And I was asking the guy who has done in there.[/quote:a2d84ea424]
Abertay was good, I’m sure I’ve posted in detail about it before, and its sure to have changed since I was there.

—

Also why is there such a big point difference between the two courses?

Trinity: 355
DIT: 230[/quote:c820434d51]

CAO points are 100% a function of supply and demand. If demand for a course goes up then the points go up… pretty much simple as that. Lately demand for CS courses has gone down, so pretty much across the board the CAO points for CS courses dropped. Now the demand is starting to rise again, and so you’ll see the points rise next year (they only rise the year after the demand rises, so there’s always a delay).

Never pick a course on the basis of points – this is generally no good indication of the quality, difficulty or employment opportunity. some courses have a consistenly high demand (e.g. medicine) and so points are nearly always high.

When choosing a course look at the course contents, opportunities for work placement / interaction with industry, quality of the student work (if published), and of course talk to students already on the courses. If you’re interested in research go a Uni with strong research track record.

Steve