[outsitWrord]

I signed up for Games Technology not how Flip Flops work or how Counters/Shift Register works. [cursing][cursing]

Worse thing is, half of it doesn't make bloody sense. And what's worse is that I need to pass first year to do anything remotely game like.

Eugh.

[fedelwet]

what were you expecting it to be anyway?

my course was the same some units i felt were not a good idea, but one i now realise was very useful

[outsitWrord]

what were you expecting it to be anyway?

my course was the same some units i felt were not a good idea, but one i now realise was very useful

I don't find learning about flip flops and all sorts of crap they're feeding us to be generally useful in the long term in my course.

Heck, back at MMU they're already coding games since my friend goes there.

[auctionlover]

Most ppl I knew in my software engineering course felt the same... Architecture and compilers courses were killers... couldn't understand a single fking thing that was being said, and more annoyingly, couldn't understand WHY we need to know that stuff.

Well, now that I'm working as a software developer, I can honestly say that I haven't needed ANYTHING I've learnt in those courses, ever. But I can see how a games developer might find it very useful, i.e. when micro managing memory usage or considering the most efficient way to write a piece of code.

Stick with it man, everyone has to go through that shite. As long as you scrape through the module exams you'll be fine. Save your hard work for the more useful modules.

[outsitWrord]

Not exactly enjoying Uni itself.

So much work and I don't even have time do go out or do anything. [no]

Worse day is tomorrow, 9am to 2pm solid no breaks. And a lecturer at 3pm wants to shift his lesson early so I'll end up doing 9am to 3pm with no breaks. Gah. [thumbdown]

[Belindanan]

Not exactly enjoying Uni itself.

So much work and I don't even have time do go out or do anything. [no]

Worse day is tomorrow, 9am to 2pm solid no breaks. And a lecturer at 3pm wants to shift his lesson early so I'll end up doing 9am to 3pm with no breaks. Gah. [thumbdown]

OH NOES!?!

What year of study are you in?

[auctionlover]

Not exactly enjoying Uni itself.

So much work and I don't even have time do go out or do anything. [no]

Worse day is tomorrow, 9am to 2pm solid no breaks. And a lecturer at 3pm wants to shift his lesson early so I'll end up doing 9am to 3pm with no breaks. Gah. [thumbdown]

Hehe, that's nothing. I spent 4 years doing 9 to 5 solid lectures + lab almost every day. It was the hardest time of my life, but thinking back it was only 4 years of my life, and now it's got me a decent job and I can live in comfort for hopefully a long time to come.

Stick with it. Uni is not there to be enjoyed. All those ppl who say they have a great time at uni are probably doing psychology or something (no offence)

[fedelwet]

trust me mate its better than working full time

[Belindanan]

Hehe, that's nothing. I spent 4 years doing 9 to 5 solid lectures + lab almost every day. It was the hardest time of my life, but thinking back it was only 4 years of my life, and now it's got me a decent job and I can live in comfort for hopefully a long time to come.

Stick with it. Uni is not there to be enjoyed. All those ppl who say they have a great time at uni are probably doing psychology or something (no offence)

If you have no free time at uni you are not working effectively enough

[auctionlover]

If you have no free time at uni you are not working effectively enough

Oh I had free time alright... In first and second years I spent 5 - 11 pm every day playing Diablo 2 in the labs with friends... probably the main reason why I didn't get a first.

[seatlyled]

Digital logic was my absolute favorite line of study at university.

[yovbQVpD]

Not exactly enjoying Uni itself.

So much work and I don't even have time do go out or do anything. [no]

Worse day is tomorrow, 9am to 2pm solid no breaks. And a lecturer at 3pm wants to shift his lesson early so I'll end up doing 9am to 3pm with no breaks. Gah. [thumbdown]

I go from 9am to 3pm with no breaks every Tuesday and Thursday, doesn't really bother me as long as I eat enough breakfast so I don't get hungry.

[amehoubFomo]

A fundamental understanding of computer architecture and digital logic can be extremely useful in designing games that are well optimized.

I direct you to InvSqrt() from Quake3 as an example.
http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/fastinvsqrt/

[NikolaAAA]

trust me mate its better than working full time

Hell yes [cursing]

Anyway..

Wait till you study Assembly language, if you ever gonna [thumbup], not sure if you will have courses about it, but most engineering and IT study it.

I loved it..you are dealing with the microprocessor registers themselves

Move AX, 0H
Move BX, AX
.
.
.

[arindiruppya]

Yeap.... this reminds of what i did.... I left...

I was a second eyar student doing CS in Games Development, apart from the course didnt even do a single thing on Games Development.... We were using JAva, and only started on C in year.... and they were all building DOS programs...

I went to a XDA event in Worick a few weeks ago, and they gave us lectures from Hull Uni... and others around the country... In the lecture, he showed us what their 1st years are currently studying...

WE HAVENT EVEN TOUCHED ANYTHING NEAR THAT...... AND WERE YEAR 2!!!!!!

So i made a decision, and dropped out... Im currently in line for Photography degree in Sept...

Hope you decide what to do!

[newpiknicker]

Well I, for one, am loving my degree (2nd year MEng Computer Science, University of Southampton) Sure, it's a hell of a lot of work - first year wasn't bad, but this semester has been pretty insane..
11 full courseworks in 12 weeks, one of which involved writing a filesystem which took me and a friend 60 hours (in 6 days) of coding and debugging C That did mean we (and pretty much everyone else) missed all the lectures that week, but attendance is optional anyway - just need to make sure to read up on the missed stuff before the exams
Also, 4 days from the submission of the final piece of coursework to the first exam was pretty bad, 3 days from the final day of lectures.. although 2 of those days I spent watching all 6 Star Wars films so I kind of screwed myself there The exam didn't seem to go too badly... I hope...

As for digital electronics and computer architecture, when you start going into the lower levels of coding, it becomes very handy to know exactly what your code is doing and how you can optimise it (see Mohrk's post). And anyway, that stuff is generally just in the first year, we had a fair bit of maths, electronics and general IT related jazz in our first year to lay a foundation, but this year it's much more about compilers, operating systems, AI, functional programming, networks, scripting etc.

[megasprut]

Hell yes [cursing]

Anyway..

Wait till you study Assembly language, if you ever gonna [thumbup], not sure if you will have courses about it, but most engineering and IT study it.

I loved it..you are dealing with the microprocessor registers themselves

Move AX, 0H
Move BX, AX
.
.
.

Hannoo you should instead do:

xor ax,ax
xor bx,bx

because it will have the same effect (zeroing out both registers) but in Intel x86 architecture a mov instruction is a 3 byte opcode and xor is just 2 bytes. So I just saved you two bytes!


Anyways I find the hardware and low level stuff fascinating... but then again I am a computer engineering major. Every course of study has that class that you hate (for me it was chemistry) but seemingly useless classes are worthwhile and may kick in at odd times.

Example: In your class you may learn how zeros are represented with low voltage and ones with high voltage. The newest radeon graphics cards will use DBI (data bit inversion) where if a bus has more ones on it than zeros it sets the DBI bit and then inverts all the bits. That way the card never sends more than 4 ones over the bus at a time, saving power and heat. Pretty nifty, but only appreciated with the appropriate background knowledge. So now this stupid class has helped you understand more how top of the line graphics cards work!

[nanyaHgoc]

i did a games type of course. my first year seemed a bit weak too. most of the work struck me as been either a little crazy or just pointless. i also didnt like been at uni that much either at the time, but when i look back it wasnt too bad. however i still believe the first year of the course was mostly bullshit. there were two more years, which i never did because i called it quits after the first. if i stuck it out id be in my final year now, abut the get a degree that would msotly likely hot help me at all. i'd also be a lot more in debt. i think uni is often pointless unless you enjoy the experience of being there.

[SeLvesTr]

Let me guess - you were expecting a mickey-mouse "party" degree, and instead they are actually making you do some work?

[Iphone]

Let me guess - you were expecting a mickey-mouse "party" degree, and instead they are actually making you do some work?

my thoughts exactly