32 minutes ago, Hodgman said:
At a AAA studio, if they're using a custom / in-house engine, it will likely be just as big and complex as Unreal... If you get a job at a place like that, you'll still be making games on top of a massive engine. Even if you get a job there as an engine developer, it will be much closer to fiddling with the UE4 code-base, than your student-home-made-engine codebase.
That makes quite a lot of sense, and I guess I didn't think of it from that aspect.
34 minutes ago, Hodgman said:
Doing fancy tech stuff from scratch is also important, if you want to work in a very technical role... but making a custom renderer from scratch when you're applying for a gameplay role isn't the best use of your time. In that case, a gameplay system built on an existing engine would be a better portfolio piece
I think my current problem is that I'm not quite sure what my focus is. I wanted to start out as a graphics programmer, but after a series of projects and outside influences, I've sort of burned out on the graphics end (at least when it comes to shaders). I think I'm more suited for either gameplay/general/tools because I have yet to burn out on them, and I like the challenge of designing the architecture , instead of implementing mathematical theories and etc to make things "look pretty".
I've always had the notion that the best way to show my work, and to create a game on the side, was to build everything from scratch, but I've started to find a diminishing returns when doing it, I think I constantly fall into the trap of looking how vast other engines are and forgetting that they have been worked on by 100s of people over a decade or more. But I also like the feeling I get when I accomplish something, and like knowing that all the code is my own.
That seems to have been a tangent, but from your perspective when looking at an applicant, would you rather see someone who created a full game , leveraging an existing engine, or someone who might have a partial game with a custom built one?