Three lessons I learnt from porting Diablo

Has anyone ever seen this before?<p>"There were hundreds of pieces of x86 assembler scattered throughout the code base, which was a problem since we were porting to the Playstation's MIPS processor. Usually just a couple of instructions long, and in the middle of functions, these snippets were pretty puzzling. Finally one of the team figured it out; somebody had struggled with C's signed/unsigned casting rules, and so they'd fallen back on the assembler instructions they understood! The whole team had a good laugh at that"

Unfortunately this is a very common introduction to the Video games industry. At least in the UK.<p>The industry trades on how 'cool' it is to work on games knowing that there are hundreds of talented kids who will do anything to get in to it. They often end up doing poorly paid difficult work under tight deadlines with bosses that make The Office seems like heaven.<p>Unfortunately people like Liddon are few and far between within the industry.

My lessons from his writeup seem to be completely different:<p>1) Get a paycheck I can live on.<p>2) Get a mentor.<p>3) You don't have to finish a job before moving on if things aren't working out.<p>(not that I'd agree with #3, that just seems to be my takeaway from the story).

"sometimes the worst projects are the best teachers."<p>That's so true. At least for me.