Thanks @Tom Sloper

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Programmer_Shirase ?

LoL, I don't understand what that has to do with this thread, but regardless, it looks cool. I watched this Anime (6 episodes or so) that was about this guy who used his cell phone to hack all types of crazy stuff.

It was most probably a way to tell you that your thread title is HIGHLY misleading to a lot of people (not call it "sounding funny"), seeing that most will have no idea what a "Battle Programmer" should be...

Sounds like a War Wizard, or something like that.... imagine a battlehardened guy standing with his mighty Keyboard in front of a whole army, hacking them to smithereens with his L33T programming skillz....

But yeah, I am not really contributing to the Thread, and the helpful mods have already said pretty much everything that has to be said, I now disappear from the Thread before go even more OT.

Sorry, FounderSim, and good luck on your quest for the job of your dreams... (damn, pun again... not even intended )

I am interested in being just a battle programmer. I would assume that this is a position in game development companies. What sort of portfolio should I build up? Is it even worth attempting to become a battle programmer since I am 31 years old with no prior "professional development" experience.

Battle & Fight scenes have always seem to get my attention and is the coolest part of almost every game (for me). My favorite "Battle" scenes would be the ones in the God of War series.

Thanks..

As a major advice: do not become a hyperspecialist. Even if you specialize in gameplay programming, and specifically "battle systems", if that's all you can do, your chances to get into the industry lower (especially if you have no prior experience in the industry).

Hyperspecialists are usually hired "on-point", due to their previous experience, for a limited time in the project, for a specific task in the project. For breaking into the industry, versatility is a trait that's most beneficial for programmers. Even if your main passion is battle system programming, if you are asked by your project lead to fill in in other areas (other gameplay programming, AI, graphics), and you turn him/her away saying "I can't do that!", it reflects bad on your abilities.

If you want to have a permanent employment, and be at the company as an employee rather than work-for-hire, be prepared to do many different things, as project needs come. A battle system programmer would not be needed for the entirety of the project, so what would you do with the rest of your time? If you don't do anything else, producers might start thinking paying you to wait is a waste of money.

You assume incorrectly. The position you want basically doesn't exist.

Actually, I've seen 2 studios have 'combat programmers' as a specialty.

What they did, from memory, is have them trained in some forms of martial arts and weapons training.

One of them, as I can distinctly recall, was a camera specialist, another was merely a gameplay turned-to-combat programmer and I have seriously no idea about anyone else.

But virtually, the position doesn't really exist as it is clearly project-centric. If a project really demands a specialist for combat, then it may exist, though to be fair, RTS combat vs FPS or Action Adventure combat have nothing in common, so the portfolio would have to be drastically different.