A Year with McLaren

Last year, rather than returning to university to complete my degree in the expected time frame; I instead found myself with an offer of an internship with McLaren Automotive. This gave me the opportunity to step away from the university and class environment, move from Dundee to Woking, and spend a year working with Game Technology in the 'Real World'.

I could not have made a better decision; my experience at McLaren was not at all what I had

expected from an internship. It has very much been a 'thrown in at the deep end' kind of experience. Although I was taken on specifically to work with games technology; Automotive is the not the industry I'd just spend the last 3 years studying and working towards. I was suddenly in a large company with relatively few people around with experience of my field or the software i was brought into use. This lack of safety new was definitely intimidating to begin with; but it quickly became something I really enjoyed about the experience. Without the option to just ask for help; I've had to develop research and experimentation skills to find answers; which otherwise i wouldn't have had the same push to do.

Throughout the year I was predominantly working with Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) using both standard release and modified source built versions with custom plugins for specific projects. Although I had causally used UE4 in the past; this was my first formal experience of working with UE4, particularly for developing large projects as part of a team.

The main project I was involved with; was to help deliver a prototype demo in a period of around 6 months, where I was responsible for a large amount of the content and functionality implementation within UE4. While working on this project; I had to work with non-commercial hardware and learn to develop applications with non-standard use of both hardware and software. This allowed me to develop valuable debugging and problem-solving skills for working with systems with little documentation and without the ability to 'just Google it'. Over the course of the project I had the valuable experience of working with external companies; including receiving development support from Epic Games. The chance to work alongside experience developers, on a very experimental project when using UE4 professionally for the first time, was an amazing learning opportunity in so many ways. Learning more about working on large projects as part of a team with a variety of skills sets; and also seeing just how much I still have to learn in industry.

The nature of this project also involved working to strict deadlines, sometimes with things not going to plan. Having to work right up to a deadline, with issues appearing at the last minute a creating a real risk of failure, is something which - while stressful in the moment - I'm glad I had the chance to experience; since it meant i also got to experience the high which despite having had issues its all came together in time.

Beyond my main project work; I had the time and scope to work on smaller projects and functionality, both specific to supporting others work and some of my own design to demonstrate concepts from game development that had potential to be useful to other fields. I enjoyed being given the freedom to work on a variety of projects while being trusted to prioritize appropriately. This allowed me to switch tasks when needed and to manage my own time to best meet deadlines in the way that worked for me.

Over the course of the year I was given so many opportunities to learn and develop my skills as a programmer; while working on real projects and getting to see where game technology can and is expanding outside of the games industry.

Now I suppose I should really finish that degree.