The developer behind the successful Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises is currently hard at work on a new franchise for multiple platforms.
Some new job postings on the official Harmonix website reveal that the acclaimed developer is currently working on a new IP that will be released across multiple platforms.
The job posting for a Software Engineer – Graphics reads:
Harmonix has an immediate opening for an ambitious, passionate and highly experienced Graphics Engineer who will work closely with our world-class artists to bring their work to life on brand new IP across multiple platforms. With input from team engineers, artists, and designers, the Graphics Engineer will implement cutting edge graphics technology, contributing to our cross-platform engine.
Responsibilities:
- Implement innovative graphics technology and art pipelines, consulting with team engineers and content creators
- Deliver analysis and optimization solutions for performance bottlenecks
- Write well architected, robust maintainable code that meets the coding standards of all platforms with an eye towards reusability for multiple games
Qualifications:
- 3+ years industry experience.
- Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field
- C/C++ proficiency and design skills
- Strong understanding of 3D graphics principles, techniques, and hardware
- Experience writing shaders (HLSL/Cg) with a strong understanding of low level shader architecture
Preferred Additional Experience:
- Passionate player of games with an ability to analyze competitive products
- Designed and implemented (or maintained) a full featured Renderer for a published AAA game
- Built and implemented own engine
Another opening with the firm for the position of Software Engineer- Gameplay hints that they new property from Harmonix may be a return to the musical genre.
Harmonix has an immediate opening for a passionate, motivated, and highly skilled Gameplay Engineer to join our world-class team. You will work with designers, artists, musicians, and engineers to bring our work to life on brand new IP, across multiple platforms.
Responsibilities:
- Invent, prototype, iterate on, and deliver novel gameplay mechanics.
- Implement robust, user-friendly, designer-facing tools and pipelines.
- Write clean, bug-resistant, well-documented and efficient code.
Qualifications:
- BS or MS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
- 2+ years of industry C++ programming for PC or console.
- 2+ years of game programming
- Demonstrated ability to build robust, complex gameplay systems.
Preferred Additional Qualifications:
- Regularly exercised strong applied math skills (discrete math, simulation, or signal processing).
- Worked creatively and cooperatively with cross-discipline teams.
- Familiarity with audio systems and their integration into gameplay mechanics.
Special attention will be given to candidates with experience in audio programming, including:
- General Game Audio Integration: triggering/event handling, parameter/state updates, occlusion calculation, ambient simulation, etc.
- Midi: parsing/processing standard midi file formats.
- Synthesis: wavetable synthesis, sample rate conversion, pitch shifting, envelope generation, oscillators, DSP, etc.
- Audio Streaming: multithreaded, compressed audio pipeline (disk -> memory -> decompression system -> software mixer -> platform audio system)
The Guitar Hero games were once the staple of any decent gathering with friends but after pumping out sequels each year and with the expensive cost of the peripherals the series fell into decline before being canned by publisher Activision.
Since the Harmonix have gone on to develop the Rock Band series which have been a moderate success.
Would you like to see another game in the same vein as Rock Band or Guitar Hero for the PS4/Xbox One? Let us know down below.