Spacetime Studios interview questions

They send you a brief programming test where you need to design a game system that shows you have good Object-Oriented design skills and can write C++ code using best practices. If successful, they invite you for 30-60 minute phone interview to learn more about your depth of knowledge of OO/C++. They're very friendly and don't ask any mean trick questions, but many of their questions are tricky if you don't have a solid understanding of the internals of C++ compile/runtime behavior. They keep a very clean code base and expect high quality code. Expect a broad range of questions pertaining to the internal workings of C/C++11, especially with respect to object-orientation.

Received a C++ programming assessment where one had to implement a particular game system with some constraints (e.g., extensible, usable for MMOG environments, etc). With few limitations, I ended up coding more than probably what was necessary (about 600 lines of code) to demonstrate the system working for multiple players. Even with a sizable code submission, I received comments from the reviewer within the next day. Unfortunately, I did not receive an invite for a follow-up interview. I received great feedback on my submission with much of the focus being on details within the submission (e.g., not enough "const" parameters, failure to use virtual destructors). I even got some criticisms on the test code needed to instantiate the demo! In all, a thorough evaluation with useful data I could take back in preparation for future programming assessments. Definitely gave the impression they have rigid coding standards they want to see expressed by their candidates.