My current hobby is making video games. Ugly horrible 2D abominations that look like really drunken Atari remakes in MS Paint, they play worse.
But its fun making them. OK, mostly infuriating and frustrating and an elaborate experiment to make me feel stupider than usual, but when everything ends up working and you have something that you'd still be too embarrassed to show anyone while sober, there is a tremendous feeling of accomplishment, like baking a cake when all you've done before is make a rather tepid mug of Horlitz.
It's also nice to be working on problems that are unlike the problems I deal with at work, which is roughly, getting information from point A to point B.Where A and B can be a user, another machine, some server run by some other company, etc, etc. It's not uninteresting, but I've beendoing it for... a very long time, and isn't as interesting as something you can, at the end of the day, load up and play.
There's also lots of other types of thinking that goes into it, more than 'how do I get the spaceship to go across the screen if I press up', more along the lines of game design. How do you make a game interesting, what elements to put in or leave out. It can be dizzingly complex and often I'm left with a mess at the end that's not altogether fun.
Future posts will be me blundering through game design theory, possibly some horrifying screenshots of my games, and, likely, some posts about the family.
But its fun making them. OK, mostly infuriating and frustrating and an elaborate experiment to make me feel stupider than usual, but when everything ends up working and you have something that you'd still be too embarrassed to show anyone while sober, there is a tremendous feeling of accomplishment, like baking a cake when all you've done before is make a rather tepid mug of Horlitz.
It's also nice to be working on problems that are unlike the problems I deal with at work, which is roughly, getting information from point A to point B.Where A and B can be a user, another machine, some server run by some other company, etc, etc. It's not uninteresting, but I've beendoing it for... a very long time, and isn't as interesting as something you can, at the end of the day, load up and play.
There's also lots of other types of thinking that goes into it, more than 'how do I get the spaceship to go across the screen if I press up', more along the lines of game design. How do you make a game interesting, what elements to put in or leave out. It can be dizzingly complex and often I'm left with a mess at the end that's not altogether fun.
Future posts will be me blundering through game design theory, possibly some horrifying screenshots of my games, and, likely, some posts about the family.
2 comments:
That's fantastic my man! Be not embaressed by treading where many fear to go. Rejoice in the strength of your nerdery and fear not in the involvement of your peers. (ie. Let me play something you made!)
Thanks NH! Yeah, I'll post something at some point, thanks for the encouragement.
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