Name: Anonymous 2019-12-28 22:49
Long time ago I sorta burned out on programming. I had to keep a break for several months not touching any code and couple of weeks ago I finally decided to come back with "a fresh start"
But how I got in to it...
When I was a kid, around the early 90s, I was playing games on my big brother's Amiga 500 I got interested in how games were made and how I could make a game myself. Though the lack of internet or any source of tutorials to practise programming back then I didn't have a chance to try to make my own game on the Amiga system. The only thing close to my own game was drawing 2D graphics with Deluxe Paint on the Amiga and by using my imagination I would "play" these games within Deluxe Paint.
Years later in 1997 or something I got introduced to Duke Nukem 3D and other Build Engine games on my brother's 486 PC. One day my cousin brought a CD with him filled with levels he had created for Duke3D and immediately I got interested how I could create my own levels. I learned about the game's level editor and built my own levels on it. Later doing the same on Shadow Warrior and Blood games. (Still have few of those levels left on a CD I created back then)
In 1999 my brother bought Unreal Tournament '99 and right away I wanted to know if creating levels for it was possible... and yeah I created couple of deathmatch levels, though those levels have been lost over the years.
Also during all these years there were some random freeware games, etc. with level editors that I made maps for.
After year 2000 everything sorta changed, we had major family problems etc. The only thing to take me away from all that "bad stuff" was to create levels in various games so I could escape the reality for a while. In 2002 I got placed in a foster home where my step-mother bought me a PC, I was so grateful and I immediately installed Duke Nukem 3D and Blood to start working on new levels again. Creating my own game kinda was forgotten during that time, I was focusing on just creating levels on different games.
In around 2002, I started desinging games on paper, I made a paper-fallout and other paper-RPG games that I played with my friend.
In later years I got into a school which was designed mostly for any sort of computer related stuff. (Don't know the english term but I guess it was school for 'datanome degree') There I learned the basics of Java and C++ and finally I had a chance in game programming. I got so interested in C++ that everyday I got home I would go to the internet and read anything I could find about creating games with C++. I went from learning graphics library such as SDL to SDL & OpenGL combination to SFML / OpenGL.
I made dozens of games in C++, just for myself and my friends to play. I never released them anywhere.
Over the past 10 years I've programmed different genre games/apps, ranging from text adventure games to 2D/3D games to Minesweeper/tetris/etc bots to harmless viruses.
That's why I burned out, I made too much different kind of games and apps and I was constantly doing something new and abandoning earlier projects but I guess I could call that my "training phase".
I never found the game/app genre I wanted to work on and I had to stop and think of a project I could work on without abandoning it and starting all over again.
Well.. That's the short version why I started programming.
I'm not really good writing any "texts" such as blogs, but I tried this here.
You have a nice day now!
But how I got in to it...
When I was a kid, around the early 90s, I was playing games on my big brother's Amiga 500 I got interested in how games were made and how I could make a game myself. Though the lack of internet or any source of tutorials to practise programming back then I didn't have a chance to try to make my own game on the Amiga system. The only thing close to my own game was drawing 2D graphics with Deluxe Paint on the Amiga and by using my imagination I would "play" these games within Deluxe Paint.
Years later in 1997 or something I got introduced to Duke Nukem 3D and other Build Engine games on my brother's 486 PC. One day my cousin brought a CD with him filled with levels he had created for Duke3D and immediately I got interested how I could create my own levels. I learned about the game's level editor and built my own levels on it. Later doing the same on Shadow Warrior and Blood games. (Still have few of those levels left on a CD I created back then)
In 1999 my brother bought Unreal Tournament '99 and right away I wanted to know if creating levels for it was possible... and yeah I created couple of deathmatch levels, though those levels have been lost over the years.
Also during all these years there were some random freeware games, etc. with level editors that I made maps for.
After year 2000 everything sorta changed, we had major family problems etc. The only thing to take me away from all that "bad stuff" was to create levels in various games so I could escape the reality for a while. In 2002 I got placed in a foster home where my step-mother bought me a PC, I was so grateful and I immediately installed Duke Nukem 3D and Blood to start working on new levels again. Creating my own game kinda was forgotten during that time, I was focusing on just creating levels on different games.
In around 2002, I started desinging games on paper, I made a paper-fallout and other paper-RPG games that I played with my friend.
In later years I got into a school which was designed mostly for any sort of computer related stuff. (Don't know the english term but I guess it was school for 'datanome degree') There I learned the basics of Java and C++ and finally I had a chance in game programming. I got so interested in C++ that everyday I got home I would go to the internet and read anything I could find about creating games with C++. I went from learning graphics library such as SDL to SDL & OpenGL combination to SFML / OpenGL.
I made dozens of games in C++, just for myself and my friends to play. I never released them anywhere.
Over the past 10 years I've programmed different genre games/apps, ranging from text adventure games to 2D/3D games to Minesweeper/tetris/etc bots to harmless viruses.
That's why I burned out, I made too much different kind of games and apps and I was constantly doing something new and abandoning earlier projects but I guess I could call that my "training phase".
I never found the game/app genre I wanted to work on and I had to stop and think of a project I could work on without abandoning it and starting all over again.
Well.. That's the short version why I started programming.
I'm not really good writing any "texts" such as blogs, but I tried this here.
You have a nice day now!