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Edited on Wed Oct-17-07 09:47 AM by DarkTirade
My parents never had cable, and rarely let us watch TV. We also never had all the cool toys the other kids had. The only one I wanted that I didn't have was a Nintendo, actually... but that's not because I liked playing the games. Its because I saw the games as a source of ideas... ideas that could be improved upon by me. There were plenty of good concepts out there, or well executed ones, but every game was lacking somewhere. Some had great gameplay but no plot, some had great plot but crappy gameplay. Some were too hard, some were too easy. Every time I played Nintendo at a friend's house, I'd spend the next few days designing things on paper. Some were new takes on the games that I'd played, some were entirely original ideas. I had a rather nifty one for an ancient egypt themed one... but then those bastards in Hollywood stole my idea... (*&%ing Stargate... :P
I kid of course, I love that movie. I'm just annoyed that they got to the idea first. So if I ever make that game, people will think I copied them.
Anyhow, once we got a computer, the first thing I did was learn BASIC programming(that was in 3rd grade). And then I started making my own games. Just the basics at first, of course. Print, input, goto. Variables. Simple text-based 'choose your own adventure' style games. Then I learned how to put pixels on the screen. By the time I was in high school I had made a 256 color graphics engine in PASCAL. My artwork was crap, but the engine was great. :P Then I realized that there was no way I could write a decent soundtrack for the games if they were DOS based at the time. I didn't have access to the sound driver information I'd need. Being a musician, I saw no point in trying to make a great game with no soundtrack. :) So I put it on hiatus for a few years until I could start programming Windows games. DirectX may have been a pain in the arse at first, but now that they've worked out most of the kinks (they're at what, version 10 or 11 now? :) ) it makes things a lot simpler for us indie developers. I'm putting the finishing touches on one right now, it's a combination of several classic arcade games into one. I wanted to go back to the roots this time. Maybe for my next one I'll go back to the one I left off so many years ago. I've still got the basic plot, settings and the characters in my head. Then again, there are a million fantasy RPGs out there... maybe I'll do something else entirely different.
Ironically, after all that, I ended up going to school for music while my older brother was the one who ended up becoming a computer pogrammer though... go figure. :) I thought I could keep up with the computer stuff on my own, whereas music I'd reached about the limit of what I could learn on my own at the time. Now I think I've hit the other way around, so when I go back to school it will be for computer stuff, not music this time.
Everyone in my family actually MAKES something though. My older brother is a programmer. He makes databases mostly. Although recently he did some work with medical imaging software. My step-sister is an interior designer. My step-brother does film, sound and stage work. Mostly stage work lately. Lighting and set design. For the film and sound he does mostly editing and effects. My little sister plays the violin like I did. And she's probably better at it than I am right now, since I haven't played it much lately. :) She'll probably major in it in college. I never really wanted to perform, I was more interested in composing. But she's more interested in performing. Who knows, maybe she'll be able to play something that I write someday. :)
And that's something I've noticed about america in general... nobody MAKES things anymore. Both as a profession and as hobbies. It's like 95% of the country is entirely service-based, and just about everything that gets made is imported. And that's just not gonna work. Eventually the whole system will collapse. I remember when I told some of the guys at work that I started brewing my own alcoholic beverages, they all reacted with shock and surprise. They'd never even HEARD of such a thing before. When one of them compared it to growing your own pot, I said, "Yes, but what I'm doing is legal." He didn't know that homebrewing is legal. Yes, it's legal to make your own beer, wine, ect. at home. But most people in america think, "Why make it yourself when you can buy it at the store?" And then they never think of it again beyond that point.
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