So here I am sitting at a coffee shop down on main street, sitting on my laptop until my job interview at 2. I'm pretty excited about it, since it's a good position as a software engineer, but I'm also pretty nervous.
I guess this gives me some time to talk about things though, so that's nice.
The main project that I'm interested in right now- The same one that I've posted once or twice about already is intended to eventually be an MMO of sorts. Not in the classical sense, with quests and NPCs and towns to buy things in, but something much more resembling some of my favorite games with unique ideas; Dwarf Fortress, Haven and Hearth, Salem, and games similar to that. Exploration, danger, survival, they're all really compelling themes to me and while I dearly love all of the games listed, I have the predicament of wanting to constantly improve on things and a tendency to take mechanics apart. In fact, here's a short writeup I made about some of the mechanics of Salem:
A Treatise on the Darkness
Conjecture on Witchcraft
I haven't really written much else in a visible place to show, but that's usually the mentality that I have approaching every game I've ever played. How do these mechanics work? Can they be exploited? What are the things the developer might've missed or not considered? I also have the innate ability to bring out every bug in a game completely by accident without even trying. I'm fairly certain that is a legitimate superpower.
It's also from that "take everything apart" mentality that made me consider programming, and game development to begin with. I took enough things apart that I started to wonder if I could put something together myself, and to that end I've been teaching myself Java and whatever else I can get my hands on. It hasn't been easy, and solid advice is hard to find, but I get by, if on nothing but tenacity and moxy sometimes.
I'm probably going to explain some of my game design theories sometime later when I do more posts centered around ideas of game design itself, but for now I'm going to try and focus on the nitty gritty backbone of programming which could someday become a game, rather than keeping my head in the clouds talking too much about my end goal, unless someone just desperately wants to know. So with that in mind, have a great day and we'll see if I can get some work done tonight on improving my tile system... I've already got a few glimmers of inspiration just from sitting around writing this.
So long for now!
