Gaem design

So during grade 11, I wanted to be a video game developer. I considered going for Vancouver Film School.

Those were quite the days. I would spend hours thinking of cool game ideas. They weren't quite as naive as those of others, since I had some idea of how game development worked. I even spent several hours trying out a demo render of what a first person shooter could look like:

This was a full 3d animation from about 3 and a half years ago. Of course, it was a pain attaching the camera at the right location and moving the entire first person body without ruining any of the bone rigs, but in the end it came out roughly satisfactory. If I spent a few more hours on it, I might've actually made the scenes and the lighting look nice!

I don't want to repeat my animation post from several posts ago, but I really do believe that in a 3d, AAA modern game, animations are THE most important thing to take into account, and that even in the year 2012, animation systems are quite lacking. I told myself that if I ever make it into the industry, I'd become a master animator/animation systems coder. I had ideas on how to vastly improve games, and to this day, I still think they are valid.

But then grade 12 happened, and then the first year of uni happened. I jumped around a bit back and forth, and ended up here in computer science. It almost feels that I've made a full circle. In my current major, the game development path is an option! Compsci is quite nice when it comes to potential job placements, and as a bonus, it's field I can really put my head into. Areas of game development such as coding for game mechanics, game engines, and rendering systems have opened up! (Maybe going a bit overboard, but let me enjoy the moment).

In an ideal world, I would graduate with a BSc in Compsci, land a software engineering position at Bungie (located in Seattle) or 343 Industries (also near Seattle), and work on systems during the intense 3-4 year game development cycles for various console platforms. Observe and take part in the evolution of games and the technology they run on. Unfortunately, this is the epitome of wishful thinking. I can almost guarantee myself that I'll never actually land a job in those companies, but the hope can drive me through the tough hours that await me at school.

At the moment, I am blasting my way through Java tutorials and toying around with GUIs. Hopefully I'll be able to get somewhere beyond fancy number and string operations by the end of this month. Still very far from making a functional game, but hey, we all have to start somewhere.