27 replies to this topic

[Noor]

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Anyways, now that I have come in I better get working on the game and the articles. I have started writing articles on 3DS Max Script/3DS MAx SDK
I am sure it would be good because I have seen hardly any stuff on the net. HARDLY. Let me finish it in a short while. Oh btw now that I have gotten some net connection to the room, I might be able to do small uploads

nice, thanks :yes:

[ttigue]

Let's see,

Don't know if you can't Logo Writer as programming, but I'd say that's what hooked me in the 5th Grade. Then in high school I started programming in Qbasic. Picked up LaMothe's Black Art of 3d Programming which taught me alot since I didn't know anything. Learned asm on lamothe's recommendation, still like asm but don't find much use for it anymore. Went to college, learned oo programming and java. I'm trying to keep up with all the changes in gaming industry, but it seems like most of the stuff I learned no longer applies. But I would say game programming is alot easier than it used to be.

[anubis]

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But I would say game programming is alot easier than it used to be.

i disagree... the difficult parts just moved to other areas :)
first of all you still have to know and understand all the math behind 3d computations, even if you need that knowledge less and less in praxis. also shaders reintroduce much of that math to game development. sure, it might be easier today to hack a game together but, for example, it still requires skill to get a respectable visual quality running on low end consumer machines.

[ttigue]

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sure, it might be easier today to hack a game together but, for example, it still requires skill to get a respectable visual quality running on low end consumer machines.

I agree with what you are saying, and upon reading my message I probably need to explain better. I meant that there are now standardized interfaces for programming games (DirectX, Open Interfaces). These make it easier for the programmer because we don't have to worry about setting up DMA ports, adding our own keyboard interrupts (which I kindof enjoyed), getting past the 16-bit barrier of DOS, etc. Now we can rely on an interface to talk to hardware specific drivers. This is good and makes some things easier.

On the other hand, putting together a simple tetris game is not marketable material. Games require development teams and investment of millions of dollars and sometimes years of time (doom3, half life 2 for example, or even less "cutting edge" games require lots of development time). It's kind of sad, but its the price of creating the level of games coming out today. I always thought I could create some real killer games if we were all still running on 16 bit cards with vga. But were not. Things are much more complex, and the game developer is now required, it seems, to model everything from the real world which includes complex 3d graphics, 3d sound, and more! So your'e completely right.

Sorry for the tangent. :)

[anubis]

true, it's much easier to get your head around the important things than it used to be.
things are more straightforward to day when it comes to dealing with hardware and the computer as a whole.

[alia]

heh, you could always try hand held/mobile games if you want to get back to the good ole days... *points to the HH forum*

For me.. I started programming after getting a Commodore 64 when I was eleven. Before then I hadent had any electricity... so seeing my fathers 8086 or whatever i was very impressed by the window manager (Gem) and some of the games.. (HHGTTG text adventure!) also looking for programs using GOPHER and ARCHIE and VERONICA (*rofl*) anyway I naturally had to take it apart... and (try) put it back together...
eventually came the C64 and many games... (yaaay!) i got sick of all the games and started programming firstly text adventures out of magazines.. then started on the car/ski games.. (wich were just a bunch of *'s) and eventually i ended up writing a version of space invaders by re drawing the bitmaps for the ascii caracter set... (higher res than gfx mode).. was heaps of fun...

After than I had to move back to the farm for a year (no electricity again!!) wich was horrible.. but we had BBC Micros so I amused myself trying to write better car games and space invaders again.. more importantly.. i wrote my first breakout clone... wich is now the game i write whenever I learn a new language/gfx api/ toolset. the rules are simple... and everyone is always willing to play test it!

after a year there we moved to a bigger city and i found a friend with an amiga 500... i love those machines.. they were awesome!!! i cant remember properly.. but i think i started my c programming there (Amiga C for Beginners) and also AMOS (man that was an easy language!) and AmigaBasic...

etc etc etc

Alia.

[Mihail121]

First touch was a QBASIC compiler that was comming with a chat-bot program i believe for C64 or something like that. After some years i decided it sux and moved to pascal. With the new computers i moved to C/C++ and before 2 years i learned ASM. Pretty dumb story, huh ?

[Smokey97]

okay.. lets see... I guess it all started when i got my first comptuer in 6th grade (nothing like the old machines you guys started one... it was [ohh and still is; sigh i need a new comptuer...] an IBM Aptiva... 600mhz CPU 64mb ram 8mb vid card, [you can start feeling sorry for me around now.] 15" monitor.. blah blah you can imagine)...
anyway, i started buying games... and found a new passion for FPS games, a year or so later i bought Unreal Tournament; After a few months of playing UT i started looking making mods, nothing great just some new weapons. After that i wanted to look into creating my own game... and i remember reading somewhere (i think it was the UnrealScript language reference) the langauges Java and C++ being referenced. so i bought a Java book and started ot learn java... that took me a few months (as i didnt really know anything about prgoramming.. all my modes were pieces of code cpoied and pasted from other mods :P).. and even then i still did not completley understand computer programming... [right now i've just started 8th grade].. anyway i basicly got sick and tired of school, and refused to go... staying at home on the internet 14 hours a day 7 days a week making mods (this time i was actualy making them, not copying fragments of code)...

I continued todo that for a while untill i had moved to Canberra (Capitol of Australia), and saw an Ad on the TV advertising enrolements at a college called the Academy of Interactive Entertainment... (basicly a college for 3D artists and comptuer game programmers) i had enrolled (yes they accepted my enrollment, even though i was only 14) and obviously was not accepted (but they told me to re enroll next year)... anyway i started to learn C++ (as oen of hte tutors told me to).. and eventualy became interested in 3D Graphics programming...

I have since re-enrolled at the AIE (just recently infact, i find out if i'm accepted some time in december), i've been working on 3D Game Engine... (progress is slow at the moment, but progress is progress), and a real time ray tracer....

Anyway... that's my 3 year story... from 6th grade to date...

P.S. there is no doubt that my story is full of typos...
i'm 15 years old...
and i'm optomistic about my enrolement at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment