I have started a new journey. The destination is somewhat unknown but luckily I know why I am at it.
For a long time, almost all my life, I have had a dream of being part of the gaming industry. I have always liked computer games and played a lot of them too. As a kid, me and my brother had ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC home computers and even then I used to play a lot. But also, I was very intrigued by making games and programming. I even did some small “games” or programs by using thee BASIC language. I still remember how some of those small “products” gave me a lot of joy when something was rendered to the screen.
I ended up doing software as a job, but it never had anything to do with the games. Rather, I just spent countless hours in Vanilla WoW raids and capping flags in BF3 after long hours at the office. That’s not the only thing I ever did, don’t worry.
Then just recently some small things happened in my life which made me question what I should do with my spare time, and from the depths of my mind I started to ponder about the game programming once again. Would it still be possible to learn something? Could I learn enough skills to possibly move to the industry which I like? Would I really enjoy the game programming as much I remember I did?
I was excited about the idea and started to evaluate how and where would I start. Like what would be the platform? What skills do I have and what I need to learn? What would be the easiest way to start?
I went through a lot of thoughts like “Should I use a game maker of some kind?”, “Creating games by using Visual Studio and DirectX must be difficult.” and “What would benefit me in my everyday work, if any?”. I happen to know some C/C++ but Java I have used almost 15 years, professionally. It definitely would be an advantage to know the syntax, even though I almost never consider the syntax an issue when evaluating languages. Also building games in Windows platform requires decent(?) skills in C/C++ and possibly DirectX and/or some game engine. I am pretty sure it would be possible to learn by doing but it just didn’t sound tempting enough.
So I chose mobile platform and more over, Android. I personally have an old Lumia which runs on Windows Mobile 7.8 and I never owned a single Android device in my life. Yet, Java and free open ecosystem and possibility to learn mobile development (which possibly can support my everyday work) made the deal for me. I could have chosen the iOS but I don’t have any Apple device either and it apparently would have required an investment of at least 1000 € to get all the things I need, even if I would have used second hand.
A question, how long would it take for me to get my investment back if I was to make money with it? Me thinks, loooong!
So here I am, at the very beginning of my journey. I don’t have any other ambitions or goals at the start but to have fun and learn. Oh, there is definitely one thing I absolutely must achieve. The game must be finished and working (of course I get to define what it means).
May the code serve you well, I hope to does the same for me!
MyOwnException 