# I/T Guy gone rogue - An Introduction

I’m a simple guy. Somebody who loves all things geek; especially when it comes to new as well as old technology!

I attended University after leaving college, because everybody told me I needed a degree if I wanted a career in I/T; even though I could program in assembler at the age of 9 (self-taught back in the 80’s).

Upon gaining my honours, I was quickly assimilated into a large, suit ridden, American Corporation. Placed in to a junior developer role, where I found myself rushing between the trenches of bad projects. Trying to avoid management babble of career progression and bottom line warnings; until I emerged 22 years later, battle-hardened and a little scarred.

From the war, I emerged with an understanding of how things should and shouldn’t work; especially in computer system design and development. Given a good set of requirements (yeah right, that happens) and a deadline, anything is possible; although it is unlikely to meet everybodies expectations, you've been warned!

I spent the majority of the time working for my employer's large clients, dealing with mis-sold solutions, decreasing profits and emerging technical landscapes. Something I will always be grateful for, as a part of the treasure hoard; however, I will always be saddened by their charge out rate to the clients for MY efforts; I received a fraction for my troubles.

…I, along with many others, were worked to the bone. Cut, squeezed and pushed to deliver. There came a point when I realised enough was enough, I needed to end it all; the Corporation career, not life!

I’d seen enough carnage and felt that the time was right to free myself and go freelance, with I/T Architect stripes in hand, I looked for the escape hatch.

With full confidence in my technical capabilities, I applied and was duly surprised (a bitter-sweet moment) to be offered a separation package. I keenly grabbed the measly offer and set about launching my own UK LTD company! Within weeks of exiting the door, I returned to the same consulting job, with large clients, but as an independent Architect, a as a one-man band. I repeated the same successful delivers to satisfied customers; my earning potential grew to new heights. Gone were the shackles of career progression, one-2-one reviews and giveback to my employer.

…but something remained calling inside of me.

An urge... A prime-evil needing... It called, urged and pleaded to be unleashed.

I needed to do something I had always wanted to do when I left school!

They all told me, at the time (the early 90's) that there was no longevity in it! So I foolishly listened to THEM, giving up my dreams and hopes. I wanted to enter the games development field from leaving college. Something that at the time, felt impossibly beyond my capabilities.

How WRONG they were! Boy, did I miss some great opportunities!

At the time, the end of the boyant Amiga market was trailing off, with the uprising of the gaming PC. I missed the Console battle, between Sony and Nintendo creating; who both created amazing and wonderful machines.

Next followed the Mobile and Tablet markets. I instantly recognised the large potential, yet did nothing, other than scribble a few game ideas into note books, never to see day light.

I recently met up with some old friends from college. My disappointment was cemented that night. I felt highly envious, as they had seen through with their ambition. Whilst I waved goodbye, I watched them driving off in their sport’s car home, heading home, towards their massive mansions. Don’t get me wrong, I’m delighted for them, but will openly admit of being jealous of their success. More for the fact that they had LIVED what I yearned for.

This world is a nasty and unforgiving place, therefore I would never wish ill or bad on anyone doing well in it; After all, I can’t really complain, as my long professional career has left me watered and fed; I'm very settled and happy with family life. I’m self-sufficient and have my future firmly in my hands.

So why am I here? Why have I started this Steemit blog?

Alongside my consultancy work, I've now set in concrete, plans to attempt to build games. I'm planning 4 to 6 months per year to work on development, whilst sustaining funds eant through Architectural Consultancy. I've already got several clients asking for my time, so that side of the plan is healthy; although I still hate TAX!

Last year, I enjoyed the privilege of spending several months working in collaboration with a brilliant artist from Iran, who had been unsuccess in getting a few of his game ideas off the ground; let down by junior programmers and promises not kept.

We formed an open friendship and he kindly shared his excellent artwork and sound (sourced from yet another great contact). We put together two prototype games and were heading fast toward releasing. However, they took far too long to build, due to being complicated in nature, having to learn to work with each other and for me the time I needed to invest in learning an engine.

The allocated time quickly ran out, along with the funds in my company, so I was soon forced back into consultancy!

We remain optimistic and will be returning to the two games in anger, over the next few months. As we build, I thought that I should maintain a blog of what we are up to and list the lessons we have learnt.

I’m new to game development, but am a highly experienced developer; i've pretty much delivered production code in every language that you can think of, from Assembler, Basic, Pascal in the early 80's through to Java, Python and C# today. My speciality is Web Server, using a Java stack.

BOY, game development is so MUCH harder!

When building websites, you typically form a well oiled team of people, who understand what they are doing, are following an understood and well-trodden path. Techniques rarely change and those that do, often an expert is on hand.

Games on the other hand require (to list just a few):

• A good design
• Patience in construction (can take days to build small elements)
• Time to experiment (prototype)
• Time to test
• Time to clean
• Time to tune
• Time to build editors
• Time to design levels
• Good decision making for when to cull an idea
• MONEY and, did I mention it, TIME!

Then there is the need to form a team. This sounds good, but often, people want to do their own thing; unless money is available to buy the skill needed.

Our working relationship has grown, although our failure to deliver, thus far, is driving us harder to make it work. For me, game development is thoroughly enjoyable, although, I have to put my heart and soul into it; with many long days, without much to show for it.

As an outlet to the development, we have constructed a facebook page as well as website for the games. A lot of work has gone into something, which is not ready to be published. However, as each day passes, things get closer.

I plan, if there is demand, to provide updates of the games here on Steemit. The updates will include insights into our design thought, solutions and possibly some code to share how we implemented things. Clearly, the intention is to make money through these games, therefore, we'll not be posting completed developments.

What I also propose to do is to offer my development knowledge to readers here; again, only if demand asks for it.

What I plan, at this stage, is to offer to a suite of simple blogs on how to develop. There are a plethora of them already, however, I'm often left scratching my head in understanding many.

My philosophy is simple. People live busy lives! Learning something new, takes a massive amount of time. However, it can be achieved by spending short bursts of effort every day, over several months. This is more rewarding and effective than trying to become a games programmer in a week.

I would like to write on subjects that take the reader between 5 and 10 minutes to complete. Terming them Micro Coding lessons. I propose to aim that at the following three audience levels:

• The beginner - I will instruct you on how to install an engine (which will be Godot Engine), how to start up a tutorial game and then how to progress onto building your first simple, "Space invaders" type clone.
• The competent - I will provide conceptual ideas and sample implementations, i.e. how to generate mazes, procedural generation, creating efficient maps, signals, collisions etc.
• The expert - I will touch on specific subjects, often found whilst developing our games or as requested by you. These will touch on specific technical need, i.e. how to do X in Godot Engine, such as when and whether to optimise variables in a global or local instance for performance benefits.

I expect to write these in a scatter-gun approach; until I gauge where (if) the demand exists. I.E. This is my intent, but I will be driven by success.

I expect to cover many tasks that can be found elsewhere, but I will link to articles that I know cover their subjects in finer detail. I have considered creating YouTube examples too, although again, that is an aspiration rather than a promise right now.

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment to let me know if this is of interest to you. No promises, but if you post up topics you would be interested in, I'll add them to the consideration list.

Finally, my very first article explains my choice of game engine (Godot Engine). There are many out there and I invested plenty of time and money in figuring out which one was most suitable to me.