Your story

[Ryan]

I thought it would be a neat thing to see how everyone here got into game design. Ill start

I got into game design out of pure desperation I guesse you could say. I had played most of all the free RPG games, and it all started with runescape. I played it for a while and then found out how awfully boring it became after you did everything you could without being a mem. I searched around all over the place to find another free RPG game, and came up with a few but were quite boring with crummy graphics (what should I have expected out of free software). Anyhoo, I decided to look at some other generes. I found a few nice FPS such as KUMA war. Its awesome. For those who are tactical FPS modern war type game its quite satisfying setting up a plan with a squad of real playing people and taking different points of the map. I really played the crap out of that game and was bored again.

I finally decided to try making my own games. I resoned, if I cant find a free game that meets my standards, I will make my own. I ambitiously set out to make the next breakthrough RPG game. I found RPG maker 2000 first. It was really fun and easy to master. Then i moved up to RPG maker 2k3, it had a bit better graphics and was even more fun then RPG maker 2000. Finally I found RPG maker Poskinghts. I loved this program because it allowed me to script with ruby code. (C++ is much esier by what ive seen), Then, i decided to poke around and found that RPG maker pos knights was the illegal version of RPG maker XP by enterbrain. Before RPG maker XP was coverted over to an english version, somone made a remake of it and called it RPG maker Postality knights enhanced edition. And it was all in english! But then when RPG maker XP came out with the english version, there really was no excuse except if you could'nt afford the 60$ to pay for it (like me) lolz. So, knowing that Poss knights was illegal took all the fun out of it for me. even though thousands of people do use this version, it still did'nt make it right in my eyes. So i tried to go back to RPG maker 2k and 2k3 and they both seemed boring after using the Poss knights version with its crystal clear graphics, and scriptable capabilities. So I quit. I tried game maker, runesword, and a few others and found both very confusing and even less rewarding.

Then rooting around in an old RPG maker resource page I had saved, I found links to FREE 3d game engines. The links were to Ogre, Crystal space, irllicht, and Reality Factory. I checked all four of them out, tried the Ogre engine and had a heck of a time even obtaining the right SDK's. Then I moved on to trying crstal space and it was confusing to me as well. Then boom, i hit reality factory. I loved it "all in one download package". I loved the fact that you could download the program, pull up the editor, and start making a game. none of this SDK witch hunt to find the rights SDK's libraries etc. I was hooked. After my awe of seeing how simple the editor was and how everything was so well put together I decided to check out these forums to see if it was really as good as it all seemed. it was. I got the "Welcome to the forums!!!!!!!!:):):):)" greeting by zany as my first response to my noob questions. That really sealed the deal. I think the comunity is the most important part to anything. you can have the most simplest engine in the world, but if the community is rotten, then whats the fun. I must admit, at times when i have been discouraged by RF, i have found myself looking for a new game engine, but somthing always seems to draw my back to reality factory. Who knows why.

Anyway, theres my story. I want to really thank all who have helped me through my learning curve with RF. I am sure i will have more questions as I go.

Lets hear everyone else's story!!

[zany_001]

I got the "Welcome to the forums!!!!!!!!SmileSmileSmileSmile" greeting by zany as my first response to my noob questions. That really sealed the deal.

thnx!!!
thats very interesting,i really got into game design cos i thought itd b real cool to be able to make my own games.i originally thought i would program a 2d sratagy game,but that went out the window.then i read a book called Game Design and f/x by Luke Ahearn.That had G3d in it,and at the end it had RF.i looked at the rabid games site,but there was nothing there,so i eventually came here.(i discovered google).thats about it really.

[Voltare]

I happened upon this thing, in 1979 , that was in a box.The guy who sold it to me(5$, HA!) told me it was a computer.It turned out to be a 1977 Apple I ....but my first real compy was an apple IIe in 1986, the one i learned basic on, and programmed my very first game, an ultima-like rpg.

Life soon intervened, kid, wife jobs, etc.and divorce, heh.Then, in 1996, i got a compaq pentium 1, and started surfing the net.For 3 years, that's all i did, surf the net, jabber on yahoo chat(met my current wife that way in 1998), and in 1999, stumbled across this little ugly red and black site with a tiny blurb in one corner about a "rabid framework".

I followed it for a while,found out it had "morphed" into Reality Factory,....so I learned all I could about it, and by August of 2004, had a decent working RPG built with Rf.The day before I had planned to release a demo on the Rf forums, Hurricane Ivan slammed into my part of the country, with the eye of the storm going directly over my mom's house.

We could not leave my mom's house for 3 days afterwards, because of all the trees that were down.It took a month to get back into my house.I went, when I could, about a week after the storm hit---and found my computer totally ruined.All work gone.My grandmother's house was one of the few that got hooked back up with electricity for months afterwards, so i went on her internet until they got my electricity back.

After I came back, i tried to restart my project, and was the last actual purchaser of RF from gekido designs.I then got their Beyond Virtual product, and have been working with it since....

I now have 3 different backups of my files....1 is online, 1 is dvds, the other is a separate hard drive.I am even considering tape backup, just to be on the safe side.

We are still feeling the effects of those 3 storms that hit our area in 2004-2005 2 years later.

I prototype in Rf, save that out as a .3ds and import it into BV.I also have tv3d, game maker 6.0, and a few other engines.....but Rf and BV are what I use.

[GD1]

it all started with runescape.

lol... my friend was a level 90 or 92, cant remember.

anways, i basically got into game dev in the same way. I had always fantasized about making my own games, ever since i was about 8 or 9 years old. but, what really got me started was Halo. I had the pc demo, and i wanted to play to rest of the game so bad, but i knew my parents would never let me get away with buying it. so... i got creative. I learned how to edit HEX values to hack the demo. from there, i went on to learn a little bit of Blender3D so that i could make my own mod. But, that was before Halo CE, so making a mod was almost impossible. Then, i stumbled upon Genesis3D, and then the next day discovered Reality Factory. For being 14, i actually didn't do half bad, i had a running 3rd person game with AI in a couple weeks. but then, i got obsessed with the whole RF2 thing that poly-gone was bragging about (what the heck happened to him?). basically, i thought i knew everything and i ended up making a fool of myself but you live and learn.

I had to take a break from Game Dev for a while. I had a girlfriend and she meant the world to me (she still does). but she had screwed up her life really bad... she had done some rly horrible things that i didn't know about. so she left me to protect me from the truth or whatever her excuse was, and then she got right back into the mess she was in. but, once she told me the truth i helped her to get her life sorted out, and now were good friends. so, that completely stopped anything i had to do with video games for about 2-3 months. but, now that my life isn't quite so crazy, i'm currently working on a game for the Clockwork Engine, and I'm writing a novel. I just got started playing guitar with a new band called Tougher Than Fort Knox. we play hardcore/emo stuff, somewhere between Silverstein and Chiodos(amazing band, i met them at the Rockstar Taste of Chaos concert in Orlando). I had a crappy job at Sears, now I work for a Bank and i drive a 2007 Mazda 3, and I'm learning American Sign Language to do volunteer work for the deaf in my spare time. and all this has happened in just the few months since I turned 18 years old. so, yeah things did work out for the best.

so thats my story so far...

[Ryan]

Well yea, im 14 right now, and im homeschooled. That will all be ending next year. I will be a freshman in highschool and I will be going to public High school instead of homeschool. Who knows how much this will interfer with my game dev. My goal is to get a game done over the summer before the hectic rush of high school begins. Still, i am not going to let anything get in the way of my game dev. I have put my foot down on that! Im still sticking with my current game, BOB, band of the brave, but with a major change to the game play. I think it will be alot more fun then the original game play i was going to use. I am going to at least try to get the demo out before school starts.

[darksmaster923]

mine started when my brother found rpgmaker2k3. i was like, omg i can make a game! but it was rpg, after making a game, i wanted to make action/fps games. so i got gamemaker and made a couple of games. but then i wanted 3D games. so i looked around for 3d game engines but gave up. i decided to go into modding and modded modern weapons for cod then i got bf2. after a while, i wanted to make a game sorta like bf2 so i got into game design again. This time i found reality factory.

[Voltare]

Remember Ryan, and anyone else who is considering this as a carreer: Save everything you do!Every little pixel, every tiny model, every awful picture or texture.Save those spgmaker 2k games as well.

Cause this will help you get a job later on in the game dev industry.....

[zany_001]

Well yea, im 14 right now, and im homeschooled.

Same!!!except im 13.

[Ryan]

Remember Ryan, and anyone else who is considering this as a carreer: Save everything you do!Every little pixel, every tiny model, every awful picture or texture.Save those spgmaker 2k games as well.

Cause this will help you get a job later on in the game dev industry.....

hehe, yea, im kicking myself in the rump that I did'nt back up all the work I lost. And zany, I remebered seeing you were homeschooled. Its nice cause it gives more time for stuf like game dev. . Although its gonna be nice to have freinds agan. maybe even get a team together. who knows. This is a cool thread. lets keep this goin.

[Juutis]

I started on game development when I was 12, I believe. My friend told me about this cool program called Game Maker. I had always been interested in making a game of my own and Game Maker seemed like the perfect tool. For three years I worked on dozens of projects, I always got a new and better idea when the previous project was about to be finished. I released only one game, a poor racing game.

Then in the summer of 2003, I found out about RF in a finnish gaming magazine. It had reviews of free 3D game making tools. I tested a few of them and fell in love with RF. I downloaded the MilkShape trial version and started to learn modeling. Ever since I've been working on my game, Nirhis. I've redone it several times because I haven't been satisfied to it, but now I believe I'm good enough with RF to make my dream come true and finish a proper game.

I'm 19 now. I just graduated from high school (well, not exactly high shool, more like a finnish counterpart for high school) and now I have lots of time to work on my game. I'm joining the army in January 2008, it's compulsory here in Finland, and until then I have nothing but free time! I'll probably enjoy the summer and have fun with my friends rather than work on my game for the next few months, but once the summer is over it's time for Nirhis to be finished! I'm hoping to release it by the end of this year.

[zany_001]

Its nice cause it gives more time for stuf like game dev. Razz

actually i get less cos my mum thinks it detracts from schoolwork,so i only go on on satdays and holidays.

[Ryan]

wow, thats to bad zany. I get to work on game dev as long as my work is done. Somtimes it is and somtimes its not Still, how could it detract from school work. I mean look at all the math, physics, etc that is involved in game dev Hey, i vote math class be replaced by game developemnt I have a question about cameras. how could I add and manipulate a 3rd person camera to a game??

[paradoxnj]

Well...When I was 13, I went out to the record store looking for some music and saw a CD from a guy named Jason Becker called Perpetual Burn. I took it home and listened to it and was immediately hooked. It made me want to pick up a guitar and learn how to play. I slaved away about 2 hours a day (on average) and learned quite a bit.

In 2000, I bought a Playstation. I picked up a little game called Final Fantasy 7. While the game was great, I found the music to be phenominal. From that point on, my mind was made up...I was going to compose music for games. I attended college and majored in Music Composition and got my BA. Out of college, I started pursuing positions in the game industry as a musician. It was quite tough as most of the development houses out sourced that sort of thing. I finally found a job at Hasbro Interactive in NYC in 2004. I worked on a few board game titles for various systems. My dream job was coming though...I applied at Vivendi Universal Games in NYC in 2005 and was accepted. My first project was a AAA title for the PS2. I've been there ever since. I am currently working on music and sound design for an XBox360 game project.

I'll tell you that the hardest part was trying to find a job at a development house here on the US East Coast. There are too few companies over here. They are mostly out West. I was trying my best not to relocate out there because I love it here.

[SithMaster]

@paradoxnj- im from the garden state as well, small world.

I bought a game programming kit from best buy (either it or darkbasic from compusa) and it came with game design secrets of the sages, c++, genesis 3d, an animating program (darkrealms i think) and some pdf manuals. I then got the game design f/x book mentioned above and then got rf since it had more to offer.

[paradoxnj]

Yes...SithMaster...small world. I've been using Genesis since 1998 and there was a forum member named Richord. I was talking with him in the G3D forums for 3 years and finally realized that he lived in the next town over from me.

Reading my post back to myself, it might be a little misleading. I graduated college with a BA in Music Composition in 1995. I was trying to get into the film industry first. Failed miserably at that. No experience = no work in that field. I didn't get my first job in the game industry until Hasbro at the end of 2000.