Hello. I''m an indie game developer. I''d like to post some information about how my game programming career has gone thus far, my plans for the future, and I''d like to know what my chances are after high school getting a real job as a real game developer, and what my salary would probably be. What college should I go to? Should I go to college right away? Ok, so here''s my little testimony. When I was 7 years old, my grandpa brought home a game. It was called King''s Quest V. When I played it, I was amazed. It was an adventure game, but what was amazing about it was it was completely hand-painted, and, beautiful! I said to my grandpa "This is obviously the 5th game, are there more?" He said there was, but they weren''t anything like this and I wouldn''t like them. He was wrong! When I saw them, he was right, they weren''t anything like them. They were 16 colors, and had yellow characters, etc. But I still liked them! I decided, that I liked the newer kind of King''s Quest better, I would become a game programmer and make games like this, or even better, remake King''s Quest games. So, I picked up Qbasic and Visual Basic. I liked making menus and neat little programs with it. I continued working. I learned Java. I made my first graphical game, SGTBM, with java. It was a space fighting game. I was really proud of it. Then, I learned the language I still use today, C. I made a game, Elk Hunter, with it. It was my first fun game, I guess you could say. It was like Street Fighter, except there were only two moves, but hey, it was cool. My friend, at this point, had just finished making a game called Mafia, which was basically a tile-based adventure game. You had to rally the troups of KBAR to combat against school. I didn''t like how this game was only 16 colors. So, I made my friend a QB engine( that''s the language he knows) to handle 256 color sprites that would be saved to a file. This began Arean''s Wish. However, QBasic''s limitations hit us so hard, we had to stop working on it. After a while, I got fed up with Andre'' Lamothe''s graphic engine. Not that it was bad, it just wasn''t designed for someone like me. I made my own graphics engine in a day or two. No offense to LaMothe, but I think it improved upon his code immensly. It took ~250 lines to do what LaMothe''s took over 1000 I think. So, I felt smart making an engine like what I did. I decided to revisit the world of SGTBM and made SGTBM II. This game was a lot smarter. I used "paths" which would make the aliens have more life-like movement. I had powerups, levels, it was a GAME. It was complete. However, I lacked the motivation to sell the game. Even though I''m only working on the project after this, the difference in quality is sooo much, that i would be embarrassed to sell it now. (I sell locally) Finally, Arean''s Wish''s time came. After finishing SGTBM II, I was completely fed up with it. The reason was, I figured out so many things to do differently! This is what happens after every game for me . After a huge facelift to Arean''s Wish, the engine is near-complete, and we''re waiting for writers to progress through the story. Even now, I can tell a bunch of things to improve on my next project. My next project is going to be to make an adventure game engine. I am going to call it Sponge Factory Adventure Game Maker. Or something like that. It will make screen based adventure games like the newer King''s Quest. It will have a scripting language farm more advanced than Arean''s Wish. It will be SO customizeable you can make non-adventure games with it. Now, with this engine, I am going to remake King''s Quest IV. This game was one of the funnest for me, and I want to remake it like the newer ones. King''s Quest IV will be released for free so that I won''t get sued . There are two games we have for plans in the future following this one. The first, will be our own original adventure game, that will be sold, like our other original games. After that, I plan on making an online MUD, that will be graphical. That''s all I have for details for those two projects, because we haven''t planned that much about them! Now I''m 16 years old, and I have been programming games for 9 years. Now that you know my game programming life story, what do you think? I have 3 more years of school, then I''m out on my own. I live in Washington. Which college should I go to? Do I even have a chance of getting a game programmer job or should I do freelance programming or web development instead? If you haven''t seen Arean''s Wish, there''s a 2 month old copy in the GDS, or, at www.games-source.net, there''s a download there also, it''s newer. (I''m borrowing music from other games until I have music from the musicians (that way I won''t get bored while testing)). My last question, will the work I have done this far mean ANYTHING on a resume, or do I have to have proffessional work (as a real employee) to mean anything? Thanks alot for reading. If you''re not a game programmer and want to be, I hope my story is encouraging to you, because, you can never start too young

bump

yeah right you liar. when I was seven, I was in first grade. give me a break, kit.

Muzlack, just because you release a remake of a game for free does not mean you can''t get sued. It just means you might not have to pay as much in damages, you should be careful. There is a group that is already redoing the KQ games, I think they are called Tierra, Google it. As for the rest, go to college, enjoy life a bit, stop thinking so much about what you are going to do with the rest of your life. You have the drive to do what you want, so do it. Good luck.

sorry for the late reply. Yes. I did start when I was 7. I never said I started GAME programming. I started making my print 1 to 10 programs and hello world etc. There''s a big differenece. A 7 year old can do that. Yes, I am well aware of Tierra. They said they have no plans for KQ4, and there is no conflict between that. As long as the position is open when I get there, I''m going to remake that game. Anyways. What do you think of my chances in the industry?

Your chances are what you want them to be. If you want in badly enough, you''ll get in, one way or another. The question no one can answer for you but you is what do you want to do? Once you figure that out, make a plan to get there, and follow it. If that plan doesn''t work, try some other plan.

There''s an anecdote in a book about writing fiction that applies.

A young and talented violinist performed a solo for a renowned conductor. He really played his heart out. After the performance, he went up to the conductor and asked him "Well, do I have what it takes?"
The conductor said, "You lack the fire."
The boy was stunned, but resolved to take the conductors words to heart and to find another path in life.
Years later, the boy chanced to meet the conductor again, and told the man, "What you said to me really changed my life. Tell me, how did you know?"
The conductor looked at him and said, "It didn''t matter what I said. If you really had the fire, you would have ignored what I said."

That''s not exactly right (doing it from memory), but the gist of it is, the only one who can tell you whether or not you have what it takes is yourself.

If you really want to be a game programmer, keep programming, and make sure that none of your other steps take you too far off the path.



Mark Fassett
Laughing Dragon Entertainment
http://www.laughing-dragon.com

Muzlack, man, you got nothing to worry about! If you work hard and learn everything you can, jobs will come by themselves. Read 2-4 books a month. Program stuff for at least 3 hours a day, if not more. Go to college. Get an internship or something before your first job. Keep making games on your own.

This is cliche but your chances are what you make of them. You still got years before you need to worry about getting a job, so if you really want to get in the industry, just put your mind to it and work at it and nothing can stop you.

I dunno what college you might want to go to.. I''d say a traditional CS degree combined with independent studying about game-specific stuff is the way to go, but I could be biased since that''s what I''m doing =) It''s not easy because classes often take up a lot of your time so you dont'' get to work on your games so much, but I think a CS degree is important since games are getting pretty complicated and it pays to know things like software engineering, advanced math,etc.

Raj

quote: Original post by Muzlack
sorry for the late reply. Yes. I did start when I was 7. I never said I started GAME programming. I started making my print 1 to 10 programs and hello world etc. There''s a big differenece. A 7 year old can do that. Yes, I am well aware of Tierra. They said they have no plans for KQ4, and there is no conflict between that. As long as the position is open when I get there, I''m going to remake that game. Anyways. What do you think of my chances in the industry?

I was 8 years old when I started programming. The language: BASIC. The platform: MSX
At 10: The language: Pascal (Turbo Pascal 3.0, actually)
At 11: The language: Z80 Assembler. Some months after I finished a "mouse driver" (not exactly a mouse, because I didn''t have one, but it was simulated by the keyboard) for a GUI I was trying to make(the rest of the GUI was in Pascal).

Yes, a 7 year old can do that.

Hey, your way ahead of me, but maybe i can help you. My first suggestion would be to get a career diploma (from Thomison direct or certification), if you then like that computer programming you will be able to do contract work or atleast it will help. Another reason for doing that is if you don''t like it you can change your career path with losing so much credits. You obviousily skilled in programming, but it may be different doing in on the job. Then i would say go to a junior college, or local technical school, and get the generals out of the way, preferably living with your parents as long as possible. Keep your eyes on transfering into a bachelor program. Then get job experience, and if you can get your job to pay for Master degree classes TAKE THEM UP ON IT!!!!!!!!! Some companies have continueing education. Also, get an internship with a game company, or if not that some other company, it will look good on your application. Keep abreast of current gaming trends. Also programming on your own will look well from what i''ve heard. Take everything with a grain of salt. Decide for yourself if that''s what you want to do. hey check out my website under game production http://groups.msn.com/SteveosTeamo
Check out the 3D Gamestudio engine.

Steveos join my teamos

Muzlack -- We create what we believe, my friend. If you are excited about it, do it with joy, and let the pieces fall where they may... you will certainly find your way. Trust me, never think in terms of chances, you only limit yourself.

Also, I think it would be very wise to check out the legalities of making remakes of other people''s games, you''d perhaps need at least a signed, written consent of some kind from the copyright owners of KQ, even if it''s freeware. At least check it out, I don''t know.

I was eight or nine... programming BASIC on my trusty old Commodore 64... ah, those were the days... good old fashioned ASCII alien spacecraft needing to be shot with ASCII laser pellets.

Be well.