As a new member on these forums, I figured I should take a moment to introduce myself. While I am a new member here, I do have a bit of game development under my belt already and I have visited these boards in the past as a guest. Game development is a hobby and a passion of mine, but professionally I am currently working as a Webmaster / Administrstor for a small local company that manufactures marine supplies. While I would by no means classify myself as a "beginner" in the game development world, I must also admit that I am by no means an expert either.



As I have said, I have visited this forum in the past browsing through various discussions while looking for ideas for building some of my small projects. Just like almost every video gaming, D&D player out there who learned to code, one of the first things I ever created was a dice rolling app, and I found these forums looking for ideas. Since that time I have worked in several environments and with several languages, and after a couple years in college now and a year working professionally writing code I have come to realize that game development always is most enjoyable and rewarding to me. I have recently decided to seriously devote myself to improving my skills as a game programmer, even switching my major of study to reflect this choice.



Anyhow, for the moment I will keep it short, but I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself to this community, and to say I look forward to meeting you all in the coming months.

Welcome to the GDNet community!

Moving to the Lounge

Moving to the Lounge

Sorry bout that Just learning my way around.

Hya and welcome! 

I'm curious about your job. Do you have a degree in something, or previous experiences with web designing etc?

cyas.

I'm curious about your job. Do you have a degree in something, or previous experiences with web designing etc?

I do have an Associate's Degree in Web Development, and I am very close to earning a second one in Computer Programming. I am also employed full time as a Webmaster and general go-to computer guy for a local company that sells marine equipment. I do a lot of general hardware and software maintance for them in addition to development and optimization of 5 websites for them.

I have found that really though, I am not as interested in developing for the web as I first thought I would be, which is why I decided to chase a second Associate's degree before going for a Bacholers Degree instead. I love to program and figure out the logic involved in complex programs, but when it comes to visual design I am not the most skilled person there is. At my job I am the only computer guy they have, and I make up the entire IT department for a firm that is growing very fast. I have had a chance to get my hands wet in many areas in the industry of computing and technology, from network administration to security, from Linux and Windows web Server Management, and even in the realms of simple promotion of goods and services using search engine optimization and social netowrking or commerce websites. In the end though, I most enjoy writing game code, and I have decided to focus on it a bit more in the coming year. After getting my second degree I am fully intending to continue on to finally get my Bacholers Degree, though I have not decided if I am going to focus on Game Development or just get my degree in generalized Computer Programming. I am leaning towards the former though...

I have had a hand in making a few little games already, though for the most part they are only 85% finished in many cases. While I have played around with a lot of different things, there are really only 2 of my games so far that really have the potential to be anything special. A couple semisters ago when taking my intro to Java class I wrote a very simple game engine for text-based console games. I dubbed it "Adventures in Text", and while I never got around to actually making any great levels to play, I knew right away that I had put together a very flexible and powerful design. When I recently took my Advanced Java Programming class, I was fortunate enough to have the same instructor, and he agreed to allow me to make a second version of the engine. In the second version of the game, I expanded the game's API, added in the ability to load custom GUI interfaces, and also added the ability to add custom content to the game stored within .jar files. While I managed to get a working version 2 in time for a grade, there were still a few features I wanted to implement. After the class ended I spent a couple weeks more tweaking it a bit, but soon enough classes started again and I started running short on time, so the game engine never got quite finished up to my vision of it, though it is pretty close. You can read a bit about it from the Adventures in Text version 2 announcement post on my blog.

My other greatest creation is a little program that I have dubbed "DiceMachine", which at first glance is a simple dice roller for d20 games like Dungeons & Dragons and the like. There is an excellant post I wrote on the Wizards of the Coast forums which gives some in depth details as to all of the features I wound up packing into this simple looking dice app (which can be found here), but still over a year since I first wrote this program I am amazed at just how powerful it turned out to be. Anyone who has ever played a high level D&D game knows that sometimes the dice rolls get to be really complex, especially when figuring out how much damage you are inflicting with your lates crushing attacks. With things like automatic miss chances, sneak attack damage that is calculated last, or minimize and maximize spells, it is very easy to make a mistake in calculating the total of a series of rolled dice. My DiceMachine program is an extremely powerful calculator that is designed from the ground up to handle just about any types of dice based calculations automatically. It keeps track of damage types, so that fire and ice damage (for example) will be maintained individually. After all, some enemies might be immune to fire but not ice, so it would become importat to know how much of the total damage is of either type. It also tracks things such as damage that is caused by sneak attacks and not to be multiplied into the total, dice that have an automatic chance of failure, and it will even allow you to nest operations within parenthesis so that you can have some parts of the calculation occurr before others. I have recently even dusted off the source for this program which I originally wrote in Visual Basic and translated it over to C#, making a few improvements and tweaks along the way, and converting it for use as a Windows Phone Library which I am thinking about using to power a few future projects.

Right now I am just entering the realms of 2d and 3d graphic design. I am very familiar with many concepts in 2d game graphics from some of my work with Flash, but the realms of 3d are almost completely foriegn to me. I would classify myself as an intermediate game programmer at this point in my education, though I would also add I feel I have the potential to become an expert in many areas. I simply have not found the areas where I most feel at home yet, and I am not really well connected with other developers that I might work with to help overcome my limitations at this time. Since I do my school online and I do not work with any other technical people, I am what you might call the epitome of a solo developer. I am hoping to change that a bit in the coming year by becoming a bit more active on discussion boards such as this one and by seeking new employment where I will be working closely with other developers.