In all honesty, I find it a bit depressing here. Everyone around me is into film and doing their best to network, but since I've sworn to myself that I was devoting myself to game programming now, I find that the festival is no longer relevant to me. It would be a wonderful opportunity for me, were I still animating: not many animators seem to attend this festival, and so all the people I've met have been greatly excited when they learn I animate. I could take this opportunity and expand my options, but the thing is, I don't want to stretch myself thin. I don't want to compromise. The thing that killed my prospects in animation was my compromise of the time and energy I devoted between my programming-centered classes, my premed classes and my animation. If I am entering a field, I want to bring the very best of myself I possibly can. It's the only way I can really become good enough to truly contribute to it. And so, despite the great networking possibilities here, I know I need to stay focused on this new path I am seeking to follow.
I am going to stop giving out my animator business cards. And from now on, I should make it clear that, though I did animate for parts of my director friend's short shown here, I am no pro animator. My last work as an animator will be on my friends' current project, the Jabberwocky, which you can see here: http://www.facebook.com/bewarethejabberwocky. Well, obviously I am going to do all animation in my own personal projects, but apart from that, yeah. This is the last one for me. I regret that I wavered so much when I aspired to be an animator, and I want to make up for it. I am all about video games now.
I have a lot to learn regarding video games. I know a lot about the animation industry: I know what a winning portfolio looks like, I know just how important draftsmanship is, I know what the job market is like, and I can predict with a fair degree of accuracy whether an animated feature will be successful or not. I know how many figure drawing pieces most schools and hirees look for in portfolio, and I know the various types of jobs available within the field itself. But I know nothing about video games. I know nothing about the industry, its literature and the kinds of skills needed. I think, specifically speaking, I would want to program the graphical effects in a game, like water and wind and such, which I think goes under the label of feel engineer, but I'm not sure. I also know that, after I make these 13 element-based games, I want to make educational games and release them for free online, as a way of contributing to the general good. I think if I actually make these 13 games, I'll be pretty good and experienced, yeah? Hopefully I won't be like, in my late 40s when I do finish these games.
As for progress on my current game, hmm, it is a lot slower than I would like it to be. I haven't been able to work on the actual code, because I a) don't have FlashDevelop, the IDE I'm working in, b) I have no internet to look things up and c) I'm a n00b. I wish I was proficient enough to program without having to look everything up, but I'm not: I've a long way to go before I can really call myself a programmer. I have a pretty good idea of how I need to structure everything, though, as well as a good idea of how to design the gameplay itself. So yay! I heard that before actual game developers start programming, they make two kinds of design documents: one for how everything in the game will be laid out, the front end, and one for the actual intricacies of the programming itself. I hope to have things worked out in detail for a level/sprite editor I am going to build into the game. I've also been practicing sprite art, which is a lot harder than I thought! Here are a few conceptual sketches I've done of the main character:
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