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I'm Calvin and I live in an apartment with a cat and a girl. I make games and work a job!
Making games is just something I always wanted to do, ever since getting a NES as a grade-4 5 or 6er. Some of my personal favorite games are Chrono Trigger, Super Mario Bros. 3, Ultima VI, Zelda: LTTP, and so forth. I remember in Grade 4 5 or 6 going to a friend's house at lunch and playing Zelda (the original LoZ.) His house smelled like cigarette smoke since both his parents were smokers; mine weren't so this was the earliest time I smelled cigarette smoke very much. To this day cigarette smoke, especially when stale reminds me of LoZ.
In junior high and high school I had trouble fitting in, for various reasons. I spent a lot of time coding, like on a VIC-20 and before that a Timex Sinclair ZX-81 which is just a weird little computer. But the VIC-20 was a dream to me and I learned a lot. I remember first realizing how GOSUB worked and it was such a MIND FUCK! I couldn't believe it, hahaha.
Later on my family got a 386 PC which I remember was just incredibly expensive. We didn't have much money so it was a big deal. I monopolized this although it was the family computer, and through junior high I became a better and better programmer.
By High School I sort of knew what I was doing and made some games, I don't really remember. I did have some friends and a social life in Grade 11, which was nice. Somewhere in there i played just shitloads of Ultima VI, just coming home after school every day and playing it for hours. Looking back it was just crazy to be obsessed with a game that much. BRB Skyrim.
Anyways between High School and the first part of university I finished my first big game, Legacy Forest which you can download on my games page. It is pretty ambitious but technically had some problems which made it incredibly unweildy to work with. Like days to get a single cutscene in. It was just a shockingly huge amount of work to make that game, and really quite un-fun. I vowed to not put myself in a position of such an unweildy system again.
After that I started work on an auto-generated space exploration sim, Venture the Void. That was also a ton of work, I think I spent about a year on terrain algorithms though this was mostly wasted time. However it wasn't so hard to work with, so even when it was done I didn't hate it. There are some really cool early prototypes of Venture the Void, some weird stuff that I should dig up sometime. Anyhow this was started when I was in Uni but not finished until after. I lived at home after graduating and didn't really have a job. So I released this game but it didn't sell very many copies so life just continues on.
In the meantime I started work on The Real Texas which I'm just about to release. Although not perfect I feel it's my first legitimately great game. I sometimes get a weird feeling when playing a game that I know very well, like Zelda: LTTP, where I think I was the one who made the game. Like, "oh I remember programming this." Super weird feeling and a real letdown when I realize I had actually zero role in the creation of that game. But with The Real Texas it's the same feeling but in this case I actually did make it.
I've focused really more on game design and art, rather than programming, for the past several years. It's really cool to see other people who learned to make games with gamemaker instead of by programming, because they are so much better designers and really are able to think higher level more easily. Yeah I have the programming chops but I feel pretty green when I have actual design problems.
Well these are "my" forums so I suppose this intro post isn't disproportionately self-indulgent, ha ha ha. Let us continue...
Apart from all this I am really lucky to have a great partner and a cat and an apartment, a good job-- I'm lucky that I legitimately enjoy computer programming because it lets me make enough money to support this wacky lifestyle. I work a few days a week for money and spend the other days working on games. I got to go to Thailand and Hong Kong after getting married, went for 3 months in total. It was such a fantastic thing and I will return!!
I really do like riding bikes, I don't have a car because while living with my parents I was unemployed and thus they were too expensive. When I met my partner I was always biking up to her place and back so I just sort of became a cyclist. Nowadays I just do everything by bike, year round. So that's kind of a wierd thing about me. I'm also way healthier than I used to be, but I don't usually think of it as exercise.
I think I am a certified "retro-grouch" which means I like old, quality things and think most new things, at least the affordable things, are usually really bad quality. For instance I like wool pants and listen to vinyl LPs. Being a retrogrouch is kind of like being a hipster but without being in denial about it. Ha ha ha! Hipsters. Actually to tell you the truth as near as I can tell a "Hipster" is actually just a young white person with fashion sense. I'm a bit older than a typical hipster anyhow (born 1979.)
OK! This is seriously by far the most self-indulgent thing I have ever written, and there it shall stand.
*** PARTY TIME ***
_________________ o._ /_. O O Takin' it EASY, riding my BIKE, makin' my GAMES. http://www.kittylambda.com
Last edited by PsySal on Wed Apr 11, 2012 6:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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