Hi, my name is Michael and I live in the state of Iowa in the United States. Iāve always been strong on the coding side of things. I first started coding as a kid when I was given a toy called Pre-Computer 1000 that had a basic programming mode in it. I was curious about it and fascinated that I could make it do whatever I wanted. Itās programming mode was a basic version of the language BASIC. I moved on to QBasic on PC and from there eventually taught myself Visual Basic, C++, and C#. Iāve also dabbled in Java and LUA coding.
My first foray into game development came from the original Half Life game during my teen years. I found out it had an editor, called the Hammer Editor. So I got a hold of it and got into 3D level mapping and learned to build my own maps, which I greatly enjoyed. It was like the Pre-Computer all over again, except this time I was fascinated that I could build my own worlds in the computer. In recent years, I delved into the Unity Engine and taught myself that. I took Ben Tristemās Unity course here on Udemy as well. I prefer to write Unity scripts in C#. During my time with Unity, Iāve also dabbled with writing shaders and gained an understanding of how they work. I canāt make really fancy things like awesome water shaders, but Iāve got that understanding of how shaders work which is still very useful.
Iāve had an interest in game design for a very long time. Iāve always loved how video games bring together so many different arts like story writing, textures, modeling, character and world design, sound and music design, and more. One problem Iāve always had is that I can program stuff, but I couldnāt make assets like 3D models. Iāve dabbled with Blender in the past via tutorials but didnāt get too far.
My biggest pet peeve in game design, though, is poorly designed difficulty. Games are supposed to be fun, not annoying or feeling like a chore. Games like Minecraft are awesome, as the huge amounts of gameplay time doesnāt come from lazy artificial difficulty. For example, Binding of Isaac on the other hand has large playtime merely because it lazily uses artificial difficulty. Here its in the form of heavy use of the random number generator and repetition via forcing you to retry a lot. Another pet peeve is people who say games are bad while having no idea what they are talking about. You know, like the idea that games make people violent or are a flat out waste of time. Nevermind the fact that the vast majority of people who play games arenāt violentā¦ Or the fact that games can move people just like written stories and moviesā¦
One of the most influential games for me was Nintendoās The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (aka Zelda64) back when I was about 15 years old. It was a bit of an alternate reality for me in early high school as I was a loner kid who never fit in. That was probably partly because I had developed and was imprisoned by anxiety disorder (and obviously low self esteem), too. In that Zelda game, you are helping the people of Hyrule and this had a positive influence on me because it helped me see that people are basically good. I was also smart enough and mature enough back then to realize love and friendship are the most important things in life. Having few friends back then, I never took them for granted. In the end, nothing else really matters. Life is short, and those bonds and the power of the heart are by far the most powerful thing in this world, aside from God. Iām not a strongly religious person, but I do believe there is a higher power.
Iāve always wanted to use my strong compassion and empathy to create stories and worlds that move people. Thatās difficult to do on your own though. I may not be terribly successful in the āreal worldā, but my intellectual endeavors have been. I enjoy learning new things about all kinds of different stuff, like science. So here I am today, trying to get a better handle on Blender so I can hopefully make cool models in the future!
