Taking the dive, escaping the dip.

The Dip, the single most terrifying occurrence for every programmer. It's the period when a programmer settles for his learned skills, and forgets that programming is a continuous learning process. The dip can be tragic, it could mean the end of a career.

I could say that I'm in this phase of my programming career right now. I'm bombarded by a vast array of technologies, all varying in structure, that I don't even know what to (or whether I should) focus on for the sake of specialization. After-all, they do say that a jack of all trades is better than a master of one. This one statement alone has driven me to pursue skills in a vast array of technologies, permeating through the different fields of IT. I like it, but nearly all professionals I come across in the web seem to think otherwise. I have come across code that I can barely comprehend and this disillusions me, but I try to keep in mind that these people might be ages ahead of me in experience, I hope I find out I'm right a few years from now.

Anyway, that aside, I think I might be on my way out of the dip, not because I'm advancing my understanding of current programming languages, but because I have taken a leap from business application programming, to game programming. I decided to transition from my current job to start my journey as a game developer, all thanks to a nice little startup that saw potential in most of my prototypes, which I had been developing in my free time with Unity. Unity utilises the C# programming language, very similar to Java (which I have been using for over a year), but different in some ways of which I'm yet to study, and master. This moment, is hopefully my escape from the dip and true fulfillment in what I want to do with my life.

From this point on-wards, I will be posting my experiences as a game developer, as well as give tips on how to achieve some goals in the frameworks and software I use to develop the games I make in my free time.  I apologize for not remaining consistent with my blog content, I normally get back to it after more than a year, I will endeavor to update it more often to keep the narrative fluid. Follow me through this journey and let me know what you think about it in the comments section.

The Journey so far.

It's January 20th 2014, a lot of time has passed since my last post. I'm 23 years old, turning 24 in three months. I'm still not rich, not a bill gates for sure. I'm now working at a software development firm in Malaysia. I still have a dream to become a game developer, and it has never been stronger than it is now. But before I elaborate on that. Let me tell you what has happened within these 3 past years my blog has been in the dark.

At the time of my first blog post, I had just joined University life and my ambitions were through the roof. I was determined to get out there as fast as I can. All my life I've been wanting to shorten the whole process of studying, I only had a 5 month holiday before I joined university from high school. I wanted to pursue a game design course but my dad didn't think that was a good idea so he encouraged me to do something more conventional. I ended up signing up for Software Engineering. I spent half of my campus life as a normal student. Attending classes, writing research papers, reviewing research papers, you know, all the boring stuff.

It was a dormant experience while it lasted. I then got to know about a new operating system called Android, which completely fascinated me. It was the most exciting thing I had come across since what, video games? I was completely hooked into the whole app development craze that came about after the release of Android.  I felt like that one operating system was my "pearly gates" to my dreams. I spent quite a lot of time outside campus trying to figure out how to program in Java. However, it was far too difficult for me at the time. So my dream slowly faded away with every single time I gave up on programming.

It was at that very moment, when I almost let go of Android, that I met the one person who changed my life forever. He was hosting an Android development workshop at one of the school labs. The workshop was utter crap, didn't help me at all. However, the friendship was priceless. He introduced me to an easier platform to start app development with - Symbian. Symbian was Nokia's flagship operating system for its smartphones. I was on the verge of its death but still had quite a bit of life left in it. It had a newly developed programming interface created for it called QML, a Qt derivative. It was so easy to program with QML, that I made my first ever video game in 3 months. And to this day, it's the only 5-star rated game I have ever made. The ultimate gem. However, it was the Symbian platform and despite all the effort placed in making that game, it didn't earn me much. I decided to stick to Symbian anyway, at least till it died out completely.

Throughout University life. I balanced half of my time studying and the other half making mobile apps and games for Nokia. We even joined a Nokia app development competition and won first place. We did quite well. My dream of finally becoming a games developer was coming to light, it was amazing. The university liked me so much that they offered me a job at one of their companies. So I've been here quite some time (4 months to be exact).

Shigeru Miyamoto gave me an aspiration.

I was introduced to games at the age of 7. My father brought home a peculiar piece of technology and explained to us how it worked. It was my first video game. People in my town called it a Terminator. I only got to discover it's real name when I was about 15, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

It only had two games pre-installed on the system. Those were the only two games we played for about 4 years. Super Mario bros. and Duck hunt. Both games I'll never forget, because they shaped my future.

Super Mario bros. was the most addictive game I'd ever played. It took 60% of all my time as I was a kid. I don't even remember having a social life at the time. The game transformed me into a gamer. I was crazy about games and dived deeper into the depths of the games Library. The more I learned of games, the more I saw my future unfolding. I began reading articles on how they were made and who were the minds behind. And of all the articles I read, the wikipedia article of Shigeru Miyamoto inspired me most.

Creator of the Super Mario series and one of the greatest games of all time - The Legend of Zelda, Shigeru's creations captivated so many gamers out there and practically changed gaming forever, only because of his creativity and determination.

He's given me a purpose in life, only problem is I don't know where to start. How do we get into the gaming industry?

Perhaps I may start with learning Japanese ^_^.

Where do I start?

02/18/2011

How do I have a dream of breaking through the thin film separating the developers from the students? Isn't that the stuff of pipes? Technology changes faster than the day's paper. I was once inspired by playing Super Mario bros. in the past and now I'm disillusioned by the advanced graphics of today's games. How am I going to make it through college with all the pressure around me?


I need a focus, I can't keep on reading the news of how Mark Zuckerberg made facebook in college and how Bill Gates created an entire new world at the age of 22. I'm already turning 21 and nothing yet. What do I really want to do? How am I going to focus on exactly  what I want to do? Perhaps documenting about my experiences will help me find my focus. Maybe I'll get my inspiration by sending this message out to the world.