First Blog - Spit_Fyre633

So this is my introductory blog, and I figured I should probably use it to tell people a little about myself. Now, first things first, I've never written a blog before, so bare with me on that front.
The first career path I ever decded on was actually very different to what I am doing now. I wanted to be a fighter pilot, since I was about the age of 5, when my grandad first took me to an air tattoo. So, naturally every subject I took from then on in school, was anything to get me to that goal. I had a bookshelf full of different aircraft books, joined my local Air Cadets when I could, etc...
Then, year 9 approached and we had to find a work experience placement for 2 weeks. The first thing I did was apply to the RAF, and, to my amazement, I got it. Two weeks at RAF Cosford, working with all areas of the airforce.
When I arrived there I met up with the one other guy doing it with me, and we headed out to find where we needed to go. The woman we met with, whilst she was taking us to the first area, told me that I would never be able to become a pilot, due to the motor tics related to my tourettes syndrome.
Needless to say hearing that on my first day was utterly....utterly...crushing. I found it hard to enjoy my time doing the work experience after that, and when it was finished I didn't know what to do with myself. Annoyingly this happened at the same time we were supposed to be choosing our GCSE subjects...and I had no idea which to choose anymore, so I kindof just chose any subject I was ok with. They were all very general subjects, so thankfully I was still able to steer myself in any direction I felt like going in.
My results weren't terrible, but certainly could have been better. Then came college applications, and again, I had no idea what sort of A-Levels I wanted to try for...I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. Again I chose some pretty generalised subjects, but my attention to this was very short-lived. It wasn't long before my work started to slack, and it eventually reached a point where I was hardly even attending the college anymore, or If I was there, I probably wouldn't be in my lessons. This was only made worse where, near the end of my first year, my dad left.
Before the first year of college was over, I quit. I was failing anyway, I wasn't enjoying myself, It was just not what I wanted to do.
After this happened I was talking to my friend who had just started college, and he was saying that it was really good, so I grabbed a prospectus for it and had a quick read. Immediately one of the subjects jumped out at me; Game Developement. Now, I had always been using the back of my schoolbooks to come up with all sorts of things for games (Weapon designs, maps, languages, storylines, alien races...) and the idea of doing something like that for a living intrigued me. Enough that I applied for the course, not really having any understanding at that point of how exactly a game was made. Sure I'd played around with level editors in a couple of games (Stronghold and Time Splitters spring to mind), but I imagined that when it actually came to production, it'd be a lot different.
Typically to how my life tends to pan out, by the time I'd been interviewed and accepted onto the course, It was already in its third week, and most people were halfway into their first assignement. Now, it's also worth baring in mind that I have a short attention span, so if I find a lecturer or a teacher boring, I end up not paying attention to them after about 5 minutes. And, unfortunately, the lecturer was boring, his voice was tedious and his favourite phrase to accompany anthing he was saying was "Like, erm..."
At first I used the time ignoring to just play flash games to get me through to break time. However, after a couple of days of that, I began to use the time more constructively. Still, not doing the work I was supposed to be doing, but productively none the less. Every day I was following through Photoshop tutorials to learn more about it.
Doing this actually started to ignite my drive to learn and work more about it, so as difficult as it was, I was starting to pay attention. For the first year we were using Game Maker, and I made a prison-escape type of game which was, looking back, horrendous. But, at the time, I was immensy proud of what I'd done.
When the second year came around things got more advanced, we started being taught photoshop, 3D modelling, and also UE2K4. This was a real turning point in my drive to learn and work, where teaching myself photoshop had begun, this took over and ran off with my inspiration. The class followed the lecturer through to leanr a few basics about creating a level in UE2K4, and then we were assigned our final year project - create a level in it. By this point, I, and a few others, had noticed that UE3 was on the college computers, and when we asked about it, we were told that they had not been trained in it, so couldn't teach it yet. However, we were also told that, if we really wanted to, we were allowed to use that for our FYP, but the learning for it would have to be done in our own time.
I got very excited, and every night from then was usually spent playing around in UDK to learn it as fast as I could. I used the time in college that was supposed to be for the FYP for the other projects, and my time at home on the FYP. It got to about a month before it was due when I was told that UDK - which I'd been using - was not UE3, and not a format they could accept. So, as a result, my map was never finished, as I spent the rest of the time cloning the map over to UE3 to be handed in.
Again, typically to how my life pans out, the last two days of college were a complete nightmare. The one week I'd had off in the middle of term was the only week our class ever did anything for concept art, another module towards our grade, which I didn't find out about until then. So, yes, those two days were spent trying to get concept art for the module. What I eventually ended up handing in was not what I thought I would, and late, capping my grade, but the lecturers both decided that what I'd done was so impressive they couldn't mark it below the cap, so they decided to be leanient and give it the mark it was due. I was completely over the moon about this, that the time and effort I'd put in had paid off, and it was something I'd enjoyed doing.
The relief of having direction back in my life was so refreshing. I applied to university and got onto Bsc: Multiplayer Online Games Design. Things really took off from there, as far as my education was concerned. Student life was excellent as well, I loved having my own space for the first time (I came from a big family in a small house), I learnt how to cook an egg in a kettle, it was great.
My first year was very good, I achieved firsts in every module I had, the second year was quite as good results wise, a couple of the modules (Like networking, which I'd like to point out had NOTHING to do with games, and was included in the curriculum only because the fools in charge thought it was necessary to the course) did let me down.
And then the third year happened, and things begun to go downhill again. Some of my grades dropped slightly due to them either being subjects I wasn't interested in, or again, crappy lecturers. I'd also moved in with a friend who'd had a motorcycle accident, couldn't work, and needed help paying rent.
It was there that I met my partner, and about halfway through the final year, she was pregnant. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here, so I'll summarise the 12 months after; Uni work took a hit, my family stopped talking to me, we were forced to move out and find our own place, neither of us had a job, our daughter was born and I couldn't get a job in the industry.
At this point I was singing on, applying for any job I was qualified for, and still being rejected...I couldn't even get a job in a warehouse, I'd have been amazed if I was even accepted for a paper round at that point. However, once you have been signing on for a while, the Jobcentre (This is what happens in the UK, by the way) pretty much force you into a work placement programme which is where you are thrown into some random job they have, usually manual labour (Let me tell you, I am NOT cut out for manual labour, far too weedy) on the absolute minimum they can pay you.
It was during a 4 week work experience in a jobcentre that I was on (Which, when over, I would have been put on the WPP) that I was told about setting up my own business. I gave it some thought, mulling it over on how things would work, doing research on it all, such as what funding I could get for setting one up.
By the end of the work experience, I was set on the idea of becoming an independent games developer, so that's what I did. I stopped signing on and started up Tophat Studios in August last year. I was always worried that this was a gamble, but as far as I was concerned, the worst it could get to was signing back on, so I figured I would at least try.
I spent the next few months starting different game ideas, but every time I stopped and came up with another that was more simple and more within the realms of possibility for what I could achieve on my own.
I will mention that I was not supposed to be doing this on my own, I was supposed to be receiving help from friends. However, I found that they were either busy with their own thing, making constant excuses as to why they couldn't, or better yet deleting me from Facebook all together.
So, it was just before Christmas when I started on Battle Tank Defence, and it is the only idea that has stuck, that I feel I can achieve some kind of success with, without really relying on others. Yes, I'm not amazing at everything, my modelling and texturing leaves much to be desired, etc... but I can still get something on screen that looks presentable, and I figured if I could start a project, It might draw some attention and I'd get help that way.
So, we finally arrive where I am now, my project has been in developement for little over a month, and there is a lot I want to do with it. However, right now I'm just trying to get the basics in and working, before I run off with all my crazy ideas and turn it into some monolithic game that, yet again, one person could not make...at least, not in my timeframe.
I won't add the links to this blog, but it's fairly easy to find it around.
So, I hope that makes for a good intro at 1:30am. I will try to keep blogging, though future ones will more than likely be less about me, and more about games developement.