#mdiyo

So I’m 26 turning 27 this year. I worked out I loved computers when I was about 11. It wasn’t until I was about 16 I really got the chance to explore computers and it was in senior high school that I fell in love with programming.

My dad is a plasterer, or was till he was forcibly retired due to poor health. Growing up that meant I was exposed to a lot of construction work. As a result my dad would often mock up plans and drawings for things on paper.

One day I saw him doing this and I fell in love with the bricks he was drawing. I watched him for a bit before asking him how he did it. He walked me through step by step and from that moment my drawing skills evolved from simple 2D drawings to more impressive 3D creations.

As I grew up my art fell to the wayside and my more logical, knowledge seeking brain took over. I became more practical than creative.

When I got to Uni I tossed around the idea of either being a business programmer or a games developer. At the time we were told the games development industry is very small and highly competitive and to not bother with it. That meant I would choose to be a business programmer.

Yet I couldn’t stop the thoughts about being a game developer from happening. Every few weeks it would occur to me and I would wonder if maybe I could. I’d think, maybe it might be a cool hobby.

Then I met mDiyo and was motivated to get into Minecraft modding, admittedly I never quite released anything but it was an eye opening experience for me. I learned so much. I got started with Pahimar’s tutorials but the support and encouragement I have to keep going made a huge difference.

From that I also discovered how much I loved creating stuff. I was making art, I was programming, I was being a digital midwife and bringing to life ideas.

Then one day I saw GameMaker Studio 1.4 for sale in a Humble Bundle with all its export modules. I went hey that’s a great deal and so I bought it. At the time I knew what GameMaker was but not how to use it.

Then one day mDiyo began working on his own game and I felt inspired and motivated to try some stuff myself. I didn’t really know where to begin and he suggested Unity, I still felt overwhelmed and admitted I wasn’t as skilled as I thought I needed to be so he suggested GameMaker and I remembered I’d bought it in a Humble Bundle many months prior so I finally installed it.

With a little help from Shaun Spalding, HeartBeast and Google, I got a very basic platformer level going. From that I realised how much I loved it all again and I knew right then that game development was the right path for me to follow.

The picture above was my very first level. I learned how to animate the lava and the slime, I learned how to trigger fireworks on a collision with the door and I made the character move. I also eventually added a life item which refilled lives and had a cooldown and how to put a basic menu in that worked.

I’d been practicing pixel art up to that point and finally applied it with my logic and made that. These days I know more.

For one I learned that decorative items are better placed in a level as tiles not objects because they use less memory, of course at the time I didn’t know that.

I also learned about sizing things and creating fonts to make text readable.

I also learned how to improve my pixel art creation skills. I went from using GIMP to using Aseprite and I’d have to say it was the best decision. I’ve found it so helpful for animating stuff, tiling, general sprite creation etc.

The biggest thing I think I’ve learned though is time estimation. Realising how long it takes me to create my sprites.

I’d never done procedural generation before and one day saying oh I could make a box in under a year once to a friend resulted in them challenging me to do it. So I started by watching videos. That took some hours but after that I set about coding my own procedural generation level with a box and within a few more hours I had it mostly pretty good.

By the day’s end I had a randomly generating level. With a few extra lines I was able to stick a box on it and with that that everything was working fine.

Yet on the flip side, take this sprite I made a little while ago

That pixel hobbit door took me days to make. The wood was especially hard and I’m still learning how to do wood. That was probably my first successful wood texture.

When I was a kid, all the cool things seemed so hard and like I’d never be able to achieve them. Now I’m an adult and yeah it took me a while to get there but now I’m starting to achieve them and I feel good about it.

For a long time I felt like I was floating through life with no sense of value or meaning. Everything was pointless and I felt entirely powerless. Admittedly I do still feel powerless sometimes(especially where my government is concerned) but now that I am achieving the cool things I dreamed of, I don’t feel like I’m so lost. I feel like I have found my purpose in life.

I thoroughly love describing the whole process as digital midwifery. The term seems entirely accurate to me. A midwife is a nurse who specializes in antenatal and post-natal pregnancy care. Here in Australia, if you have a healthy pregnancy then you’ll be seen by a midwife. If you’re a private patient you can also have a doctor see you and attend the delivery. If you’re deemed high risk then you’ll be seen exclusively by a doctor.

For the vast majority of people they have a perfectly normal pregnancy and deliver with a midwife present. When the baby comes out the midwife catches it and they do the post delivery checks before returning baby and mother to the ward.

The midwife is basically there from the start. From a few weeks after conception to many weeks after delivery a midwife will check in with expectant and new mothers. Through their job they get to see this life develop from an embryo to a fetus to a healthy baby.

I see process of going from conceiving an idea, nurturing the idea as it grows and develops in planning and implementation to a fully healthy idea as it is delivered just like a baby is so I see that whole process as “digital midwifery”.

I’m still learning and growing just like an idea or baby might but I’ve learned so much and I continue to learn heaps. Every day I try to learn something new. Even if I feel confronted and challenged by what I’m learning, I try to not be judgemental and to let the facts present themselves and to assess whether it is I who has faulty knowledge or if it is the source. Sometimes that means it’s me but I also accept that and improve myself by integrating that new knowledge within me and growing and developing further in the process. Sometimes I learn lessons along the way too.

To look at myself now and see where I am, I wish I could hold my younger self and pass along to her the lessons I’ve learned and offer her the encouragement and support she needed. I can see that I have become the very person I needed as a kid. One who is much wiser, has learned lots, is fully of love and support and encouragement. One who knows who to get from A to B.

As a kid that’s one thing I struggled with. I didn’t know how to get from A to B. Now I’m doing it and I’m so glad and proud of myself for that but I’m also filled with regret that I couldn’t help my younger self. Yet from the past I’ve learned you can’t dwell on regrets. If you do you’ll never move forward.

Sometimes I regret how my time is spent. Perhaps I might set out to create something and end up getting distracted. I regret the wasted time but I also endeavour the next day to implement steps to stop that happening again. It means I’m always learning new lessons too.

As I‘ve learned to manage my time better, I’ve also learned when to multitask, how to multitask (eg. listen to music or have a video in the background) and most importantly why to multitask.

I think this post was a bit rambly though I tried to keep it on topic and a logic flow of ideas through it. I think I might write another post on game development. Perhaps maybe how my latest project is going and any other lessons I’ve learned since then.

Links

mDiyo - https://twitter.com/Merdiwen

Pahimar - https://www.twitter.com/Pahimar

Pahimar’s Tutorials - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXOevHnu6lzJqFNa1swefIQ

GameMaker Studio - https://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker

Humble Bundle - https://www.humblebundle.com/

Shaun Spalding - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn7FE3Tx391g1tWPv-1tv7Q

HeartBeast - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrHQNOyU1q6BFEfkNq2CYMA

GIMP - https://www.gimp.org