Hello World

I play a lot of games, across many genres and platforms. I was playing games at a very young age, and it's been my main hobby for the majority of my life. I don't do a lot of writing (you can probably already tell), but I think I've got a pretty good understanding of videogames and the communities and media surrounding them. I made this blog so I can have a place to publish my musings on these things, and maybe help some to better understand what has very quickly become a massive culture across the connected world. This post will hopefully introduce you to my background and particular gaming interests.

I'm 25, and I live in Australia. I'm in my third year of a games-programming degree. I intend to make a career out of games development, though this career may ultimately take on many forms. When I'm supposed to be working on assignments or paying attention to lectures, I'm often playing games or thinking about them instead. I enjoy playing solo, with friends, or against rivals. I do pretty well in FPS games and am terrible at RTS games. I have a list of games to play next to my list of games to make. Most of them will never be made, but I look at them and say "maybe one day".

Why is this blog called Rocket Jumping? It's partly that I intend to write a lot of posts about interesting game mechanics, and rocket jumping is a very well-known one. As a game developer I try to examine games from a design perspective and understand how certain mechanics can make a game better or worse. My own personal discovery of rocket jumping marks the day I decided that I wanted to make games.

Screenshot taken using EGL

I accidentally discovered a secret area in Quake 2 after nearly blowing myself to pieces with rockets. I don't remember how old I was, but I remember seeing the message "You crazy rocket jumpers!" when I hit the ground on the other side of the wall. The reward? A BFG 10,000 and some health packs to compensate for the explosive entry. Had I not seen that message, I would have assumed that my first rocket jump had been a mistake. Instead, the game had rewarded me for toying with explosives. I felt like the king of the world until I tried using the BFG to jump back over, which quickly turned me into a fine pink mist. But from that day forth I felt that game development was the job for me.

I started pulling games apart with varying success. My first 'mod' was a simple text edit job on an old game whose name I can't remember - I modified the weapon data (stored in plain text) and made all the guns fire really fast. This was a bad idea because all the enemies now had machineguns too. I tried programming in QBASIC when I was in high school, and didn't quite get it. A year later when we had to go see careers people, I told them I wanted to make games. They said I shouldn't get my hopes up.

Later, I did some more advanced modding. I made levels for Quake, modified pieces of UnrealScript in Deus Ex and mashed up Counter-Strike skins with my own weapon scripts in SMOD. I wanted to make my own games but my ideas were far too huge to achieve with what little I could do.

Finally, I decided it was time to step up and improve my skills. I enrolled at a local university to study programming for games. There have been good subjects and bad ones, but I have certainly learned plenty. I made a toy out of particles and gravity in first year, and while I waited 15 minutes for a lab instructor to come in one day, I threw together a basic Breakout clone. I like the idea of making games quickly to see if it's fun and then doing all the important stuff later, when I know it's worth it. I participated in the Global Game Jam for the last 2 years, and together with friends made something pretty cool each time. I enjoy making games almost as much as I love playing them, and hopefully someday soon I can earn a living while doing what I love.

So I guess rocket jumping contributed to who I am today, and who I will be for the rest of my life. Using explosives to propel yourself through the air is generally considered a bad idea in the real world, but in Quake it's second nature. Games allow us to try bad ideas, and sometimes bad ideas turn out to be awesome. I suppose this is a reasonable analogy for why I want to make games, too - To explore the impossible and see if it's cool.