dinsdag 9 september 2014

On the Absence of Tuna

In case you hadn't noticed, which is most likely the case, I've been away for a while. Away from the game development scene. Not because of some holiday or a depression or anything like that. Let's call it a software revelation.

During the judging period of the last Ludum Dare I just thought to myself: "Is this really what I want to do with software? Aren't there better things to make?" The questions were answered very swiftly with a "no" and a "yes" respectively.

Back when I started programming I had another hobby as well: Game Maker. Using the drag-and-drop software to make some silly, little games. Once I had learned C#, I got into XNA and thought: "Why not combine the two? Why not program games?", and what started off as some kind of trial quickly got me sucked into the community, and all of the sudden I was known as, and identified as a "game programmer".

It was really an experiment that in the end just didn't work for me. While I was supposed to be playing Ludum Dare games so people would rate mine, I just thought "screw it". I didn't play any LD games, and didn't even look at the rating my own game got.

So I've been out of the game development scene for about six months now and I can't say I've regretted my decision. I've also taken kind of a general break from software development, but have worked on several things along the way, including some C compilers ('cause why the hell not, right?).


I take interest in low-level programming, real programming. It's the reason I got into programming in the first place, I wanted to know how to make one of those cool .EXE files, I just wanted to figure out stuff, the deeper levels of the computer. Games simply don't do it for me.

I've also transferred maintainership of Pencil.Gaming over to the person I deemed most appropriate and trustworthy, one of the people who contributed to it, and has, through other projects, shown adequacy in maintaining this kind of thing. While OpenTK is under active development again, Pencil.Gaming is now maintained by Andy Korth at https://github.com/andykorth/Pencil.Gaming.


So for those that were interested in me because of game development or Pencil.Gaming, I fear this is where it ends. I will from now on be active mostly in low-level software.


Antonie

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