I made a decision last week as I was juggling the “Ultimate Game Design: Building Game Worlds” vs “Beginning C++ Game Programming“. I realized that building a game world will certaintly become a necessary skill for me, but I need more hands on, at this time. The game design book is more theory, as I don’t know how to actually create a game yet.  So; I dropped… more put the book on hold… until I have some more game developing under my belt.  So; I’m back to focusing on one book. Whew! That was certainly an ambicious move, on my part. No worries though, I love this C++ book and I should have no problems finishing it.

Right now I’m on page 14, learning the basics of C++. It’s bringing back a lot of memories when I was at Broward Community College (central campus) taking my first C++ class. It was intoxicating. I really don’t need to go over the first chapter, but it never hurts doing a refeshers’ course.

Today, I stopped at page 16 with “Declaring Variable”. I have to hit the sack. I have to be in Atlanta by 8:00 AM tomorrow.

I really don’t know how to date these entries. We’ll see how long it takes me to no longer write “day n”. Well; I’m making some subtle moves into completing my childhood dream of becoming a video game developer. Two nights ago, I came up with a rough plan, I’m hosting that document on Google Docs, and last night I did some more research. I’m reading this article from GameDev.net on Game Programming Beginners Guide, and luckily for me, they are suggesting C/C++. I really wished they’d suggest that language. It was the first system-level programming language I learned and I really have some kind of loyalty to it.

So; based on that GameDev article, I logged on to my local library’s web site to see if I can check out some C++ books. This was my first, maybe second time, visiting their web site. I asked my wife what my login information was and it was some generic password. Of course, the first thing I do is change my password. Yah, that didn’t go so well. I saw two books I wanted them to hold, but when I went to click on the button it told me that my session was messed up in some way. It seems that I needed to log off/in with my new password. In the end, I couldn’t log back in. So; now I’ll have to go to the library (so old school) and look for the book there.

The Force is Strong with Me

How fitting that Star Wars would interact, in some way, with my dream. I believe in things happening, in due time, and recently I stumbled upon an emulation project called SWGEmu. This is a group of volunteers that are creating a ligitamite Star Wars Galaxies engine emulating the first Star Wars related MMO. Sony killed it by not listening to their core users, but these fine folks are building the engine from scratch and my goal is to become apart of this group to sharpen my C++ skills. So; it’s perfect time. So far, I’ve been familiarizing myself with the community and I think they have an awesome website.