It is not the critic who counts, or how the strong man stumbled, or whether
the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the
man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again; who
knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, and who spends himself in a
worthy cause, and if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that
he’ll never be with those cold and timid souls who never know either victory
or defeat.
Teddy Roosevelt
I was trying to think of how to describe this site when I got this quote from the fortune(6) program, and it just seemed to fit my situation. This site is about daring greatly, and I will either succeed or fail. My goal is to create the greatest computer role playing game ever. My inspirations are the Ultima series and the Elder Scrolls games, and am going to make something that will make their creators weep with shame for not achieving even a tenth of my greatness.
Or I’ll fail.
But I will not, as Teddy Roosevelt said, be one of “those cold and timid souls who never know either victory or defeat.”
As for my background, I used to be a professional programmer, working on back-end database tools for restructuring and repairing large databases, as well as a little scientific programming and some more straightforward database front-end work, but I haven’t written software for a living in several years. I am just now learning game programming to satisfy my own curiosity and creative impulses, so I am certainly no expert on the subject. Nonetheless, I will do my best to share what I learn, as I learn it, for a couple of reasons.
First, I have often noted that experts often neglect the kinds of questions that newcomers ask, because the experts learned the answers so long ago that they take them for granted. By writing as I learn I hope to document the exact questions and answers that a new game programmer is likely to encounter.
The second reason I am doing this is because of what some of my college professors told me: if you truly want to understand something, teach it to others. The act of teaching makes you sit down and think hard about what the subject really means, and what the most important aspects of it really are. It makes you focus on the subject and clarify your understanding of it.