I’ll skip the usual soliloquy that usually starts off one of these posts and dive right into the tasty meats like some kind of carnivorous Scrooge McDuck (eww). I’ve got 3, that right 3 things to be all happy and/or stressed about. One of which I won’t talk about here in the harsh light of the internet for fears that it may wither. Right now it’s like Rome, and the idea of it can only be spoken of in whisper else it be blown away.
Hmm, it seems I am incapable of skipping soliloquies.
Moving on first to game related stuff. I’ve built a list of Achievements to install. They’re all basic things that will be quick to implement. Things like, “Beat the Story Mode on Hard” and “Collect all the Dolls.” I am following what I consider to be good Achievement Design though. So when a player finishes on Hard, they’ll also unlock the Achievements for beating it on Normal and Easy. The same will be true for Speed Running the game. So getting the tentatively named Zephyr accolade by doing the game in 30 minutes or less, will also unlock the also tentatively named Thief Done Quick and Arabian Royal for beating the game in less than 45 and 60 minutes respectively.
Other than adding another front page to the main menu, the actual implementation of this new feature shouldn’t take too long. Generally speaking, since I’m waiting for art content to finish cooking I get to work on other stuff. Yet, I’m not ready to move on to another project since I feel my dedication to this Thief is one of the defining factors of my leadership. Some of the rivets holding the project together. So yes, this is a kind of feature creep, but I’m oddly okay with it given the circumstances. Besides, I’m not technically competent enough with C# to start off the EP…yet.
The other thing hit me yesterday. It’s an odd kind of feeling, like when you’re climbing a mountain. You spend so much time staring at your feet and the rocks that when you finally turn around your progress surprises you. That happened. I was checking out schools, mostly because I found that Full Sail offers an online course. So I was cruising the information traffic jam of internet and browsing reviews and discovering that it’s quite expensive when I started reading the syllabus. I quickly wondered if I could audit the classes, since I, you know, have done all that stuff before in one way or another. So I trekked over to see if The Art Institute offers an online option, and wouldn’t you know it, they do. They were even nice enough to show me all the classes required to get a Bachelor’s Degree in Game Design.
Again, I started reading and then it hit me, like patchouli flavoured truck, I know all of that already. Game Design Theory? Yep, and Practical Application – which isn’t offered. Game Programming? Yeah, that too. Plus Engine Construction, Scripting Implementation and learning to fuggin code. 3D modeling, History of Game Design, Writing Composition were all a yes, yes and a duh.
In all, there wasn’t anything that they could teach that I didn’t already know, or could quickly apply skills I do have to. That’s when I realized that yes, I am a real game developer. Even though I just happened to consider myself an “Indie” which has zero application process, somewhere along the way I had passed the line between what people would consider to be just a guy that dabbles in games, and a guy that has the abilities to create them from the raw aether itself.
To put it another way, it’s like this:
“Do you have an Engineering Degree?”
“Nope.”
“So, why do you think you can be a Structural Engineer?”
“You see that bridge over there?”
“The one across the bay?”
“Yeah, I built it. Figured it out. Would you like to see the blueprints?”
*bloop*