The Demo
Now, I did not really just wake up one day and decide to drop it all and get a game programming job. The decision to follow this path was taken sometime last November. But I decided to take it easy and prepare myself. Night after night I would be browsing the web looking for information about all aspects of video game programming, trying to figure the state of the art in the industry. (geek alert!)* I revisited old friends, like Blender, a program to create 3D models and animations. I spent some time learning Python, a scripting language used to extend Blender, create games with libraries like Panda3D and all sorts of other things. After brief looks at several free game and graphics libraries out there (TrueVision3D, Panda3D, Crystal Space ) I settled on using Ogre3D. I became a member of AIGameDev.com, an incredibly cool website with tons of information about Game Artificial Intelligence (or AI for short). I have also spent a bit of money in books about game and animation, not to mention the many white papers freely available on the web about innumerous techniques used to create believable characters and cool graphic effects in games. Lately I have played quite a bit with Shaders and the computer languages used to create them. It's easy to start feeling like Johnny 5 from that movie, Short Circuit. I just need more input!!!

It's been a fun few months and I have learned lots of great things. I probably would have continued like that, filling up my "spare" time studying and experimenting until I felt I was ready to make the jump. But life at work (which is where you spend most of your life) just got worse and worse. I was not bored. Not at all. I do not need external motivation and there is plenty of challenging work to be done in my company. But I have felt like a little fish against the current for a while. And it became harder and harder to make sense of my being in this company where I do not really fit, working on a product I do not believe in. It is not like I woke up that day on February 25th and decided to drop it all and follow my dreams. It is just that, at some random point in the middle of that day I got up and said to myself: "It happens today."

And so the idea took form in my head: Instead of continuing my training at nights, I would spend a solid month putting what I have learned to use and create a demo, then use it to try to open some tightly closed doors in the video game industry. It's a long shot, I know. But I have to try. It is not like I could stand working in the same place anymore. If plan A fails, I shall find something else. I believe in my skills (although not so much in my ability to sell them...) and I have waited long enough. May God have mercy on this poor fool!

* I promise to add this geek alert whenever I am about to start rambling referencing computer related stuff. But be warned that entire posts might be peppered with it when I'm working on my demo full time!