Testing, testing.

All right, I think it’s working.

Oh snap, it’s the first post of this blog! As you might have seen from the text on the homepage, I’m Austin and you’ve made it to my portfolio site. I’m a game designer and programmer, with a focus on mechanics and gameplay, as well as a good deal of experience with narrative design and writing. I set this site up for two reasons: first, as I already said, it’s a portfolio site, so I plan to put all the projects I’ve worked on and feel proud to show on here to show off my skills and experience, as you do.

The other reason is because of the blog that you are reading now and I can explain why: chances are you already know this depending on your profession, but game programming isn’t just writing lines of code all day long. In fact, no job in software development, not just games, is just about the code. The real crux of it is problem solving: how can I get this level and everything inside it to load properly, how can I do show off some really cool effects and models without eating too many resources, how can I control this character on screen. You have to figure out the solutions to those problems and than you translate those solutions into the programming language of your choice. That’s what I’m good at, but it’s also where I have some trouble, if I’m being honest.

You see, when I say I have experience in Unreal and Unity, it means I’m very familiar with their interfaces, I know the general structure of how both of those engines operate, and what similarities and differences they hold. Same goes for their respective languages, C++ and Blueprints for the former and C# for the latter. However, I have had problems actually sticking to a project long enough in either program where I can actually use that knowledge and really understand how the program works. In other words, I have plenty of book knowledge, but not a lot of practical knowledge.

This is done to that wonderful, beautiful condition known as ADHD. The result of having suffered through it over the years has been pretty much what you expected: spotty (at best) work ethic, bad habit of putting things off all the way up until the very last minute, bad anxiety about life and myself, perfectionism so severe that I don’t bother working on anything at times and other great things. I finally started getting treatment for it last year and now I plan to take control of my life. That starts with me being responsible and showing off my work and what my real skill level look like, even if it looks questionable. Why? Because when you’re starting out, you’ll have to make a bunch of crap before you can make something that’s good. I’m not exactly starting out, but I still need to work through the crap to get to the good stuff so I can show people.

That’s where this blog comes in: here, you can follow my progress on whether I’m working on a project, solving a code challenge or even just doing small gameplay experiments. The only way through for me is to put myself out there, because you can’t expect to truly understand design and programming until you see what other people have to say about your stuff, and this is the place for me to do it. To stick to a project, work through problems, show my thought process, get help if necessary (and it probably will be) and have people see what I can do, where I excel and where I can improve.

This is also a place for me to just talk about whatever I happen to have a thought about: an interesting mechanic, a good movie, a bad game, what I think about certain theme parks, all kinds of stuff. So please, stick around, check out the site and thanks for stopping by!

(Do be careful, the site is still under construction at the time of writing. It’ll be fixed up and I’ll have plenty of stuff to show in the weeks to come.)