It's not a big dream, or a glorified fantasy, or anything along those lines. It's just something I'd really like to be able to do some day. Developing games as a hobby instead of a profession certainly has a lot of disadvantages. Like no salary and very few people will ever even acknowledge that you ever accomplished anything. Course, there are lots of advantages - like not having to worry about budget or deadlines and being able to brag to your friends.
Sadly not a lot of my friends actually play the things I write. Mostly working with the Unreal engine and not many of them really adhere to it much. In fact, ironically the people I know the least are probably the ones who play the things I develop the most.
It would be nice to reverse that. In my daydream, I'm able to code and design on one box. Once it's running, I'm able to put it on another box, jam some controllers in it, hook it up to my TV and sit down on the couch and play the game with my girlfriend. In fact, in this daydream I spend half the day coding, part of the day drinking beer, and part of the day playing a game I made with a girl. I don't think there is a geek on Earth that wouldn't agree - that's a good day.
But is it crazy? I'm not sure. The chokepoint is this mythical box that can run PC code without alteration on a television ... with joystick support. There are few options. A modded XBox might work, for instance. A PC with a TV tuner/card is another choice. And then there's that Mac Mini that was just released.
The XBox is a hard choice because I don't like having to hack into someone's hardware just to do what I want. If Microsoft wanted me to be able to code for the XBox without knowing the secret handshake, they wouldn't have a secret handshake. The PCTV is a distinct possibility, provided a form factor that made sense could be negotiated. I don't really want a tower box to contend with. There is the advantage to the Mini - it's pretty much the perfect form factor. Problem there is that all my dev right now is on Windows.
Who knows, who knows. I'm likely to try by the end of the year though.
Thursday, January 27, 2005
I Have A Daydream. Maybe a mini one.
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4 comments:
I so feel the same way about the things I design. (Worse yet I have a wife who hates games, so she won't even play them with me :P ) Quite often I feel like I put intense effort into my hobby/work, yet it evaporates soon after I release it into the community.
Tell you what, I'll play your games if you play mine :)
Yeah, I don't know I got blessed with a girl who actually steals the controller.
But you got yourself a deal :). You did get my last email right? Course, right now there's probably a month or so wait time before I get anything back into the entertaining category...
Holy cow! I'm not so sure I'm so moved about Blogger... I JUST NOW realized that you're responding to the comments I'm writing! (Sadly, ROFL)
And no... I didn't get your email :( Again, this is probably something to do with Blogger. I'll go see how to figure out what messages I have through it, but if all else fails, just email me at winkyboy@winkyboy.com
Heh, yeah - this isn't the most efficient form of communication. Half the time I don't even look for comments until days after I post something.
Just tried a resend to winkyboy@winkyboy.com.
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