TL;DR: I used to troll around in TES forums, now I'm a lot better

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I just realized that I have been around TES forums for almost ten years! I know my stats show I joined in Dec of 2006, but that is because this account is the only one that hasn't been banned, lol. For the entire year of 2006 I was following the release of TES Oblivion, and back then I was working part time in my college's library as a receptionist, so 80% of my working time consists of doing homework and trolling around TES forums, making sarcastic threads and constantly getting banned. Not really a proud resume entry. In the following years of my (gaming) life, I started applying what I learned from TES discussions to a new hobby - game development.

2007 - 2008: Leading a gaming community

In 2007 GTA San Andreas Multiplayer (SAMP) mod became very popular. I was hanging out around in LVRPG server, got to know the admins there. When the original owner decided to quit, I still want to be able to keep playing on this server so I volunteered to take over the ownership of the server (meaning I have to pay for the rent). I was given the full code of the gamemode along with that of LVRPG2.0 code. I immediately set off to create some fun minigames for the community, including a turf war game where clans can takeover various spots (turfs) on the map, to earn money, and must protect it from other clans. I had great fun with the creation and watching players fight to their death over the turfs. I was so immersed in coding that over Fall Break I spent 12 hours a day on it. For LVRPG2.0 I created some job missions for player to earn money, unfortunately 2.0 never really took off due to weird server crash issue that I couldn't resolve. Over the two years I learned a lot on the art of leading and managing a gaming community, and have also done stupid things that I'm too ashamed to mention, but these two years are one of the most memorable times of my life.

2012: Drama with WarZ

I discovered WarZ back in August of 2012. I was really excited about having a open world zombie survival game, and I certainly didn't troll at all in the WarZ community. I made serious observations about the gameplay and provided a lot of game design suggestions, and that was my first attempt at figuring out how gameplay can or cannot work. I made a name for myself there and some indie developers came to me for game design suggestions.

I eventually joined one of them, first as a designer, and then was encouraged to learn to code in Unity3D and become a programmer. I took the challenge and progressed very quickly, in merely two weeks I was able to make a item system similar to that of Diablo 2 with more capabilities. All of these were done in my free time because I had a challenging and stable day job, and a kid. The indie team had some great folks, but I think their vision is way too big and way beyond a small indie team to deliver. I promptly quit the team because I don't think the promise of tens of thousands of dollars in pay will ever come true, and the game will ever come out. The feature creep (always coming out with new ideas to add to the game design) was uncontrollable, and team meetings hardly ever happened due to the fact that everyone was doing this on free time. It's been two years and I have yet seen any more gameplay videos released after I left the team.

2013: Setting out by myself

Though I quit the team, my the skills I learned from the indie team is still there and my desire to make a good game is ever-high. I wanted to make a space game, something similar to Freelancer (I love it) but with features that I wanted. I started working on it immediately and had something playable (though really crappy, you can find it https://www.dropbox.com/s/u4eu6ov3h4l874o/V0.001.rar?dl=0lol: ) to test out my fantasy. However, my enthusiasm was quickly distinguished after I discovered Star Citizen. I was like, OMG Star Citizen is exactly what I wanted, a legitimate successor to Freelancer! So I don't see a point with continue making my own space game. (Though nowadays it seems like Star Citizen is becoming something I don't want, a EVE wannabe with way too much gadgets for soft-core gamers to manage. )

So I turned my spaceship into a helicopter. I was thinking about a helicopter game (again, similar to Freelancer's style) that takes place in high altitude atmosphere, allowing players to explore, trade and dogfight. However later I realized that though it sounds exciting, flying in midair with nothing around you will become very boring. So I moved the game to low altitude, and decided to make some nice looking terrains and ocean to fly around in. I set off to learn World Machine, and developed my own terrain and ocean shader, and borrowed the ocean code from a very talented blogger who gave it out for free. I came up with some really good looking environments:

http://i.imgur.com/9c5VFNL.jpg

2014: Failed collaborations and more drama

With the cool looking screenshots I started looking for artists to collaborate, since I'm not an artist myself. I first tried to sign a contract with a colleague's relative, thinking since it's my colleague's relative he can be trusted. I paid $600, and after several months I only got some crooked 2D drawings of one helicopter, and the artist said he's been too sick to work further and offered $100 refund. Disgusted, I started looking for partner from forums and I eventually met a very talented artist and we (seemed) to share the same vision. He agreed to work with me on the project with half-half profit split. But after half year of working together, I found out that we really don't have the same vision, and the art style he's looking for is beyond my ability to create (I have tried, very hard). Moreover, I have run into a big problem with my open world helicopter trading/explore/combat idea - the lack of interesting level design. Since the gameplay is in midair most of the time, I can't limit the players where they can or cannot go, without very dramatic measures. Frustrated, I tried to come up with some art styles myself that would fit well with level design (for example, limit the players within a large network of canyons and they can't fly above the mountains, like a huge trench), but the artist didn't like what I came up with. I was on the verge of ditching this project.

2015: A new beginning

I did not ditch the project. Instead, I have found a new avenue - helicopter combat among skyscraqers. The art style can be very low-poly and abstract, the city is consisted of cubes and simple skyscraqer meshes with no texture (or only occasional texture), matching the helicopters made also with low-poly style. Since I'm not an artist, I set off to learn 3D modeling with Blender and basic texturing. After following a few Blender tutorials, I made my first helicopter model, animated it with code (very simple), and viola! I have made the game entirely on my own! I no longer need to collaborate with anyone and with adequate time, I can finish the game by myself. Without needing to satisfy anyone else, I'm free to design the gameplay anyway I want, the joy of freewill creation was awesome. I don't want to babble more about the current project because I don't want to fall into the category of spamming and advertising, lol, so I'll just conclude with a small screenshot:

http://i.imgur.com/5qDT4LR.jpg

TL;DR - Let the good times roll