Year after year, I get a lot of rewarding experiences designing games or else I wouldn't still be doing it. This blog is about the event that mattered most.

In 2006 I am working on a game and decide I am in need of a few very specific sound effects. Going to a lot of sites that offered .wav files, I could not find what I needed. The idea occurred to me that I would try to find my gaming sound effects from looking inside other games. The first thing I download is the game Knight Online. My intent was to seek out the sound effects, but then I thought maybe I would actually see if it was fun to play the game. Frankly, it's the kind of game you want to put down once you see any of it. Hardly anyone spoke English and the general population was mostly Turkish. I did not know what to do in an online game where I was not able to talk to anyone. Hackers run rampant and the admins were corrupt and would take bribes. I had enough of it really quick and I never even found the kind of sound files I wanted. I was just about to delete the game before I went to work. Since I was in a rush, it had to wait until later.

When I got home, I was going to follow through with my intention of deleting the game. It's just that there was one location that I was still curious enough to explore. I told myself, that I was going to play in this area for around ten minutes and then be done for good. I am farming a creature and this guy comes out of nowhere and starts stealing my kills. I yell at him for this, and he apologizes to me. The best part of yelling at him was how he learned I spoke English. He was building an English speaking guild. I join a really awesome group of people and decide it is worth staying in the game. Days later, I come home from work anxiously wanting to play. A new girl has joined the guild and she becomes the most endearing woman I have ever talked to. It's love and I move across the country to stay with her. Verlena Frequency starts being made as a sort of love token for her.

Before this happened, I never aimed for much. I was content, despite believing there was no right person out there for me. Happy even though my job did nothing more than afford rent and food and internetz. Then, I never knew how good it would become. Now I have an amazing wife, my own home, and a really awesome extended family. Happy second anniversary 6/20/11 !

When something good comes into my life, I really think about how perfectly things had to go for it to happen. One different turn you see as insignificant can change you profoundly. If I was not involved with rpgmaker, there would have been no spark for me to set off that course of events. Same with me delaying the deletion of a game folder or even choosing to yell at some random guy. Funny, funny life.

One thing I value in any game is consistency. Up to this point, I think I have made the most of the blocky rtp that comes with VX. It's really not as bad as some people say; I like what I have done with it. Recently, a lot of tile sets have come out that really help a person give a game more shape. With that in mind, I plan to take my map design in a new direction. What's to come will be far less blocky.

When I hit a stumbling block in game design, I work on maps to stay productive. I have somewhere around 70 maps that should make the cut already. If I go along with my plan, I will have a load of square maps and a lot of others full of shape. I am guessing this will really be seen as inconsistent. Then I had this idea of compromise. The game starts out travelling through a dream, and maybe these maps will be the ones that are square. The dream will account for the blocky perception. Once all heroes arrive in the new world maybe I can have it come to life with shape. The game has a lot of ambition, but also a lot of work already poured in. Last thing I want to do is backtrack and redo.