Last week, I wrote that I felt inspired to try out some simple programming to see how difficult it might be to make a rudimentary game. I started by using Game Maker 8.1 as sort of a primer for something more powerful later.

Game Maker 8.1 has proven to be kind of a bust. The first tutorial taught me how to make a simple program that worked a lot like the fly swatting game from Mario Paint, which was fine. But, the second tutorial covered making a 1942 style overhead shooter. I was really excited to get in to that one, but when I did, it was riddled with misspellings and sections that were vague and super confusing. For example every instance of the word sea, is misspelled as see. My suspicion is that English may not have been the writer's first language, and it's a shame that I wasn't able to get more out of that program.

So, I've moved on to C++. My thinking is that, though it may be much more difficult, I'll be learning applicable information in a valid language. So far, all I've been able to do is the Hello World! program, but I'm studying with a book I picked up that covers C++ through gaming that's been fantastic. Next, I'll be trying to understand what the hell I did to get that first program running. I'm buoyed. I can feel good about making progress with C++ knowing that it's a language that will pay off later, although it's hard to see now how Hello World! applies to games that aren't text adventures. Even so, I love the idea of making a text based dungeon crawler.

I wanted to thank you guys for the support and advice I got last week and apologize for this massive text block here. I'm writing these on an iPad that doesn't support Giant Bomb's text editor. Someday, when I have, time I'll get on and separate these in to proper paragraphs.

See you in a week! - Blair.