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I read an article about how a developer's game became #1 in the Apple store and quit his job after netting $21K from his sales in one day! iPhone Developer Quits Day Job After 'iShoot' Hits Number One

So sound's like this iPhone has an user base that's willing to buy games from indie devs...which leads me to this

Dear Stephen Milone,

Thank you for registering as an iPhone Developer. To access the iPhone Dev Center and download the free SDK, simply click on the button below, and sign in using your Registered iPhone Developer Apple ID and password.

Your Registered iPhone Developer Apple ID is: djxstream

Download Free SDK

If you need further assistance, please contact us.

iPhone Developer Program


but wait, I am a Linux guy, always have been, the SDK can only be ran in Apple's operating system. So what do I do, buy an expensive over priced Mac? NEGATIVE. I've been reading about MacOSx86 project for a while now, even made sure I bought a motherboard that was compatible when I built my latest PC rig over the summer, however I never installed it, but it was nice knowing I could if i ever needed to use Mac OS X...and boom. Looks like I have a reason.

As a video game addict who hopes to become a developer, when the Wii first came out with its revolutionary game play (Side note: Wii's developing codename was Revolution) I had to get one and I love it, Zelda, Mario, Smash Brothers are all great. However my favorite game of late has been World of Goo. An indie WiiWare download, I spent a few days going through all the levels, there was 2 I just could not beat, however I did finish the game's story and the credits rolled...the credits consisted of exactly 4 names! While watching the credits it was what sparked my interest in developing for the Wii. However after some searching, I came across that it costs money to get the WiiWare SDK, close to $2000...in other words, not a good place to start. But you never know...

Now here is where I hit a dead stop regarding video game design...atleast from a 1 man operation perspective. I have zero experience in graphic design except a few minutes here and there doing edits in GIMP, mostly for photos or web site design, I have another site for another passion of mine, DJing: http://www.djxstream.com

But 3-D models...even 2-D models...backgrounds...shadows, light...no experience whats so ever.

My video game development history is rather short, having only worked on 2 projects that actually compiled for looked like a game.

First was the high school final C++ project. I did a port of Pong and I have already discussed this in my programming history post.

I also went into detail of my other programming languages I learned in college, well during college I got into Visual C++ & Visual Basic when not in class, in VB I made random programs to help me with repetitive things on my PC on an as-needed basis. Nothing to intense, renaming files, resizing pictures, etc. In Visual C++ I wanted to get into video game programming and I did, cold. Without any books or knowledge specifically generated towards creating a game I tried to create a RPG, and honestly I think I did pretty well in just general coding of the game.

from scratch, no engine, no copied source code, all i took was sprites from Final Fantasy VI on the SNES.

Now this is all from memory, maybe I still have the source code, I've gone thru 2 other computers since college so it may not have transferred over at one point.

I had 3 characters on the screen, 1 was movable by user input, 2 following their own pattern. The limits were made in place that a character could not walk off the screen, nor through another character. And while controlling the character and pressing the space bar while next to another character, the characters would face each other and then dialog was displayed. The dialogue was pulled from an external text file so that I can edit the "script" without changing code...however I never got that far.

The world of computer programming first hit me in my Junior year of High School, where we had to take an intro to C++ class. Rocking a DOS based Borland C++ compiler in the year 2000, and I excelled. Top marks in my class, first to finish projects I was hooked, so Senior year came and I took advanced C++ as my elective class, and picked up right where I left off and even excelling more because these projects weren't like last years where it was a problem and and there was one answer. These were projects where we had to design our own program, but it had to use the algorithm we learned that week/month/whatever it was.

Then my first "game" came, we just learned how to generate random numbers & how to draw shapes on the screen, with using that I created a Yahtzee dice roller. It didn't keep score or anything, but it "rolled" the dice by changing the display and then let you choose which ones to keep and roll again.

Now my final project for HS, I decided to re-create the game that started it all, Pong. I don't remember much else of the code, but it replicated the original Pong in every way, I do remember however that there was one problem I could not fix, I set the keys for up/down for both players and if the ball was going towards the right player, the paddle wouldn't move if the left player was holding down their key. I realized that a few extra if/then statements would of probably fixed this later on in time. However it was still FAR more advanced than what anyone else submitted, hell even my dice roller was more complex then half my class's final project.

Onto college and pursuing my degree in Computer Science. I took as many programming classes as I could, more C++, Basic, Perl, COBOL, FoxPro, Visual Basic & .NET.

We'll this wouldn't be much a blog if I didn't use the first post to tell you my story.

I grew up on video games, my parents Colecovision to my first system, the NES followed by the many Game Boy iterations then I skipped a generation of 16 bit goodness and my next console was the PlayStation 1. Add on a Dreamcast, PS2, Gamecube, PSP, NDS and a Wii and you have my current game collection. PS3 or Xbox 360 coming soon.

Then during college I got a part time job..of all things working in the video game section of toys r us. I was there for 3 Christmas seasons and was honestly marveled at how many people bought bad games and good games were left on the shelf. And I'm not just talking about games based on a movie or a tv show, those will always sell. But just generally bad games, I can't even remember titles. This experience is what really lit the spark to get into video game design.

After college graduation I was looking for a job, like everyone. I was mainly looking at programming or video game based positions. Applied to be a game tester as well. One place actually "hired" me. I was working a part time job at the time, and went for an interview. The interview lasted 5 minutes and they pretty much put a phone in my hand and i played some craptastic hip hop trivia game. I'm thinking this is part of the interview, they gave me a bad build and wanted to see if i could find the bugs...nope. I was testing just like everyone else and then the guy who did the interview came over to me and telling me "you can take lunch whenever, we take an hour". As much as I wanted to be in video game based company, this was just a shady operation. I didn't get an offer ($$), sign any papers, agree to anything and they just made me start working. It didn't feel right, but after leaving that office, before lunch time mind you I returned to me lousy part time job in a music/electronics/computer store and was like this has no future, let me deal with the shady company again, so I emailed them saying I would like to work with them but I will need time to leave my current job...never heard back.

Fast forward a little bit and you're at where I'm at now, a real job in IT. Not programming, but a real job that I enjoy. And finally I decided to try and dive back into the video game world by running this site and trying to become an indie developer. If only as a hobby at this point in time.

So welcome, that's my story. The main point of this site is to report progress on my development, creating a blog was one of the ways I thought to make sure I stay on top of it and not let it die off as another unfinished project.