Howdy! I'm Kirk. I like tall blonde...wait, what forum am I on again? Oh yes! I'm 40 years old, and only dabbled a little bit here and there with game development. When I was very pre-teen, my parents bought us a Commodore 64. My older brother bought one of these commodore magazine type things, and when I flipped through it looking at all the cool games I would never have, I realized they had code you can type into your computer to write your own game! It was only a simple little game of blackjack, but I used the knowledge gained from that to write a very simple room escape game.
I had absolutely no idea what those pokes and peeks were at the time, and what the heck those endless streams of seemingly random numbers it forced me to type in were all about, but I was able to ascertain the meaning of the line numbering, goto, input, and simple things like that. Unfortunately, that magazine was nothing but "hey! type this in for a game!" without teaching you anything about it at all so I had to learn from doing. I desperately wanted to make an epic text adventure as I was absolutely hooked on this game called Lancelot on the Commodore. I didn't even know I could save my program though, so I would just make a simple game of a character locked in a room and had to find the key to escape. I didn't even know Room Escape was a type of game at the time :-D maybe it even wasn't? who knows. Probably was I'm sure.
ANYWAY!!!! I didn't even know about the existence of this game jam until yesterday. I think it was when I was randomly watching a HeartBeast video on YouTube and it either directed me to something on itch.io or he mentioned it in some way...don't recall exactly. In any case, I came to itch.io and first thing I noticed on the top left was the Jams tab, and I remember a while back watching some Imphezia videos of his Ludum Dare jam entries, so I was intrigued and clicked. What? My First Game Jam? Hmm, maybe I should do that! I've been wanting to actually make games FOREVER but haven't done much more than maybe having a ship fly around in empty space zapping at asteroids...
Oh yeah! I remember the last time I tried getting back into game dev now. For the longest I can remember, I've always wanted to do some game that's kinda I guess sorta maybe perhaps but not really something around the effect to the semblance of the tiniest glimmer of a mix between Kerbal Space Program and Elite: Dangerous...but in 2D or 2.5D and with story. The first time I thought about that was, I dunno, maybe 15ish give or take a year or 2. There was this DOS game that I can for the friggin life of me not recall the name of... Ok, ignore that, I NEEDED to know so I unsheathed my Googletana and swung a mighty attack at the internet. Critical roll! The internet falls to its knees clutching at its neck, trying to stop the life blood from pouring out of it. It's a worthless attempt however, and only delays the inevitable by mere moments. Now prone on the ground, lifeless, the murky red essence spills to my feet. As I look down at the crimson pool spewing forth, it starts to shift. A word slowly forms! Solar Winds. (yeah sorry for the dramatic reveal of the name. I haven't really wrote anything besides bs facebook and twitter posts since my teens, so I'm just practicing lol)
Speaking of things I haven't done since my teens, I miss music. I don't mean listening to music. I do that all the time. ALL the time. I can't stand not having it in my ears. I don't care what music. I mean I have my preferences of course, but I mostly like anything. Ok I lied, not ALL the time, I don't mind it when there's no music in TV shows or Movies. Mostly. Depends. You know what I mean. Ambiance. Or creative lack thereof. You get my drift I hope. Even at work (I'm a cook at a pizzaria...yay...that life story beyond the scope of this one) I yell at my boss when Alexa decides to randomly stop playing music and he goes more than 2 minutes without commanding our digital servant to entertain us. Losing track!
So in 4th grade I was taking my usual nap. I randomly wake up to seeing maybe 10 or so kids with their hands raised with some other teacher inside our class I've never seen counting hands. I had no idea what was going on, so I raised my hand too. Gutsy move! Turns out the teacher was in there asking who wants to be part of the orchestra. So she takes our names and comes back again a day or so later to collect as all and take us to the music room. Again I'm zoned out when she asked us all a question and called us one by one with everyone saying yes or no. When she came to me I said "no". She said "are you sure?" What? uh..."yes." Well I picked the wrong answer. This question was "do you need us to provide you with an instrument?" lol. So I picked Viola, and when I got home I told my mom about it. Told her that I said I don't need one from the school. It was too late as the allotment was already set. I think so anyway, I don't recall exactly. All I know is my mom had to rent a viola for me. Turns out I was pretty good! Or so I was told.
My teacher told me I was the fastest learner she ever had, and placed me in the orchestra already. Not many from my grade were in it. Usually the first year you just learn, then second year you're in the orchestra. Unless of course your parents had you take private lessons previously. I never touched an instrument before then, and the others from my grade that made the orchestra had previous training. So anyway, fast forward to the end of the year and on the last day the music teacher comes to my class, kisses me on the cheek, and tells me to keep playing. This is her final year. Well my mom was already stretched thin with cash and asked me if I'm gonna keep playing next year. I just shrugged. I think so anyway, I mean I'm always zoned out, inside my own mind. She told me later in life that's how it went down. So because of that, she returned the viola. The next year the new music teacher came to my class to get me. Asked me where my viola was, told him I don't have it anymore. He seemed annoyed, but handed me one. Ok, so being I haven't practiced in months, it came out a horrible screech. I laughed and said "ok, wait". same thing. My classmate looked at me and said "what are you doing?" She knew I was good. We sat next to each other in orchestra the year before. I said "I don't know." and that's when the teacher took the viola back and sent me back to class...
I was about to probably do a few or 12 more paragraphs on my music background, but this post is already MUCH too long. Anyway, I like music. I've played viola a year, had a couple years of private piano lessons as a kid, an uncle gave me a guitar in my teens that I taught myself and played for maybe close to a decade before a "friend" of mine decided to destroy it. A drummer friend of mine gave me a couple lessons. Only played drums those 2 times. I've written a lot of music when I was younger on varying different DAWs, free and otherwise. Reason was my largest purchase. Back in the day of Reason 3.0. I lost all of my music plus a crap ton of short stories and poems and an attempt at a novel when my HDD died. Backup your crap, kids. I haven't done anything creative since my mid 20's because of that. Just work sleep eat repeat. 15 years of that. I need a change. I hope I stick with it this time using this Jam.
Hey! Thanks if you actually read all of this! I'm so so sorry it's so long and if I rambled on till a quarter century past the end of time!