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Meteor Blast
Download Meteor Blast Here
It was the spring of 2000, my final semester of college (after an extended break from school), and
DirectX 7 was brand new.
By this time I was getting pretty heavy into the game programming literature. I had started to develop
an understanding of what I needed to learn in order to program modern computer games, and I was
determined that I would take the steps required to get me there.
College was almost over, but my learning had only just begun.
I had been hearing a lot about DirectX, and decided it was time to figure out how it worked. I was
new to the win32 programming environment, I didn't know C/C++ very well, and I had only recently
acquired a computer modern enough to run Windows 98.
So what did I do? I applied to work at a game programming company. The company provided me with a programming
"test" ... I suppose, to weed out the idiots like myself. The test took the form of a game programming
project: "Use DirectX to make a game using the provided bitmaps."
So I drove to a big bookstore in Pittsburgh (you couldn't find any DirectX 7 books in northern West Virginia),
and purchased Teach Yourself DirectX 7 in 21 days. Five days later, Meteor Blast was the result. (It wouldn't
have taken nearly so long if they didn't leave out a critical piece of code in the book. I learned a valuable
lesson about first editions of books, but that's another story for another time.)
Well, I submitted my program to the company. I had really pushed myself on the code, using some of the cool
object oriented stuff in C++ that I'd never used before. The owner of the company told me that there were a
few things that he would recommend for changes, but seemed to like what he saw. He said he'd call me back.
When I called him a week later to check up, he said they were going through some structural changes and weren't
sure how soon they would be able to hire me. I never hear back from him.
But I had succeeded. I had taught myself DirectX, and won a qualified approval from a guy in the game industry.
Now it was time to get back to MY game.
I should mention that despite DirectX, I was still doing things in two and a half dimensions (2D with transparent
overlapping). 3D was a strange and crazy world... and scared me to death. I was actually somewhat annoyed with 3D
games. Most of them were first-person shooters, and they didn't seem to have any substance. All the development
effort was put into fancy graphics, but there was no plot, no character development. I was very disappointed.
But yes, I was also scared. Scared of the overwhelming concept of 3 dimensional programming. The time involved
and my lack of understanding ... yes, another lesson.
Next Project: Search 2001
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