Search 2001

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.

So I began work on Search 2001.

Programmatically, with DirectX many of the things I wrote on my own before were already done for me. I could make icons using bitmaps using bitmap editors, and they in turn were easily imported using DirectDraw. I could use DirectSound to play sounds instead of hard coding the pc speaker with frequency and delays.

It all went very smoothly at first... and I was very proud with what I was creating... ...that is, until I played the demo of a new game on the market... Thief: The Dark Project.

Wow! What an incredible game... the concept was new ... the graphics were excellent ... and sheesh, there is no way I could write anything that compares to this.

Here I am, thinking that I'm finally about to catch up to the game industry, only to find that I'm years and years behind. What else could I do? I boarded the ensuing 3D games roller coaster...

I bought Thief: The Dark Project, played it for hours and hours. Ultima IX: Ascension was released. Like so many others ... incredible anticipation ... followed by incredible disappointment. Then Thief 2: The Metal Age was released... but only a few months later Looking Glass Studios was axed.

The my favorite gaming magazine, PC Accelerator was killed shortly after I bought my subscription.

Then Origin Systems was killed.

All is dark? ...

Am I dead? ...

I hear a voice ...

On to The Chena Project.