Look - Activity!
by Gina-Marie -Netjera- Hammer · 08/24/2012 (4:52 pm) · 7 comments
In the intervening few years, I've been working on several part-time projects. I've been making texture and content packs for the DAZ3d community, sprite work and content for the mapping communities such as Dundjinni and Campaign Cartographer, as well as working with SmiteWorks on roleplaying addons for their Fantasy Grounds computer tabletop.
Meanwhile, I haven't given up on game development. I've been doing an extensive search and test of products that ran the gamut of TGB, Gamemaker, Adventure Maker, PERL and a few others. I've been working on my programming skills, but I'm mostly hopeless because what it takes someone else 3 hours to do takes me more like 3 weeks or months! I've been boning up on my art, and really learning the ins and outs of the Daz|Studio-Bryce-Carrara pipeline, as well as their game development tools such as Texture Atlas, Decimator and FBX Exporter.
In short, I've been working but I'm only finally beginning to have something to show for it. My website at www.netjera.com follows my personal hobbies and distractions, my art work, and things I find interesting. My website at www.netjersoft.com is a work in progress where I'll be blogging about my game development progress, and posting more work. (There's a little bit there now, but not much.)
Meanwhile, I'll keep plugging away and pestering everyone in the chat room. Thanks guys! :)
Meanwhile, I haven't given up on game development. I've been doing an extensive search and test of products that ran the gamut of TGB, Gamemaker, Adventure Maker, PERL and a few others. I've been working on my programming skills, but I'm mostly hopeless because what it takes someone else 3 hours to do takes me more like 3 weeks or months! I've been boning up on my art, and really learning the ins and outs of the Daz|Studio-Bryce-Carrara pipeline, as well as their game development tools such as Texture Atlas, Decimator and FBX Exporter.
In short, I've been working but I'm only finally beginning to have something to show for it. My website at www.netjera.com follows my personal hobbies and distractions, my art work, and things I find interesting. My website at www.netjersoft.com is a work in progress where I'll be blogging about my game development progress, and posting more work. (There's a little bit there now, but not much.)
Meanwhile, I'll keep plugging away and pestering everyone in the chat room. Thanks guys! :)
About the author
Art, Games, Life www.netjera.com See my in-progress website and game design work at: www.netjersoft.com!
#2
08/25/2012 (10:13 am)
Don't get discouraged by things taking a bit longer. I recently had to return to total newbie status myself as I'm starting to learn web programming for my Innovation Friday project. It can be frustrating to try and complete a task which you think should be simple and quick, but if you stick it out it eventually clicks and the apparent dam that holds the knowledge back from you bursts.
#3
@Scott: I came to GarageGames in 2005, with few skills (some fine art) and nothing but a strong desire to do something I'd always dreamed about. In the intervening years, I've had a lot of people call me crazy, and many tell me I should give up. There are times I've almost been with them - I know that I don't really have the kind of experience necessary for this.
BUT I can learn it. The one thing I have is a lot of time on my hands. The other, is this community. I've made a lot of friends here who have stood by me through the years. Although I haven't been active in a long time, I've listened to the news and I mourned the old GG. I'm relieved to see it might be back. (Yes, I'm a tiny bit distrustful, but I'm gonna stick around and see.)
Without what the founders started here, this wouldn't have been possible at all for this disabled accountant. It's taken me 7 years to get to a point where I have something to show, but I've learned a lot, made a lot of friends, and this has kept me going. Sometimes, the dream is what keeps you alive, you know? :)
08/25/2012 (2:11 pm)
@Frank: Thanks! There are times I'm sure I'm missing something at the foundation level, because I'm primarily self-taught. I was raised in the gifted program, and we started with computers and BASIC when I was 13, but my math is pitiful so I never felt able to go into programming, despite loving both the art and logic of it. Hopefully, looking at some basic CS will clear up some of those little holes.@Scott: I came to GarageGames in 2005, with few skills (some fine art) and nothing but a strong desire to do something I'd always dreamed about. In the intervening years, I've had a lot of people call me crazy, and many tell me I should give up. There are times I've almost been with them - I know that I don't really have the kind of experience necessary for this.
BUT I can learn it. The one thing I have is a lot of time on my hands. The other, is this community. I've made a lot of friends here who have stood by me through the years. Although I haven't been active in a long time, I've listened to the news and I mourned the old GG. I'm relieved to see it might be back. (Yes, I'm a tiny bit distrustful, but I'm gonna stick around and see.)
Without what the founders started here, this wouldn't have been possible at all for this disabled accountant. It's taken me 7 years to get to a point where I have something to show, but I've learned a lot, made a lot of friends, and this has kept me going. Sometimes, the dream is what keeps you alive, you know? :)
#5
It is not so much the math, but the problem solving. Learning to divide
a problem into smaller chunks. I first learned to program Pascal on Macs writing completely linear apps in text. Then the CS teacher at my HS suggested I take a class. Once I learned to structure and divide up problems it got a lot easier. The math will help when you do more advanced things. However, things like sorting a list, though important, can just be a library call away. So a lot of the math has been put into the standard libraries. It would not hurt to learn the math though. It can help a lot and give you good ideas to solve difficult problems. That site would help with the math. Also, I just got my kids a set of math books that cover everything from simple add and subtract all the way through calculus from: www.swadvantage.com My 15 year old is going through both books and really likes them. She is not the best at math so this is helping her a lot. They are spendy, but they are worth the price.
08/26/2012 (9:41 pm)
@Gina,It is not so much the math, but the problem solving. Learning to divide
a problem into smaller chunks. I first learned to program Pascal on Macs writing completely linear apps in text. Then the CS teacher at my HS suggested I take a class. Once I learned to structure and divide up problems it got a lot easier. The math will help when you do more advanced things. However, things like sorting a list, though important, can just be a library call away. So a lot of the math has been put into the standard libraries. It would not hurt to learn the math though. It can help a lot and give you good ideas to solve difficult problems. That site would help with the math. Also, I just got my kids a set of math books that cover everything from simple add and subtract all the way through calculus from: www.swadvantage.com My 15 year old is going through both books and really likes them. She is not the best at math so this is helping her a lot. They are spendy, but they are worth the price.
#6
@Frank: I'm pretty good with the logic, and I'm all-about trying to make things into small pieces so they're easier to maintain and reuse. My issue stems from a problem understanding purely representational systems. Case in point: I discovered today that I was thinking of variables completely wrong. I was thinking they were containers and you actually put the data in them. All of my logic was structured around the fact that if I stored an object in a variable, then it was another object, unless I removed the first, and I had to do a lot of tap-dancing to move that same object about to make sure all the changes carried through.
Come to find out that the variables are pointers to the objects, and that means any changes made to the object from any variable are happening anyways. Changed my logic around and solved a problem I was having in under ten minutes.
That's the kind of gap in my knowledge because it's so old, and all the new stuff is self taught. I have a lot of trouble with anything where you're representing something in an abstraction and I can't see concretely exactly what's happening. I did *very* poorly in Algebra. I will *definitely* have a look around that site, and mark those books. I keep hoping to go back and refresh and/or improve my math, so that's a perfect resource, thanks!
08/27/2012 (12:02 am)
@Steve: Why thank you! :)@Frank: I'm pretty good with the logic, and I'm all-about trying to make things into small pieces so they're easier to maintain and reuse. My issue stems from a problem understanding purely representational systems. Case in point: I discovered today that I was thinking of variables completely wrong. I was thinking they were containers and you actually put the data in them. All of my logic was structured around the fact that if I stored an object in a variable, then it was another object, unless I removed the first, and I had to do a lot of tap-dancing to move that same object about to make sure all the changes carried through.
Come to find out that the variables are pointers to the objects, and that means any changes made to the object from any variable are happening anyways. Changed my logic around and solved a problem I was having in under ten minutes.
That's the kind of gap in my knowledge because it's so old, and all the new stuff is self taught. I have a lot of trouble with anything where you're representing something in an abstraction and I can't see concretely exactly what's happening. I did *very* poorly in Algebra. I will *definitely* have a look around that site, and mark those books. I keep hoping to go back and refresh and/or improve my math, so that's a perfect resource, thanks!
#7
08/27/2012 (10:58 am)
Yeah, I hear you. Variable abstraction can be confusing depending upon the object and programming language you are using. TS is kind of confusing when it comes to arrays. 
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This webpage has resources for learning the sciences. They should have a computer science section. It would help you with the concepts that help to understand any programming language. Once you get a lot of the base concepts down you will be amazed at how simple it starts to look.
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