I just finished my first ever video game. Well… It’s a text
adventure game, not like a 3D action shooter or 2D Pacman style game. It could
almost have been done in a book. But video games have been an art I’ve always
admired and wanted to create one. I never understood people who liked music and
couldn’t play an instrument (I still appreciate them of course!).
I want to stress that it’s really simple. The “gameplay”
aspect is really just a series of choices down a linear path. It’s short and
you could do the whole thing in like 5 minutes. The entertainment value comes
from reading what happens to you after making your choice. So really, most of
the fun is gotten through reading what I’ve written. Which isn’t bad, it’s just
an example of my limitations as a “programmer”.
It was more a proof of concept and exercise than an
expectation of actually bringing more joy into the world. I learned a lot.
Everything is built from something someone else made. Which sort of puts
another dent in my individualist ideologies. It’s built on knockout.js, jQuery,
Google Map’s API, Open Weather API, and Bootstrap, plus the actual languages
those are made in Javascript, CSS, and HTML. Not to mention the thousands of
forum posts I’ve perused looking for answers to how to get all those things to
work together. Also the internet, this computer, electricity, written language…
But whatever, that video of Mr. Rogers has me going. Where
he says “It doesn’t matter that it’s not a very good painting. What matters is
that the painting didn’t exist and now it does” or something.
