Hello, My Name is…

It occurred to me the other day that, in starting up blogging again, I’ve just assumed that readers are familiar with who I am, knowing me from twitter or ITS or wherever.

But that’s a fairly dubious assumption, right? So might as well do what I encourage people who join the RM discord server to do, and introduce myself.

Was that too subtle a hint? Join my discord, please, it’s an Elder God masquerading as binary code and if I don’t feed it one soul a week it’ll take mine! I mean, uh, it’s nice. Come chat. Really nice.

So anyway, this is me:

Though the quasi-mohawk has grown out, now, sadly.

And this is me in a cool jacket. For no other reason than I like that jacket.

Just kidding, of course. I’ll spread out the selfies so that you have time to really absorb the magnificence of each one.

I live in sunny Durban, South Africa. Which is here:

We’re shifting into Autumn, now. Lovely mild Autumn, where you can leave the safety of your air conditioning without feeling like you just want to lie down on the ground and pant. Durban is splendid for 3 seasons of the year, ranging in temperature from warm and sunny to “maybe a light jersey” weather, but Summer is a trial to endure.

So, I am The Dude behind Rogue Moon Studios. For now, at least, it’s just me, although I take on contractors for art and music, as needed. Otherwise, I wear all the hats, from programming and QA to design and writing. And webdev. And marketing, and PR, and the bookkeeping.

So many hats. Oh god, my neck is so tired from the weight of all these fucking hats.

Ah well. One day, when I can afford it, I’ll have proper minions to boss around. I mean “employees”. They make you call them that, legally. My lawyer explained it. Something something “dehumanising” something something “abusive workplace” blah blah whatever.

All I want it something like that floating hand from Dungeon Keeper that slaps my imps to make them work faster. Is that too much to ask? And maybe a small temple in my likeness, possibly in the office canteen.

Sounds attractive, eh? Send in your CV today, game developers. Masochism and a fanatical religious devotion to your employer a big, big plus on the resume.

I’ve gotten distracted, what was I talking about? Oh yes, me.

Selfie time again!

I wear a lot of hats, but mostly I’m a programmer. Been programming, oh, 20 or so years now. And, from the beginning, the goal was always to use my programming knowledge to make games. Before that, I wanted to write novels.

But gaming had sunk its hooks into me by high school, and I turned my efforts thus-ward, taking all the programming classes I could, and afterward doing a degree in Computer Science. All the while supplementing that with game programming knowledge gleaned off the internet, tutorials and the like.

I was on my way. But there were some bumps and turns waiting for me, to say the least.

Alright, this is getting long and there’s still plenty of ground to cover, so I think I’ll split this into a series of blog posts running over the week. I’ll leave it there for today.

Join me next time, friends, where I take you back in time, to the heady days of the Torque Game Engine and my first real effort at making a commercial game – Scars of War.

-Gareth out