Hi everyone, I've just joined and thought I'd let you all know a little about me since this looks like a tight community and introductions are the norm. Out of curiosity, why is the Roll Call thread closed?

I'm Richard, a programmer in his nearly-mid 20's, and have been working in the industry since 2000 on both PC and PS2 titles in Australia (Ratbag Games) and Canada (Relic Entertainment). Some may know me (Mike from Retro64 for instance) from various forums (flipCode, IGDA, CG Talk sometimes) and IRC channels (#flipCode especially) around the 'net, so hi to anyone who I know already!

I've always known that game development was my future, starting from when I was 7 in BASIC doing simple line graphics on a Sanyo 8088 and moving to C and Assembly at ~12-13 with Wolf-3D style games. I'm as much at home in to-the-metal low-level programming as I am in higher-level fully-OOP/design-patterns/STL/Boost style development - they both are of strong interest to me.. just don't ask me to use a language other than C/C++/Asm (at last count I knew around 12 languages, so it's not that I don't know any others; just I know very well what ones I like).

Other than programming, I've always enjoyed creating computer art in both Photoshop and 3DS Max - even if I do completely suck at it. ;) Practice makes tolerable with regards to programmer art, right? Truthfully, I don't think I'm that bad an artist if I really sit down and try to make something; unfortunately my patience with bad art tools is usually shorter than the amount of time it takes to make something good looking - but I'm working on that. Of course, having my SI being a very talented computer artist does help with tips & advice on what I'm doing wrong.

Management is also an area I'm fairly interested in; I took a 6 month course on small business management back in '99 with plans of starting my own company, but soon after that I was offered the position at Ratbag Games, that I couldn't turn down. I think I've safely forgotten all of the stuff I learnt then however - now all my management knowledge comes from my Dilbert calendar.. ;)

Here at Relic Entertainment, I'm the graphics programmer on an unannounced PC RTS game that's due for release around this time next year. My areas of interest are very centered around graphics programming: lighting and shadows, occlusion and visibility, and optimizations mainly. I do like to have an overview of many areas however, so I read a bit about AI, pathfinding, animation, sound, etc when I have a chance.

As for hobbies, I'm totally addicted to high-end R/C car and truck racing - the ones in the $US 1,000+ range.. no kiddie toys here! I also enjoy fiddling with electronics, even though I'm not actually sure if I know what I'm doing when it comes to using various microcontrollers, but that's half the fun.. hehe. Then there's programming - I'm usually programming for fun for around 4 hours most nights; things like demo's and testing new techniques out.

So why am I here? Some time, far in the future, I'd like to be an indie developer; this isn't some new realization for me, but something I've known for many years. I give it around 10 years until that time though as I'm not ready yet, at all. In 10 years who knows what the industry will look like too.. it may completely scare me off. :p This doesn't mean I won't try releasing shareware games in the meantime however, since there's a few small games that I really want to make - and it's best to make them now when it doesn't matter if they sell well or not, than at a point when I need them to sell well to survive.
But for now, I'm happy to stay as I am for many years to come. :) That brings up another point, with the industry being as volatile as it is, a minor reason that I'd like to release a few games here-and-there is so that if something bad does happen, hopefully they'll be able to support me sufficiently until things get better.

I look forward to having some good discussions here, and learning a lot about the indie community.


Regards,
Richard

Welcome Richard!

We can always use more Canadians around here. ;)

Michael Sikora
Guardian Games (http://www.guardiangames.com)

Originally posted by Nutter
Out of curiosity, why is the Roll Call thread closed?

So THAT'S why no one is using it. I was starting to wonder if everyone was blind or something, starting new introduction threads here there and everywhere. Thanks for the tip, I don't think I would have ever noticed. Oh, and welcome aboard, I think you'll provide a valuable perspective to this little corner of the web. Occasionally we'll get someone like derek smart come by and stir things up, but it's not too often we have someone working in the industry who really even understands Indies enough to come here and talk about indie topics.

As a side note, I think it says a lot for relic that your happy enough there not to want to go indie right away. We have a few indie's here who were so upset by the state of their jobs and the industry that they went indie. It's not often that I meet people who are genuinely happy about their "industry" jobs; I think it's pretty cool when you can actually enjoy the job you always wanted to have. :)

A bit late in this reply.. oh well. My excuse is that I was programming! Just don't pay attention to any of my other posts.. hehe.

Michael: I'm actually an Australian, just living/working here in Canada (because my other half is Canadian). But close enough. :p
Unfortunately for me, that does pose a problem for doing any Indie games on the side, since I can't legally operate a business over here. Not sure what I'll do about this - I may be able to start a business in Australia and just operate it from here, but that sounds like a tax nightmare. I'll probably end up waiting until I can start a business here though, and just release freeware until then to build up a name and traffic. I'm in no great hurry. :)

Dan: "oops".. yea, that'd sure do it. ;)
oh-no, DS? Yaaaaah! Sorry, I seem to have been developing a DS phobia lately, but lets not go there - scarey territory. Hopefully I fit that category of understanding Indies enough to talk about the topics of interest.. I'm still here, so that's probably a good sign.

Yea, Relic is a great place to work; they really spoil me here, and I love it (how do you spoil a geek? Give them some of the most kick-ass hardware!). :cool: Of course that's not the only reason I want to stay here, as the people are great (there's free donuts on Fridays), the games are exciting (there's "coffee runs" a few times a day), we're not overworked (they order all the latest cool books for us), and it's about the right size to know everyone, but not be too small either. Oh, and amazingly enough, the management is actually *good*.