Dreams come true

I know because it's happened to me a couple of times, and it's always been great. It looks like it's about to happen again. Last weekend I compiled and ran my first program in Java. Okay, I didn't write it and it was really, really simple. Still, I couldn't be happier if I made GRAND THEFT AUTO: THE WHOLE FRICKIN' WORLD. See, I've dreamed about making videogames since 1984 when I tried (and failed) on my Commodore-64. I tried again (and succeeded) in 2004 on my Linuxed PC but the dream crashed and burned and I lost everything. I did something stupid. Really stupid. Operating system-level stupid. The game was a simple 2-d shooter called SKY THIEF and I wrote it in C. I still have the source code (but all the assets are gone) so maybe it will fly again.

Anyway, here's hoping, more than two decades later, my gleaming dream comes true. So far, so good. Like they say, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single stumble.

Incidentally, you should see the collision detection algorithm I wrote when the book I was using failed to help. It's the worst sort of spaghetti code you're ever likely to see. For kicks and giggles I'll post it sometime (even if you don't know anything about C, it should be obvious how bad it is). And hope I don't have to use it again. It's beyond ugly.