Blogs

My Origin

Posted on 5 November 2016

My name is Robin, and I am the sole developer of Xatro Games. This is my quest to realize my dream of becoming a professional game developer. I have been writing game ideas for the majority of my life, and now I have the ability to create them and release them for the world to enjoy.

Every game that I make is a stepping stone to understanding game development. It all began with Microsoft Office PowerPoint. I first saw PowerPoint in elementary school and thought to myself, “This is a suitable method for game development!” I made several “games” with PowerPoint. Many of the games had a choose-your-fate feel with nothing but text, static pictures, and buttons. Then I made a full-lengthed story about a superhero I created as a child named The Red R. It had moving images, music, and a variety of puzzles. But because it was PowerPoint, it was definitely not a real game. After trying too hard with another slideshow bigger than The Red R, I then realized PowerPoint is definitely not a suitable method for game development.

I began exploring other software and eventually discovered a program called the 3D Flash Animator (3DFA). I spent years trying to figure out how to use it until I eventually learned the basics of programming. I began again with simple text-based games. My first game was called Text Base, the text-based game. It was only fun if you followed the rules like it was the first time playing it. The player could easily type in any command used in the game to skip to that part. Before finishing the story for Text Base, I started a new project simply titled Text-Based Role Playing Game. This time, I improved my programming skills and made it so the player could only use certain commands in the right context. Now it was a real game for the first time ever in my life. It wasn’t user-friendly and required exact case and spelling to submit a command, but it worked. I developed the story as I went along, and I also borrowed a bit from Text Base. The original story was simple: find the Evil Being and slay it. To make the story more like other role playing games, the player had to gather five Power Orbs in order to defeat the Evil Being. After completing the story and the game, I finally renamed the game to Messiah Quest. The Evil Being is called the Messiah by the monsters attacking human civilizations, and it is the player’s quest to slay this Messiah to prevent the extinction of the human race.

I continued to make more games with 3DFA and began learning how to create graphics. The next game I started was called Metal Nightmare, a story about a guitarist trapped inside his own mind. Near the end of developing the first level, I quickly realized I did not know how to truly use 3DFA, because every time I added to the game, the game ran slower. After completing the first level, I couldn’t even play it on my own computer. Knowing that I could not scale my current project to satisfy the plans for Metal Nightmare, I gave up on it and decided to move on from 3DFA.

A few years later, I went to college to study software development. I began to learn how to use Visual Studio and write code in the C# language. Shortly after learning the basics, I immediately re-developed Messiah Quest as a Windows Console application. Then, Messiah Quest became much like a real text-based game. One year later I had completely remade the game with a much better story (the original in 3DFA was limited to 6 lines of text per message; there wasn’t much detail). After Messiah Quest, I began exploring the ability to develop software without Visual Studio. I wanted to understand how to develop an application from virtually nothing. My first complete project was a text-based Euchre game, which was developed strictly in Notepad, and compiled with the command line. By developing like this I slowly began to understand the .NET Framework and C# on a deeper level without relying on Visual Studio to provide me with everything I need. I now continue to develop my personal applications in this manner.

Another year later, I decided to explore creating a game with graphical components for a class project. I began developing a demo for Messiah Quest II. I was able to accomplish the assignment, and I continued development over the summer break. Then, just before the next semester started, my laptop’s hard drive crashed. And with it died all of my work for the last several years. Thankfully, another student let me borrow his old desktop to support my development. With his generosity, I was able to start over and get through my classes. I was able to salvage some applications, such as Messiah Quest, Metal Nightmare, etc. which were stored on my flash drive, but I did not have any source code, and I was not satisfied with that.

Out of spite, revenge, and depression, I spent the following months recreating Messiah Quest from the debris of my shattered dreams. The new Messiah Quest was developed in such a manner that it could easily be modified to run on different platforms. The game was first developed for Windows Console, and as a class project later that semester, I created a Windows Universal application version of Messiah Quest. There was even a version of Messiah Quest which ran in the browser, and they all used the same base. Each version is practically the same game.

I still have many stepping stones to cross before I complete my quest to become a professional game developer. However, even when I do become a professional game developer, I will continue to learn and improve. There truly is no end to what I am trying to accomplish. Xatro Games will continue to grow as I do.