My name is Daniel Beaty, and I’m the one who has written every blog post for Team Autonomous, thus far. The point of this blog post is for me to share a little bit about myself, so lets get right to it.
I was born, raised, and still live in a town located in the Deep South called Albany, GA. I was home schooled until my 7th grade year. That is the year I started going to a public school. Talk about a massive wake up call. Going to a private school really opened my eyes to how the world really was. By that, I mean I realized how sheltered I had been. I was exposed to things that I knew about, but really didn’t have much experience with. For example, cursing was widely used, which is probably no big surprise or a big deal to most of you, but to someone who really hadn’t been exposed to this kind of environment; it was like hitting a ton of bricks. My mind was just flooded with all kinds of perverted talk and such.
Growing up, I really enjoyed creating things, so I was naturally drawn to things such as Legos and eventually to video games like Roller Coaster Tycoon. I started with games like Mario, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Frogger, and Golden Eye for the N64. After my brother bought a PS2, I really began to notice how much I enjoyed playing First Person Shooters. I really grew a liking to the TimeSplitters series. The multiplayer and single player in those games was just the best, in my opinion. To this day, I still play Time Splitters 2 and 3 from time to time, which I can’t say for any other game that I started playing 10+ years ago.
As I grew older, my obsession with video games increased. This obsession finally led me to wanting to create video games. I first dabbled in video game development with a program called FPS Creator. At the time, it seemed to be an amazing tool, and I really enjoyed messing around with it. I finally got bored with FPSC and went back to just playing video games.
A few years later, I graduate as a home schooler. Yep, I went back to home schooling in 10th grade. This was due to financial reasons that I will not discuss. Before graduating, I had already picked out a dream college. It was a college called Full Sail University. FSU is primarily known for its excellent filmography degree, but I wanted to go there for a different reason, to learn how to develop video games. FSU also has excellent online programs, so I decided I would give the school a shot. I started in the online program of Game Design back in July of 2011, and I am glad to say that I haven’t regretted that decision thus far. I have learned a lot so far, and that is one reason why I am already developing games with a team using the Unity 3D engine.
Are you a game developer or ever-dabbled in game development? Please share with a comment below.
Take it easy,
Daniel
