Early Video Games

One of the first things I did when we got access to the internet was to figure out how to make video games. I fiddled with languages like QBasic and TurboPascal, but nothing stuck until I found an editor called the OHRRPGCE.

"OHR" ran in DOS and handled all the aspects of game making inside a single editor. You could make a whole game without writing any code. With this tool, you could make any sort of game you could imagine, as long as you only imagined games that strongly resembled the early Final Fantasy games.

I get amazed looks when I tell people I started making games at 9, but the OHR made it easy. My friend Jared and I would work on our own projects and share them when one of us came over to the other's house. I had an elaborate plan for an epic open-world Star Wars game that I never actually built. He thought up a game called Bill the Moose which he did make. My issues with scoping projects began early.

Over time, the engine grew and added some basic scripting capabilities. The first working code I wrote was used to abuse this simple RPG engine to do things like create sidescroller sequences, cutscenes, or other custom behavior that you couldn't do in the editor.

The OHR community was also my first exposure to online communities, and I made many friends with people over the years, with names like Sew, Cube, Chaos Nyte (he went on to make Fields of Mistria!), Shadowiii, and Aethreal. I was in the younger cohort, but these were mostly just teenagers from around the continent who were trying to make games like I was. Everybody was very kind, generous with helping new members, and would constantly inspire me to make more games.

That said, the list of actual "finished" games from this era is short. Signs of my undiagnosed ADHD are very clear from the constant starting and abandoning of projects.

South RPG

A game that tool place at South Junior High, featuring all my friends. I was proud of a little skateboarding mini game I built with the scripting engine, but the game ended as soon as the introductory act ended.

Blow Up!

A game made for a 48 hour game jam, comprised of a bunch of small mini games, presented rapidly and jarringly. It only took a few minutes to beat, but I'd like to think it was an exciting few minutes.

Put on Shoes

A silly anti-game where your hero strives to put on shoes before the time limit, but never can. The only reason I mention this is that it earned a kind of meme status thanks to community members who treated it like some sort of prestige game. I later made a short film based on it and someone from the community even sculpted a figure of the main character!

Super Epic Star Wars RPG Game

If you're asking me what actually exists in the game itself that is playable, well...

There is a single character who walks around a grassy field. You can get into and out of a speeder that lets you move around quickly He can enter a building which was half-built. And... that's it.

But planning this game was a major part of my attention during 6th grade. I have a notebook filled with details of the Star Wars universe, mostly the extended world of novels and comic books, with all the planets you will be able to visit, the weapons and vehicles you can use, the characters, story, and quests, and anything my little brain thought would be cool to put into a video game.

I never would have put it this way at the time, but what I really enjoyed was the systems. Every non-joke game had a huge scope and was prepped to be a 20+ hour experience. But actually sitting down and making the thing was always oddly different.

The hours I spent working in the engine is not reflected in the playable output, to the point where the three years I was going hard building games feels a little pitiful to recount. I guess it's not bad for my pre-teen years, but it was constantly frustrating to have ambitions that were so much bigger than what I was able to create.