My experiences with game development began when got this thing called QBASIC from my neighbour. I started copy-pasting tutorials from all over the internet, not understanding a thing. Later, I decided to actually understand it. I made a few QBASIC programs. Some of them involved graphics, but it wasn't good enough (DOS). Then, I searched on Google for 'game creation program' I got a load of stuff I downloaded and could not use. Until I found Game Maker. I stuck with it. It had two ways to make games :- Drag and drop, and programming. At first, I used drag and drop but it was good only for simple games (like pacman). I switched to coding. It took me a long time to learn, but I still stuck with it thinking I would some day get it. 3 weeks later, I finished my first game, Space Age. I made a few more games. I made lots of little demos and quick applications, tried to emulate 3D, physics, sound distortion, particle effects and whatnot. My dad bought the full version for me, and then there I was, bashing away at the keyboard almost everyday. I just loved the way Game Maker organised your game. It was flawless.

In Game Maker, there were the following 3 important things:- Sprites (the images and graphics), Objects (the actual logic objects), and Rooms (the worlds or levels). Each object handled itself, instead of one big function where everything is done. It was an ingenious method of organizing the game. But, all my games were 2D. I tried to to 3D. It worked. But when I made the second level of my game, the game ran as slow as hell (if hell is slow, that is). So, I decided to try making games using C++ (I had seen some C++ code before and was horrified) in September, 2005. My dad bought me a C++ book long before that time, I tried to learn but couldn't. I discovered that it was about Visual C++ (the IDE), not the language itself. But, there was a small C++ section too. I learned from that. After a week, I downloaded Ogre and tried to make something (I had seen Ogre before, but thought that it would be really complex and difficult to use like the other C++ engines). For around 3 or 4 days, it didn't work. I put it up on the forums, and in less than 2 hours, I got a reply and it got fixed. Been using Ogre since then [nose smile]

After making many small demo games and little apps (and later adding physics and sound to them), I decided that something serious should be done. Thus, HAPDV (a game) was born. It was a very ambitious project. I found that it was difficult to organise a game in C++ directly. So, I tried to emulate the Game Maker method (splitting everything up into objects, each minding their own business). But, the game required lots of work and art and was abandoned (stopped). During the July and August of 2006, I thought that I should make a framework first. A framework that works like Game Maker. Everyday of the summer holidays I would make little diagrams showing object systems, hierarchies, and flowcharts of such a system. Thus, NGF (Nikki's Game Framework) was born. It allowed the programmer to make objects, organize and manage them, update them every frame, send messages between them, make worlds (Game Maker rooms), load levels and lots of other stuff. In the first 1 and a half months of the holidays, I didn't write a single line of code, just design, design, design. Then, I made a short code sketch, and then wrote the actual code. The problem was that, in India (I went there for vacation), I had no compiler, so I couldn't check my code. Once I came to Doha, I incorporated NGF into a demo I made long back, and was surprised to see that it worked with only 2 or 3 small errors. I then made the world manager, the level loader and the Blender 3D (3d modeller) to NGF level exporter. I had been thinking of a game that had a ball rolling around in a maze long back in July. The maze should have electricity, spikes, bombs, switches, keys etc. I drew some small sketches and designed and designed until October 26, when, finally, I had written the first line of code of GraLL. The first time I ever ran GraLL, it had a ball that just kept falling. Now, its has developed after 5 months of hard work into what you see today.

I hope you too, will be able to follow you dreams, and of course, make them come true.

Thanks for reading.