Game developing: expectation vs reality

First of all, this is my first blog post, so, welcome to the Fireward Games blog! Our topic for today will be the difference between game developing stereotypes and expectations vs. the reality of what developing is actually like! Let's begin!

1. When you first think of game developing, you probably think of dark screens (not using dark mode is a crime) ,flashing text flying by in wild colors, filled with unidentifiable symbols and gibberish, and Hello World statements, if you have read into coding at all. If you haven't, don't worry. This blog exists for a reason.

   Anyway, there is a lot more math involved than one would think, including the four basic operations, squaring and square roots, and even things like calculus and trigonometry for certain games. Now, this doesn't mean you can't do it if you didn't pay attention in math class! Coding is fun, and more engaging than any old math class for most people. This means that you can learn (or relearn) these math concepts in a way that is actually useful in modern life! Now you know the answer to "What field are you even supposed to use this in,"the question all math teachers fear!

Colorful code with symbols and gibberish, as described above

2. I don't know about other coding, because I specialize in games, but another thing not in game coding that people associate with it is binary code. Yep. The infamous 0s and 1s. The only times you will type numbers in game coding is for numerical logic. I'm sorry, but in coding, you cannot escape the math monster. If you ever see a cartoon or animation where someone is playing a game and the game shuts down to 1s and 0s, let me just tell you, even with something like a kill stick, which destroys your computer's inner hardware, no 0s and 1s, just pitch black darkness for the rest of eternity. But don't try that at home, kids. Today, binary is more widely known as a cipher (code) than a computer language. So, I guess the media is learning a bit. I even tried to make a python script to show 0s and 1s, even that

   didn't exactly look realistic to this image below.

   

   This basically never happens.

   
   
   
   

3. 3. We will finish off with one more. Dev slang. People seem to think that computer devs talk like this: "all operations null, this game has an undefined argument in line 7 of array delta." Well, while we may write like that, we only talk like that if someone asks us to. Of course, I can only speak for myself, as anyone else looking at this blog who codes video games could take one look at this post and laugh their head off. I am making this post because 2 of these have directly happened to me, and one I have seen elsewhere, but they make me laugh whenever I see or hear them because they just aren't true. I always try to figure out the cause of all these things, but if I'm being honest, I am taking this topic too seriously. So, I'll stop here, and introduce one final thing.

   If I get five members in the coming week or two, up until Sunday March 30th, I will add a confusing site heading of a winner's choice to the homepage of firewardgames.com. It just has to be age-appropriate for anyone on the site, and have a maximum of 10 words that are no longer than 10 letters each.

   See you in the next post, and if you strongly can or can't relate, share in the comments and i'd be happy to reply!