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Today I thought I'd share the tale about how I found myself in the role of programmer for Melonhead Games. It wasn't a straightforward journey, I actually bounced around quite a bit before finding myself where I am.

It started in high school when I first started learning 3D modeling, I enjoyed the class a lot but in later years dropped it to focus on maths so I could get into mechatronic engineering. Upon arriving at university, I quickly realised this degree wasn't for me, but the one topic I liked the most involved 3D modeling.

At this point, a few years had passed since I had last done any 3D modeling but I found I still had a passion for it. I made a decision to stop my Bachelor of Mechatronic Engineering and went to study an Advanced Diploma of Screen and Media specializing in game art.

Getting back into it

Having done 3D modeling before put me a step ahead in the Advanced Diploma, but I quickly found myself challenged to improve on my skills. I took every assignment as an opportunity to do something a bit more complicated and while this early work was nothing special, I did find myself improving.

Texturing was where I started falling behind, I had never done digital painting or anything like that before and my workflow ended up becoming more logical rather than creative. Learning to manipulate tools to get desired results and what values to use to emulate specific materials.

Then came programing

One of the major projects in the Advanced Diploma was to create a game and attempt to get it into the Indie Games Room at AVCon. To do this we were advised to use Unreal Engine 4, and this was when I started learning Blueprint Scripting. We were a bunch of artists trying to make games and while a lot of teams opted to use the preset first person project I wanted to make a platformer.

Over the course of the project I was making assets and trying to teach myself blueprint scripting and implement features all at the same time. Sure enough, with the help of my team we got it working in time for AVCon.

Back to university

Using my Advanced Diploma I got several courses ticked off for recognized prior learning towards the Bachelor of Creative Arts at Flinders University. Due to this, in my first semester I was doing my 3rd year major project topic. First lesson a team got up and asked if anyone knew blueprint scripting and could help them with a project. No one really put up their hand and not knowing what to work on otherwise I put up my hand. This started a trend and through out University I found myself being the blueprint scripter on projects.

After having that initial project I worked on displayed in the Indie Games Room, I was approached by the rest of the Melonhead team to help them finish off our last assignments and planning what to do when we finished University.

The global game jam 2018

The point I dedicated myself to programming was the Global Game Jam in 2018. Which some of you may be aware was what spawned the initial build of Rooftop Renegade. Since then I have been working hard to improve my skills as a programmer and utilizing them in refining the game to what it is now.