A Scot 'exiled' to England!

Oh, ok - I go where the work is, and there's little work for Level Designers in Scotland. I've moved around Britian a bit now - born in Glasgow, moved to outside Edinburgh, did a year and a bit of AI and Psychology in Endinburgh Uni, moved to Middlesbrough to do Computer Level Design at the uni there (dropped out) and then moved to Oxford for a year to work for Travellers Tales.

Game Design is something that I've been focused on for years now - it's something that I don't seem to be able to 'not' do. I once counted how many game ideas I could come up with in 20 minutes, and I believe I ended up with over 30. It's a little disappointing, as with the Games industry the way it is, none of those games will ever get made. So that's the reason I'm trying to teach myself C++ - so I can try to prototype the game ideas I get! I've used DarkBasic in the past, and while it's very fast and easy, it's as shoddy as a very shoddy thing :) All the programmers at work tease me about it though - keep telling me I should be able to fix my own bugs now! As if. They're good lads though, and I'm really glad I'm such a geek or I wouldn't be able to handle being the only girl there. It's recently been really hard - having broken up with my bf of 5 years (and still being at sea about that) and trying to get the game finished too - which means 16hr days 7 days a week. I've been trying to remember what daylight looks like!

I'm a bit of an RPer, but haven't had the time to do so in quite some time. I've played D&D, Vampire, Little Fears, Space Master, Role Master and a few other little games. I've even tried to run a few games, but if they last longer than a couple of sessions I chicken out and stop running them. Not because they're bad (I receive quite a few compliments) but because I keep thinking I'm going to trip up, and I'd rather not try :) I know - daft, but it's something I haven't gotten over yet. I roleplayed a great deal in Star Wars Galaxies (MMORPG) for a while - but after a time I grew tired of the style in the village I played in - it got a bit too 'American Soap Opera' for my liking. So I took a break. Haven't had time to get back into it yet, but I'm going to be playing it the way I like, next time. (And not get dragged into another 'kidnapping' story!).

I keep trying to redesign everything I touch though - you should all be wary of that! I've tried to make my own pen and paper RPG (managed to completely forget about ranged combat - oops), submitted countless design proposals on the Star Wars Galaxies forums, thought of a million and one modifications to games already out there, and now I've found the Dream! I really have to try and watch myself though - I'm prone to get disuaded if things get quiet for a while, so I'm going to try to not let that happen. :)

So anyway, I'm still in Birmingham doing the finishing touches to Coldwinter on the PS2. Missing Scotland, and my mum, a great deal. :/

None