How did you learn what your know today?

decompiling

failure

Drinking coffee

Nowadays its best to have a degree in something, building a portfolio, and at the end of the day, all about proving yourself in an interview for a position you want.

Procrastinatin' by masturbatin'.

Quote from Nz-Nexus

decompiling

having fun : lol

Attempting to replicate others work, failing, and being left with the result.

same as everyone else... except for decompiling.

Age of Empires 2, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Game Maker, FPS Creator, Far Cry Instincts Predator map editor, Battleforge editor, F.E.A.R. editor, Source editor, UDK, Cryengine, ...

All fails, wasn't pretty. Didn't finish anything ever, you could say I was addicted to trying out different editors and seeing how things were made behind the scenes. I kinda just like building stuff Every time a new game came out I was scribbling map designs on paper or just in my head.

After all these unfinished map doodles I finally made some finished work on the side while following a 3 year college course to fill in the much needed gaps in knowledge.

I also messed around in 3D packages (like anim8tor lol) at some point xD

There's probably more editors I have tried out over the years but I don't have a detailed recollection of everything I've done... As far as I can remember I've always done something game-dev related. That's usually why I giggle when someone with no experience suddenly wants to become a "game developer" from one day to another. I suppose it's just something in your DNA that grows naturally.

making shit, if you do it enough you keep getting better

Pringles, Twix and hard work.

a day in my life in 2001: feel motivated, open hammer, make ugly warehouse with hl.wad textures, start again, make ugly de_torn clone, close hammer, open photoshop, make crappy plaster texture, start again, make crappy brick wall, get fed up, masterbate, play game

On a more serious note however, it's a lot easier to get into game art today than it was 10 years ago, thanks to all these awesome training sites (gnomon, eat3d, 3dmotive etc....). Or as John Carmack put it: In the information age, the barriers just aren't there. The barriers are self imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don't need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers.

haha I remember trying about 100 compiles to figure out how to make a hl ladder work, these days you'd have about 20 youtube tutorials ... ok shit I sound old,time to go off and play with my garden swings

Hah yeah, so much easier to learn just about anything today, even if the standards have moved a great deal as well. My biggest challenge must've been figuring out what the hell leaks were, and why that had anything to do with the map being super bright. When I started it wasn't really that logical why those were connected in any way

yeah, those days were frustrated. But in some way I miss it

its easier to learn how to do things but the things you're doing are a bit more complex than in the old days. I think if I was starting now I would be overwhelmed and probably give up

I believe that while the information was a lot scarcer years ago, the increase in complexity to deliver something relatively good nowadays somehow balanced the difficulty to build levels etc.

Something that always helps you to be able to do anything is to be well aware that you will FAIL! A lot. And you should be literally happy when the failure comes.

After all, if you are failing, it means that you are at least trying to do something right.

The sooner one understands that, the sooner will fade away the worry about not starting "because something might go wrong". Let it go wrong! Let it happen! Learn with the mistakes, improve on it. Iterate. Practice makes perfection.

Yes