How are you doing?

I'm off to college in 2 weeks time and I'm going to be studying a game design course. \o/ I'm getting a part-time job in a few weeks as well and I'll probably end up freelancing once I get some work done for my portfolio.

skdr, it seems you't doing pretty well man, congrats, and I hope you keep up!

Well, I've been pretty good myself as well.

I finished high school last July, and I got my first Level Designer/3d modeler job this month, I'm loving it, and I can't imagine myself doing anything else, but this! It's a dream came true...

Finally, all those nights messing with game editors, 3dsmax, watching and reading tutorials, listening to my mom yelling at me at 3am: "for god sake, go to bed!!", all this is starting to actually pay of!

Portugal, as some of you probably know, has a mediocre economy, so life isn't exactly luxurious around here, but, at least for me, the thing that matters the most, is working in an area that you really love, and have enough money to spend a nice, peacefully and healthy life, withs lot's and lot's of games on your bedroom's shelves!!

I got a beautiful girlfriend, with over 2 years in store as well! And I have never been happier...

Cheers all!

Not great for me. Broke up with my fiancee in june and just come out of another relationship that went nowhere. Works okay, nothing amazing but it pays pretty well. Rather 'meh' at the moment.

Lets seeee.... I just started my senior year of high school Umm tonight I have my first football game of the season, last year we had an 11-1 record, and we are hoping of a repeat. I broke up a pretty long relationship with my girlfriend Lauren recently, but after playing the field for a while, I am currently "seeing" a girl named Emily, the only real problem is that she mite be too nice for me. Life has been great, been partying and having a lot of fun.

good thread~

it's cool man.

Just got the new Reason REFILL and fruity loops DAWS and it's rollin hot in here. So, in the real time me and my bros.. making beats in da appergiators and looping samples in da mixers.

I'm into the university now. .. I'm not making any raps anymore because of the big work, not any maps too because I dont wanna.

It's pending but it's ballin' - one day downhill, other uphill.

doubtless, not long time ago people wrote about me in the newspaper.

good thread.

Life is a up and down of feelings. Got accepted by Grin this week. made me pretty happy.

Yesterday i tried to safe a little bird that felt into a pond and was in panic. I grabbed it and then made it dry but it was too late. It had no power anymore and died

Today i had to reinstall my dads PC and it was a nightmare because i din't had the right drivers and nothing worked. Wasted the whole day with fixing this piece of crap.

-snip-

Going back for my final year of A-Levels coming Thursday and I'm not looking forward to it, I get sick of being there. Other than that I don't really do anything interesting other than modding and watching anime everyday. I don't ever go out unless it's for school or to the game store which I rarely ever do. I'm stuck in my room practically 24/7 otherwise, and I really need a job - preferably a twilight based one to still earn some cash daily (since I have school)

e-freak, you're 35? Or did I read that wrong?

i am currently busy with too many things. maybe this is a reason why i dont have a girlfriend. there were a couple of nice girls showing up in my life but somehow all turned out to be kind of bitchy. the last one pissed me off because i had this really DAMN hard exam at uni and after it passed i felt really bad because i didnt get the questions that dropped like 50% of the points. suddenly the next day i got a mail from the professor and he told me i got an A+ because i was the only student who actually tried to solve those excercises! i was super happy and told the girl. all she did was saying she hates people first saying "oh everything went wrong" and aftwards saying "yeah baby. A+" even they knew it would pass that way. in my case i didnt know and she was wrong. so it was the final sign to kick her off (after lots of different annoying situations).

as i told i am busy with lots of stuff: finishing a mapproject i have spending the last 16 month on, finishing my exams with good grades, fixing my car, working at home.

but life keeps good things up for me too! recently i was in piermont, italy, with my dad. usually i see him like 1 time in a month. so it was really nice to be around with him for a couple of days and go on an "adventure" of my families history. (short version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldensians) they were forced to leave italy and settled down near Karlsruhe. My grandmother still got the Italian family name.

this week Arkane studios knocked on my door with a job offer which i had again to reject. after starting at uni i got quite a few job offers from big companies with cool games. so i am looking forward to finish my bachelor degree in next spring and then maybe give the industry a shot to save some money. maybe i will go for a master degree instead. thats a decision i did not make yet.

on a range of 10 points i would judge my life with a 6 to 7. i am healthy and uni goes well. somehow it lacks certain nice things like a girlfriend and less annoying things. if the map project will be a success the life rating would get a 15 out of 10! the thing i am trying to achieve with it is like a dream. even a bigger dream than getting into game industry (which is fairly easy if you once made a nice level or what ever). it is like a personal goal i wanted to reach ever since i first started a game editor

A+ for this thread!

This is like reading Livejournal.. heh.

Well I had another job not long ago in telesales but I only managed to last a week despite giving it my very all, they let me go due to 'not being productive enough for the company'.. lame. I wasn't getting enough sales I guess, it's a tough job though, you have to be a machine and be dedicated to making lots of money, whereas I really don't care so much about having lots of money. I'd of liked to have stayed there for at least a month or more to get some work experience, I didn't really like the job but it seemed to build up my confidence somewhat. Now I'm struggling (as per fucking usual) to get another job.. aghhh!

My self-esteem has taken quite a hit after being attacked at night some months ago, I kinda thought I'd be able to get over it easily but it seems to be getting to me a lot. I think maybe I need to talk to victim support or something because I can't carry on with this, always being paranoid of everyone in the dark when I walk home or take the bus...

The woman I love very much has left the country to goto the United Arab Emirates for a year to take a teaching job. I'm thrilled for her to have this opportunity and having heard from her recently it seems she's doing ok in her training, has to raise her voice a lot when teaching the older kids but it's making her more assertive which is one of the reasons she wanted to work abroad. I miss her a lot but it's early days yet so I guess I will find a way to cope with it. It's heart breaking that she couldn't return my feelings but alas she still had feelings for some other asshole who let her down all the time leaving me and others to pick up the pieces. I should really have let go awhile ago but feelings don't work like that do they? It's such a bitch. Hopefully whilst she's out there she can clear her head and come to a realisation about things and maybe, just maybe miss me a little more than she she thought. For now I'm trying to look elsewhere, I have a few friends who I think are nice but I don't really have any romantic feelings for them, I certainly don't want to force myself to move on anyway, that will only lead to misery.

My grandma had a stroke over a year ago, leaving her severely weakened, we all have to look after in any way we can, it's not so bad because she does get out and she's a lot better off than a lot of older women but she's not the same as she was and I have to keep putting up with 'I wish I was dead a lot..' which is really upsetting and makes it hard to keep my chin up in order to support her when and where she needs it.

On the plus side of things, I have so many great friends that keep me entertained and support me and I do the same for them and I'm always meeting cool new people all the time. Once I've got myself another job, in time I will try to move out of my parent's house and live with some people for a bit, maybe goto university but I'm not too sure about that at the moment. I'm thinking towards possibly going abroad for work in a couple of years time for awhile but I need to get settled here first and gain some local life experience before taking that step. In the meantime I'm applying for Free Radical when I've finally got all my portfolio material together, it's one of two local game dev companies I know of in Nottingham, England, the other being Monumental Games whom I applied for a couple of months ago and I never heard from them despite one of my friends being an employee there..

Life is a bitch, but it could be a lot worse I suppose.

Ps: This is a serious thread, so none of that 'emo goth' bullshit please, keep that in EOT.

Life is good.

In the middle of buying a house in Brighton UK with my missus of the last 12 years. Working a job with Sony which has great perks even if it's corporate as fook and gets on my tits from time to time for being so bloody arrogant and lacking in imagination.

My record collection continues to grow, I have some great buddies who are into the same kinda stupid shit that I am (games, drinking & smoking too much and generally being a stupid arse). I have a wicked cat who I fight with on a regular basis and constantly have scratches all over my hands and legs from (Bless!).

My family are all healthy and happy and TBH every time I ever start complaining about anything I tend to feel a bit guilty, since I probably have a better life than just about 99.99% of all people who have ever lived before me on Earth.

Put that in yer pipe and smoke it

D3ads, regarding you being attacked:

Take some self-defence classes or take up a martial art. It'll do you wonders. A lot of the classes feature people like you and me (a bit nerdish, not really fighting types, wouldn't know what to do if attacked). Think about it: Are you more or less likely to take up a martial art if you're already confident about defending yourself? I've been going to a local instructor for approaching four years now (he teaches hand to hand combat to the special forces amongst other stuff) and I know I can handle myself these days because I know various things for every angle of attack etc. I'll never be a hard bastard or a great martial artist, but I now have a good understanding of what I can and cannot do and plenty of stuff in my locker for both recognising & dealing with various situations, including someone with a weapon.

Also, if you find the right class and instructor, it will also do wonders for your self-esteem, get you fighting fit and teach you a lot about life in general. Just make sure you find a good instructor; avoid the cowboys (one touch of death!111 I will throw you with my Ki power!) & sport-based martial arts.

If I can do it, it's almost guaranteed that you can, too. I've been trying to get my brother to take it up too as he was almost assaulted a few months back but he's wary of the effort involved. Once you're in and training it's grand, you just have to have the confidence to take that first step. Personally, it was something I always wanted to do but never got around to. Once I started, I was so glad that I actually took the first step. Definitely one of the best decisions I ever made.

The reason I think this is a good route is that you can overcome your fears through confidence in your own abilities. When I started uni prior to starting training, I used to wonder if I was going to get mugged when wandering through the overpass to the train station late at night (almost happened once when two dickheads started asking me for money then started following me while abusing me). Nowadays I'm still careful to avoid trouble, but I'm much less worried about anything happening.

If you're ever interested or want any advice on choosing an instructor etc. just shoot me a pm sometime.

As for me: It's going alright. Got a first class degree after working my balls off, now I'm job-hunting. Got turned down once already but I'm confident I can get a job programming somewhere

Great thread. Therapeutic too! Love to read stuff from you guys.

As for me, life is okay. Next week will be pretty relaxed I hope, as it is the last free week before school starts. I've worked 4 weeks as a mechanic, fixing wheelchairs and scootmobiles. Was fun, and I've made new friends. In about 2 weeks, I'll be having my introduciton into a schoolcounsil, wich I am looking very much forward to! I'll be staying in a hotel with all other chosen candidates and we'll hopefully have a good chance of meeting eachother. I should probably lay down on the girls a bit, since it's quite distracting from other impaortant things, but I find that really hard. It's ratio vs habit vs feelings. May the best win.

Awesome thread indeed, and i think really healthy for mapcore

Well these days will be i hope a new turn in my life, it's been now 5 years that i was studying stuff in Electrical engineering : 3 years at college and 2 years at university. I really wanted to work in the game industry before getting into all that, but i was convincing myself back then that i should study to get "a more serious job", just in case a career in the game industry couldn't work..

I should have graduate after my two years at university, and i needed a 10/20 to do so, well unfortunately, i had a 9,7/20 .. Tough stuff. Yeah mathematics aren't my thing since i was 13.

I had to work in an electronics company during that last year, and that was really terrible, the only moments the employees were speaking to each other were to say "morning" or "evening", we could talk about politics or the weather, maybe football sometime.. The only passion some of these guys had was working for working, it's not that they liked electronics, it was to appease some kind of culpability " I have a work, i work more than you, here me roar". And i told myself one thing when i was there : "I don't want to have a life like this."

So rather than doing another boring year just to get a paper and a nervous breakdown for a work that i'm sure i don't want to do, i decided to try to get into the game industry as an artist that year.

I postulated, and was accepted in a new formation about CG arts applied to games. It's basically a collaboration between a public university and an association of game developers around Lyon, we will be only 20 and our teachers will be people from development studios, but we will not learn how to draw or how to use 3dsmax, but more something like leading a project, getting in touch with the new technologies etc ..

Well i'm pretty excited to start although i have to say, all this is quite stressful, it's a bit like jumping blindly in a dark hole for me. Let's hope i could make contacts and find any cool work offers after that year.

The thing is, i don't really feel motivated these days about mapping and any other 3d work. It's not that i've lost any inspiration, actually the ideas are coming every time at every moment, it's the process of dedicate a lot of my hours to make that idea a reality that kind of bore me. And i find that a bit scary if i want to do something in the game industry..

But yeah doing this as job, i will certainly get over it i suppose .

Other than that, yeah, life is cool. Although a bit empty these days, like any end of holidays i suppose.. Next year i've taken resolutions, i'll have to find myself a girlfriend, cool thing is that i will be in an university with a majority of girls ( last year it was 196 guys for 4 chicks, electrical engineering ftw ). So yeah let's hope haha

got accepted into a great uni on a bachelor line in software development, now "serving time". great people there, really happy about it (34 guys vs 6 chicks, all looking decent). got a new computer the other day, so i guess things are pretty cool.

all i need is a job that compliments my studies and it would be pretty perfect. i could go into details about trivial anecdotes, but i figured this is just as proper knowledge of my existance.

hope it gets better for you guys having a bad time atm.

indeed a good thread, even if no one reads what anyone else posts

i go back to college on tuesday, i absolutely hate it there as its a shithole and has negative sociability. walk to class, walk to car go home type deal. i'lll be working 5 days while going to class 5 days (no days off) so that'll be just lovely. i 'm doing liberal arts for the second year since i still have no idea what i want to be. i;d love to go away to college.

i'd been a busboy at work for a year two weeks ago. i got promoted a few months ago to be a runner 2 days of the weekwhich is similar pay, a bit harder but half the hours and a step up. 2 weeks ago i was asked/asked to be a waiter so i got that and finished training last week. more money is always nice. i've been saving money since i've gotten a job and have a nice little bank account going.

i generally have no life, since i got a job that's basically been my only life. on the plus side i'm pretty friendly with some of the people at work. i hang out after work and drink with some people and i know the bartenders so that's nice. i was a shy person for a long time and im opening up. nothing at all in the area of girls though im friendly with two i work with...who are dating other people we're supposed to see a movie tomorrow. we were supposed to see one last saturday but that turned into drinking which wasn't a bad thing

i spend most of my free time watching tv/posting on forums/reading digg/ working on my car. yesterday i tore my car apart completely and replaced some belts water pump etc. i got the job done in 10 hours by myself and feel real good about it. ive put an assload of money into my car, i'm kind of passionate about it since it's just a fun and cool thing to have. i thought this picture was awesome:

http://www.zeroproof.com/bicball/tb.jpg

uh, thats kind of it

your car looks like a transformer

My grandparents are going to take dinner today with us. My grandma has a bad senile dementia and at the moment the phase starts she can't recognize us. It's a bit frustrating and I have great respect to my grandfather who's managing to stay calm most of the time and getting things done. He's also learned to work with computers - started with the Atari and basically I think I've got my passion towards computers from him.