How Passion for Retro Gaming Taught Me Perseverance

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Bing AI

Welcome, my dear readers, to this space. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about the most difficult thing I've had to learn.

It's a very interesting topic, of course, because we've all had, at some point in our lives, that difficulty or challenge that we've faced in which some activity or something we want to do has become complicated for us to learn.

But, as you know, those of you who know me can be sure that something that I'm passionate about is the 80s.

All that retro era of video games and all that has been something that has been completely exciting for me. And I'm going to tell you two things that have been for me one of the most difficult to learn.

The first, precisely because of my great love and passion for video games, is precisely to be able to program or make a video game.

Learning to have that ability was for me a completely titanic challenge because I didn't even have the slightest idea of where to start.

And in my time as a high school student, from an early age, even before high school, I had this seed and this need and I dedicated myself to buying magazines of PC Computing and Wired and there I was reading the different articles.

So, at that time, I was a child and I didn't even have a job or I didn't receive enough money to be able to have the funds and buy a computer to be able to learn this skill.

But I was gathering what they gave me to have breakfast every day at school and with this I bought the magazines.

And in the magazines I was reading the articles on how to learn to program, how to draw a circle, for example, in colors or with a happy face.

And later, when the years passed, I already had a great collection of magazines and I managed to acquire what was my first computer.

And that's when I started to practice drawing. In a Sinclair ZX81, I started to draw these happy faces that I learned to do in BASIC.

Bing AI

And that was the beginning of my learning of how to program a game.

Little by little, I was approaching different things with what has to do with the handling of databases and other things.

And I remember that before all this, before I had this Sinclair, it was with an old childhood friend, that we are no longer friends because he did not want to have more contact with me, that with an Atari 800 that he won in a contest in a record store, we started to test how things were programmed and how things were done.

Because I remember that the Atari had a code of several programs, of samples, in which a cart was drawn, it was shown how different color lines were made on the screen.

And I remember that the code was very long. And between my friend, who is called Guillermo, and me, we each wrote a part of the code.

We spent four hours writing that code by hand. Two hours he and two hours I, so that after those 5,000 lines or 7,000 lines, which was a huge thing, we could see the lines that were drawn and that moved like a kind of spiral on the Atari 800.

And for nothing, because we were only seeing that for about half an hour or 40 minutes, we had to turn off the Atari, because he did not yet have the device to record the programs and keep them in a cassette.

We did not even have the money to buy that. That was the first skill I learned, basic programming, and it took me many years. Developing this skill for the challenge of having the computer and all that.

And the other skill that also has to do with video games is to draw in pixel art, which was a more recent challenge that I managed to overcome about two or three years ago.

I would say that two and a half years, this great desire was born in me to be able to learn to draw in pixel art. And I took on the challenge.

I remember that the first drawings that I have shown you in other publications here at hive are precisely horrible, scary, and I was very bad.

I had no idea of the perspective, of how to do things.

Bing AI

And little by little, watching YouTube videos and learning from several people here, like @Alviro2050, who was my tutor and my mentor in this pixel art, was that I was gaining more experience and also seeing the drawings and techniques that other artists use, I was improving little by little, practicing.

And today I do very beautiful pixel art.

It was very difficult for me to learn all this because I did not have the skill.

I did not know how to draw with a mouse and I did not have any kind of concepts about the theory of colors or how to make shadows or drawing techniques or painting.

So that was something very challenging for me. But at the same time, I think that was what allowed my brain to learn this skill so quickly because it was something completely new.

And today I am very happy with this pair of skills and things I have learned.

And currently I am developing my own video game that, by the way, I have time that I do not dedicate to this for occupations of daily life.

But yes, it is developing and I am in the stage of making the map, let's say, of the entire video game continent and all that. Sprites and animations and all that are on the way.

So I really liked talking about this topic today.

I think it is a very exciting topic and I hope and encourage everyone and each one of you that if you have something that is difficult for you, that is difficult to learn, go practicing it and go dedicating with discipline a little time daily and you will see that over time, as you practice more and more, you will be able to master and enjoy that skill or that knowledge that you want to learn so much.

Thanks for reading, your comments will be very apreciated.

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