User:Volatar

Some history (Needs editing for point of view and wiki-formatting. Also needs categorical separation, such as the real person, "Volatar", gaming, and programming)
So I am the guy currently known as Volatar.

A little history: I first got online in 1999. I wasn't browsing around though, I mostly just played flash games. My first online identity was on Lego.com. I could not come up with a unique name for the life of me (8 year old creativity = nil). Eventually I did come up with the name "xxnm". I still don't know where that came from, but I used that name for a while. When I joined Runescape (yes, it sucks, but I liked it then just like everyone else) xxnm was taken so I became xxnm13.

Later, after I had quit Runesuck I wandered for a bit between games. I played Freelancer for a while under the name Exodous. I initially thought I was spelling Exodus correctly when I typed Exodous. I was totally oblivious to all the people that tried to point it out (or laughed at me) for about a year. Once I figured it out I kept the misspelling anyways. I got XFire during this period.

After Freelancer I returned to MMO's, though I could not find a good F2P one. ($15 a month is a lot for an 8th grader) I don't remember how, but at some point I stumbled upon the open alpha for Minions of Mirth.

MoM was fun for a while. One night I was up rather late grinding a new character in the Trinst sewers. AoE spell + hoards of rats = EXP! I actually got my character from level 10, to level 35/20/8 in just a few hours that way. (Josh Ritter, the developer, changed how XP was given after that night. In all honesty it [i]was[/i] too easy, but he changed it too much, and the game became a slow grindfest after that patch.) I was not alone in those sewers though. That night I was in a party with a guy named Aegis. Between spawns we chatted a bunch. We shared a number of interests, namely gaming and game development. He invited me to his site called Eclipse Games.

Aegis later became Gyrofalcon, and then he became just Gyro.

Eclipse Games... wow the nostalgia. I was 14, and stupid. But I had dreams of awesome game development, and never lost those dreams.

Eclipse Games slowly died, and I drifted away for a while. I started playing Eve Online, as I finally had enough money to pay for it. When I first created my Eve character I knew I would be playing it for a while, and needed it to be good. I spend a long time contemplating a new name for myself. I typed in different ideas, but always backspaced them. After hours I finally came up with the name of Volatar.

Volatar was a female Caldari. Though she was blonde, she had the look of a war veteran, doubly so with the piece of shrapnel embedded in her left cheek. [url=http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/9853/724286749.jpg](Here's her picture)[/url] I played Eve as her for the next 2 years.

Somewhere in the middle of those two years I remembered Eclipse Games, and looked for it. It had disappeared. I was sad. I kept my sadness at bay by teaching myself Photoshop.

After a time, I discovered that I had not totally lost Gyro, MiDiMaN, Kuraitou (who was orcfan32 at the time) and everyone else. In fact, most everyone from EG had moved to a new site Gyro had created, called Digital Aeon. Digital Aeon lasted for a while, and while in DA we began the habit of all hanging out in the same chatroom together at all times we were online (though it wasn't a requirement or anything, we all just enjoyed it). Most of the time we were in DA we used an XFire chatroom. In game chat is very convenient, as is knowing when someone is playing a game - you know why they are not chatting as much, and it also provides topics of conversation.

Eventually I caved, got Steam (this was before the Steam Community), and got HL2 + HL2:E1 on sale for $15, and then bought GMod. We had lots of fun with the Digital Aeon dedicated server. We also played a host of other games. Fun times.

Second semester of my Senior year of high school (First half of 2008) I suddenly became a programmer. [quote][21:02] «DΛ»κμяάιτσυ (kuraitou): Programming isn't for everyone; side effects may include diarrhea, headaches, dizziness, nausea, and insomnia. Ask your doctor before use.[/quote] How true Kuraitou is.

I learned C++ and one day, after a few days of planning, I sat down and programmed Arena 1.0. I then spent the rest of the semester improving it.

Though I float in an out of actually programming things, I have never wavered from the plan to have Computer Science as my major in college. I may not end up in game development as a career, but it will always be a hobby.

Hello Wikipedia. :)