Sam Castle

Game Development & Design Portfolio

Contact

mlc8776@rit.edu

About me

Intro

I love spending my free time creating and developing games or applications. It is a dream of mine to be able to work on a team and develop a game that we all put every ounce of effort we had into. Starting at around age 8, my father introduced me to coding. Ever since, I've been fascinated with it and take every chance I get to learn more. It wasn't until 8th grade that I decided I wanted to program games in specific.

Why games? - Computer Science

Ever since I was young, I loved programming. The first thing I ever got to program was an Arduino, which my father gifted to me when I was about eight. I loved creating and learning how to make new things with it. I followed along with the little book that came along with the breadboard and Arduino, completing all the exercises in no time. The more I got to learn, the more I realized just how many possibilities there were to what was possible with code, and I wanted to try it all. I remember spending hours and hours making pointless little inventions just because I could, just because I wanted to experiment with a new concept, like while loops and switch statements. I still have that same curiosity and drive to learn more and conquer those kinds of challenges.

Why games? - Storytelling

When I was around 12, I got into story writing. I had an idea for this amazing book, and I tried numerous times to make it. I think part of the reason I wanted to make stories was because of my ADHD. I was always daydreaming, my imagination was always filled with ideas. It's still a mystery to me why I found it so much fun to just write for hours on end. However, I knew I was young. I knew I didn't know everything about the world. So, I spent a long time researching and trying to understand how real writers do it, how real writers plan out their novels and write in such a way that the reader can picture the scene in their head, but not too much that the entire book is just descriptions.

I still write to this day. The same plot. I haven't given up on that dream of a novel. Back then, I was only twelve, so there were many plot holes and things that I just payed no attention to that I have spent five years refining and developing into a fully coherent and fleshed out world with fully developed characters. In eleventh grade, I even went to a Young Writers Conference in Vermont to learn more and get more input from actual authors.

Why games? - Problem-solving

There is another hobby I have yet to mention. I love jigsaw puzzles. They help me concentrate and think through things. Similarly to writing, I think part of why this is has to do with my ADHD. I can be solving something while also doing something with my hands, which I find helps me concentrate.

I started off with smaller puzzles, like 200 pieces or 300 pieces, but now I consider 1000 pieces "small". When a puzzle is big, I can spend a longer amount of time working on it and letting myself think about things. I never liked breaking them apart afterwards, so I always flip the entire thing over (a very difficult maneuver) and tape the back so that it can be displayed. Currently, the walls of my room are not visible. They are covered in puzzles. The hallway outside my room has puzzles. Even my bedroom ceiling has puzzles (Not shown in picture because it's in the other corner). My room is practically a museum of puzzles.

After doing so many, I have gotten to be pretty efficient at putting them together and can now do 1000 pieces puzzles in a day or two. It has also helped me spot patterns or ways to solve things in real life situations, because a lot of things are really just a big puzzle.

Why games? - The fusion

Many people will agree with me when I say that I am a very creative and independent person. I never stick to just one hobby, I'm always jumping from one thing to the next. Drawing, writing, coding, puzzles, sewing, building with K'NEX, or any other random thing I suddenly got interested in. That's how I am. It's actually a symptom of ADHD. If I'm genuinely interested in what I'm working on, I dive in head first and give it everything I have. I don't always need guidance on these things either. All those things I mentioned I learned by myself just because I wanted to learn something new.

This meant that I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I always thought I wanted to be a computer scientist like my father, but as I gained more and more interests, I started to think I wanted to be something else. I spent multiple years trying to write a book, just to see if I could and if it was a plausible career.

In my mind, those were my top two paths for what career choices I had: Computer scientist or Writer/Author. There was no middle ground. I couldn't decide, I loved both. When I was in the school robotics club and was coding, I would be convinced that I wanted to be a computer scientist, but then when the robotics season would end, I would be convinced that I should be a writer.

When I found out that I could make games, I was ecstatic. I don't even play games that often, but it was the perfect solution. Games have both programming and storytelling! And there's an actual major for it, and real jobs! That is why I want to make games. It's the perfect combination of creativity and logic.

My first attempts: Processing and P5.JS

The first platform I found to start trying to make games was Processing 3, a Java platform. I spent some time learning about it, particularly from Daniel Shiffman, a college professor who uses Processing 3 to teach coding. He had parts of his course online for students to go back to and re-watch, or for anyone else to learn. Eventually, I started to want to be able to share my work, and it wasn't very easy to do that with Processing. However, there was another type of Processing, P5.JS, the JavaScript version of it. So, I started using that, which allowed me to simply share a link with my friends if I wanted to show them what I did.

The switch to Unity

After doing a few projects on P5.JS, I started to look into other programs to use. Unity was always a platform I thought of using, so eventually, I decided to install it. It took a lot of time to understand half of how it worked. Unity has so many features already built in to utilize with so many options, it takes a lot of reading through API's, watching tutorials, and skimming through forums to understand it. Once I got the hang of it though, it was a lot of fun and fulfilling to use.

Walls o' puzzles

College

After getting into college, I got to learn about more game design and coding techniques that improved my capability more, and I'm still learning. Creating games and coming across challenges will always be one of my biggest passions. Even if it's not games, creating some type of application with interesting solutions will always be fun.

The dream

I've always had this dream to make the story that I've been developing for five years into a game. All the characters in it are very fleshed out, but the plot and story of it has fallen apart. Hopefully one day, it can turn into a real game that people can experience for themselves.