Tuesday, February 6, 2007

C Spot Run (Die, Puns. Die.)

 When you dive head-first into something, sometimes you can come to realization that you have a bit of wading to do before you're ready to swim.  Such is the case in the project I've started.

It's been about seven years since I've done any coding in C (and even then, it was a basic dabble).  However, it has been something I have wanted to learn for a long time since.  There's just something about creation and the work itself to make things function properly that's always been fascinating to me.  I have always been looking for a project to cut my teeth on, and thankfully I stumbled onto something that I really found a passion for.  

I have been playing the Eastside Hockey Manager games since its freeware days, and it is - bar none - the best representation of hockey you can play.  Text-based sims rarely get the love that console-based video games do, but this is just one of those programs that have found a home on my iBook (and before that, my PC) and never get removed.

When I read that the EHM jersey was being raised up into the banners due to a few reasons I won't go into here, I discovered upon visiting the official forums that the data structures for the data files were well documented and that the data could be manipulated to enhance the EHM2007 experience.  I had found my project.

As I read through the books I own (I have a surprising amount of ones geared toward Dummies), a lot of my old knowledge is coming back along with the realisation that there is a lot of stuff I have yet to learn.  I love that; I love the fact that not only am I learning something new but at the same time I could also - somewhere far down the line - provide something that could benefit other people as well.

It's going to be a long road; I don't deny that for a second.  That being said though, it's one I am really looking forward to and hope that when I hang up my skates on this project, I can take the same pride I hope to have in my work that everyone at the EHM team should have in theirs.

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