ABOUT ME
Profile
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Name: Alex Kong
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Age: 20
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Base of Operations: Texas, United States
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Programming Languages: C#, Java, Python
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Primary Game Engine: Unity
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Software Skills: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, Autodesk Maya, Audacity, CyberLink PowerDirector, GIMP, TouchDesigner, Visual Studio
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Where You Can Find Me: Discord, Twitter, LinkedIn, Itch.io, Twitch
My Story
My name is Alex Kong, and I've been creating and designing games for nearly two years. I love creating things on my own, from games and systems to websites and even logos. As an independent game developer and programmer, I'm constantly searching for ways to improve my code and my design philosophies.
My love for creating things stems from my early childhood. My parents introduced me to Battle for Middle-Earth, an RTS game based on the Lord of the Rings universe. This game, and its sequel, sparked my interest in game design and my passion for creating. I spent hours using the game's Worldbuilder tool to create new maps to play on, and experimented with the software's terrain-sculpting features. Around the age of 10, I created a paper-and-pencil game I simply called "Battlefield;" it used graph paper and various letters and other symbols to mimic an RTS game. I would draw mountains, lakes, and other landscape features on a sheet of graph paper as a "map," denote starting points for players, and introduce others to this game I created. It was a hit among a number of people within my school, with whom I began a mock tournament to generate hype. I even went as far as to create "factions," designing lore for each and giving players the option to choose the faction they played for. I then expanded the basis of the tournament to revolve around a global war - classic Risk style. For all intents and purposes, I created a miniature MMO...in physical form.
The game would eventually die out as people moved away and I changed schools. My love for creating still remained, however, and the hundreds of thousands of LEGO pieces we collected over the years gave me the perfect outlet to flex my design and storytelling muscles. I spun a narrative of two brothers, warriors and adventurers, who traveled space and time to encounter new places, new people, and new problems. They wielded two powerful swords: Durendal, the golden blade, and Excalibur, the silver. These weapons evolved just as their owners did with every experience, every battle. A growing evil loomed upon the horizon, however, and the story would grow in scope as greater and greater threats emerged. Battles were fought everywhere. In a desperate search for a solution, for something that could better resist this evil, one brother gave into evil himself, attempting to fight fire with fire. Excalibur, his blade, became a part of him, reshaping his left hand into a silver claw. The two brothers eventually came to odds and fought one another...a battle that ended with the restoration and purifying of the corrupted brother. The two, together again, gathered their allies for one final, massive battle on the broken fields of an ashen planet. It was here that the definite story ended. I left most of the progression and resolution of the battle open for exploration, and I would spend the remainder of my childhood experimenting with different ways the battle could have ended.
Possibly a rather cliched storyline, but a storyline I enjoyed nonetheless. I would soon discover ways to bring my ideas to life through software, using Java to create small games that, now, are lost. I entered my first year of college at the University of Texas at Austin as an Arts and Entertainment major - game design was my profession of choice. At first, I was anxious. I love creating things, but what would my role as a developer be? Would I be able to keep myself sustained? Most importantly, to me, would I still love creating things if I chose to do so as a career?
I spent my first semester in a back-and-forth state as I worried about my skillset and my future. Ultimately, however, my fears were allayed as I got further and further into developing. I spent the following three semesters designing game concepts and creating them in Unity, and I developed a passion for systems design. I loved creating health, combat, and other interaction systems, and I also loved creating AI and expanding upon the code I wrote through inheritance. Furthermore, I realized that I could use my imagination to create programs for other people to use with Unity - I wrote a basic UI system for stats display for a team project, and a basic inventory system that made use of Item objects I had also created. Both systems were created with an end-user design in mind, allowing my teammates to use and manipulate the code to their own needs. This discovery rekindled my original passion for designing and creating, and set me on the path I'm taking now, as an independent game developer and designer.
Now, I design and develop indie games. Desolation is the running name for my current project, a 2D exploration/survival side-scroller that makes use of extensive procedural generation systems. I regularly post updates on my projects right here via my blog, and my completed works and prototypes can be found in my Portfolio page.