It’s all well and good to have an idea for a video game but have you ever actually tried creating one? Do you know how difficult coding is, how tough it is to make something from nothing? And I had to start at nothing, after all – that was the point. If I stole from something else or if I took from another source then I wasn’t really creating it, was I? It was still going to have the limitations, still stuck within the boundaries, within the confines of someone else’s limitations.

So I needed to learn how to code and man, what a daunting task that was.

After many Google searches, far too many Wikipedia pages and a slew of poor online tutorials I was no further to learning how to code than I was to mastering my fear of Koala bears (it’s the beady little eyes) but I did land on a thread that I could pull at. Turns out that some of the greatest painters learned how to draw by copying pictures their predecessors did; dissecting images drawn by the great masters and trying to retrace them. Even composers worked in a similar way recreating movements that inspired them so they could learn as well.

So why not start the same?

The first game I tried to delve into was one of my all-time favourite games called “Half-Life.” It’s a game by Valve that follows a scientist turned bad-ass who, after a particularly difficult time with a teleportation beam, jacks up a bunch of aliens with a crowbar. I really didn’t learn much from that first delve into coding (admittedly I may have gotten sidetracked into playing Half Life) but I did spend a lot of time looking at the code broken down. C++ was no longer my grade score but a language that I was starting to learn and slowly but surely I began to extract pieces from the games engine and recreate them on my own.

Honestly, all of this is going to be confusing to you and it doesn’t really matter the detailed ins and outs, suffice it to say that I only got so far before hitting a wall. Despite my eagerness to learn, my limitations; both mental and physical, were a roadblock; enter Mr. Derrigar.

Mr. Derrigar was a librarian in my town whom I had come into contact with once or twice. He was always quick to recommend some flashy science fiction novel to a visitor or chat about HP Lovecraft but more than that he was the only adult I was aware of that loved gaming and knew about coding. Unfortunately it wasn’t me he shared this information with (again, this is what no friends means) but I’d overheard him enough times that I felt confident he was the person who could help me.

It took literally everything I had to walk up to Mr. Derrigar’s help desk. My palms were sweaty and other than mom’s spaghetti in my stomach, I had all the remaining Eminem ailments. I remember saying something pretty stupid like,

“H-hey Mr. Derrigar? My name is Lester and I know you like computers.”

Stolen novel; please report.

He must have thought I was off my rocker, as my grandmother would say. I remember the slow way he brought his eyes up from the book he was reading to meet my gaze. The confused and calm way that he spoke without really understanding the words that came from his mouth,

“I do like computers. Do you like computers too?” he said with an arched eyebrow. Looking back I’m not sure if he was being funny and matching my bizarre confused tone or taken aback by the way I approached him but for better or worse we began talking.

I couldn’t say that Mr. Derrigar, Drew as I would eventually be encouraged to call him, was a friend exactly. He knew that I was asking him for help but I think as the weeks rolled by he became invested in me, like a project. I was hesitant to tell him about Dunn, not because of any doubt that he would enjoy the concept but because I was worried I’d fall into the long line of creative types who carry around a notebook and never do anything with it. No, I wanted Dunn to have meat on the bone before spurting on about it. Regardless, Mr. Derrigar offered experience and tutelage but the library was where the real creamy center was; the library had computers. Good ones too.

It was obviously Mr. Derrigar who recommended the gaming computers in the study lounge, his knowledge and experience was undeniable and the amount of hardware in the library was impressive. When it wasn’t being hogged by StarCraft League Player wannabe’s, Mr. Derrigar and I were spending hours and hours on coding, tutorials and detailed code running – this is what we called scanning games for lines of code and recreating them. In all honesty, looking back on it now, these were my favourite days. The days where Dunn was an idea and not a reality, pun intended.

For my 14th birthday I asked for money and only money. The library was a haven but I had outgrown the teachings Drew offered (in the best way possible) and I was ready to start creating Dunn from the ground up and that meant I needed a system at home capable of more than Minecraft on Medium settings. It meant I needed hardware and high quality hardware at that. It meant I needed cash-ola as my dad would say.

Luckily, my family came through. There was no doubt that my hobby had spun into passion had spun into work. To my parents, despite the negative sound of it, me focusing on something that kept my head down, my grades up and my interests occupied meant that they could spend more time with my brother. I know at times it bothered them, made them feel a bit like bad parents but it was best for everyone involved, especially me. Days after my birthday my parts were bought; my PSU, CPU, GPU, Motherboard, Case, RAM & software were all installed and when the little green light blinked on and the CPU fan whirred softly, Ramen was born.

Okay, okay, why did I name my computer Ramen? Well, I wanted “Ra” because he was the Egyptian god of life; some believed he was the creator of all things, he who wept from the stars above and created man. Feels fitting, no? If I was to create Dunn I thought it apt to inspire the idea of creation within my system was Ra… except Microsoft requires a minimum of 5 characters to name your PC and thus my Egyptian inspired PC became instant noodles.