Since my blog is getting more popular, and it has a lot more page views then it did a month ago, I am going to do a detailed post on how I got into architecture. You won't believe how every little event led up to this day. Welcome to a special edition of my blog called, "How Did I Get into Architecture?"
I always had a thing for creativity. I felt like it was an important part in my life, and I loved to build from a very young age. I started off constructing with these little wooden blocks that were different shapes, sizes, and colors. The little structures I created were almost as tall as me sometimes. Lincoln Logs were also very fun for me to play with. Since I went to Colorado Springs almost every year, I loved building the little log cabins.
Then I discovered Thrillville. This was a theme park game designed by Lucas Arts. You had the ability to design theme parks and walk around in them. You also could create the roller coasters in your park which you could ride. I felt great about the game, and because of it I wanted to be a roller coaster designer. After Thrillville, I bought Thrillville Off the Rails on the PSP. Off the Rails brought a new aspect to the roller coasters in Thrillville, allowing you to now make the roller coasters jump from one track to another. Thrillville eventually became dull, and I was searching for a new game. Then I heard of the game that would change my life forever, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3! (RCT3)
RCT3 brought a whole new experience to the engineering and designing aspect. The game looked better and had a better feel. It was also way more customizable. You even could see your parks from any angle! I got the game...I think...around Christmas 2007. At first I had trouble playing it, and I remember just giving up. About a month later I tried the game again, and this time it worked out. I could play it!
My first park was ironically named "Frontier City." It is ironic because Oklahoma City has that exact theme park. (I've been to Frontier City so much I can't even count!) Anyway, the park looked horrible, but being a 10-year-old I didn't care. It looked kind of bad because it didn't have any trees! But I wasn't that familiar with the game anyway. I would show you guys some pictures, but the park was accidentally overwrited because I "wasn't that familiar with the game!" The park did reach almost 3,000 guests! (which is a lot for the game's standards) An even bigger park that I created was called Sand Stone. It had more than 4,000 guests. It is so big that the frame rate drops tremendously when you come into it!
I played the game like that for years until I saw Steven's RCT3 Videos. Also called Alloria, he is a guy in the UK that creates amazing RCT3 structures. (I've posted his videos on my blog before.) What really inspired me to start building cities in a theme park game was Alloria's city backdrops that he used for an intro to his parks. They are amazing! As you have seen from my blog, I've posted pictures of my cities that I have created throughout the years.
Where does my blog come into this? Well, RCT3 pretty much won me over to be an architect, but that is not what made me create my blog in the first place. This is where things led up to when I created my blog. First, when I came into 7th grade, I had 7th hour classes that I could choose for the three tri-mesters. (sports, media, spanish, etc.) I chose media for my first tri-mester. In this class we were assigned a blog with a topic, and we had certain requirements that we had to meet. It seems pretty strict, and it was, but it made me better at writing.
One of the requirements was that you couldn't use the same word in a paragraph. This is kind of hard to explain so let me show you. For example, if I wrote, "I like architecture. I also like roller coasters." I wouldn't be able to use the letter "I" then "also like roller coasters." because "I" had already been used in the previous sentence as the first letter. But as I said these requirements taught me how to be a better writer.
I also chose media as my third tri-mester, which is now. This time I had a choice between two classes: The previous class with requirements, or my science teacher's class called Advanced Media. Here we learned HTML and Javascript, which are computer code languages. Then we got to create a blog about any topic that we wanted. I thought about it at first and then chose architecture! I started this blog in mid-January of 2011, and it is now mid-April and has over 1,000 page views! This blog has grown so much, and I want to thank all those architecture blogs out there that have given me inspiration for new ideas. I am very excited about what my blog will be like in the future. And by the way, I see a very bright future ahead. Anyway thanks for reading and enjoy that ARCHITECTURE!
- Zach
P.S. Wow! That took a long time! I'm about to break a sweat! ; )
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