TEAM FORTRESS UNIVERSE - Part 2: "The Tech-Knowledgy Engineer"

TEAM FORTRESS UNIVERSE - Part 2: "The Tech-Knowledgy Engineer"To continue these bi-weekly articles, leading up to my project's official launch, I feel the need to offer some personal info since it's very important to understand my immense love for video games and how far back it goes.My first game console was the Atari 2600. I saw friends get a Commodore 64 a few the years after that, but was part of a working class family who had no money to spend on something that may be wasted. I always wanted to program, but never had the devices to do it properly. As I was starting to reach adulthood, my father passed away suddenly. It was one month before his retirement, and at the very least, would have given some money to myself and my mother. Because he died before the last thirty days had gone by, we got zero. He had been in the sanitation trade for a ridiculous amount of time, was a part-time taxi driver and waxed the floors at Westinghouse once a week. He was a great dad, fought as a soldier during wartime, was able to fix and build things with zero effort, as well as remaining a hard and honest worker up to his final moments. The engineer characters of TFC and TF2 remind me of him to this very day.Insurance gave us $10k. Just enough to survive for a few months. Upon a promise given to me during his last few months, for my 21st birthday, she made sure I recieved a cheap computer and monitor for the first time in my life. A 286/12 running mostly in DOS. A friend told me to get the most out of it, I need to join his chat room and he'd make me a System Operator (Sysop) so he can jump in and take control, showing how to perform certain functions as I watched. I was hardly able to type at first, but slowly became addicted to the Bulletin Board System scene. I was a member of iCE, was a sysop of about three BBSes over the years and became a prime source for people to get their ANSI artwork done. But, within a few years, it faded because something else was being introduced worldwide... The Internet.A few years came and went, but I was using the same old computer. Then the worst thing that can happen at the moment, changed my life forever... my mother was admitted to the hospital's critial care unit and never survived a severe case of pneumonia. Literally, soon after my father was gone, I was now left alone in the world to fend for myself. Secretly, and I still don't know how she did it... mom saved practically every dime I gave her as a young adult and I bought a better, previously used PC. Having worked the last few years as a student and apprentice to two of the greatest artists I ever knew (which we will get into during a later chapter), it was now time to make my own life one worth living.Since that day: I have independently embraced and taught illustration/design techniques through digital and non-digital media, learned HTML since before 2.0 was finalized (currently HTML5), learned CSS since it was first introduced (up to the most recent CSS3), and during that period of time - to this day - have picked up books teaching myself ASP/VBScript, PHP, SQL, JavaScript, JQuery, and tons of other programming languages. I have never taken a day of college in my life but have always communicated with other professionals to learn, teach, and discuss.Team Fortress Universe will soon be the result of that experience. It started with creating a screenplay based on Team Fortress Classic and has been updated in story and delivery over many years. It's gone from classic HTML to tableless and responsive code. Gone from secured ASP to a more secured PHP (using OpenID for a good portion of our authentication), and is still using the same data structure I've worked on for a very long time. It capitalizes on the knowledge I've gained from search engine optimization, marketing, but most of all... an appreciation to the development and design of my most favorite games over the years.From the end of August, you will start to see the following domains exist past their current forms, each delivering specific content to the fans of the world(s) presented within Team Fortress: TEAMFORTRESSINDUSTRIES.COM , INDUSTRIES.TF, BUILDERSLEAGUEUNITED.COM GRAVELPITGAZETTE.COM and TEUFORTTIMES.COM . Being supported, through an original storyline by TEAMFORTRESSUNIVERSE.COM TF2UNIVERSE.COM and TF2NIVERSE.COM . Eventually resulting in the launch of both STEAMSTATS.COM and VALVECON.COM Get ready folks. You may have seen fan-fiction in the past, but this will be quite original, extensive, and extremely supportive of the community at hand.To Be Continued...