In my ambitions of making this blog as confusing as possible so as to make my interests and goals appear as fuddled as they are in real life, I decided to throw away the idea of using a proprietary tool for game development (see: Unreal) four months ago. On top of that I decided to switch up the project.
So what the hell is this guy doing now? Sticking to my C++ guns consarn it! I want to make my own game using pure C++ and any necessary libraries that enable that. As much as I was enjoying Unreal and the idea of learning it to make myself more marketable in the industry (did I mention I finally landed my first job in the industry?) I found that I was spending far too much time learning a tool and engine as opposed to understanding game engines and development fundamentals themselves.
This isn’t to say Unreal doesn’t teach you things about those topics, but between debugging its problems and watching too many videos that told me what to do vs what I was doing at a fundamental level, I wasn’t having fun. My original goal was to learn as much as I can about game development, and to an extent Unreal felt limiting on that end. When I inevitably go back to it, I want to go back to it understanding everything that goes into making something like it, so it could be fully appreciated.
Of course it’s also worth saying, I always wanted to make a 2D game before I got into the wickedness that is 3D. Unreal is not famous for being a great tool for making 2D games. Unity is seemingly the engine of choice for 2D folks but I did not want to switch to Unity just to get that ability. All tools are just that, they have their own problems and charms, but I wasn’t looking for a way to rapidly develop something I couldn’t do on my own. I also wasn’t just trying to move as fast to the gameplay stage as possible. I really wanted to do-it-myself as a means by which to learn and make all the problems my own. If it’s any indication that I made the right choice, I finally have been working on one project for more than three days. I’m on month three if we’re counting and I can feel myself settling into it and enjoying it.
So what is the project? When I first got my dog, Kona, she had a knack for breaking out and going on a spree of rabbit chasing, full out zoomies, and doing what a cut loose dog does – wreaking havoc across the landscape. When I was walking her last year the idea popped into my head that I could make a game out of her foyers. You’re the dog, you have a limited time window of freedom, you want to stir the pot, and you have limited time. What do you do with that time before the owner catches up? Stir some shit up and earn points of course.
During this walk I just was hit with the creative lightning I rarely get. I was inventing gameplay mechanics and getting juiced up thinking about all the fun and appeal that a game like this could have, even if no one but me ever played it. So I went home and wrote it all down. That was months before I picked up Unreal so the idea was always stirring in my head. I’ve just gotten around to prioritizing it.
I was also lucky enough to have my lifelong friend, an audio nut and owner of his own audio design company express interest and decide to join me in making this project. All it’s “costing” me is his favorite dog as a playable sprite. In return I get professional sound design and soundtrack experience.
Anyhow, I am genuinely excited to be moving forward with this and be doing it with a great friend and talent. I plan on providing updates on some of what I’ve learned and worked through recently in future posts. If it doesn’t come soon, I apologize to the zero people reading this, learning pixel art and getting in the weeds of collision detection have been enjoyable and time consuming. So until then, adios muchachos.