Game Development Journey: Background
For those that aren’t aware, I spend my day sitting at a computer. As much as I may disagree with the title, I’m a “devops” engineer, I spend my day working on cloud computing infrastructure, writing code, and various related tasks. All this is to say that, despite not being a computer whiz when I was a kid, over the past decade, I’ve learned my way around computers and code. But despite a lifetime of playing video games, minus a few dry spells here and there (touched on in my “My First Video Game Memories” post), I really don’t know much about making video games.
Sure, I’m familiar with some basic tenets of game design, I know the major game engines and some other tools, and I know what I like in a game, I’ve never put a concerted effort into learning about what it takes to make a game. I gave myself a few “goals” or resolutions for 2024, and one of them being to learn more about game design and development, and to write more on this site, I think the only logical next step is to publish a series of posts on my journey learning more about game production. What this entails I’m not entirely sure yet, most likely some musings as I follow tutorials and such, with the overarching goal being the publishing of some very rudimentary games in later posts.
I have a cursory knowledge of some of the ecosystem of game engines, and I’ve tried multiple times to make my way through some Unity tutorials in the past, despite initial excitement, I’ve failed to stick with it. I think it’s a combination of biting off more than I can chew in terms of game dev, and I’ve found that my learning style isn’t always aligned with watching video tutorials, and I learn much better reading documentation on my own. Given Unity’s wild ride as a company through 2023, and my inability to really “click” with it in the past, I think I’ll be passing on Unity, for now at least. I’ve never engaged with Unreal Engine other than playing games made in UE, and given that Epic also did some not great stuff in 2023, and knowing that I am nowhere near ready for a tool of that caliber, I’ll be passing on UE as well.
This leads me to the intersection of a few of my other interests. Given the nature of my day job, I am avid consumer of open source software, as well as a contributor to the Kubernetes project. I became aware of tools like GB Studio and the Godot game engine earlier in 2023. As soon as I learned more about the availability of open source game tools, I began to contribute where I can, both monetarily, as well as documentation contributions. I am aware that GB Studio and Godot are very different tools, but to avoid the risk of boxing myself in before 2024 has even started, and to give myself the best chance to succeed in producing something that others can play before the end of 2024, I think giving myself an option to explore both GB Studio and Godot, will be for the best!
I also am aware of the myriad of other skills and tools that I have little to zero experience with, that could be something that you could practice for years before feeling any sort of confident with them. First up, the visual side, if I want to make Game Boy games, I’ll need to explore the realm of pixel art, and anything beyond that would need hundreds to thousands of hours of practice in Blender or other tools. I’ve got experience in music performance as a guitarist and a drummer, both for multiple decades, but I’m awful with a DAW and composition, if I wanted to ever put music in a game, I’d be starting from scratch. Storytelling, writing, dialogue, all are also skills I’ve not explored in years, not since creative writing over a decade ago. Am I saying I want to master all of these? Not at all, but I am excited to learn how much I don’t know, and to find with parts of games behind the scenes really resonate with me!
I don’t really know the cadence of posts I’ll be making for this project, my goal is at least two a month, but who knows what the future holds, between day job, bands and other hobbies, this is currently a lower priority, but we’ll see what the future holds! Here’s to learning new things in 2024!