One of the things that I have wanted to do for a long time (since high school, when I saw one of the other students making a simple side-scroller during lunch breaks), either as a hobby or professionally, is game development. It's why I took a two-year programming course twice. (I initially flunked the VB and ASP .Net modules, since I had no interest in languages and technologies not used in game development. To this day, VB .Net still disgusts me.)
After over a decade as a professional software and Web developer, I am still no closer to developing games (not even simple text-driven ones, never mind with ncurses). I like C for its simplicity and elegance, but barely know it. I have no love for pointers, since they always end up confusing me and are a source of some very interesting (read confounding) bugs in my code. I'm in the same boat with C++. While I know Java, I feel like it's taking C++, keeping the shitty parts, throwing away the cool parts and adding memory management. C#, on the other hand, is keeping the cool parts of C++ and adding memory management. (It's what Java should have been. Java is for developers who need spectacles, because they can't C#.)
Anyway, to come back from that brief stroll down (Bad) Memory Lane, I've spent the last week or so looking at a number of game development engines and tools (Game Maker, RPG Maker, Godot, Leadwerks, Unity and Unreal), to see which one(s) will be best to use as my starting point for beginning game development. Although I know C#, Godot and Unity (which use it) might not actually be the best tools for me in the short term (although I will need to learn at least one of them at some point). The reason for this is that although making great games that I can sell and list on a portfolio will definitely require writing code, I'm not anywhere near that point yet. There's still a lot that I need to learn about artwork (not just sprites), design, light maps, physics, storyboarding, soundtracks, shading and a bucket-load of concepts I probably don't even know I don't know. Having a somewhat constrained tool that hides the coding aspect might actually be a better initial learning tool than some highly capable behemoth, even if it means not producing absolutely stellar games from the get go (not that that has stopped certain individuals from doing that with them; see the links below this post). For that reason, I'm going to focus on learning Game Maker and RPG Maker before moving on to Godot and Unity. I might even be able to leverage them to the point of making something decent enough to sell on the Unreal Launcher (and possibly Steam, although I'll have to charge at least 30% more just to cover Valve's fees).
There's also the VTube stuff (which is a lot more involved and time-consuming than I realised, particularly since I want to create my own avatar and not pay some rando hundreds of US dollars or thousands of Yen for one).
I still have quite a long journey (at least several months of learning, never mind development) ahead of me to get there (and I also need to focus on finding a job to pay the bills while I do). For the time being, I am gathering resources and tutorials (including watching videos that compare the various tools, weighing up the pros and cons). I plan to write a future post that summarises what I've found and tried (since I've purchased and/or downloaded a number of tools on Steam), but it won't be this post.
Right now, I'm going to bed. Working outdoors on a flesh-searingly hot day has left me tired and sunburnt, despite wearing three layers of clothing for protection. It was worth every minute I spent with funny and sweet pooches. So much to do, not enough Snark time ...
Until next time,
Snark Out!
Thumbnail image: Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
