It has been awhile since I utilized this site and made any posts. Needless to say a lot has changed in my life since 2019. I wanted to make a re-introduction post to explain what I’ve been up to recently and what’s new since I created this site.
Starting a game company
My “side hustle” is no longer trying to start a game company, at least right now. At some point after making that original introduction post, I realized I enjoyed game development much more when I treated it purely as a hobby in my free time. I like being able to focus on making what I want at the pace I want. By treating gamedev as just a hobby, I can make fan games or small standalone demos since I don’t have to worry about marketability or anything like that.
I still want to release an original game of my own one day, but I’m less interested in making a career out of game development. If I happen to eventually release something that sells enough or gets enough support to sustain me full-time, then that’s great, but it is no longer the end goal. For now, I just want to work on improving my skills and getting game projects out into the world for people to play.
Engine development
I am also no longer trying to learn OpenGL and make a game engine from scratch. In the same way I realized I enjoy game development as a hobby rather than a “side hustle,” I realized I enjoy designing and implementing gameplay systems and levels more than I’m interested in making a game engine. Since the beginning of 2020, I’ve been using Unreal Engine 4 and have been enjoying its workflow. I’ve since made a couple game projects in it, to varying levels of completeness. I may revisit some of those unfinished projects in a future post.
What’s next?
My main goal for this year is to release more game projects. There are a couple fan game projects I have in mind and I want to release betas for them by the end of this year. Another goal of mine is to be more active with this site. My main focus for the site will be making tutorials and writing technical articles about game development problems I faced and how I solved them. I think within the Unreal Engine community, we’re lacking in community-made resources compared to other engines like Unity and Godot. I’m a big proponent of knowledge sharing, and want to make sure there are high quality guides out there for Unreal Engine.
New site features
I’ve started to add more pages to the site aside from blog posts. Along with the site, I’ve also set up a self-hosted Git service for my game projects and libraries. You can find that under the “Portfolio” tab at the top of the page. You can also find links to my GitLab and GitHub under that same tab as well.
Like always, I hope you enjoy your stay! Stay tuned for more blog posts in the near future.