What I’m Up To

It’s a long-standing tradition to start a website and slowly let it fall into disuse. Far be it from me to be the nail that sticks out, so don’t expect a ton of activity in the coming months. It’s also tradition to promise that you’re totally going to start using the site all the time any day. I’m not going to do that here. I never intended this site to be a blog, but rather a living archive of my various programming exploits. Still, it’s good to check in from time to time to clear out the cobwebs. I wouldn’t want a prospective employer, far in the future, to stumble across this website and assume I must have retired young. Believe me, I would, but willingness is only part of the equation.

Currently, I’m learning Unity. I did some job searches – out of curiosity – for game developer positions, and although I expected most of them to involve either Unity or Unreal Engine, I didn’t expect all of them to. So that’s today’s lesson: if you’re looking to get into game development, learn one of those. I chose Unity because I do actually have experience with it, having made a test “game” in it years back. No, you can’t see it. Not only does it no longer exist, but I wouldn’t want you to even if it did. Also, Unity is the engine of choice for smaller, indie projects. There have been some massive successes made in Unity from big companies, but nothing you’d call a AAA title. They use Unreal for that, if anything.

I say I’m “learning Unity”, but really what I’m doing is making a game and learning what I need to as I go along. I have started numerous game projects and only ever completed one, but this one I have a good feeling about. It’s a fairly simple game with a pretty unique concept behind it, so I’m pretty driven to get this one done.

Of course, I have absolutely no real information, much less an ETA, to offer at this point. Could be six months, could be three years. Such is the life of a solo developer who’s doing this as a hobby. I would like to get it done sooner than later. I do plan on selling it, and even if it just sells a couple hundred copies, I could always use five hundred bucks. And having a published, sold Unity game in your portfolio is invaluable in today’s market.

Once I’m comfortable enough to declare this game “almost ready” I’ll give some more details.