Null's Gamedev Journal - Week 1: Starting Off Slow
I'm a bit troubled on how to start writing something like this. I'm simply not that good at beginnings. That's a common problem for authors I've heard. That your opening sentence is the hardest one to write. Of course, by drawing attention to my inability to begin writing, I've begun to write. Perhaps it's a little cheap to cheat like this, but I'd rather cheat and begin writing than sit and agonize over how to begin. But I'll make an effort to start more earnestly in future entries.
If you've read the title, you may have made the reasonable guess that this is the first part of a weekly series. You'd be correct in that assumption. I've wanted to begin writing for some time but I'm usually so hard on myself that I make the entire process so unenjoyable that I quit. My hope is that writing regularly will give me the experience I need to express myself more coherently in speech as well as writing. I tend to meander, you see.
As for my choice of topic, naturally it's video games. I've been playing games literally as far back as I can remember. They've played an important part in my growth and development as a person. More recently I've decided that I simply must make video games. It's not just a matter of wanting to do it, I feel that if I don't, I'd be wasting my potential. It's a bit of an odd thought to think the best use of my potential is making games and not something more obviously significant like devoting myself to furthering some sort of science or cause. But no matter how I think about it, it seems that I'll be able to do the most good for the world making games.
I've only been programming about 2 years now. And even then, I've not been taking it seriously at all times. In all honesty, I'm a little too old at this point to recklessly go chasing after wild dreams with all my energy. Well. I'm only 20 so I'm not particularly old at all, but I'm at the point where I've made financial self-sufficiency a priority. In the near future, I'd like to have a house and a family and enough money to keep that family relatively safe. In order to achieve that goal, it's best if I stick to working hard at a stable day-job. So until game development is a more stable enterprise, I'll have to stick to doing it in my spare time.
In the past, I've dabbled in basically every major game engine. I've tried Unity, Unreal, Gamemaker, and more recently Godot. As a programmer and a bit of a control freak, though, I've decided to go a little more low-level and use SDL as the base to build my game off of. At present, all I've got is some base level code to open a window, or else I'd be offering some screenshots. I have a fairly solid idea of what type of game I'll be building, but I'll be waiting to describe the details until next week.
I have a few rules and goals for myself relating to game development. Well that's a lie. I have one rule and one goal. I'm sure I'll think of more in the future, though. I'll make sure to write them down as I think of them.
Rule 1: All of my game development will be self-funding. In other words, the only money I'll spend on game development is the money I earn from game development. That can come from selling games or it can come from making popular posts on Steemit or finding support on Kickstarter or Patreon or something like that. Basically I'm just not going to spend the money I make off of my dayjob.
Goal 1: Sometime in 2019, I'd like to earn enough money to afford the hosting fees for a website. This is a pretty minor goal. Like less than $5 a month. But it would be a big step for me.
As for my writing schedule, I hope to be able to write something each week. Sunday is the day where I disallow myself from doing work, but I'd say writing whatever I want like this isn't really work. If anything, it's more like stress relief.
I have a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head, and I'd like to get them all out there, one week at a time. I hope I can write something interesting for you to read in the process.
Stats
- Git Repo Size: 348 kb
- Lines of Code: 146