Man I remember being in college studying mechanical engineering seeing all my dorm mates programming for their computer science homework. I would think to myself man this is a big part of how video games are made. I had been a massive gamer my whole life and even though I considered myself a technical person, programming still felt like witchcraft to me. I never had any friends that did it. I never learning anything about it at school. Making games just felt out of my reach.
After graduating college and finding more free time I was like dang I need to commit to this it could be so fulfilling.
In 2015, 4 years ago, I enrolled in the Udacity "Front End Web Development Nanodegree", the company I worked at was sponsoring the training so its employees could learn more programming skills. I picked web development track because I liked that it was more visual and creative. I spent 10 hours a week for probably 3-4 months learning Javascript, HTML, CSS and more importantly industry software tools like git. I was completely hooked. The shroud around programming was lifted and I started to see how the sausage gets made. I immediately applied what I learned to making a game. My first ever game, "Colony Collapse Disorder", was made using web frameworks like Bootstrap (CSS) and Knockout (Javascript). It was so rewarding. And I learned that the tools you use don't matter to make games, any form of interactive media can be harnessed. It did not take years of training.
A few months later I set out to make a more substantial game, one that could be run as an application on the computer or a phone rather than in the browser. After too much time reading /r/gamedev and a million other how to get started websites I decided to use LibGDX Java framework to make the game. It was recommended as something more lightweight and easy to get started with than Unity. I took some tutorials and a crammed through Xmas timeoff to make "Space Canoe", my second game. I even ported it to Android and got it on my phone! Space Canoe was an extremely simple arcade game that completely befuddled anyone that tried it but I didn't mind. I was just riding the high of learning and making something.
After Space Canoe I really started to daydream about what kind of games I could make in my future and how fun it would be to collaborate with others. I started to look up game jams I could participate in. Turns out the 2017 Global Game Jam was right around the corner and Google Launchpad was hosting! Apparently I could just show up, find a team, and work all weekend with free catered food. I was really nervous since I was so inexperienced and didn't know anyone to go with. It ended up being an amazing experience. I found someone early on who also wanted to work with LibGDX and we took off from there. We were the only team that didn't use Unity but we were able to make something pretty cool over a short weekend. "Press Space to Wave" was a silly local multiplayer game with a lot of personality.
After the Global Game Jam the gamemaking and exploring slowed down considerably. My career was in flux and I had to work really hard to get more interesting career opportunities. I also struggled with mental health followed by some time off and travel. I really just lost all my momentum.
A few months ago, after maybe a year of simply being too scared to try again, I finally just started. I decided to use Unity since it has become the indie game gold standard. I looked up a Tower Defense tutorial in Unity2D (from raywenderlich). It was the rabbit hole I needed. I've found with coding/creative projects the hardest part is just creating something small out of nothing. Once you have something small the snowball starts rolling and you have smaller bite sized pieces to Google for help. I got hooked, and Unity proved fairly quick to pick up.
I found Krita, an open source painting program, and it has been a godsend. I got a cheap drawing tablet and even though I was discouraged with my initial art output I have kept with it and created some stuff I think is pretty neat.
Current status is obsessed. I've ran with the basic concepts I learned in the tutorial and am making a simple chess/starcraftlike game about bugs addicted to sugary drinks. The experiences I've had the past couple months have made me feel proud of myself and made me feel like this is a hobby that I can have.
My main hope in writing all this is just to share how slow and bendy this journey has been for me and that's ok. It took 4 years to get to this infant point. Actually it's really taken 27 years because I've been wanting to do this my whole life. Hope everyone out there is having fun and taking it easy on themselves.
Love, Ben
9/10/2019