Thoughts on Development

As an aspiring indie game dev, I've dabbled in many things, and will dabble in many more. I felt inspired to put words to text on my experience in trying to create games.

I'm not sure whether I'm the minority or not on this subject, but I have found that I prefer coding something from the ground up as opposed to using a service that automates parts of it. I've used Unity and RPG Maker off and on in the past, and while many of my favorite games (looking at you, ISaT) are made in RPG Maker, neither seems to have the right feel for me.

I think part of it is the learning curve of the GUI, which in theory should make things easier. I'm sure that for many people it does. Perhaps even the vast majority! But at the end of the day, I've spent so long learning what menu items do what, forgetting where to find certain functionalities, and hunting down tutorials and documentation on buttons and features that I could have really gotten into the meat of something already.

Unity has so much going on (especially for a person who will only ever make 2D games) that if there's any time at all between dev sessions, I find myself forgetting things. None of this is to knock Unity for its mechanical aspects! It's simply my own style and how I interface with the world.

RPG Maker has less of that issue, but more of another issue altogether: its rigidity. If you want to make a turn-based game in the style that the software is built for, you're golden. Want to make a walking sim with no combat, no menus for leveling up, etc? Want to have a skill tree? What about custom status effects with timers and cooldowns? Prepare to don your religious attire and worship the creators of plugins (or forge your own path and learn to code them yourself), because you have to break the system to do things that I expected a bit more flexibility on (All Hail Yanfly our Lord and Savior.) Somehow in spite of this, I've spent more time dev-ing in RPG Maker than anything else at this point. Eventually I think I found a rhythm, and got very invested in those projects.

At this point though, I've been learning various languages for game dev to try and find one that suits my style. I've dipped my toes into Python, Ruby, and even Common Lisp, and each have their own strengths and also things that didn't quite mesh with me. While this process certainly involves reinventing the wheel sometimes, it's fun to really fundamentally understand the mechanical nature of the game being created because I coded it. I'm curious to dabble in more things, as I find learning to be incredibly enjoyable. At the same time, learning forever does not an indie game make, so I will put dabbling on hold for a while so creation can occur.

A New Timeline

So begins a new adventure into the grand unknown! A blog to capture game development thoughts. Perhaps I may rant about game mechanics and design, or wax lyrical about characters I enjoy. Regardless, I am Weft, and it is a pleasure to meet you~