My New Project

I have talked a bit about my Strategy game. I have been working my Saturdays on this game for something like 7 years. It has come along nicely, and a lot of other projects were completed along the way. For example, my custom 2D game engine, and my editor pipeline. I have come to a point, though, were I really want to ship a game.

I spent a few months going over various ideas. Could I speed up the process? Could I shrink the scope? Could I do both? Then, I started thinking about making a smaller game instead. I contemplated on the idea for a while. I didn't want to make a drastic decision just because I was getting antsy. After creating some timeline projections for a few different game ideas; I settled on my current project.

I am making a Vertical Shooter; think the 1980s airplane shooting games you would find in an arcade. Of course, I have a few tricks up my sleeve to make it interesting.

I have already spent a few Saturdays working on this game, and it's been a lot of fun. I have been spending most of the last 3 years working on my engine and editor. It's nice to actually get into some gameplay development again. Also, it's felt good to be able to validate my editor work. I spent a lot of energy to make my editor as easy and quick-to-use as possible. Until now, it had never been tested, and I am quite happy with the results.

Why I Roll My Own

I use my own custom game engine for my projects.That's right. I am not using Unity, Unreal, or any other packaged game engine.

There are a number of reasons why I chose to do this. My most common answer is "Because it's fun!". I only work on my projects on Saturdays. That means my development is really slow, and it's going to take a long time for me to finish anything. I expected to spend years of my Saturdays working on a project before it's finished. I realized pretty early on that if I wasn't having fun on those Saturdays, then I would probably end up quitting before anything was ever completed. Also, I really like programming. It's much more enjoyable for me to make my own code then to use somebody else'.

To date, I have spent about 255 Saturdays working on the Strategy Game in one form or another. One more Saturday, and some might just roll over and quit. Luckily I have more capacity then that. I can happily say that I am still having fun and I look forward to next weekend.

The Strategy Game

There is one project that I have spent more time on then any other. I dabbled with ideas in high school. I tinkered with the concept in college. The project really started taking shape, though, in early 2008. I have spent a majority of my Saturdays since then working on the project.

That project is The Strategy Game. Catchy name, right? It started off as a CCG, but eventually turned into something else. It's turn based, it has resource management, there are deck building aspects, and it borrows from miniature games. It's a bit of jumble of concepts that all end up fitting nicely together. But calling it a TBRMDBM game doesn't work too well, and so I just refer to it as The Strategy Game.