The Story So Far...

A robotic-looking farmer admires the view of his static farm.

Okay, so here we have a screenshot.

Here's what's basically been going on the last couple of months... well, years.

The Story So Far...

I started making games when I was very young on a fantastic piece of software called Klik and Play, which later developed into The Games Factory and is now, sadly, no longer available.

These were dead basic bits of software, but at the age of around 10-or-so it was a great way to dive in and get to grips with the basics of game logic. The majority of any complex development within Klik and Play was through algebra and nested 'if' functions - but this complexity could only go so far within the fairly stringent walls of what was, ultimately, an imaginative and engaging piece of software. The mix of a UI and [some semblance of] a backend was perfect for me, as my brain needs almost instantaneous visual results to release endorphins, otherwise it seizes up and feels like it's accomplished nothing at all.

Following this, over the years, I encountered other such 'game making tools'. Software like RPG Maker, in its various iterations, and even going as far as to make functioning games within Microsoft Excel (?).

I think the thing that always put me off tackling code-based development was the fact that it seemed so insurmountable and impenetrable. And, to be perfectly honest, it is. The biggest stumbling block I, and probably many others without any training, face is actually admitting to yourself that what you see before you is actually there, i.e. coding is hard, especially with no training. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t do it.

And so I started to teach myself Java. This went all right, and I began to get the hang of things. Methods, functions, variables - whatever, it all started to fall into place. Learning the definitions and theory is difficult, and time consuming, but it’s not the hard part - it only gets really difficult when you realise that  coding is an applied practice.

You can learn as much general information surrounding the topic as you like, but until you actually get into a script and start trying to do something with it, it doesn’t amount to much.

After learning the basics of Java and giving some basic development a go I started work on my first project - a FPS about a robot who is sent to a dead planet that has no light to take atmospheric readings. I was pleased with the results, but ultimately not the direction of the game, and so I moved on to another. This project was more ambitious, but again, I wasn’t sure about where it was heading.

I had chosen to use Unity3D to develop my games in. Why? Well, for starters it’s free. It’s also, like Klik and Play decades before it, a blend of UI with backend control; the perfect, and most rewarding mix.

After haphazardly putting together these first two games it quickly struck me that I had essentially grabbed the first tool in the box because it was the closest one to me. This didn’t make any sense at all. 

If I wanted to cave in a man’s skull I’d be there for months with sandpaper - better to use a hammer.

And so I grabbed, for me, what was to become the hammer I would cave the proverbial man’s skull in with. And I began to cave his skull in.

With C#.

In total I spent around 45 hours getting to grips with it; learning, making mistakes, learning, looking shit up, and eventually getting it to work.

And I haven’t really looked back.

So, from this point onward I have been coding my latest game project within Unity using C#, and I’ve been thrilled with the results.

For other indie amateur game developers, whom I’m sure can relate to the feeling, the sense of accomplishment is staggering. To spend a whole evening trying to figure out what the funk has gone wrong with a single line of code that is nestled within five hundred others lines, and to instantly know how to solve it is rewarding. Then to click ‘play’ and see those lines come to life is something else... 

Succeeding posts will be exclusively about the game I’m making, but I figured it might be nice to lay some backstory, just to give some insight into how inexperienced I am, and the challenge that I’ve set myself. I hope it’s going to be fun.