Where to Start...
This isn't a tutorial, or educational material. I'm not a game industry professional. I'm just a software engineer who loves to hack, and games are a particularly fun project to hack on.
My personal projects tend to go nowhere, and that's usually fine. I build for the cycle of curiosity and discovery — building for the sake of building. Not for a shippable product.
Now. With that being said... I do want to finish this project. I want a game that I can share with my friends and family and ship to the public. Getting to that point will require discipline and accountability. So here we are. I'm going to write every step of the process to force myself to account for the decisions I make. If this project is intended to go out into the world, then I need to maintain a fair balance of hacky but disciplined. Maybe I'll find some new middle ground between the hacker I am at home and the engineer I am at work.
The Game
I aim to make something simple, but not trivial. A top-down, multiplayer game where you fish with friends. Catch a fish, show it off, release it. My vision for the art style is top-down pixel art. Think Pokémon, Zelda, Stardew Valley. Also, I want to be able to wave to my friends. That's it (for now).
Decisions, Decisions
There are many decisions to make at the beginning of a project. The annoying part is, the beginning is also where we're faced with the most unknowns. To make matters even worse, these decisions are the ones we have to live with the longest. Don't fuck it up.
No need to fret though! This is what engineering is all about. We'll take each decision one at a time and think about them. We'll solve the problem that's in front of us and not hold too tightly to any previous decision: if we need to refactor, we'll refactor.
And let's not forget, of course, this is a personal project and a video game. We're not saving lives. This doesn't have to be stressful. Some decisions are allowed to be based on vibes. Just not most of them.
A couple vibes-based decisions I'm making right away are:
- Editor: VS Code, because I like it.
- Repo: GitLab, because I like it.
- Language: C++20, because I like it (and it's the industry standard or something).
- Build System: CMake, because I know it.
I'll go get all that setup and come back when there are more decisions to make.