This month (November 2021), I’m going to be changing up what I’m writing for this blog: not only will I be spending November making a game from scratch, but I will be sharing my thoughts, decisions, and progress with you all right here. The goal is to start November 1st (so by the time you’re reading this, I should already be happily crunching away), and then see where we’re at come November 30th. Ideally, I’ll have something playable that I can share with you all by then, but if I’ve learned nothing else about game development, it’s that things will go wrong, schedules will blow up, and boy howdy do bugs happen! All of this is especially true when you’re planning on making a game by yourself, which is exactly what I’m planning on doing here. To make this one-man show happen, I have come up with a (loose) plan.
The plan
For this yet-to-exist game, I’m planning on making a first person shooter in the same vein as those from the early 90s such as Doom, Quake, and Dark Forces. The first reason for this is that these games are mostly sprite-based. This means that enemies, equipment, and powerups are all two-dimensional objects, rotated to be facing the player at all times to give the illusion of being three-dimensional. As someone who is an amateur 3D modeler at best, this significantly lessens the art load I will have to work through, freeing up more time and energy for the areas in which I feel much more comfortable: programming and design.
The second reason is that it allows me to utilize Unreal Engine, the game engine I am most familiar with. Unreal Engine was originally created in 1998 to help make first person shooters such as Epic Games’ popular title “Unreal”. It is also the game engine I have the most experience using, which will reduce the amount of time I’ll have to spend learning how the engine works, thereby giving myself more time to develop the game itself. Having experience working with sprite-based actors (game objects) and first person shooter mechanics in Unreal will also help save me a bit of time, as I may be able to reuse some of the code I have made while working on previous projects.
The third major reason I want to make this type of game is that I’m generally a fan of first person shooter games. I’ve played a wide variety of shooters, such as Planetside 2, Overwatch, and Metroid Prime, and generally enjoy the genre. This has allowed me to build a wide knowledge base of what mechanics various shooter games have included, which will help me figure out what mechanics I want to include in my game versus which ones I may want to avoid. Having a passion for first person shooters also makes “finding the fun” much easier. This means that in the early stages of development, I have a lot more trust in my ability to identify which aspects of the game create entertaining scenarios versus which ones need to be iterated upon.
The Goal
Come November 30th, I want to have at least one playable level. It may not look the prettiest, and it will almost definitely have more than a few bugs, but if I can produce a little slice of fun 30 days after starting from scratch, I’ll be pretty happy. If time allows, I would also like to include a menu with a handful of adjustable settings, but this can always be added later if need be. I would also like to have more than a single level done by the 30th, but I expect that this will have to be something that gets delayed beyond my self-imposed November deadline.
I also plan to catalog my experiences building this game here, so expect weekly updates containing insights on progress, features that didn’t make the cut, in-progress work, and more! I look forward to sharing this journey with you all, and hope to see you next week once we have well and truly dived into the development.
In the meantime, I hope your week develops well, and I’ll see you next week!
-Mark