Getting Started

One might say that my game development journey started back in the 80s on my TI99/4a. Getting the Extended Basic cartridge for the 16k / 16 color machine was a game changer. The best feature of Extended Basic was the ability to use sprites - moving graphics smoothly on the screen. Taking full advantage of this new capability, I created a game called Collision - a top down driving game with simple lanes and using colors to hide obstacles on the screen. Using a joystick, the player had to avoid collisions with those obstacles and other cars.

I was so happy with the game I sent it in to Compute, the defacto programing magazine which printed entire programs for different models of personal computers. And after a few weeks, Compute responded by sending back the cassette and saying Collision wasn't what they were looking for at the time.

Deflated...

But the idea of being a game developer has never left. Fast forward to now, I find myself with more bandwidth and thus the time to learn and there is a lot to learn. Gone are the days of a simple (in today's terms) few hundred line BASIC program to produce a game like Collision. As with any development paradigm, the learning curve is steep but not insurmountable.

Over time, I've learned much of what I know, for better or for worse, on my own. But realizing that there is too much to know in the world of game development, I decided to make a small investment into udemy.com so that access to the information I needed was structured and readily available.

The development environment of choice is Unreal Engine 5. While there are other platforms out there, UE5's approach to game development and beyond seems based in the vast experience that Epic has as a premier developer. Their licensing model is extremely fair as well - it's basically free until you reach over a $1m in revenue. So that would be a nice problem to have when it comes time to pay the piper.

The result so far? In just a few days, I have my environment set up and have learned some of the basics of UE5 including content browsing and import, setting up a project, and the idea of Blueprints - UE's graphical interface into objects. I've also started brainstorming and making notes on the game that I want to create. All in all, a productive week.