I am only just now (Wednesday) getting to week 2’s work as I have been working hard on what will end up being a promotional video from my game Serial Link. If you don’t mind blood and foul language (I think it will end up with an 18 certificate) then, by all means, have a sneak peek at the edit that I have sent around the team and the collaborators here. Just watching the introduction to this weeks material, I am grateful for the slow and steady explanations about some of the choices that I will need to make. I must say though that my instinct at the moment is to stay relatively tight in my choices to focus on C++ and the Unreal engine but that could be just down to the fact that that is all I have been using since July 2017 when I made the transition to wannabe game developer. That said, Michael Scott’s advice is to identify the best tools for the job and the job for me right now is making games. However, I am curious to see if I have made the right choice in using Unreal and C++ but I worry that if I have not, would it be sensible to jump ship and use Unity and C# (I think)? I do want to be able to ‘throw’ together a couple of apps though like my own time and task manager and a touch typing program that’s more adaptable than ones that I have used. I think that the overall conclusion I have come to just from the introduction is that he is promoting a ‘minimum standard’ in the breadth of knowledge and frankly I don’t meet that at the moment. I’m looking forward to exploring things and deciding on what to focus.
Hammer Time
I like the quote in this next lecture ‘It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail’. Hmm, that is a good way to look at only knowing one language. Also, I think that it is becoming clear to me that C++ is quite a heavyweight language and it’s possible that I would benefit from learning something that is a little more straight forward at the same time. I must not abandon C++ however, as it is tightly related to the goal of working in Unreal at a lower level than Blueprint, as marvellous as Blueprint is!
“Beginners should stay away from C++” Great. Well, I do like a challenge…
Many, many years ago (it feels at least) I was introduced to Java and its the language with which I started to understand the object orientated paradigm. I like OOP a lot, it seems to sit in my mind very easily, much more so than procedural programming. Although not being very skilled in either approach, I suppose that it may be too early to tell really. Objective C seems to be the one to learn if I want to develop for Apple and at this point, I assume that you can use it for Android development also? Would have to have a look into that. I think that not taking mobile development seriously, at least for one project, would be a mistake and I do hope that the desireto create PC style games subsides enough at some point in the future to allow me to consider this.
‘I’m Snakebite, I’m your only man… ‘ Alice Cooper.
I would really like to have a good look at Python and I have a very close friend who is very skilled with it that could chaperone me through any pitfalls in order to help me become more productive with it sooner. Python is a good bet for me really. I wonder if coming from learning C++, I might slip into it quite easily? I would just have to try it out I suppose. And Assembly language? Yeah, I don’t think I will be touching that at the moment…
What should I stand on? Platforms.
I think that I am in right place with this aside from needing access to the PS4 development environment for Unreal. I can already aim for deployment on the PC as that’s really a given as the vast majority (if not all?) games are developed there and I know that I could turn my Xbox One into a development machine in order to deploy Unreal projects to it. But, I would really like access to the PlayStation 4 as it has an install base that far exceeds the Xbox One (as I understand it from the general gist of what I’ve read). When I last checked, it cost around £2,000 to get that access and I just can’t pay that at this time. I wonder if that is something that we should roll up in the kick starter for Serial Link should we get the chance to launch it. I suppose that the other thing I need to know is how to develop for mobile in the most flexible way so that I could release content on both IOS and Android without having to create two apps. I am almost certain that I would not have to do that, but its only being on this course that is making me think about it at all, so I have never looked into the details of developing for either platform. I do know that Unreal can be used to deploy to mobile, and knowing that its C++ driven, does that mean that mobile apps can be developed in C++? More mobile questions…
Atomic Movie! That’s incredible!
I had no idea that this had happened. As soon as the clip in the presentation was finished I went to find the animation and was just blown away! I can barely comprehend the scale of this work and need to watch the short documentary that explains how it was done!
Chronicles of a Sofa Ninja 