Why I'm doing this

I recently opened up the Unity Editor for the first time in a couple years and decided to get myself back into game development, partly because I've always wanted to make a game, partly because I'm bored at work, and partly because, it's a great learning experience, even if you fail miserably at it. Like just about everyone else, I've always been advised that I should start small and work my way up, which makes perfect sense. However, since I've messed around with the Unity engine in the past and actually made a few smaller games like Roll-a-Ball or Space Shooter, it never really felt like I was making something I wanted to make. My dream has always been to make a game that I would want to play. I grew up playing games like Ultima Online, Final Fantasy 7, Dark Age of Camelot, etc. Games that pull you into the world and story, sink their hooks in, and hold on.

So when I opened up Unity this time, I made a decision. No tutorials, no starting small and working my way up, I'm jumping in the deep end and either sinking or swimming. So I settled on making an RPG that I would want to play. Sure, there are some things I'm not doing myself, I'm neither an animator nor a graphic designer, so many of the visual and audio components I'll be using will be from the asset store. However, the functionality, game play, GUI, will all be done by one person, me.

Yes, an RPG is a momentous task to undertake, even for a large team of people, and I fully expect to crash and burn, hard. However, I can think of no better way to truly learn the art of game development. If nothing else, I'll learn more than what I already know and become a better developer for it.

So what's my process going to be? Well, like any developer, I'm going to think about the big picture but focus on individual tasks. Rather than doing what most learning tutorials tell you to do, I'm going to build my world first. this means that I'm going to focus first on how animals and creatures behave, build my world out, create my weather, and then, I'll focus on adding my player, story, quests, missions, etc. My reasoning behind this is, I already know what most of my world will behave and operate.

Each week I'm going to post screen shots and video clips of the functionality I've completed.