When my brain decides to be creative...

Category: Rambles

I do sometimes have bursts of creativity and embark on a new project, a new direction, a new experiment. When it comes to game development I'm a noob. It's not that I don't have the ability to create whatever I want if I put my mind to it, it's simply a case of not understanding how to create a game that feels fun to play. I've always been one of those people who has a passion for a project in the initial stages and it slowly fades until I find it an absolute chore. I love simulation games, I love role-playing, surely I should be able to create the ultimate game for me right? If only it was as simple as that.

This week on too unmotivated to work on personal projects... I've been looking into using Rewired in my next Unity project. One of the most recent comments by a user named MixedUpJim is "If you're making a commercial game then this is the control system you need to be using."... So after using Unity for the past few months trying to get a feel for it and work with it, I have to agree, for now. Creating customisable controls feels like hell. Even with the new input system (not that I have experience with either new or old), I've tried to force myself to watch and take in tutorials on YouTube and other sites that explain this system, it's beyond me. My Smol Brain just does not want to know. Rewired seems to be a solution for me at-least, I've managed to get keyboard/mouse and my controllers working. There's some more tweaking and things I need to read through but it's further than I managed to get with the built in input manager.

Other than that, I'm trying to get back into Blender. A few months ago when I first decided.. "I WANT TO MAKE A GAME :3", I opted to create a game set in a British school. Ever since the days of Bully I've wanted a game set in a British themed school and who better to create that than little old me, fresh out of the British school system only 5 years ago. That's fresh right?

Well that project is on a big fat hold for now because I have a tendency to set my expectations and goals way too high. It was my first time creating a model (after watching some Blender intro tutorials and creating a cat with a little butt hole), and boy was it a challenge. I've since learnt many tricks that improve the Blender workflow and I think I could re-create that school in few hours now, it took me weeks to manually align all the pixels up with each other before I figured out how to use snapping. That is all I will say about that.

Anyway after watching some Blender tutorials, specifically a tutorial I purchased on Udemy, I created the scene that the tutor wanted me to create... then I added some cats with little pink butt holes. That was the most amazing day of my modelling (3D) life. I had created that. Ignore the bear and the crappy grass/mud layer, the cat is the only part of that picture that matters. I was ready to take on my first big project which as I explained, is now on hold.

Fast forward to my next project which I started due to my love of the game known as My Summer Car. I was in love with that game and still occasionally return to it. I have no interest in cars (which is a huge issue as you'll find out in a moment), but I loved the roleplay aspect of that game. Wake up, drink a beer, drive to the shop in your Uncle's van and enjoy the nightlife by eating some sausages or whatever they were. That is the game that drove me to try out Unity in the first place. I knew that My Summer Car used Unity as the engine and I was amazed by what the developer had created.

So I thought $&!^ it. I'd make my own My Summer Car and it'd be awesome because I'd have MULTIPLE buildable cars and customers would bring their cars to you to get them fixed. Yeah, I yet again set my expectations and goals too high for this one because my skill level was still basically zero. I am proud of what I learnt and discovered though, I wrote my own code using raycasts to pickup objects lying around, they'd also save to a fancy little JSON file and reload precisely where you left them. There was no real game direction and I had no idea how to create any decent buildings at this point so I was frustrated and annoyed that I couldn't make the vision I had. The more I did, the more performance dipped and the car itself was a disaster in too many ways. It was my first attempt at creating a 3D car WITH an interior you could get in to mess with the controls. In a way, the project was a success. It taught me a LOT, but I'm confident in saying I'll probably never return to that project and apply what I learnt to other projects instead.

Next we move onto my attempt at a horror game. I'm quite proud of the achievements made with that project and I may return to it. Using my new found snapping skills in Blender, I created a pretty decent looking house complete with working doors, stairs, windows and curtains. I also created a little dog using Dimensions, it's a pretty cool site. It was my second delve into basic AI scripts as I did dabble with AI in my school project which I mentioned above. The problem with the horror game is the project started out with a small goal which spiralled into new ideas and bursts of creativity which meant I knew I would not be able to finish it in a reasonable time frame and I wanted to create something that I could finish, be kinda proud of and learn a lot in the process. And with that, I can move on to my first ever project release called Cold Fish.

Cold Fish started after lying in bed and thinking "I want to make an ice fishing game!". What compelled me? Don't ask because I'll tell ya. There is a game called Ice Lakes which with my limited knowledge of ice fishing feels pretty damn good. That's probably the only reason why I wanted to create my own game based on ice fishing, since I've had no other contact with the activity other than that. I opted to create a really simple arcade style game and using tutorials from around the internet I got to work. Oh, did I mention I wanted it to be multiplayer? So not only was I starting yet another project, I was also going to tackle (hehe) multiplayer. I chose Mirror Networking for this project because it seemed like the best one out there if you didn't want to use other paid options. I'm not sure if I'd use anything other than Mirror at this time since it really does simplify the online part of creating games for me.

I can't say I'm one hundred percent happy with how Cold Fish turned out, but damn am I proud of myself for seeing it through. If you consider how it looked when I started it (that picture right above this paragraph), I think it turned out pretty well.

So finally we get to current day. I've brought a project to a state where I feel it can be released, what next. Updating my existing release aside, I needed a break. It took a lot of mental effort to actually release a project for the first time and I needed to move onto something else. I do have a project in progress, the above picture is not it. The Wew Wew Van is my latest attempt at creating a vehicle. I haven't wanted to attempt that again since my buildable car game. So consider this. It took me approximately 2 weeks to create a trash boxy car model with endless problems and stresses. It took me around 20 minutes to build the base for that Wew Wew Van. I'm impressed with myself, even if you're not.

What I take away from my lack of motivation and putting myself all the damn time is that I am making progress with this hobby. Despite the days where I feel absolutely defeated and like I am going nowhere, just a few months ago I had never touched Blender or Unity and today I'm able to put together little games with relative ease and have a bit of fun doing it.

I'll always have new bursts of creativity and I can always try out new ideas, it is getting a little easier to be proud of myself, even for the little things I create.

Until the next ramble, bye.