Like most solo game developers I’ve always had a really difficult time reining in the scope of my projects. This probably goes without saying, it’s a universal problem we all struggle with!
It was never in sharper focus than during my first ever serious attempt at game development, a thinly veiled attempt to recapture what it felt to play through Final Fantasy VIII as a child. With every successive project since I have fought to pull that scope back in to something resembling the possible, but even now I have that tendency to pick multi-year projects that come with higher risks of burn out and/or my attention being pulled away by something new.
My earliest experiences with game development were with the Source Engine back in 2007, which is why so many of my block outs are always in some variation of orange and grey. 😍
I created techarthub in the wake of the pandemic, and one of my primary motivators was to break out of this cycle. I had just experienced two very long term projects come crashing down simultaneously (for completely independent reasons) and I just couldn’t motivate myself to start anything new.
After a period of about a year I came around to the idea that if I was able to provide a range of useful resources for other developers, then I could live vicariously through their efforts, and so techarthub was born.
It felt good to create bite-sized resources that directly helped others build their dream projects. It’s always a joy to see how my work fits into your worlds.
What’s changed?
Not much, to be honest. I’ve just been doing a lot of thinking, and working out a vision for what techarthub might look like five years from now.
This plan always involves what has now become my flagship project, the Shooter Sandbox. I’ve realised that if I am to continue to devote significant time to the Sandbox, it needed to be far more thoroughly battle tested before I can be confident to present it as a production-ready template.
Shooter Sandbox is by far the most comprehensive and complicated project I’ve created for techarthub, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of its potential. I have a lot of work to do.
I also acknowledge that creating a new game project that uses the Sandbox as its foundation would give me the opportunity to play with features and mechanics that might be outside the best interests of the project as a template for other people. I could experiment, take more risks, and feed whatever useful things I discover back into the Sandbox for all to use.
Creating a game project that’s intended for release to the gaming public instead of being plundered for parts also opens up opportunities to license third-party assets without worrying about distribution rights.
Purchasing assets is a daunting prospect after so many years of doing almost everything myself.
Thanks, Ryan!
I’d also like to give a quick shout out to Ryan Layley, an Unreal Engine educator who’s been sharing progress on his own game project Mimic for over a year now. It’s been super cool to follow his progress, and I hope to share my own journey in a similar way.
Fires Farther Afield
The working title of my new project is Fires Farther Afield, and at this stage there isn’t much more I can tell you about it. It was originally conceived as a first-person soulslike, but I’ve recently taken a bit of a step back from that plan. I can afford to take my time here, and I’d like to do a bit more thinking before I throw a label on it.
What I can say for sure is that Fires will take full advantage of the Shooter Sandbox, and that in most other respects the slate is clean and I am giving myself permission to experiment. I’d very much like to explore some ideas for asynchronous multiplayer I’ve kept in my back pocket for a number of years.
I have migrated the Sandbox into a new project and populated it with an interesting modular environment to play around with. I feel like it’s a good start.
What does this mean for techarthub?
I don’t think this new project will have an adverse effect on any of my ongoing techarthub initiatives. In fact I fully expect Fires Farther Afield to act as a proving ground for my work, making the end result far more dependable.
This kind of mutually supporting project will be most obvious with the Shooter Sandbox, where it’s already having exciting results. I have developed a lot of unreleased content for the Sandbox which should be coming your way soon, just as soon as I can properly document it.
I am really looking forward to hearing what you think of it all.
