[v2.1.30] – 2022-10-23
Added
- uploaded a bunch of videos
- source code for my current project and new “game engine”
Changed
- finished Game B and uploaded it to itch
- temporarily switched to “writing my own game engine” as discussed in this video and started working on Game C
- now uploading daily on YouTube (it’s not as bad as it sounds lol)
- I consider this personal minor version update 1 since a lotta shit has changed! The format goes – major (2) minor (1) issue (30) (yup I’m just making this shit up as I go)
G’DAY!
I’ve got a big ol’ juice filled one for ya today. Before we dive into it though – I hope all is good and well on your end. Once this bad boy is through I want you to go crush some work out like a goddamn champion, or violently relax into a restful slumber (there is no in-between).
/daily
I spent 12 hours last Sunday editing the video for the week. While at the time I was incredibly proud of myself for such a feat (it’s the fastest turn around I’ve ever had on a video), I was struck with a realisation.
What if instead of spending an entire day editing on Sunday, I try figure out how to edit a video every single day in 10 minutes.
I was inspired by this article and video on the topic.
So that’s what I’ve been doing. I’m a couple days in and it’s going really well so far. I’m getting a shit ton of iteration on the process each day and really streamlining my workflow.
It’s not entirely dandy though. The lack of warning and complete disregard for timing on my part has come at a cost…
/comments
Yet again I’ve found myself knee-deep in a cesspool of people trying to give me “advice” about what I’m currently doing.
It doesn’t help that the day I decide to start posting daily is also the day I decide to switch to writing my own “game engine” (those quotes will become apparent later on).
After all, progress isn’t exactly instantaneous on the game dev front (no matter what tools you use).
It also doesn’t help that I chose to clickbait the shit outta my last couple of uploads, with works of art such as…
Yes I know, I know. They rival the Mona Lisa.
I’ve leaned fully into the “from scratch” meme, despite me pulling an extremely lateral move from Telescope over to Sokol headers. Both of which have me working at the same layer of abstraction.
Sokol is actually more shippable and mature than Telescope in its current state, so it’ll actually be a much better short-term move. Give me a few days to warm up and I’ll be off to the races.
Game C is getting shipped on the 29th to your goddamn web browser, so mark ya calendar.
Anywho, back to these extremely thought provoking and insightful comments…
I may be going out on a little bit of a limb here, but I’d say that the majority of my wider YouTube audience are not game developers, let alone game devs that have ever shipped anything “from scratch”. So I guess you can’t blame them for not knowing what they’re looking at.
Especially with my track record of being derailed from game development by technical challenges.
After seeing this latest comment section though, I’m now completely convinced that the YouTube comments are an absolute cesspool. One that is not worth another second of my time and energy.
If someone has something valuable, constructive, and important to say to me, they’ll email it.
There is zero benefit to reading comments from people who don’t actually know what I’m up to beyond a surface level 8 minute video.
Now that may sound a little close minded. But I’m actually more than open to having my ideas criticized and torn apart. Provided it’s from people who are actually in the trenches with me shipping games, not consumers who voluntarily spend their time writing YouTube comments.
Consider the case closed.
If you ever see someone malding in the wilderness of my comment section, be sure to link them https://tomrandall.net/my-response
/CHOO-CHOO
Thomas the Game Engine (trademark pending) is full steam ahead.
There wasn’t much of a thought process behind switching over to this bad boy tbh. I just wanted to see what using lightweight libraries like Sokol would feel like compared to Telescope.
Also I just had an itch for making an open source project to share with y’all.
It’s given me a good excuse to write up my own base layer (massive thanks to Allen for the guide) and do memory arenas from scratch (still yet to do this, haven’t had a need just yet).
/from-scratch
Now it’s a bit of a bag of worms, because the word “game engine” or “from scratch” in itself can be very open to interpretation.
“You’re not writing it from scratch! You’re using Sokol headers! Where’s the win32 code?”
You got me! I’m a fraud! An imposter! How on earth can I even be associated with the Handmade community now?
I alluded to this a bit in the interview that I had with Abner a couple weeks back, but I struggled to articulate myself there, so let’s delve into that a bit.
Doing things from scratch is important, but not nearly as important as doing the right things from scratch.
Is writing a win32 or graphics API abstraction from scratch something I should be doing? Or are there already good enough solutions to that? (cough cough, Telescope, cough cough Sokol)
Well, it all depends on my long-term goals and where I’m currently at.
I’m a game developer, and I want to ship games. Someone has to write these things from scratch, otherwise they wouldn’t exist. But I don’t want to be that guy. I want to be the one writing the games from scratch! Not getting bogged down in Microsoft’s docs (although I do love me a bit of spelunking from time-to-time).
Now you could extrapolate out that line of thinking and say “well why don’t you just use Godot or Unity then?”
But that feels way too “high level” for what I’m trying to achieve. At the end of the day, it all depends on where you want to sit, and what problems you’re tryna solve.
For me, I’m trying to become one of the world’s best game developers over the next decade.
Will shitting out C# code in Unity get me there? No.
Will inventing the universe from scratch get me there? No.
I’m snuggled up right at the level where my intuition is telling me I should be.
So when I say “from scratch” or “writing my own game engine” that’s where I draw the line.
I’m hardly writing my own game engine or doing things from scratch. I’m standing on the shoulders of giants. I’m trying my best to figure out what it takes to ship games, ship em’ good, and ship em’ fast.
Speed is king.
There are (quite literally) an endless amount of problems to solve. Which ones will give me the highest return?
/end
Anywho, happy to see that you’ve read this far.
I’m glad that there’re people like yourself that are at least somewhat interested in what I’m doing on a deeper level than the click baity mass-produced content.
The larger audience has their place. I’m grateful to even be in this position and have it as my full-time job…
But man, I forget how cosy it is to just throw away all that surface level bullshit and dive into what’s actually on my mind.
It’s funny, because every time I get around to writing up a changelog, I always come away from it being like “wow, this was a lot of fun. I really needed to get all of that off my chest, I should do this more often!”
Yet next Sunday rolls around and I’m like “ughhhhh do I really gotta delve into what’s really happening, can’t I just skip it and keep working??”
I’m convinced that this exercise will never cease to be invaluable.
Change is the only constant in life, after all.
Thanks for reading. I hope your week has gone well. Wishing you all the best for this upcoming one and whatever project it is that you’re tinkering away on.
Take care.
– randy