Summary
Yes, it is true. I finally gave up the tutorial hell!
Tutorial hell is the special place we noobies go to rot. Instead of working on real projects of our own, we gather around the esteemed mentors of the interwebs and keep making clone after clone… Which never really leads anywhere.
So I decided that it is time for this little fish to take that leap and dive into the deep end. I will no longer follow the various courses as if they were the gospel. Instead, I will watch them to prepare myself for what is coming in the relatively near future.
Final Thoughts on Code Monkey’s Course
As I wrapped up the Visual Scripting Course by Code Monkey, I realized just how much time I would have wasted doing things that I didn’t really need to be doing. And I don’t mean the course is a waste, I mean that I am headed in a different direction. I need dialogue boxes and states for choices, not FPS controllers or Platforming experience.
That being said, this course, much like many others before and after it, has one major issue – time. I’m sure you techies know how fast the industry moves, and how bloody rapidly every software service/product keeps pushing out new updates. I’m not a technical person, so for me, this is all very… stupid. Why on earth do you have to push out an update that does nothing but change the UI and some terminology? Somebody, please explain this to me!
Code Monkey’s course, while valuable, is now quite outdated. The various assets he provides do not work as intended in the new versions, shaders break down left and right. Not to mention the whole new look of Unity VS versus Bolt. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I was at a loss due to not knowing the right words to search with. And the thing still doesn’t have much of a backlog of tutorials to go see!
Also, Mr. Monkey… Good God, man, slow down! So much information, so fast. My pea-sized brain couldn’t keep up much of the time. And we all know how pausing every 10 seconds is the fun of all learning… no?
What am I learning next?
The next thing on the menu is Game Design Essentials by Gabriel Chauri, which is more down my line of expertise. I learned coding and the technical side of game making (and will continue to do so) for the purposes of understanding the whole process and being able to prototype and such. This, however, is what I’m here for. The design part of it. The story, the art, the lay of the land, and how to bring it all together. Let’s leave the implementation to the pros, mainly my husband.
I also plan to finish the Harvard CS50 on YouTube to gain a better understanding of the whole computer thing in general. So far, I’ve watched about an hour of it, and already I’m experiencing all sorts of light bulb moments. Bits, bytes… It was all the same for me in the past!
I also checked out a short course about Cutscenes in Unity by Mario Korov. Turns out Unity will work just fine for whatever I have in mind. It has all the tools for doing cool things like cutscenes of various types. And being able to tell the game to run some code at certain points of an animation, or to switch to other stages, is just brilliant!
Future Projects: A or B?
So. What am I going towards then? I have two alternatives for my (or ours, I will somehow rope my husband into this, I swear! I need his skills desperately) first true project. And about 50 ideas on top of them for other, not-so-doable, whole souls-like situations.
Option A is an Interactive Fiction. Much like the things Choice of Games keeps pumping out, but with my own flare. I have also found many of the stories made with their engine to be… lacking, and want to bring my own into the mix. That being said, my current glimpse of the script for said Choose Your Own Adventure is… out of proportion. It’s gruesome how it just escaped and began doing its own thing without my consent. I gave it the tag ‘EHE’ for now.
Option B is a short Horror Experience, an RPG of sorts. It involves a metric ton of art assets, and a whole new topic to learn about. Yup, with all my learning, I never actually learned how to make those nifty dialogue boxes pop up. I’m rather excited about this one, as I would get to practice my designer skills more than with Option A. I tagged this project ‘She Comes At Night’. Ohhh, so creepy!
In the meantime
The project will need to wait for a while, however, as I finish up Rialar and some art things. As it stands, now that I have finished with Our Story for the moment, the next thing is to make some assets for RimWorld. Husband’s decree, what can I do, right? After that, I will finish Rialar. And then, finally, if nothing weird happens, I will begin working on the game!
But Mrs. V, what will you be logging about for the next while? Good question, Watson!
I will keep a log of my preparations as I watch and learn. I will talk about things that come up while learning, all the while honing in on the project I wish to start when the time comes. So you can expect some game design musings, at the very least, as that is the next course I will work through whenever I have the time to do so.
That’s it for now. Remember, you can always catch me on X/Twitter for the latest and greatest escapades!
Oh, and remember boys and girls, Unity shader graphs now want you to split your alpha. I was scared to death by my invisible enemies!