Game Dev Update
A small update on projects
After publishing a demo for Dalija, I took a little break from game development. I already have two or three projects I was actively working on. One is almost done — Bebe the Baker. I just have to finish some small things and polish it. So, two or three weeks and I’ll publish that too.
This would be a big milestone. Unlike the other two demos, this will be a full game. It would also let me focus on Metamorphosis, Scatterpoint, and Afterlife. Metamorphosis is a fun project I started recently. Scatterpoint started way before, but Afterlife is my book. It was the first thing I tried to build, and I failed. Now I think I’d be able to do a way better job.
My skills in Unreal Engine kind of grow without me realizing it. I took a bunch of courses on Udemy, I tried to learn from YouTube, and I was always actively working on how to improve. Afterlife, at least in my mind, combines it all: environment art, programming, UI, game design, marketing, and everything else. The book wasn’t successful, but I still like the story and the idea.
I’m a little hesitant to start, so I’m just bitching about it. But even if it fails, it wouldn’t be a first failure, and it surely won’t be the last. My hardware can allow me to go for it now. The decision I made: I’ll finish the novels I’m writing by 2027, and hopefully have something to show for Afterlife.
How do I plan to get there? Well, a procedurally generated open world sounds good. I planned that harvesting and salvaging would be correlated with the survival of your settlement. That kind of follows all the ideas I had. Not sure why, but it gives purpose to the game. That’s the core objective — to survive. Now, how to go about a skill tree and what it unlocks? One on the player, the other on the settlement? Weapons and shooting. Patrols, extractions, factions — all of this is kind of easy on paper, but I still don’t see a way to connect it all inside a game loop. Hopefully AI will be able to make more.
The plan for the Afterlife world is procedural blueprint foliage. I watched a tutorial where you can specify a blueprint. Now I hope to put a tree, rock, or something like that with an interface on it that would allow harvesting or salvaging. This could decrease the time needed to populate the world drastically. However, I need different biomes and factions, so it can’t be random through the whole world. I need to make a few of those, and I think I can have a satisfying open world ready to be populated in a month. Building this world with buildings, roads, and NPCs should take a month or two. But the crucial thing is that it won’t change after. So if I fail later on with some programming logic or something similar, this should remain intact. Coming back and trying again, I’d start with a finished world already. With this approach, I’d be able to improve drastically by the end of the year.
Scatterpoint is an old-school shooter. Working on that should relax me — it’s the project that’s there to be enjoyed, not to be stressed over or consumed by. The logic needed for it is way simpler, and honestly, I think I could have a full game by the end of the year. The amount of assets I have from all these years should let me build some nice levels and just shoot through them.
Metamorphosis is 2D, and it has nothing to do with Kafka. I mean, kind of. But I enjoy making 2D games recently, not sure why. AI allowed me to close the gap quickly and is always there to back me up when I’m clueless. So working in 2D, as far as Unity goes, is satisfying. The issue this project has is that the majority of its assets are created with AI, and everyone hates AI. Not sure why, but it would be easy to lie and masquerade it. To be truthful to yourself is more rewarding than achieving success through lies. So the second part of 2026 is stacked for me.
The last thing I decided was to improve the quality of my videos and content in general. CapCut, Houdini, and Blender are also in scope now, and hopefully there’ll be no burnout. I’ll try to write and log it as much as I can. Till the next time — see ya…