Video game making side quest!

Lately I’ve been on a video game making kick and a couple of other projects. A while back I came across a term called fantasy console. If you’re like me and haven’t heard of the concept before it’s a virtual video game console. Upon exploring this fantasy console I was hooked. It has many video games, art, prototypes that the community has made and they’re all free. I believe some people have used it as a jumping point to creating purchasable video games outside the system. The console itself can be used as a game engine which makes video game making more accessible (coding may still be required to make a game ) but the game engine itself has a music composer, sprite maker, map editor, code editor. If I’m not mistaken it is a wrapper for a popular programming language Lua. I’ve heard of this language but previous to this game I had not actively used it as my goals were of a different sort. I feel I may be able to do Lua now but I cant say for sure as the fantasy console has a guard rails way of doing stuff. Long story short my co-developer and I finished our first video game runs practically everywhere I’ve tested it on my website, device, phone, laptop; how cool is that?

I went on a bit of a side quest and rabbit hole and found there are actually a few of these fantasy consoles with different properties. As you may or may not know I’ve also been trying to figure out the Rust programming language. I gotta say it’s difficult but I get the appeal, but I did find it difficult. So as to knock out two birds with one stone I wanted to make yet another video game but in the Rust language; currently I’m mid-project everything. I started combo learning/ making the next video game but quickly found I was Ill equipped to handle the task as making video games requires infrastructure and would then require me to make everything from scratch things such as windowing system, graphics, logic and actually learn it. It became overwhelming. I pivoted to using a dedicated game making platform and came across Godot.

Godot is a game making engine. Upon following a tutorial it has been relatively pain free, it feels similar to video editing software. I also came across that scripting stuff in Godot can also be done in Rust. Score!! I’ve gotten some rudimentary stuff working nothing to write home about but the speed I was able to do it in Godot and ease of use I gotta say has been great! Hopefully I can now merge my two goals of learning Rust while developing a game.

Furthermore, I’d argue if you find yourself lost in what path to take regarding video game making. I would suggest Godot or a fantasy console. I do have to caution It took me a while to get the game complete on the fantasy console as there are some drawbacks as in currently I don’t believe there is online multiplayer capability where as Godot feels quite fully fledged I cant say I know whether it has online capabilities or not but the graphic capabilities in Godot are better not to say the fantasy console is bad but not everyone may like the low resolution graphics. This “limitation”/ feature from the fantasy I found it forced me to figure out mechanics first rather than adding cool new graphics or animations which take time and may distract from the fun factor of a video game. As a first time game maker I believe I needed that as It can be easy to add and add features. As my first video game making project I believe I mastered the skill of making engaging video games.

I feel I also learned how to approach video game making. It starts on paper. After the game is completed on paper then comes the prototyping and implementing the game mechanics first (it’ll look ugly) and I believe towards the end comes the polishing nice graphics, audio ,etc. At least that’s the approach I’ve taken and seems to be working.