Sunday, February 08, 2009

Dev into Hope

So, as I continue working on learning various web languages and working on continuing to learn Qt, I begin to notice a continuing trend of getting away from game development. This is something that I have to keep in mind in the future, but for now, current paths must be continued until the current journeys come to an end.

So, Ajax, Mysql, and php are the newest members to the arsenal of development tools in my tool box. I'm having quite a bit of fun getting to know them, working on the decipherone website. I'm also getting to know web standards in the process, which has been interesting. Although I've been using websites, I never really noticed how much the development process has changed for them over the last decade. It just goes to show my lack of education in the area prior to the last few months that I've been preparing to tackle the GoG tournament connection tool and building the community website to promote Troglodyte and indie games in general.

While it's interesting and practical , and I could see myself doing it for a living, I just don't have the time to continue to do web development, work on a game engine, design games, make games, work a full time job, and fit the other hats in my life on my head. As stated currently, I've had to set aside the game development aspect, and it's something that I really want to get back to. So as I finally come to the forks in the road, I need to get back to the initial cause.

It looks like April will be the month where I actually get time to port the current code base of the engine over to using Qt. As I do that I'm thinking that I am going to need to finish the game state management that still isn't complete at this time, before starting to build the next edition of Scribe, the editor. By that time the official release of Qt creator should be out as well, which should be awesome. Qt will also be releasing version 4.5 in march, which will add a LGPL license, which should help with marketability for Troglodyte.

At this point in time I'd like to say this. The main reason of this game engine and editing suite is to provide a tool for myself and fellow companions to make games, do it well , and fast. I'm choosing to release it to the public after an agreed upon time in between myself and the guys of Phyersoft. In doing so, my hope is not to become rich from the endeavor, although if that happens it would be welcomed. Instead, it's my hope to provide a very affordable tool that is easy enough for a complete newb to use, while still having enough power to entice seasoned developers.

By having it be open source as well, I'm hoping that it give those who are interested in coding a good place to begin to learn about programming games. That is also the purpose of the website. Also, I hope to grow as a programmer because for the most part I'm self taught and I'd love for those who would be interested in looking at the code base to be able to offer and make suggestions.

In addition, I'd love to see people become passionate about the project and for it to grow into a robust development tool owned by the global community. Only time will tell if these hopes and dreams will be attained, but it should be an interesting journey to get to cultivation of the ideas.