Game Development: Going to try itch.io
If you haven't heard of Itch.io, it's basically Twitch, but just a bit itchier... Just kidding, while both cater to the gaming community, the former, Itch.io is a place for Indie developers, and for indie gamers to find games made by independent creators. It supports the hosting of an entire projects by these creators as well. While I do enjoy creating my own websites, I am thinking that perhaps leaning on an existing well-established service and platform might be a bit better for me. I've been incredibly distracted trying to get a proper website built that I haven't really been actually making any games...
Itch.io is all-inclusive
The Itch.io platform supports mostly everything an aspiring creator might need to get started much more quickly. A website to host their games, in both native platform formats, as well as HTML5, which is my preferred method at the moment, especially for smaller games which I don't really plan to monetize. While trying to create my own platform via RPGTube.app is admirable, I also miss out on the discovery, and many other features which an established platform like itch.io can bring.
I will be taking part in my very first game jam, where for a month, I need to develop a fully working game for the community to play, and eventually vote upon. Due to the more simple nature of the game engine I am using, as it's not Unreal, Unity, or Godot, but rather a more specific game engine tailored exactly for the development of Japanese style Role-playing games, I feel a bit like Homer Simpson from that episode of The Simpsons where he enlists in the companies contest to create a modern power plant I believe it was. However, this contest was not meant for people of his age group, but Homer still takes part. One of his co-workers, the one who dies at the end for obsessively mocking Homer about how he chooses to live his life. If I choose to use a game engine suited solely for the creation of Japanese style Role-playing games, rather than trying to create everything from scratch in say Godot, then I'm this Homer Simpson to the people who might choose to make fun of me.
While I enjoy programming, I don't really like constantly re-inventing the wheel while doing so. I might occasionally tinker with some lower-level game development, but for a serious project, I'd prefer to use a game engine which is built from the ground up with all the tools I already need to be hopefully successful. I'm not looking to be the next hit game developer, and so I don't see the need nor the requirement to use overly complex tools like Unreal, Unity, or Godot. I just want to use a game engine built specifically for what my ultimate goal is, and that is to create a Japanese style role-playing game. I grew up with JRPGs from both the Super Nintendo, and Sony Playstation. If I had to choose my favourite genre of video games, it would be the JRPG. I also used a lot of game engines growing up, but never actually released a full game. I usually enjoy playing around with the tools, and seeing what sort of things my programmer mind can do with such game engines. A lot of specific JRPG game engines are purposely limited in their programmability, and I find it rather enjoyable to try to push the limits of these so-called more limited game engines to see what I can actually make them do.
Once my game for this game jam has been completed in about a month, I will also post a link to it here for anyone who does read my posts here can see what an apparently limited game engine is really capable of.
Nintendo Taught Me
If there's one thing I really learned from Nintendo, and especially the late, and very brilliant, Gunpei Yokoi is that amazing things can come from limitations. As we've seen countless times even in the modern day with the very success Nintendo Switch, Nintendo still shares this mentality. Countless developers have released games which were originally thought to be impossible to run on the Switch, and yet, these amazing developers managed to get their games running on such limited hardware.
When the original Gameboy released, it was already considered outdated hardware, which is how Nintendo was able to sell it at such a great price point, and even later beat the technically more powerful Sega GameGear. This to me proves that you don't need all the power in the world to create either great hardware or games. You just need to find the best ways to exploit those limitations in the hardware to really stand-out, and this still really holds true for me today.
Linux is another interesting example of making older hardware actually work, hardware which can barely run Microsoft Windows, can run Linux, and modern web browsers perfectly fine. Being able to reuse older technology is brilliant.
Limitations Stem Creativity
As many that read my blog here might already know, I enjoy playing around with much more limited systems, rather than modern systems with seemingly limitless power. I still occasionally create programs for the 6502 with custom built emulators. I enjoy the strategic thinking that is involved with programming for much more limited systems like this. It forces me to rethink how I would implement certain aspects of my software or game.
Conclusion
So, please look forward to a hopefully completed game for this upcoming game jam, of which the theme has yet to be announced. It should be rather interesting for me, as I will need to plan out everything to be built within an entire month's span. Wish me luck.