Introduction - Who am I?

Hello, whoever is reading this! My name is Kijana Woodbine am I an aspiring game dev that has recently been re-inspired to really give this a shot. I've decided to go this route because the thought of making something and putting it out there for other people to enjoy is something that I want to do. I started my game dev journey around 9 months ago in Hostos Community College and that is where I was introduced to Unity. For one of my first assignment, we had to make a level using the pre built LEGO microgame. It definitely helped me get into the flow and since then I've decided this would be my engine of choice for the foreseeable future. Since then it's been an roller coaster. Unity and C# is such a steep learning curve and I felt like at times I was simply not capable of learning this stuff because it's just so damn much. However, with the help of good professors, I was able to just make stuff that I can at least say helped me learn the basics of the engine. Fast forward and I went ahead and decided I was gonna make a game where the player will have to kill waves enemies in an arena. I actually made some decent progress on it! I got the player to move around, shoot, round system, and had enemies spawning in.

 However, at around June 2022 I hit a wall in my progress and started to feel some burn out at the same time(rough combination, I know). I made strides with my knowledge of programming, but I still felt like(and still do) that I had a lot more to learn and sort of felt discouraged. And on top of that I put an insane amount of hours into my project that the aforementioned burn out hit and I basically stopped using unity or developing anything for months. I felt bad for a while because it felt like I had kind of given up on my hopes and dreams. I simply just did not have the motivation to continue. That is until about August or so where the motivation started to come back. I still wasn't using Unity, but I decided that if I was going to come back that I needed to do it right.

One issue that I had was I was honestly a terrible programmer. Don't get me wrong, I'm still very much growing and there's a lot I need to learn, but I simply did not understand the basics well enough for my first project. To try to fix this, I studied old code I made with the help of professors and watched more tutorials. I still have a long way to go, but I think having a better baseline is important and today I feel like I have a much better grasp of the basics. At least well enough that I do not have to look up a tutorial for literally EVERY little thing.

Another issue with my last project(probably my main issue) was that I did not plan it out well enough. I kind of was just going off a rough idea that I had, but the more I worked on the project, the more I felt I was just "BS'ing" and implementing something as I thought of it. Combine that with my low level programming skill and you can see why my motivation took a pretty hard hit.  

This time around, I decided that I wanted to plan out my project much better than I did. The idea that I had was similar to my old project, but I wanted to change it up. It actually ended up having a bigger scope than my original idea, but it felt wayyyy more manageable since I actually was properly planning it out this time around(I don't know if this makes sense for not, but it's how I felt). I don't want to get too much into my design here(devlog coming up!), but basically this game still had the player killing waves of enemies with guns. This time, though, I decided that I wanted to have different characters with their own weapons and personality that factored into not only the play style/gameplay, but also the overall feel of the character. I also wanted there to be different maps and game modes that gives the game more replayability. 

At this point, I had already planned out all of the major features and main game loop. This actually took me about a month or so and I hadn't even touched Unity since I abandoned my last project, but at this point I felt sooooo much better about the direction it was heading in and it gave me a lot of motivation. I started development at around September 2022 and at this point I am completely locked in to this idea. Obviously I made some changes to the design here and there, but I am staying true to the main concept of my game and I haven't looked back.

It's November 2022 and I have made progress that I will share in a later devlog, but trust me I am still a looooong way away from being anywhere near finished. So I was hoping I can track my progress as here and hope that this does several things. 1. Distract me for a bit from the development since at times I get so caught up in making stuff that I can forget to stop a take a breather at times(one issue at had in my first project), and 2.  Be able to look back and see all of the progress I made to keep me motivated for when at times I feel down that I have a long way to go, and 3. hopefully someone will give a damn enough to keep up with a game that I think is a cool idea and give me feedback to make the game better.

I hope this puts this project into prospective. It's technically not my first project, but I plan on this being the first project that I actually release and continue to build upon for years to come. I feel so good about where this game is headed that I decided I was going to show it with others...that is of course if anyone sees this, haha. Anyway, I hope you all can enjoy following this game as much as I enjoy making it. Who knows? Maybe this game because something bigger than I ever anticipated. But at the very least I can say at some point this game is RELEASED and to me that would be a huge step for my future in game development.

Oh, and BTW, I made a twitter specifically for following other game devs and at some point - when I stop being scared - I'll actually post some updates of the game on there too. Follow me: @Keejawn