Taking the Leap!

I've been watching and reading devlogs for quite some time, years in fact. Back in 2020 I decided to buy an unreal engine course through udemy.  I took my sweet ole time, but I finally finished it. Over the holiday break I finally got some time to get into the groove with my first project. 

I've been doing really serious work for my entire career (military and now cyber security), and I want to bring joy to the world (yea, kinda corny, but it's the truth). I'm still working in my career, but hope to one day step away from the seriousness and bring fun to my family and kids through video games I create. I took the leap this evening to publish my "post udemy course, start-from-scratch, see what I can do" project here on itch. It's been so much fun learning and actually seeing it come to life. I have a whole backlog of things I want to add to it. 

I'd love your feedback. It's still very much experimental and prototypy. One thing that really clicked for me was one of the live shows the gamedev.tv crew said, (something to the effect of...), "it's a game when there is start menu, a win condition and a lose condition". I finally got all that stuff in there haha.. So... I hope you enjoy it!

What is City Defense

City Defense is a mash up of two classics,  Missile Command and Space Invaders, with a modern 2.5D twist. I have a story line that I'm fleshing out and I'll eventually share it. 

Tech Stuff

One of the big things I checked off the box with this initial prototype release is my build and package flow. 

I come from 30 years in technology. Automation is kinda my thing. One thing I struggled to find with game development is a thorough walk through of version control, build/cook, packaging, and distribution, using unreal engine and an easy automation of that flow. Running your game in the editor window is cool, but that's not something you can easily share. I found several bits and pieces from other devs and sites, and pulled from my knowledge of automation to build out the first iteration. It's still pretty wonky, but I plan on creating a good walk through to share with the community. 

This flow will enables you to make, track and version control the changes you make to your project, build it and package it into a single file installer. 

In any case. This post was a spur of the moment thing so I will leave it here. One of my goals was to start a devlog... #gotit. They will get better. haha.