Game Dev Journey: Day 0
I am not a total beginner when it comes to Unity and C# programming, but this is my day 0 on an improved strategy for developing these skills in a meaningful way. I say “improved,” when what I really mean is “having any discernable strategy to begin with.”
This journal, keeping a log of my progress, is a big key to that strategy. My wins, my struggles, my solutions to sticky problems will all live here chiefly as a reference for myself, so when I encounter them again I can see how I handled them in the past any maybe come up with an improved solution in the future.
I don’t have a specific target date for when I will confidently add “software development” to my formidable list of freelance capabilities, but I already have some designs on how to fold Unity into my existing motion design toolkit. Afterall, that’s what brought me to Unity in the first place and the realtime engines have certainly grown in their prominence in this space over the past several years.
Suffice it to say: if you’re one of my clients reading this, I’m not going anywhere. I gotchu.
The plan looks something like this:
- Spend a minimum of two hours per day for at least five days per week working forward on an array of projects to build specific skillsets
- Document and post daily articles about specific mechanics, tools, workflows or other relevant technical or aesthetic topics I encounter
- Lean on my accountability network to keep me on task and grounded should I start to drift from the goal
That last bit is really the standout clause. In all my aborted attempts at this in the past, I never felt like I had a community to bounce off of, to share problems and solutions, to celebrate one another’s wins.
There are about a hundred of us right now, all in a similar stage of our development, under the guidance of the inimitable and irrepressible Jonathan Weinberger and his GameDevHQ team. It feels like the early days of my motion design career all over again, and I expect to replicate that success.
This first post took on more of a personal nature than the journal entries to follow, but I felt a post to outline my goals was as good a way to begin as any. On that note, I’ll leave you with a picture of my office manager.
