About my “work” (lol)

As a C++ engineer, for years I’ve been building (on and off, mostly off) my own set of tools to something that resembles a start of game engine. I like to do things myself, but am very lazy 😴.

I was trained to be a 3d game programmer. Unfortunately I could not get a job in that field, and I did not really keep in touch with advancements.

I’m considering all this as a hobby, I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself. I like to program my own things, if they’re sub-par then so be it, my livelihood is not based on it 😎.

What do I want to achieve?

Well that’s a tough one. As a younger and more naive person I’d always wanted to make video games. I kind of lost that drive, after years of not putting enough time and energy to get result that would match my ambitions.

But I am trying this new approach with this website. Hopefully laying things down will help me be more productive.
And if it doesn’t work, doing more writing is never a bad thing anyway 👨🏼‍💻.

I try to set goals all the time, and I keep changing my mind. I don’t have self-discipline, and it’s essential if you want to actually do anything.

Discipline is freedom.

The road ahead is long, but I will keep that in mind.

Method

I’m very into DIY when it comes to coding. Of course this slows me down ridiculously, and may be one of the main reasons I haven’t done anything cool yet.

But it’s also very enjoyable to know most of the code was written by yourself. Of course I’m not talented enough to reinvent every wheel, I still use well known libraries for things like compression and image loading / saving, and will probably add more when needed.

Just for fun and because I like to slow myself down, I’m not using STL and wrote my own common objects like string & containers.

Side note: At work I’m obviously not as crazy and will do things properly and efficiently.

Did I say I was lazy? and crazy?

I’m okay with working with old versions of OpenGL (3.3 I think 🤷‍♂️), I’m confident I can achieve something with a decent look with “ancient” techniques.

I’m a terrible artist (as you surely will see if you look at my movie blog posts 🤮), and would go crazy drawing my own assets. I remember using 3dsMAX as being an excruciating experience.

I could ask the help of artists, or get assets free of rights.

But no, I want to have total control, and will take the hard road 😈.

I really like procedural generation, it’s a really cool challenge to make it all work and do all the heavy lifting for you.

Conclusion

Best of luck to myself, I will need it !