After a much needed break from work and just life in general, I am getting back into the groove of learning and developing new ideas. I also built up the courage to finally join a month long game jam and try to make some cool ideas with a teammate. I have never joined a game jam due to a busy schedule but now since I am done with college and working half the day, I figured this would be a good time to try and get some ideas flowing as well as try to participate in a community that I have come to love. 

This jam is hosted by a YouTuber I mentioned previously, Matthew Palaje, who has been hard at work trying to get a good steady crowd to learn and become better in game development. I love his mentality and the small extra clips he does for the community that has grown around his videos. I, as a developer, have achieved so much by just trying to watch each segment he puts out as well as come up with some of my own ideas to try at some point when I complete these games with teams I have started. 

While up in the mountains of Wyoming I did a lot of spiritual searching and brainstorming as to games I want to make and as well as played quite a few mobile games. Some of the top games I play on mobile are not about actually keeping the players attention, but keep them coming back time after time in order to complete small goals that will eventually lead to a bigger goal. By making these small goals easily achievable players are more tempted to play and leave and come back later to try their next task. I already understood World of Warcraft's armor treadmill system but this really takes it to the next level. I think if I can really come up with a design that really rewards player for 10 minutes of play and make them feel like they are progressing to a bigger goal with small accomplishments, I could have a potential top mobile game. The problem with games like that is they need a lot of extra content that can't be easily recycled which is pretty much any games developer's dream for production. Smallest amount of work for large amount of content. 

With this in mind I have a potential contract I can put forth my efforts on as a day job as well as two games that I want to try and complete within the next month or two. Hopefully the efforts of all these projects don't go to waste and I can present these as good portfolio pieces to future employers. ​

urrently I have been working on a small C++ project in order to brush up on syntax and learning as much as I could. I will be teaching kids out in Seattle at the end of July how to code in C++ as well as design aspects of creating a game. I still need to come up with a few ideas to get them started but I'm glad I have taken this month to just program a very simple design of Asteroids. I keep thinking of ways to improve the code and better ways to have the code optimized. The biggest thought right now is rewriting the entire main part of it and making it more modular to create a game that can be set to multiple difficulties. I still need to figure out how I want to do the main menu and set up the beginning of the game. 

Next time I write code in this fashion I want to make sure I set up the entire thing so I can be way more modular and be able to thrown into any other projects with only needing a header or cpp file. It's definitely a bit harder coming back from a game engine to only code. It makes you realize how much back end stuff a game engine like Unity and Unreal really does for you.
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However I really have enjoyed watching a youtuber by the name of Matthew Palaje, and with this have decided that my next personal project will be in Unreal engine. I tried before but really wasn't inspired because I just got out of college and was stressed with so much going on during Christmas. I now have a decent workflow to keep myself on track with learning new tricks and designs, which inspire me to do so much more. I really wish I could have started designing and just playing around a lot more while I was in college compared to what I did. I think now as a graduate and constantly looking for a job and see what people are wanting and looking for I can really try to push myself to learn more and tailor my learning experience to what I want and figure out how I can make myself better.

I'm still figuring out how I can make this blog and website better so if you have any ideas or comments let know. I love feedback.

Thanks for reading,
Josh

C++/SFML Astroids on Github: ​https://github.com/foxrythem/SFML_Astroids