One Year!!!
heh heh heh.....
heh....... heh
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How's it going everyone! It's been one whole year since I embarked on
this crazy journey of creating my own game - by myself in Unreal Engine 4, with no knowledge of
how to make games apart from some tutorials.
I also documented the entire journey right here
on this channel so if you're new here -> Oh boy you got a lot of stuff to binge my friend
It's been such a crazy year that today I just wanted to summarize the journey so far
and just reflect over this past year.
Some of the stuff that I did that I'm really
happy that I did do and some other stuff that I..
hehehe
maybe could have done a bit better...
A year ago I had pretty much no idea how to make games whatsoever. I had done
some tutorials and a little bit of this a little bit of that, but I was taking long breaks in
between, forgetting everything and then having to start over all the time.
One thing that I started doing was to try and recreate games that I like, rather than just random stuff.
Ha ha ha
It didn't go that well, I couldn't get anything working properly except..
HEY!
Except Flappy Bird, I did manage to recreate Flappy Bird, but that's about it..
[???]
I don't know about you
but I just started up and quit so many projects
I lost count.. So I decided
that i was gonna make a game, it's something that had been on my mind for a long time.
I thought, okay we're gonna do this, we're gonna commit, we're gonna make a game, we're gonna learn.
I don't really know why i chose a boxing game i never really had these grand, big ideas of games
that I wanted to do. I don't really work that way. It's more like, I'll get like a very specific
idea - it can be an environment or just some piece of controls. And that's sort of how this
whole game started, it started out really simple just the first thought about this whole boxing
game was that you were supposed to lean the upper body with like a thumbstick so that
you basically lean the body independently in any direction that you want and then based on that you
would be able to throw different types of punches. I did this like little prototype it was like super
simple it was just like some sort of like spheres or something like that it just looked awful but
that wasn't the point i just wanted to kind of feel what it felt like that was in my head and
it felt pretty good. I was like yeah this this could actually be something.
So I was just like - OKAY, you know what let's just do it, let's just go with that, let's make a simple little
boxing game. It seemed small to me at the time, I mean it kind of was though because the only
thing i was really thinking about was the controls. I needed something a little better than these
ugly balls so i just started modeling some sort of dummy character that i was going to replace
later but i actually ended up really liking the look of this character.
It looked a bit different, I mean it looks a bit like the Michelin man which i didn't actually
think about at the time but the whole character kind of stuck with me and the fact that they feel
like they're made out of rubber or something it just kind of really went with the theme
because i didn't really want to make a violent game it was not supposed to be about that and
you guys really seem to like the design as well so yeah i'm really happy that i didn't
go for anything more complicated than that. Right before i started working on the boxing game I was
trying to make this snowboard game or something like that where you go down the hill and
it's kind of the same idea that you lean your upper body to direct the skier because
that's what it feels like to ski. But it just didn't work I was just totally out of my depth
So i think probably that's actually where it came from it started as a skiing game!
Ski A Bunch!
After I'd set the whole thing up it felt pretty good i was pretty excited about it so i was like
okay this is the idea - I'm gonna make this game it'll be a local multiplayer game that
you can play against your friends one versus one. A simple game, no problem, because obviously I'd
read online that over scoping was a thing and the idea felt small to me at the time but obviously
I totally over scoped, it was way too big a game for me to handle. I was just trying to get things
to work, I had to do things over and over again because it
just wasn't working and I was doing things wrong and I had to restart because I set it up wrong.
I decided to go with Unreal Engine 4 because it seemed to have more features than unity.
I'm not a coder and in Unity 3D you have to build your own tools a little
bit and I just didn't feel ready for that. Unreal Engine had a lot of stuff
already built in so that's why iI went with that, but everything took such a long time.
Definitely I've learned a lot from this but in hindsight I should have definitely started with
smaller projects, like a month long project, finish it and move on to the next. I don't really
think i told anyone this but my initial idea was that i was going to finish the game in six months...
Yeah that went well. lol. I didn't want to say that because I knew that probably that wasn't
gonna happen but yes if you're thinking six months then you're probably way off.
I was at least, but it was okay because I was having a lot of fun and I was really
learning because I had like this overall goal now so I felt more inclined to learn as I
was building the game. I saw this GDC talk about physical animations and how you can, as a solo
developer, add a lot of life to your animations by adding physics to the body parts so that you
can do ugly animations because if you look at the animations I did for the boxer they
look really bad. It looks so awful but when you put the physics on top it actually looks pretty good
i think at least and that is all built into unreal engine which was also a huge benefit
unity doesn't have that and it was around this time as well that i started uploading youtube
videos about my progress because i'd seen a lot of other people do it and i just like man this is so
cool like you can follow someone's journey there's one thing that had scared me for a long time about
making games which is kind of why i never really went for it was that i didn't want to spend like
three years in the dark making a game that you just don't know if you're going to sell it right
so i was it just seemed like a stupid idea so i had worked ahead. I think i had for about
three videos before i started publishing and then i don't know why but i was so nervous
about this, like what if people started watching and then i would just screw it up. I don't know
but i started uploading these videos and I kept working on the game and implementing more and more
features. It was pretty tricky because I had a full-time job at the time making visual effects
for movies. I was working at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). I was like working full time during
the day and then the evenings i would work on the game but i was also making these videos
and my goal was to make like a video a week which I kind of kept up but not really.
Personally i feel like i handled it pretty well, I didn't feel that stressed..
In hindsight, it was crazy but I feel like I had this goal:
I'm gonna work on this game and I'm gonna make these videos and we'll just see what
happens. I guess what also happened like really early on is that I started getting all these
followers like you guys showed up it took like four or five videos before we hit
10'000 subs and i had like 10 subscribers when I started uploading these videos remember that so
i started feeling this pressure like "oh my god there's so many people watching I gotta like
deliver on this game now" i was working like crazy and trying to keep up
and all the while like (funny voice)"Pontypants! Oh it's been two days since you published Where's the next video"
Guys it takes time to make games, but at the same time I also feel like that was what kept me
on track. I got so motivated by the fact that you guys showed up and the weirdest thing
was that people actually seemed to like the game and got excited about the game.
So but I kept implementing features I kept doing all this stuff, it was kind of weird because it
was like at some point I wasn't even making the game to make the game, it felt more like I
was making progress on the game to make videos and i think that was really healthy because it
kept me focused on stuff that matters if that makes sense. As the months dragged on
it definitely started wearing me down this whole day job working the game make a video every week
it was just getting super crazy so something that i haven't really mentioned Vivien, my wife,
also started making youtube channel around the same time, she makes videos about home decor which
is kind of unrelated so I haven't really talked about it, so we both were trying to
get something off the ground and basically make income online instead of relying on a job because
and now at the time we were living in Vancouver, which is like one of the most expensive cities in the
world to live in, the real estate is crazy so we were just like we got to do something
that will allow us to move out of the city I was getting really stressed I think I didn't
feel it but it definitely it was starting to wear me down so around last year in November I was
making enough money to kind of sustain myself on it and Viv's youtube channel was also taking off
at the time so we kind of had the same sub count growing all the time but now she's at 90 000 and
I'm falling way behind so guys please help me get to 100k subs before Viv!!!! In the end we decided
that we were going to quit our job and move over from Vancouver to Vancouver Island because rent
is cheaper here so we're going to reduce our expenses so that the youtube income and stuff
would be enough to sustain us and then we would be able to quit our jobs and do this
full time and reduce the stress. And now we live here, but I also - right after we finished the
move when we had it just settled down i just like completely gassed out.. Yeah i burned out for sure
I couldn't even like think about the game but i was like here's what i'm gonna do I'm gonna just
take a break on the game and i'm gonna keep making videos because i just i really didn't want to lose
the connection with you guys so i actually and this is gonna sound crazy but instead of working
on Punch A Bunch i signed up for a game jam which was basically to make a game in three days.. yeah
that's not stressful at all haha! Actually here's the cool thing that was actually the best thing
i'd done in this whole time if you're working on a long-term project and you're starting to
feel burned out work on something else. Take a break, do like a month small, just a tiny
project - maybe something that's been in your mind for a while, something you want to try out
it might seem like you need to rest but you DON'T! No rest is good but don't
rest too much because I started getting into this mindset where i was just moping around and
feeling demotivated it was really refreshing to just think about something else. So if you're
feeling yourself a little bit stuck i highly recommend to just do something else for a bit
do another project but anyways I kept working on the game I also released like a little tiny demo
of the game where you basically just fight against a dummy and i released it to you guys and you played it.
you wait for it! You wait for it!
Come on, gimme gimme!
Huge positive feedback on that you guys. Most people seem to really enjoy this idea of how
the game works and the mechanic and you you were like oh man you gotta make this multiplayer and
and add an AI and stuff. At this time as well I was trying to make devlogs but the progress was
so minimal because I just needed to kind of tweak everything and just make things
work and it doesn't really make for a very visual excitement. So I thought -
I'm gonna take a break from making Punch A Bunch videos for a bit and figure out the next step.
It's been like a couple of months now since my last Devlog and I know a lot of you guys
have been waiting I'm sorry, don't worry it's not cancelled. It takes TIME to make games
Two months, you think two months is long in making a game. I don't want to spoil too
much because there's a new devlog coming out very soon but I'm basically working on making
an AI for the game which is super exciting and I finally make some pretty good progress on it.
Remember: I don't know how to make games guys like you want to take Pontypants - an idiot
and have him make an AI in a game, like are you crazy?? That just doesn't make any sense but
I've finally learned a bit. I think I understand now so that's going to be the
next step for Punch A Bunch. I also obviously want to make online multiplayer work for it but
with the physics and stuff i just don't know if it's going to be possible. I'm aiming to
release the game, maybe in early access first, it will have local multiplayer obviously but not online
I do want to make it online multiplayer but... I'm too stupid guys.
We definitely have a lot of feature creep happening. As you work on the project it just tends to grow
and you add new features that you want to do, but at the same time i don't really see it as
a problem that it's taking a long time because I'm learning so much from doing this project and
constantly keep pushing forward. But i also learned that just working on one project is maybe
not such a good idea. I'm really excited to start doing other stuff as well. Some of the
things that i regret: I should have started making smaller games, like more incremental games
"small game" "a little bit bigger game" "a little bit bigger game" and like actually finish stuff but
it worked out in the end I'm really happy i stuck through with it but yeah.. It was not a good
idea. The best decision though in all of this was definitely making this YouTube channel! I'm having
almost more fun making youtube videos than making the game which also really motivates
me to make the game. I can work on this full time because of mainly because of you guys and I
just want to say thank you to everyone who stuck around especially to you early birds because I
see you guys commenting still and i know you're here this whole year has just been such a crazy
roller coaster. I'm really excited for what's to come this year guys it's gonna be another
incredible year i'm sure. My plan is to release something in 2021 so like I said, there's another
devlog coming up really soon. If you want to come along on this journey with me and if you want to
support me and this channel then the best thing you can do is to simply watch another one of my
videos. It really helps a lot and it gives me a lot of Algorithm JUICE with youtube. If you
want to stay in touch, come join me on Instagram where I post random pictures of... I don't know...
I made this render over the weekend which I just put up there so if you're interested in that kind of
stuff, join me there! It's a piece inspired by this artwork from Khurshid in our discord server
so if you want to join the community then join the discord we have a lot of fun in there it's
gonna be another cool year i guarantee it guys 100k this year come on help me 100k before Viv
okay enough. Thank you for watching I appreciate it i'll see you next time! Bye!