Not My Canvas

I’ve run into a bit of a problem with game development and I’m interested in opinions on the subject. I am in the process of relearning everything that I spent a year exploring in Unity. With the death of all trust in that platform, I am now trying again in Unreal. That’s all well and good, but who’s to say it won’t happen again. This is still a company we are talking about here, especially with Disney starting to dig their fingers in.

At least with Megalomania, I would just need to jump from one drawing software to another. I don’t really feel like I lose control of what I am able to make. With game development, I find it feels more like I’m working on a borrowed canvas. Without warning and through no control of my own, I may no longer have access to the same techniques or styles, and I may have to start over, learning everything again. It does make me hesitant to commit to something like that.

There’s a part of me that wonders if I wouldn’t just be better off continuing in this version of Unity and just never upgrading, but that feels like I’m asking for trouble. Godot and other open source options are intriguing, but if my goal is to spend less time troubleshooting, open source isn’t really the way to go. I’m just trying to figure out what my safest option would be.

The best answer appears to be Unreal, but things are very different. I think I liked the node editor at first but, as things are getting more complex, I just want C# back. What I really need to do is get deep into C++ so that I have some hope of controlling those data structures in the way I was before. It’s supposed to be a lower level language so it should be doable. It just feels very frustrating to be back here after a year of discipline and focus finishing TufTower so I can learn.

I’m determined, though. I am gonna do it. I think it’s likely that some real time will be spent on this resource management game so that I can learn again. If anyone has any thoughts on my predicament, share them here or on the discord!

Thanks for reading! I’ll see you in the next one.