Happy New Year. I wanted to take a few minutes today instead of writing code to get an update on my blog. If I were to set some resolutions for this year, one would definitely be more frequent updates. Thankfully, my plan of attack is forming, and I feel like I'm on the start of a compelling path, which hopefully means having things to show off soon.
My plan ever since day one of my resignation was to build a framework I could churn out multiple game ideas in quick succession. The sprout of an idea has taken root, and I'm excited about the possibilities. The elevator pitch is: "a platform for game developers to leverage to add cross-platform friends, groups/clans/corporations, MMR-based matchmaking and ranking, party finding, inventories, and more."
Armed with this plan and several good ideas of games to write, I started trying to tell my story on my Patreon page. Of all my game ideas I found compelling, none were as passion-inspiring as the MMO idea I have. That was a problem because while I was passionate about my platform, I know that if I'm solely writing a game because I think it might be popular... I don't think I'll finish those projects. I need to have either a passion for seeing people experience something that I don't think they have or the selfishness of wanting the game to play for myself.
That is no longer a problem as of a few days ago. I've decided to make a turn-based, hero-brawler/MOBA (a la Heroes of the Storm (HOTS)) crossed with something like Disgaea or Final Fantasy Tactics. I loved playing HOTS but lost interest once Blizzard killed the eSports scene.. I think Blizzard did a lot of great things with the design of HOTS, and I want to create a different style of game and also turn it into more of a strategy game than a game focused on twitch-reactions.
In the meantime, my two months of deep diving into Rust have been very productive. I'm still learning every day I write code, but I'm finding myself reaching for Google a lot less each day. I'm really enjoying actix-web, but I'm currently pre-async/await. I've started contributing to one crate and have identified a few other crates that could use some love that I may also be contributing to shortly.
I have high hopes for this year. I'm looking forward to continuing to contribute to open source while I build up my first game. As I wrote on Twitter earlier, my main goal for the year is to ship a game I'm proud of. While I know I want to ship something I'm proud of, the other goal is to build a community around my ideas. To that end, here's how I'm currently planning on communicating:
- Twitter: Short updates, interesting links, screenshots/gifs
- Khonsu Labs Community Discourse: In-depth discussions about my ongoing projects, feature requests/ideas, and off-topic discussions
- Khonsu Labs Patreon: Currently, I'm not expecting anyone to start supporting me yet. Patreon will probably not contain any extra information on itself, but it does unlock roles on Discord and Discourse. I plan to use those roles to eventually offer exclusive invitations to be testers, sounding boards, and included in discussions that work better with a smaller audience than a larger audience. The perks will change over time, and as I said, while I have a page up, it's more to check off a box on my to-do list at this point than to seriously garner support.
- Discord: I don't currently have any formal plans for the Discord server. For now, feel free to drop in and say, "Hi." Over time this server will have more use as the community grows, but initially, I expect most discussions to take place on Discourse.
So for now, I'll wrap this post up by ending where we started: