What is a hobby you enjoy, but seems too quirky or obscure to bring up in most conversations?
Mine would be creating pen and paper ciphers for my made up secret communication needs.
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I'm an amateur game developer. It's very, very rare I actually get to meet someone else who's into it. Everyone else is either overly impressed, thinking I'm some genius making COD or GTA in my spare time (I am definitely not), or some combination of thinking I'm lying/complete disinterest. It makes me quite sad to see that programming is still relatively niche.
Same! If you wanna talk about niche, I make games that are blind accessible. I'm quirky and obscure even for a hobbyist game dev.
Damn, that's a niche within a niche.
Nested niches
Accessibility is important! Thanks for caring!
I tried to get into game development once, but the amount of workarounds that you have to do when scripting makes me go mad. I'm used to a more structured approach of programming when I got into game development there's so much that can be basically called hacks my mind just imploded.
Well, I learned programming through game dev, and haven't really entered the world of programming outside yet... so I'm scared of what's to come when I start my CS degree haha
Get a game development degree in Colorado instead! It's like CS but with less math and more programming projects.
Game development is harder than most programming jobs.
Eh, it's too late haha my course starts in two months
What engine or tech are you most interested in? I've been a game developer for 10 years. Worked on a few larger indie titles like Squad and Midnight Ghost Hunt. I've had only one experience in AAA and that was at Harmonix which I disliked immensely. So for my career I've been aiming for studios of 20 or less people.
Atm I work in godot. I've had no work above indie, and very little outside my own projects. I'd like to say I've become quite competent, though.
Here's my latest project: https://irmoz.itch.io/upheaval
It's a jam game, a low-res first person shooter inspired by doom, with a horror theme, and adaptive music. The weapons are made from body parts :D
I'm pretty much a Godot dev at the moment, though I've also used UE4 and GameMaker before that. I've not really touched Unity much.
I'm not at the level of working with studios - it's been a hobby of mine since I was a teenager, and only the past 4 years of so have I taken it more seriously.
I still haven't released anything myself, apart from a couple jam games, and though I've started a few more substantial projects, I haven't completed any. My current major project, though, I do hope to finish. I also have a minor side project I managed to complete an initial version of for a jam: https://irmoz.itch.io/upheaval which I intend to complete in the following weeks, after I finish a making of video.
I've worked in Godot since 2018 on personal projects and Unreal 4/5 since 2014 professionally. I've been wanting to learn a ton of Godot so I can make a switch to indie single player games. Where the biggest benefit of Unreal is large indie to AAA multiplayer games. So, I am hoping to release my own Godot single player game in a year or two. I've really been focusing on trying to do it all myself. Sounds, Modeling, Etc. I'm primarily an engineer so things like gdscript or gdnative come easy to me. One thing that worries me in Godot is GPU performance. I think with 4 it's much better now though.
Yes, Godot 4 is faaaaar better in all respects when it comes to 3D. Both better looking and better performing.
Maybe we should all get together! A few other devs have responded to me here :P
I also am an aspiring game dev. What's your stack? I've been working in Godot for a while now but might be migrating to Bevy to use Rust and ECS.
Most people don't recognize how much work goes into game development and expect you to just crank out AAA content, it can be demoralizing working on your own. If you wanna chat and talk shop, hit me up!
I've found Godot has pretty much everything I need. I roll my own components using the node system, and combine it with inheritance for the full flexibility of both worlds. There's also Godot-rust, an extension to Godot that adds Rust bindings!
I code in Godot using GDScript, make my models using Blender, compose my music and edit sound using REAPER, and edit images using GIMP. I've also recently started making videos using Kdenlive (I use linux btw ;))
I'm curious about other engines, true, but for anything they may have, the thought of losing Godot's workflow is crippling.
If you're interested, here's my latest project: https://irmoz.itch.io/upheaval
I'm working on a video about how I made it, too (it's mostly components)
I think there is so much variety even within the developer community that it can be hard to find others with the same exact niche.
Quite true. And, as awful as it sounds, it's also hard to find people at your own level. Whenever I do meet a fellow dev, they're always either just starting or years ahead of me haha. So that either leaves me teaching, or in the dust, never just... jamming.
I've been following a lot of PICO-8 game developers lately (on Mastodon and Discord) and I love seeing all the cool stuff they are doing.