Hello there fellow devs and probably gamers. I'm still alive.

I had been through series of miseries in life from personal relationships to illness. There are also stress from political in my country and the state of global affairs which  nibbled down my motivation to live.

I spent my time since my last update to work on my game project in unreal 4. I'll be honest and admitted that myself from back then was still too green and didn't understand the immensity of the sky so I dared to be a bit too ambitious.

The worst thing I underestimated was the freedom I have being indie and detached from worldly affairs. You could say that I'd been a caveman for so long that you can even called me a hermit.

So at around September 2023, I started to got super burn out to the point that it'd be hard to keep my sanity intact. I pushed myself too far, but I also learnt a lot during those time.

I spent my time during October and November to write my new novel, but it's only a glimmer dream and I didn't finish it since I got a bit fixated on the logical accuracy and ignored the main point of the novel which is to tell the freaking story lol

After November which I tried to start working on the game project again, but as you'd expected I got burned out from trying to keep up with NaNoWriMo...it's the first time I finished the challenge and will be the last time to do so. I'd rather work at my own pace, though it's slow but I won't get into such pathetic state again.

During such time, I hurt myself because I hit my chest too hard and my internal organs got injured to the point that I couldn't exercise for months.

I was in the state of wasted potato couch since December til The 10th March. Yes, I was just recovered from all the bullshit thing I experienced during last year of isolation.

Right now I could exercise lightly, so my body will get better gradually. It's still hard because of PM2.5 covering the entire country and my hometown got rather intense. Luckily my body gotten much healthier than it used to be years ago, so I'm not bedridden like back then.

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Currently I'm 31 and will be 32 in 23rd November

It's been quite a long journey since I started getting into gamedev. How long has it been that I was in tutorials hell?

I started in 2014, probably late April or early May.

It's started with the whimsical idea of "I wanted to make my own game"

I'll be honest that back then I didn't even have a proper motivation. I just randomly said that "I wanted to make videogame"

I was a uni student back then and my friends was so exciting at first. Well damn, life got in the way.

While pursuing my goal to make games. Starting from some random mini game engine which doesn't have much tools(I can't even remember the name of that game engine that I got from humble bundle, but there was no proper tutorials and apparently nobody use that game engine anymore)

Life hit hard, my ex broke up with me and I failed at the uni so hard that it's broke my naive dream of becoming "part of the society". The truth about my ex is that she didn't want her father to know, so she broke up with me. But she didn't know how fragile my heart was back then. It's like my world crumbling right there then.

I got new gf, now she's also ex because of various reasons. It was her that helped me through such a bad state in life. Here is the real reason I broke up with her, it's because I was incapable of being a decent human. I got stressed out by all the pressures from the society, responsibilities, and my own expectations. Trust me, the pressure from the society is real and not imaginary. It's how well you're doing, and if you fucked up your life then your reputation will be ruined and nobody gonna be your friend. Well there were people that still be my friends, but they're not as close and I was in their outer circle because my life was suck. How is outer circle? Well they won't invite you unless you're the last person that's missing. They won't tell you any good things. And they won't ever listen to anything you have to say when something happens.

Back then I also wanted to use unreal. I even tried UDK in 2011, but I didn't have enough mental clarity so nothing happen. At some point when unreal 4 started to be free, my close friend and I talked about trying it out. But we're just some random idiots that didn't even know what it mean to work on something and all we knew was to play around and finish homework so we won't get F in each courses. We just thought about graduating and get a day job like anyone else(the actual word is "any decent human")

Then my ex which is the one that helped me through dark time invited me to use unity. Before this point, I used gamemaker studio to finish the course project. Before the course, I talked with my close friend about unreal. BTW the course taught unity but the professor was stupid and the students all need to followed the online tutorials to finish  their game projects. This guy made me think super badly about the university and probably bias against university for a very long time.

I spent like 4 years in unity and never make a proper game. The tech demo were all wacked and they're seriously lacked in game design.

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The reason I quitted unity is because of technical limitation. It's not like unity is inferior if we're talking about real performance. But I was just a multimedia student. I was never good at anything and multimedia students are generalists in media creation area which mean we're not teaching to be specialists in the first place.

I realized after I started using unreal 4 that the reason I couldn't do anything good in unity was because I didn't have proper knowledge about C# in the first place. Though if we're talking about programming 101 and CS101, I already got firmed knowledges. I even finished OOP course and introduction to AI which made me understood the concepts of both OOP and AI.

With visual scripting in unreal, my programming skills which are all soft skills could shine. I don't have to remember the proper syntax or function names from the framework. I mean the visual scripting got searching function which allowed me to just think about the word for the functionality that I wanted to use.

Just being able to write pseudo code for the system I wanted to implement would be enough for me to develop it into reality. This is something that I could never have done in my limited knowledge in unity.

Let me tell you the hook point that unreal reeled me in.

It's the behavior tree system. The system is super convenient to use and I could see the potential that I could make an advance AI for my future games.

I wish that Godot could have great tools like unreal. I like the idea of my game is mine and don't need to pay royalty and the engine is free. But using unreal is worth the price I have to pay in case my game is success. Back then unreal got only $3000 before they're taking the cut. When I changed to unreal, it was already a million before they're taking the cut. I honestly didn't even take into consideration about this change when I changed into unreal. I mean I thought it was still over $3000 and 5% royalty for them.

Anyway, my attitude changed over time. Right now I just considered epic as my colleagues from another departments. Even if I'm working on my own project without anyone to tell me what kind of project I have to work on. I'm part of the society and everyone are somehow colleagues. Since I'm using unreal engine, the development team and other teams are technically my colleagues. The bosses there would be like business partners and our successes are correlative.

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Back to the present.

The reason I wanted to post this is because I wanted everyone to know that I'm exist and still working on my game project.

The moment I started typing the post, I just finished the camera lock system, or I called it as targeting system. It's the system which is essential to the current game project and for my future dream games.

I like shooter games, but sometime I wanted something to play that won't required me to be "precise". I mean it's nice to laid back and play the game right? At least from time to time.

I'll have to find a way to make controller works and will have to work on key binding, so that people won't complain about not using QWERTY keyboard like me.

For controller, I'd just implement enough so that the one I own can work, so I can enjoy my own game lol

But both controller support and key binding will have to wait.

First thing first, I have to finish the prototype which is long overdue since years ago.

I mean I never make real prototype. All of those projects ended up as tech demo which can't even call as functional in game term. They're far from being prototype. If anything, maybe incomplete minigames might be the most fit.

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My current game project is just a glimpse of my dream game. It's something that I'd been calling as "foundation"

I'm building the foundation for my future games.

The idea for this game project is to make a combat system for mages.

I never understand why would mages have to be on the backline. Maybe because people never delve deep into what superpowers or sorcery are?

Why would warriors not using magic themselves? The answer is because people never think that those big skills are magic in the first place. Which made the rift to appeared. When the world functioning inconsistently, the immersion breaks. The universe rules are supposed to be constant and applied to every existences.

So while writing novel, I'd been thinking about this matter. I rewritten the universe rules where the rules of physics supposed to be the only one dictated the entire existence. This is the universe of sorcery, the one which the rules of physics will have to follow the way of sorcery.

Basically everything science are only subset of sorcery.

Which lead to this idea, to make the world where mages fight at the frontline and warriors are mages that train in various weapons and have different set of skills.

Well I just don't like how mages are weak in defense and even offense could be called as subpar. I'm serious, all games I played are either sharpshooter or assassin that would be great in offense.

That doesn't mean I don't have sharpshooters or assassins. They're just based on sorcery in everything they do.

Now let's get back to mages.

Since everyone are using magic, or in my world it's called "sorcery arts"

Their characteristics would be

-Long range spells

-Area spells

-Crowd control spells

-Enchantment spells

-Status effect spells

The long range is the characteristic of sharpshooters

The crowd control is for warriors or tanks

Enchantment are generally for supports

Now the only characteristics left are Area and Status effect, which could be branched into various classes if we're delving deep enough

So I'm trying to think about what kind of mage do I want to portray for my first game.

My answer is the lightning mage.

I just love lightning. The symbol of power and destruction and swift in nature.

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Since this is my first game, I wouldn't be able to make the full version of lightning mage. Even if I could, it'd be hard because the nature of lightning is still hard to comprehend despite reading several things involving lightning including electromagnetic.

The first character design that I wanted to make as a playable character is the electromagnetic mage. But back then I wasn't able to grasp the characteristic of lightning and only relied on vague understanding.

There are many ideas that I could use, but at the end it's better for me to work on something simple than trying to have something "genius".

I mean I never finish a proper game, or you could say "commercial viable game". So it's better to keep things simple and ship the game first.

So I ended up as the idea of cult classic "Arc" or "Chain lightning". It's the ability to shoot lightning and it'll jump to another enemies.

I could have something else to expand the armament. But I think it's not good to have shallow mechanic just to fill out quantities.

So I decided to triple down on arc by using lightning bolt as a smaller form of thunder bolt to increase the destructive feeling and the thunder bolt itself is something akin to the ultimate skill.

Though I'm talking thunder bolt as ultimate, it's not as something that you'd rarely use.

My design is that the Arc will be able to use without casting as a slow interval between each use. It's technically casting but you could think of it as attack speed.

The Lightning bolt will be casted automatically when stop casting Arc, as to make the attack seems more interesting than normal combo attack that you could see in many games out there.

Then the Thunder bolt will need to cast at least a stage before it could release. The more stages it casted, the stronger. If you don't know how it works, then think about how megaman charging his gun and shoot. The longer it charged, the bigger and stronger it become.

The key important part here is the status effect here which is called "mana corruption". Right now it's basically just amplifying the damage the target take. I still don't have a good idea on this yet, but the system is in place and can be expand when I have a good idea. I still don't know how I want to make the enemies stun yet, so the status effects will have to wait until I figured out the concept of stunned enemies.

Well I'll have to keep other stuffs hidden because they're rather crucial for my game. I mean it'd be bad if people figured out something similar and somehow make better game than me when I'm not even finish the prototype yet lol.

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The scope of my game is to have several stages to select from. You beat the boss of the stage, and you win the stage. Ideally I wanted to make them as unlockable, but I still don't know how to do it yet.

Then the progression system will be relying on the unlockable perks for customization. It won't be something too flashy, so it's only there to make it feels that you could build the character in certain ways.

I know this is still considered ambitious, but I wanted to make my own models and animation. I've already nailed down the workflow, so it's not that hard. The hard part would be to actually design interesting enemies in the first place.

The music will be composed by myself. No offense, but I don't like musics that people are using in games. Of course there are some great musics like musics from Hollow Knight and Final Fantasy. Other big names are generally using generic stuffs. Stardew is great, but the guy composed by himself right? So I will too.

I wanted to make each stage to have difficulties. So each stages will be able to play a few times. The way I'll make them more difficult is still a secret, but it won't be the number change that's I could assured you.

I think these are all. I don't even plan to have story in the game. At most I'd write some description under the stage selection to tell a bit of lore.

I know that the way my presentation of the game is considered archaic. That's right, it's rather common in online games back in 2000s which I played a lot during my childhood. But now people won't do this anymore and I'm rather nostalgic. Also it's simple enough for a solo dev like me to make it possible to finish the game.

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Now let's talk about my question.

I wonder what price would you sell the game I'm making?

Personally I wanted to sell $9.99

But my perceived quality would be only around $4.99

The problem is that I don't want to ruin the gamedev community by racing to zero

I wanted to help fellow gamedevs to be confidence in their pricing.

Maybe I should just price my game at $9.99 and have regular discount when the time comes.

Well I'll see after I finished my prototype if my perspective will change.

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As for people from discord. I won't be open my discord anytime soon. I still wanted to enjoy my isolation and focus on developing my game.

I got enough pressure from my own expectation. I don't want to expose myself on any social media while I'm in such crucial time.

At some point I'll have to start marketing. I don't want to make myself as a brand like many people do. So I'll limit my own presence to my personal space and only promote the game through business account.

I won't stream. In front of camera, I'm like a deer in front of headlight.

I also won't become youtuber or upload my devlogs...I'd no longer post my devlogs.

It's fine if my publication is kinda obscure and my games might not sell as much as I wish. I don't want to trade the only precious thing that I possessed. It's my freedom.