Lost in Space

It's unlikely, but some of you may have noticed for the last 4 months I dropped off the face of the earth. There's a combination of reasons and most of them are not all that surprising.

Parallel Journeys

It wasn't too long ago that I announced I was working on building my own video games, I was actively posted on here as well as on social media until even more recently. As it happened, it was around this time I happened to start a new job as well, so both of these journeys took off at the same time.

I'm not going to get in to what my job is here, but I'm happy to say I've been enjoying it considerably. As a result, in recent months work has slipped into my free time as well, which has made it harder to squeeze in all of the side projects I want to, combine that with another reason I'll get to in a minute, and that's why things went silent.

Also, video games still exist, and I've found myself playing a lot of Forza Horizon 6, Black Flag, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I can't entirely blame my unhealthy obsession with work for getting lost in space.

Project Avalon

So where does the time go? Some of you may know that I work on wow.export, which is an export toolkit for World of Warcraft. This has been a massive project me and Marlamin have worked on for the better part of a decade.

wow.export is written in JavaScript, specifically nw.js which is the NodeJS runtime strapped onto Chromium. Choosing this tech stack allowed us to get the project to where it is today, but it's safe to say we've outgrown it. As the game has grown bigger and more advanced, the limitations of the tech stack are beginning to be a real problem. So what's the solution?

Quietly, in the background, I've been working on essentially wow.export 2.0. The reason for this bump in version is that it's a complete rewrite from the ground up, written in Rust. If you're reading this, you're probably one of the first people to know that I'm doing this, as I haven't announced it anywhere else yet.

Why a rewrite? We've gotten to the point where I feel the most sane thing to do is to start again, take everything we learnt from the current version, and re-build each part better from the ground up. Why haven't I announced it? At this stage, this is very much me experimenting in a dark basement to see what happens. I'm not going to announce to the world we're absolutely doing this, only for it to turn out to be an awful idea.

Is it an awful idea? So far, actually, no. The installation size has gone from 700MB to 15MB, it loads in seconds rather than minutes, it's considerably more stable, and it's much friendly to those strange people who use Linux and macOS willingly as a desktop.

What now? Well, I plan to keep working on this as my own machination. It's given me an excellent excuse to learn a new programming language, and so far it's looking very promising.

Project Gauntlet

I know what you're thinking. The game is abandoned! Yes, but actually, no. If you've followed along on social media you'll see the engine is in a really good state, and it got to the fun part, where I get to actually sit and make the game itself.. except, that's where the fun hit a wall.

The initial idea for Project Gauntlet was essentially an obstacle course. The goal is to get from point A to point B, and as the game designer I'd invent all sorts of challenging, amusing and potentially frustrating obstacles to put in your way. The death mechanic would take after Super Meat Boy, where the bad thing kills you instantly, you go back to the start and get straight back to it.

I have an engine, I had the idea, and I had a working prototype. But as I started to look at the path ahead, I realized there wasn't a lot of me in this. It wasn't unique, it didn't have personality. It was just a 3D platformer, like every other 3D platformer. And then I started to worry that I'd spend all of this time, only for it to never stand out in the sea of asset flips and commerical engine slop.

Project Milkshake

In one of the first posts I wrote on here, I mentioned I had three games in mind. Hitting this fork in the road, I decided to put in a pin in the gauntlet and reach for the milkshake instead.

Why this? The ideas I have for this project are.. more crazy. Definitely more ambitious. Probably not a good idea for the first game I'd try to release commercially. But after a lot of thinking, I feel like the saying "go big or go home" is quite apt with the current indie game scene at the moment. It's also going to be a lot more fun to create.

The Road Ahead

For you, the observer, not a lot changes. If you're a wow.export user, then there's potential excitement in the future for you. If you're here in the anticipation of the game then know that I'm as motivated as ever, I'm just changing lanes, and I think what I have planned will be far more interesting.

I will be making an effort to post here more often. Perhaps 4 months was too long, but that's life sometimes. You may have noticed there was a little re-design around here too! I'll also be making an effort to post more on social media.