My First Game!

Sunday, November 20, 2016

Yesterday I announced on my new website that I'm finally making my first game! It should be noted that I don't count W.A.R.P, the game I made for last years oculus VR Jam, because I tried to make a game with that, but don't feel I succeeded and didn't plan to move forward with it. But this one I do! I hope to one day release this commercially!


For now though, I once again have entered a VR Game Jam with this new game. But my work and progress is going much better then last year! I've been quite proud of it so far, and confident in it that it had a fair reasonable chance at winning a prize. The scripting is going well, shaders, texture and models are all made by me as well. The aesthetic I am aiming for is being achieved! So its been going really well, and I've been so happy!

Sadly though, it seems this VR Jam too is going to be plagued with bias and corruption, in addition to a larger pool of entrants. I didn't learn about all this until the past couple days. Before, I was happy to see that almost no one I knew was talking about this Jam, making me think based on the amount of entrants alone that my odds would better. But that's not the case. And like the oculus Jam, they look the other way when it comes to entering a game that's not being made since the start of the Jam, for the Jam. People are taking games that have been in development for a while and entering them, some planned to release commercially soon even if the Jam didn't exist! They will even give more points to full games then demos. Basing the points on length of the game is terrible. No legit Jam developer could compete with a game that's had a couple years of development!

I'm still proud of my game, and I plan to continue with it for a better commercial release, but I now doubt I have a remote chance in hell of winning. I feel I could get this games quality and fun factor up enough to be reasonably popular as a commercial release with time, but I don't think I can polish it THAT MUCH for this Jam. I was counting on it to be fun, but more showing its potential for further development. To me that's what a Jam game should be. A sample/demo that's awarded to say "this has potential to be something more!".

So I've had to come to the disappointing realization that my chances of winning aren't fair, and minuscule. It's been quite the mental turn, losing confidence, excitement, pride, etc. Still, I'm determined to retain s much as that as I can. I considered just dropping from the Jam. The reasons to do so would be to keep the game open to enter into future Jams, and cheat like everyone else does. Or just to lower my stress. For the former, I would think that if oculus was going to do another Jam it would be in 2017. But I would also think they would have hinted at it by now. Like at OC3. Their last one went terrible in so many areas. Unless they are blind to all its failing, I'd think they would have pause in holding another. I would hope that they would, and have learned from their mistakes. but I doubt it. For the stress reason. Well, I plan to continue the game no matter what, so dropping out wouldn't be a huge deal cause of that. The stress of these deadlines can be quite heavy! Unlike apparently everyone else, I'm creating everything for my game, including its design and mechanics as I go. I have to take it on faith that I'll be able to fill in holes in my games design before then end. That's stressful as hell for me. I know I'll figure things out. But I just don't know if I can do so under a deadline like this!

To make things worse, this Jam started off about like the last one for me, where it seems like everything is going to go wrong. Then I had a terrible cold sapping my energy for have of it. This time, I was without my Rift for 2 weeks! Completely unable to test the VR game I'm trying to make on a deadline! I wasted 2 weeks sending it in to be replaced, thinking that since oculus wanted to replace it, they concluded it was a hardware issue I was having. I thought it was a code issue. Well, they were wrong, so I'm right. But that's 2 weeks gone for nothing. And now I have to put up with a HMD that likes to randomly only work for 1m before cutting out and requiring being unplugged for 5m.

Anyway. lets forget about that for now. I was considering dropping out, but I don't think I will. I started this, so I'll keep at it in finish it. Maybe hell will freeze over, and I actually win something! lol.

Here's the announcement post for my game. =)

Announcement: AdFighter