New Year, new challenges!

During the last year, I started to feel a growing concern for participating in new projects.

It’s not that I have too much free time. Nor does it mean that I’m bored at my current job and I want to get out of there to seek new horizons. In fact, as I wrote in a previous article (“Farewell 2015! Two short stories and new challenges”), last year was amazing in the professional field, and I know I am very lucky to be a member of a team like Behaviour.

But in that work context, especially in a game development studio like Behaviour, I really have to focus on efficiency and quality, and there is not much space or time to freely research alternatives, try weird ideas or explore new topics just for the fun of doing it.

In fact, it’s been a really long time since I had to implement the gameplay logic for a player to jump or an enemy to take “intelligent” decisions and pursue the main character. And I really enjoyed coding those kind of features just because we programmers do like technical challenges a lot; many of us actually got into the industry because we wanted to solve those kind of challenges in the context of videogames.

Fortunately, Behaviour is a company that understands that we all need to grow as professionals and, for that purpose, we sometimes need to work on some personal projects. Of course, those projects should not have any conflicts of interest with the company, so creating my own mobile version of “Snoopy” or a console port of “Fallout Shelter” is completely out of the question.

But what about reviving my own (and very old) version of Pacman, of which I just found the source code some months ago? Or materializing one of my childhood dreams and developing a small football (soccer) game? Or just trying some new technology that I have not had any time to check at work?

Projects in Papa Game Dev
Projects in Papa Game Dev

I have many ideas, and also a strong willing to work on them. I’m only missing the free time to effectively sit down and do some progress, but since there is no pressure to advance nor to meet any date, I will not worry about that.

Furthermore, it is an excellent opportunity to share the process of creating a videogame and create a kind of developer log that can provide guidance to those who are just starting and could learn from my experience.

Welcome to the Papa Game Dev Projects section!

I will post a small update each time I do some progress, describing what was done and perhaps sharing a version of the updated game itself. I have no idea how fast I will be able to finish or publish anything, but I am sure that I will enjoy the ride.

It’s time to get down to work!