My First Game Dev Journey: Week 2

Right, what a week it’s been! So, how am I getting on? 

For those of you who don’t know, I’m also an artist, and I plan to start selling some of my paintings soon on my website. Why is that relevant to my game dev journey? Well, one of my big ambitions is to one day create every aspect of a game myself, and that includes bringing my artistic skills into it. I’d love to incorporate my artwork to make the game feel truly mine. 

That being said, since this is my very first game and I’m attempting it in a short time frame, I’ve decided to cut a few corners. My focus right now is on learning how to code, experimenting with music implementation, and building my sound design skill set. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I want to nail the basics before I overwhelm myself with more complex tasks. Given the time scale, I might just aim for a demo or a single level,

but that’ll depend on how quickly I make progress. 

During some research, I discovered that you can get plug-in assets for game design. One site I stumbled across was KitBash3D. Plug-ins are basically pre-made kits filled with items, assets, and models, things like architecture, furniture, and landscape features. As much as I’d love to use my own artwork for this project, realistically I don’t have the time to make everything from scratch. Plug-ins like CARGO are giving me a big head start, freeing up more time for coding and learning about Wwise. 

And here’s a fun coincidence: one of the key features I needed for my game was a portal, and wouldn’t you know it, CARGO had a free fantasy pack with exactly that. It honestly felt like it was meant to be! 

I’m still getting the hang of the controls in Unreal, but I’m slowly finding my bearings. Honestly, I’m pretty proud of how things are coming along so far. Here are some screenshots of my first game level in progress.