Silly Little House

So I've been playing a lot of android netrunner and it made me completely relook at how I get a job in the games industry.

Netrunner has been such a positive experience for me recently. I got into the game with after getting it demo'd to me at the UK games expo. Its such a fun game and after some pushing from my TCG obsessed brother, I went to a local group that I wasnt sure was still active with hardly any experience or equipment. I wasnt even that experienced with card game culture or anything! However everyone was super welcoming and accepting of me and I've made some really good friends!! Chief among them is a trans woman who let me borrow her decks, tokens, and playmat for MONTHS!! (I have my own stuff now tho). The game has been super fun and I recommend all who even have a passing interest in card games to give it a try :). These friends even took me to my first regional tournament and drove me 2.5 HOURS across the country at 6 in the morning!

During this car journey is when I realised (and back on topic) that this new friend who took me under her wing, taught me so much of the game and who I was basically playing her deck archetypes at this regional tournament, also went to the same uni as me, was in the same course and has MY DREAM JOB?!?!?! (graphics programming)

Anyways, after a talk with her, my inspiration was revitalised for game development and the path I should take has become a lot clearer. She had recommended to me, half way through this car journey, that making a game engine was a super great way of getting into the games industry into a specialised, low level, field. Now, making a game engine has been something thats been on the backburner for a while now, but I have been so distrcated by ideas and inspiration from the Godot engine has a program that renders a triangle on a screen has just been gathering virtual dust.

I'm gonna go back to it. I wanna make a better go of game development, and making a game engine seems to tick most of those boxes.

So what am I planning to actually do.

Today I started relearning OpenGL. In university I did a whole module on graphics programming and rendering pipelines, but it was all using a Java version of OpenGL. I've never really done a project in C++, so thats where I'm starting. I'm planning on learning OpenGL with this tutorial supported by looking up some C++ things here. Hopefully I can get to the stage of doing something simple like a physics engine, maybe with a spinning object interacting with some balls. That sorta thing. Something quick that I can put straight into my portfolio and CV super easily.

Then, I wanna learn DirectX. My netrunner friend mentioned offhand that DirectX is a lot more similar to other graphics APIs than OpenGL is, and would probably be a good place to go to next from OpenGL. I found a blog post going over a graphics programmer's process of learning how to do directX 12 in 2023, so I will probably look at following that and seeing where it leads me.

I am also thinking about Vulkan. It's made by the people who did OpenGL and the tutorials look super good and more accessible. I am super tempted, but likely I will be picking which one I will pick up at random :).

I am a very project oriented person. I struggle to just follow a tutorial without having a project with a clear goal at the end. So, in previous attempts to get on and learn Graphics APIs, I thought of a few projects I'm gonna look at doing through this journey of sorts:

(idk if its obvious that I dont have much of an idea apart from like 2 projects.)

I'm super excited to continue learning OpenGL. I really hope this has the desired effect, and given some of my interviews I've had, I really think it will! I'll likely keep this blog updated with my progress inbetween my ADHD ridden escepades.

Thank you netrunner for inadvertantly reigniting my passion and motivation in really trying for a game development job :3.

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