Hi all, it’s been a good 3 or 4 years since my last post. Let’s see, what’s happened… Well, I’m still in the PNW, I’ve been upgraded from a high level support tech supporting software deployments to the senior engineer for developing and keeping our company’s help desk up to date. It’s been a wild ride.
So this year I’ve started to recover from the pandemic and every other shit-show that’s been going on in my life for the last 6 years or so. It’s been a lot, but it’s nice to finally make some upward movement. But why update now after so damn long?
Well, last week, here I was minding my own business, trying to juggle life with my recovery from alcoholism (that’s a whole other story for later), which means gamedev stuff has had to take a backseat to everything else. I’ve been doing a little bit here or there and keeping up to date with Unity over the course of the last 8 years or so.
All of that came to a halt last week when out of nowhere, they announced new pricing. Look, now I’m not under any illusion that anything I have now or in the future would even come close to breaking through to the revenue where this change would affect me personally. However, what they are doing here is particularly scummy for a few reasons:
- This will retroactively affect products already released on previous versions of Unity
- They quietly removed their ToS github because it protected against this kind of change
- They still have no idea HOW EXACTLY they will count installs and keep going back and forth on this
- Instead of addressing the huge breach of trust this is, Unity has tried to gaslight developers by telling them they are “confused”
Anyway, like mentioned above, my heart goes out to developers who have hard committed to this engine with projects which are almost complete, and those who have projects already out who are affected by downloads. I stand with you all, this is a HUGE HUGE breach of trust, and as someone else so elegantly put it, even if they backtrack this, none of us want to sit around wondering where the next kick will be coming from.
So, all this being said, I immediately started looking into other engines. I’ve done a bit of coursework and playing with Unreal Engine, which is an absolutely amazing engine, but I’ve really wanted to give something FOSS a try, so I landed on Godot. Got myself a sweet awesome course by some dude named Firebelley and HOLY HELL I am in love. I know Godot has a way to go, but the developers have been working hard, and with the flood of new users all providing feedback, I see nothing but good things in the future here.
“Spoony, your title mentioned existential dread, what’s with that?” — Yeah, yeah, I’m getting to that. You see, just interacting with devs over this, and playing around in Godot has really lit the fire back in my soul. I feel challenged and creative again. While the 9-5 job I have is great and all, and REALLY pays the bill, I just can’t overcome this void in the pit of my stomach. It’s what was fueling my addiction for years now, and all I could do is overlook it. With the joy and happiness I get from my hobby in development, I just want more. I’m not expecting to make the next indie blockbuster by any means, but there has to be something more personally fulfilling for me out there, and damnit, I will find that. But for now, plan to see more gamedev related updates as I explore Godot and Unreal.
It’s good to be back folks. I learn much faster on fire. Enjoy a little preview of the fun little game I’m working on. Vampire Survivor fans will recognize the format.