Since I was a kid, I love playing games.
Before I know there are video games back then, I used to play some traditional Indonesian games such as: Aslen, Benteng, Gobak Sodor, BETE, etc.
I enjoy having a good time with other kids and beat them to it, the feeling of victorious was very satisfying especially when other losing kids are cry that’d be a pleasant bonus for me 🤣
Sometimes I lose as well and I don’t like losing, I was very competitive to win regardless there are no reward whatsoever.
However, as I grow older, traditional game is no longer satisfy me, and I discover there is a thing called “Video Games” and I was mezmerized with it!
I didn't grow in the silver spoon family, my parent was too poor to buy me fancy console or a computer back then. I used to come to my neighboor's terrace, outside of their house and peeking my neighboor through a small gap of curtain watching them playing video games, and turns out that they play video games from their TV! Back then some TV model have built in video games such as something like Pacman, or top down tank shooter, and I can sit there for hours until they are aware Im around and eventually shut down the curtain lmao.
As I grow older and yet still have no money, I used to go to Internet Cafe to play Dota! You know the custom map runs by Warcraft game, back then there is no Dota 2 yet, we play dota in a custom map inside Warcraft game.. Crazy times, I used to go to that place and bail out my school playing the game with my friends and enjoy beating people in local region level.
After playing Dota, I also used to play some MMORPG and oh boy that was wild, MMORPG was very addictive, I used to grind every day every night just to mine some material to craft best weapon, but somehow rich guy always beat me because most are them are Pay To Win game.
Finally after I reach my adult age, and have decent money I bought my first PC and finally installing all the cracked games lol because I was still too poor to buy them, and said to myself “Im gonna create a game one day”, I got goosebumps everytime remembering that moment of joy.
Since 2023 I was learning on how to create games, I tried Unity and enjoyed it very much but since recent January 2024 they change their indie license to somehow pay-per-install thingy which triggers everyone to jump off out of the boat, then I discover Godot and have a pretty good time with it, I love the engine and the engine are open source meaning you can create game and distribute it with 0 commission! I started to learn the engine quite deep and join some of the game jams to create a game (Shitty Game).
After getting familiar with the engine, my so called game-dev soul are kicking, I want to create AAA game single handedly, create everything from scratch, use free engine without using any free assets from marketplace to craft my dream game. I made a design document as well and got some basic scaffolding on how to create a game, watching countless tutorial, devlogs, etc. After working on my AAA games for 3 days, I got bored and in my boredom I found another game idea, and start creating that game from scratch again.. and the hell loop repeat :)
Until now I couldn't escape tutorial hell! everytime Im in the middle of creating my initial game idea, I always got new idea and ended up abandon my initial game and building another from scratch. I realized that Im suck at creating assets, it always the biggest blocker so far and my ego that avoiding use the free assets from market store make it worse because I maintain huge standard of what I produce (Im an Artist!). So what I do ?
I realized that I think Im not ready to create AAA games (yet) so I decided to create some small experience, it shitty and doesn’t necessarily a game, and beside making games I also like make things pretty.. That’s why I become a web developer at first.
Until I discover.. There.. Is.. A.. 3D.. Renderer.. Based.. On… . Web. It’s called
My head was blown, it has amazing features let people render meshes with WebGL, you can even create a shader as well!
There are alternative such as Pixi.js, konva.js, etc. But for 3D experience THREE.JS are the god father of all.
I quickly open my Notion and create a roadmap to learn it, watching tutorials, following people on X creating amazing 3D experience.
It is truly amazing things, you can build everything on it (except Global Illumination)! People are creating game as well based on it, and web agency are crushing amazing website with it.
I actually already know it since 2018 but never went too serious as right now learning it.
To be able to run you must learn to walk right, so I decided to focus on it and build a simple golf game.
I don’t have a timeline yet as Im a professional Web Developer and always devoted 200% to my job, it is always my top priority.
But I spend 2 hours everyday on grinding it because you know, you gotta sacrifice something to get something right.
Here is a initial sneek peek of my game, it’s still using base assets that I download from Kenney.nl, but I plan to replace it with my own assets some day.
There is so much to do, a lot of fun experiment, lot of errors, tears and joy.
I plan to share the progress on my personal website, Im aware that maybe no one will notice this but that’s fine since Im introvert that kinda win for me, along the way I can learn better English writing and game development.
So… Ill be sharing the update for this and document all of it in this Wiki website :).