2023 is over. Welcome 2024. It’s that time of the year again, and I encourage you to write down what you did this year. It always makes me feel better. Now get ready for some good old bragging (again)!
Shipped an AAA game
It’s been almost 3 years at my job, and in September, the game I’ve worked on finally shipped! It’s a cool achievement, and the release week felt very special, it’s a dream coming true. I cannot wait to see how we’re going to make the game better over time, and now the challenge of “live maintenance” starts. It’s a new way to work, so it’s always a good thing for my experience.
Learned (a bit of) game engine development
I’ve always wanted to make my own game engine, but never thought I was skilled enough. After two tries this year, I made something I’m kind of happy about. I learned to make a simple 2D renderer with OpenGL, and plenty of C++ stuff. I’ve started to go down the rabbit hole of Graphics Programming, but stopped too early because of a lack of math skills. I really need to get better at math this year, to do a third try on making my own game engine.
Started learning Rust
It’s the new cool kid in town, so I had to learn it a bit. I created a very simple roguelike with the help of a library made for that purpose. Then I tried to tinker with macroquad to make very simple games. It helped me learn a bit about Rust and become more familiar with the Rust ecosystem.
I also made a simple static site generator with it, which was a cool project overall that I recommend to anyone curious about it!
Did more web dev
Last year, I got more familiar with web development. This year, it all clicked. I did more front-end and back-end dev at work, which improved my skills a ton. I’m now very comfortable coding a simple backend, whatever the language is. Which led me to learn a bit about…
…Golang
Golang is fun! I did a simple REST API with it, and it helped me learn more about the language. But the funniest project I did with it was a simple todos manager, how original.
I made it for work and linked it to our Jira, because I think the jira web interface is too slow for me, and I hate going to the Jira website just to know what I need to do, it disrupts my workflow too much. So I made this todo tool to handle all this in my terminal, which made my life a tiny bit better at work.
Did one gamejam with a friend
I’ve played a lot of Persona 5 this year and it really reignited my love for games (and for gamedev). So I did a gamejam with a friend and ultimately, we ended up making a very poor version of Persona 5 turn by turn fights. It was fun because I hadn’t touched Unity since a very long time, so it was an opportunity for me to get back at it!
Godot
I started learning Godot, even before the Unity fees drama, just because I hate how slow Unity became. Godot is lightweight and fast. It lacks some important stuff in my opinion, and have some really rough edges here and there. I like it, but I can’t imagine myself using it for a very serious project now, but I will definitely keep an eye on it from now on and I might use for smaller projects.
Wrap-up
I am very happy about my progress this year, and I feel I am finally on my way to becoming a better programmer. Experience really makes the difference, and having good mentors too. With the right people around us, we go faster, further, and we have fun with it!
Which leads me to think that I better start posting more here, and start sharing my thoughts and knowledge more regularly!
Stay tuned!