One WEEK progress of Indie RPG on Godot (Devlog)

[@vigneshmoorthie922]

Hey Erza. I've been watching your videos. I relate to your goal of finding something to work on that you can be proud of and is meaningful to you. My question to you is how did you go about finding that making a RPG game was the meaningful things to do after getting fired from a big tech company? I work in big tech as well and I am also on the same journey of looking to find something interesting to work on for myself.

[@ezthedev]

This is a really good question, and there's a lot I wish to talk about, but maybe long answer for a video later. Shorter version is this: Growing up in a practical and 'responsibility' driven culture as a creative person, I always had an inner conflict between my creative pursuit and 'practical addition to the society'. Reasons dictate the latter is more worth my time, but with deeper reflection and time, I am thinking the human connection and experience I can provide through creative product is just as important and meanigful as other 'practical' results. (There's a really long discussion to be had there that not everyone can agree I'm sure) At the end of the day, 'meaning' in my personal life has been shaped by what others have defined for me. And I just knew (and now realize more clearly) that is not what I find meaningful or is my contribution to the society. I'm not sure if you can relate, but I've had many profound moment and realization and emotional experience through movies, music and even in games. Every time I've experienced that I wanted to share that feeling with other humans. One hope I had to get that which is meaningful to me in Big Tech would have been to carefully make an experience that is helpful and important to the users, making a complete product without worrying about checking all the boxes for career and promotion. However, I'm sure you know how that usually goes. So. 1. The chase of meaningfulness I had is realizing what I had always wanted to share with the world. 2. The kind of experience and emotion and hopefully profoundness I want to share with the others can be delivered through RPG Game as a medium. (Both reach and in my familiarity) 3. I don't think it's necessarily impossible to achieve this in places like my former employment, but right now I want this more deeply personal experience more. Hope that answered your question somewhat!

[@vigneshmoorthie922]

​@@ezthedev I think I understand what you mean by meaning coming from wanting to share or engage with the world in a more direct fashion as opposed to inside a large corporate environment where you for the most part you may not deal with anyone who uses and appreciates the code you have written for them. Let me share some moments which I definitely that I found small joy in my years in corporate. I found joy when I would learn something that other found complicated and I was able to explain it to them in a really easy to understand fashion and they would say that I was a really good teacher or communicator. I also found joy when I would have to work with some other member of another team and I would cut the bullshit and the pretense that comes in general with working in corporate and just get to the point and talk to them like a friend would. Saying stuff like look this is what needs to be done and this is how we are doing and this is the reason it has to be done and here are the steps etc. And they found that refreshing compared to others who either wont share that information or would just bullshit them. Is this what you meant by sharing with the world, where you learnt something (making an rpg game) and you want some one to use it and be happy (playing the game and liking it) Sorry for the long post.

[@ezthedev]

@@vigneshmoorthie922 haha no worries, love engaging in these type of comments anyways. but yea, exactly! those are all valid moments! And of course, I made a lot of good friends and had those moments of joyous experience at past works. In fact, a lot of my close friends now are from that kind of moments. I think the biggest disappointment really was when you get into the "cut the bs and let's do what's right" resulted in a great successful and meaningful work and experience, which you enjoy, and the company or the leadership decides that is not done the right way or is not important.

[@ezthedev]

Hey all! Thanks for watching! What do you think of the progress so far and the design direction?

[@Cablesfish]

The coffee rutine sounds good. Stick to it!

[@ezthedev]

Thanks! Haha yea love finding and going different local shops daily.

[@twomur_]

man i love the look of your game! the pixel art is amazing!!

[@ezthedev]

Thanks!

[@computersciencestudentriverbat]

This is a very earnest devlog. No memes, no jump cuts, just a straightforward video blog. I think that's really cool. I think it takes courage share your process so public, much respect to you for that.

[@ezthedev]

Thank you for the kind comment! I really appreciate it and it encourages me to keep going!

[@deathgho]

Love the art style! Really unique!

[@ezthedev]

Thank you!

[@sudhansubalasahoo]

Noice calming devlog, great job Really glad you found and played outer wilds as I myself played it recently and fell in love with it.

[@ezthedev]

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it! Yea! I had to finish and liked it so much I also bought the DLC and finished that as well haha

[@breadman7733]

Such a great devlog !

[@ezthedev]

Thanks!

[@Kenbomp]

Nice detail on the fireplace animation.

[@ezthedev]

Thanks! Haha it's nice to have small things noticed!

[@realjames1]

Loving the feel so far, excited to see the next devlogs!

[@ezthedev]

Thanks! A lot of progress has been made! But making a devlog itself has been a whole ordeal on itself as well haha.. but it'll be out soon!

[@mohamedelhawy4124]

Looks amazing :D

[@ezthedev]

thanks!

[@Riazey]

This game looks super cool! Very excited for it!

[@ezthedev]

Thanks!

[@beardyluke]

Amazing! Love your art style!

[@ezthedev]

Thanks! It's encouraging to hear haha.

[@collinvisser7108]

Neat well done

[@ezthedev]

Thanks!

[@Aymanastic]

i like it, countinue!

[@ezthedev]

Thanks! Keeping keeping on!

[@OsTerminator]

Looks really cool..🎉

[@ezthedev]

Thanks! Hoping it only gets better from here!

[@OsTerminator]

@@ezthedev do you have any expectations for your game, and will it be on the App Store eventually?

[@ezthedev]

I do think it might take a bit of time. But Haven't really thought about platform yet! so maybe will be on App Store eventually if it makes sense! I do really hope to get it released on PC and switch at least tho!

[@OsTerminator]

@@ezthedev Thanks, I can’t wait to see the end results.. 👾👾👾

[@ezthedev]

@@OsTerminator thanks!

[@casualuser5527]

I don't think you should have the dialogue stored directly in the code with lists. You should have text files that your code reads. It makes it more manageable and also makes localization not a nightmare.

[@ezthedev]

Haha yea I thought I could get by for the time being for the prototype... but as usual I decided against it as you mentioned (with separate dialogue text file and management and etc) Been working on.. dialogue manager for past few weeks! Excited to share on the next update! Soon!

[@kiwifrogg]

So in the flashback, you can make a change that affects the present time?

[@ezthedev]

Hey! Yea im playing around with that aspect right now, being careful to not to make it feel like time travel mechanic you know? But maybe that isn't too bad either... haha A lot of room to experiment through testing!