I started doing game development again this month. I have chosen to use pygame-ce as my framework so that I can work in Python. When I last started in 2020, I had chosen the Love2D framework which used Lua as the programming language. My original thoughts were that I gave up on gamedev because I was working in a language that would never be used outside of programming. There wasn’t enough in Lua itself to keep me fully interested in it, so I abandoned it.
I recently got a new job at my company as a software engineer. I knew I would be working in C, C#, and Python. Python I think is one of the more fun languages, so that’s how I ended up at pygame.
I had watched a video by Coding with Russ on his journey of using pygame over 2 years. His journey started with re-implementing classic games up to a fighting game and dungeon crawler. I wanted to emulate that and started reimplementing pong.
I implemented pong twice in pygame. The first time was basically a riff on Tech with Tim’s tutorial on it. I wasn’t fully satisfied with the way the tutorial implemented the game (and it had some bugs) so I redid it with proper classes. He did use some classes, but I think I ignored that refactor in favor of doing it on my own. I am now on my third iteration, but I am implementing the Entity-Component-System. The ECS system is definitely overkill for pong, but I really just wanted to learn how the design pattern worked. I am debating on finishing this implementation…
After the second pong implementation, I went into breakout which is very similar to pong in a lot of physics and gameplay. I didn’t actually complete the implementation as I got bored. I may revisit this sometime when I feel like I need it.
I think one of my challenges is fighting boredom and lack of focus. I want to flex my programming skills, but I cannot drive myself to complete the actual project. While I did finish 2 pong implementations and posted it to GitHub, I haven’t finished the final one and gave up on breakout. Maybe I am just looking at this too negatively. Right now as I write this, I am thinking about how I’m not going to work on ECS pong today. I am thinking about starting an original game soon rather than a re-implementation. I am thinking this game will bring back the interest in making a game.
I will have to come up with a workflow on creating a new game. Starting with requirements and art before diving into coding. I will want to run it in the ECS system. I will want to create some tools to prototype more levels. It will be a fun project I think over just re-implementing something that’s been done.