Progress, of a Kind

Yesterday I managed to get the Unreal engine up and running and found a set of tutorial videos that I like. Considering I haven't worked in earnest with any kind of editor since slapping together some messy Half-life levels in Hammer I feel like I have a lot of ground to make up.

For now I have a box full of misaligned polys with no textures and one janky automatic door. I figure by this time tomorrow I should have a full AAA game polished and ready to ship.

Maybe Saturday.

But I do feel like this is some kind of progress towards my ultimate goal. I'm going to have to learn some kind of tool to do this. I don't think I can make a game of any interest out of Excel and VBA (though others have done it before).

I realize that going straight to the biggest, arguably most complicated engine is going to be ... let's say challenging. My initial thought was to go with a simpler engine, maybe something I could make a nice 2D side-scroller from. I only looked on Steam though and didn't realize that GameMaker Studio had a free version on their website.

Still, I feel like Unreal will give me more flexibility in the long run. Ultimately I'm not trying to make something that I can sell for money, just something I can show to friends.

Obviously there's more motivating me to do this, but I'll get into that a little later.

Now I just need to figure out what exactly I want to make.