Well here it goes: the first post.
I've been working on Atma for a little over two years now. During that time I've had to learn a LOT about every aspect of game development and I still have a lot more to learn. I'm lucky to have a strong support group around me that asks how the project is going frequently. They genuinely feel interested in my future plans for the project or if the playtest on Friday went well.
On the other hand, they aren't quite as interested in how increasing contrast can guide players toward the important buttons, or when I migrate my AWS infrastructure into CDK, or how I recouped 20 milliseconds on the game thread by changing a TMap to a TArray. They haven't had the same social experiences I did playing Voyage Century Online for hours a day and going to a 100 vs. 100 war to take over a city. They haven't felt that joy of level 40 attack and walking around with your first rune scimitar. They haven't lost a full set of tier 7 gear because they disconnected during a Hellgate. And they certainly haven't tried to recreate these experiences in Unreal Engine 5. When I was still working as a Technical Lead I was surrounded by people who had similar memories of games deeply ingrained in their history as a gamer.
I miss that.
So this blog is going to be my way of sharing my experiences with anyone who is willing to listen. I plan on talking about my development process from design theories to technical battles to production issues and timelines. I may even just share some of my favorite experiences growing up playing games that influenced what I want Atma to become. We'll see how it evolves over time. Hopefully this provides some valuable insight for people who love to play these types of games and people who want to make them. It might serve as a giant warning sign to anyone else considering tackling projects like this or might be the green light one of you has been waiting for. It might just be me writing a diary that only my brother reads once every few months.
Either way, I'm excited to put my thoughts on paper and share my experiences. We have a lot to catch up on.