It was another week of banging my head on Unreal Engine. I did, however, find a good tutorial that not only was informative but would help me with doing a game. It was for making an inventory system and was that rare tutorial in which the guy explained why he was doing something and not just saying that he was doing it. The explanations were brief and clear. Despite the time it took to explain, the tutorial segments were short and to the point. I give it two thumbs up.
I was getting discouraged at my slow progress with the engine, especially after seeing a comment by someone who had been working with it for five months and still felt overwhelmed. I've used the BigWorld engine in the past and have taken programming classes. I was hoping for faster progress. Any progress is good progress, I suppose.
The main thing I've been looking at is using procedural generation to create a planet. That would give me a variety of biomes for book covers as well as being useful for a game. It appears that there are two main ways to do it. The first is to create a massive sphere. The second is to create a flat world in which a player reaching the edge of the map would transition to the other side of it in a seamless way. From the ground it would appear to be a planet. For a space game, which is what I'm leaning toward, I'd need to create planets and then create the landscapes, all using procedural generation. It's dreadfully complicated but would only need to be done one time. That's another thing I find encouraging. No matter how difficult a problem is, it only has to be solved once.
If it seems like a game is a distraction, I'm thinking of it like this. A $20 or $30 game that sold 1,000 copies would gross $20,000 or $30,000. If it sold a few thousand, that would be even better. If it was popular, I could start a company and start hiring employees.
Have a great weekend.
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