Behind-the-scenes overview ~
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I think Game Development is the best way for beginners to wrap their minds around the concept of Software Engineering- However, let me clarify: one can excel as a programmer without ever creating a game.
Yet, I find game development to be the optimal gateway to the world of computer science due to its comprehensive nature:
The reason is, that the game development process entails multiple aspects of Software Development all at once- including design logic like the Onion Design, Software Testing, Production Cycles, and Release Management. Moreover, Optimization, Code efficiency, Safety protocols, Time Complexity, Space Complexity, Boundary checks, and adept handling of Edge cases.
Consequently, by developing games, one can gain valuable insights into real-world job positions, DevOps, Graphics programming, Artistic expression, and Storytelling. Game development almost– encapsulates the entirety of Computer Science and Engineering.
But enough about that—perhaps you didn’t come here to indulge in my musings on this particular field. So, without further ado, let’s delve behind the scenes of Shadowing Nightfall.
I won’t be going into details- rather, I’ll just share a few clips that I recorded during my development phases. which Include:
- Prototyping
- Land
- Buildings
- Programming
Prototyping
Prototyping is the art of experimenting with core features/functionalities you intend to offer in your product, no matter what software you might be building, a prototype will always make your project go smoothly and is something you can come back to later in the future projects and use it, improve on it and it makes everything much easier!
Here is very early footage of me experimenting with enemy AI mechanics, and shooting mechanics in a very constrained environment
Designing the World
Although most of the assets like the gravestones, guns, car and trees were pre-made and freely available assets that I simply dragged in, there were some things that I had to design myself with good effort, starting with the ground: Unity provides a great tool to sculpt, paint and shape our terrain however we like, and we can use our texture file to colour the terrain
The next video is about painting and smoothening the cliffs
Constructing Houses
Although Blender is the best tool for such sort of work, I happened to rely on Unity’s Blender Spin-off tool called “ProBuilder” It is very well made and indeed useful for those who don’t know how to use Blender. It has all the goodies, extrusion, edge-loop, wireframe, etc.
Programming
Most people think you need to be a professional or well-versed in X language to build something, but, mostly: that is not the case. The problem in this field is that we are faced with tons of information right in front of us, and we can’t learn everything about everything, what we can do is know what to learn. we need to learn how to learn. these days, coding is made much easier by the invention of LLMs, but even before that, we used to have IDE Code Completion and Intellisense features to let us know how and what to write. in the following video, I’ve showcased how Visual Studio Code makes it easy to program when set up correctly
All thanks to Unity’s Scripting API
As you might’ve seen, VS Code does all the heavy lifting for you, you don’t even need to remember the exact spelling of a function/name/variable and what it does, simply use VS Code’s Features and it will treat you right in your journey of programming. It’s important to be fluent with the IDE you chose and become very comfortable with it.
Fun Fact: in the source code of this game, I might have coded a couple of lines only. the rest is almost written by ChatGPT and a few intelligent folks across YouTube and StackOverflow.
The Idea I intend to get across is: that nowadays we don’t have to worry about the heavy lifting. just learn enough so that you will be able to know what to do, not necessarily how to do it. Then use the technology of LLMs to figure out how to do what to do. Knowing what to Google, research and knowing how to use LLMs effectively is going to be very crucial in the new age of AI.
Check out the source code of this game on GitHub!
Parting Words
So how much time did I spend on this? approx 2 months, averaging intensive 4-6 hours of development each day.
Thanks for reading my post and have a nice day!
Grab the game!
(If you’re anything like an average curious gamer, you’ll soon realize that there is something weird in the game’s files, and with that information, I will leave you to it.)
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