Chris Prior – Sole Delevoper on Elemgate
I started learning unreal engine on the 1st January 2018, well I purchased a couple of courses on Udemy from emails I found on my phone the next day, when over the Christmas break I was thinking I really needed a change of job.
I might have been a little hungover to start that day and I needed to download the UE4 but the next day I started and I thought well you’ve played games for the last 30 years it’s about time I created one.
Always wanted to create a video game while growing up and was impressed, amazed by cartoons and later Pixar or DreamWorks movies with the look and animation of these movies, but it seemed like there was no good way to get started and building an entire game by ones self just looked like an impossible task.
Especially when I was always playing games since the family got a Commodore 64 back in the 80’s, playing games like all the dungeons and dragons, impossible mission 1 and 2, defender of the crown, the last ninja series, jump man, mummy’s tomb, IK+ and so many more.
My last job was drafting 2d traffic management plans for roadworks companies and I did enjoy doing it but it got repetitive in the sense that it was just a different road or location and only so many different types of jobs, the truth is I couldn’t see myself doing it for the rest of my life, there was not challenges left and I was learning nothing new and I’ve always had a creative side but I’ve never really used like I am now.
After working a fulltime job and learning unreal engine every night also a day if not both days on weekends for 20-21 months, my full time job was starting to get in my way of learning unreal, as work was getting more and more busy that I had to draw plans at night almost every night as well as all day and learning unreal didn’t happen for a few months.
That made decide to leave my full time job, I wasn’t happy not being able to learn anymore and when I did have time to learn more I was just to mentally exhausted to even think about it, I was there another two months before leaving at the start of December 2019 almost two years after I started this game development journey.
In December I had a few prototypes and was having a little break while deciding where to go from here, I thought about applying for jobs at game studios but thought in all seriousness, who would hire or take a chance on someone who is 40 years old starting game development for the first time, never working on any game title before.
The only choose I had was to create a game myself, no one else I knew was interested, so i picked a small game i had something I thought I could finish while still continuing to learn everyday, well thing always seem to take long then you think and when learning at the same time you make a few mistakes along the way but over the past two years I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished.
I didn’t want to release as an early access game but I have done my best to have it polished enough that it will only be missing more levels, cinematics and more of a polish, but even with the levels that the game will come out players will find it a challenge to be sure, unfortunately I can’t afford to continue work on it full time unless I hit a certain amount of sales.
