September Monthly Update
I started writing this out already, but it was somehow deleted unfortunately. So here we go again, the month of September!
Unity and the Game Dev Community Upset
By far the biggest thing that happened in September. I’m sure you heard about it to some degree. Essentially Unity introduced a new pricing model but it was done clumsily and in ignorance. They couldn’t specify what they meant when questions were asked about it. What it consisted of, was for every download of your game, Unity would charge $0.20 per installation. They later specified this to be at $200,000 or more, however at the time of the price release, that wasn’t said. It’s a little better now that they’ve released some answers, but it was done messily and without a lot of thought. Apparently even a lot of the Unity developers themselves didn’t know this change was coming. If you want to read more about this, I definitely recommend you read Unity’s own FAQ here and I’m sure there’s many many articles out there talking more about it than I could.
How is this going to affect DIDS and it’s current projects?
The current project in progress that was using Unity was Daughter of Bones. The prototype was almost done, however I’m choosing to move DoB from Unity to Unreal Engine. I started learning Godot, however I believe that Unreal Engine, especially with the recent release of UE5, has more credibility to it’s name and will be the better choice going forwards. I’m making this change despite the Unity price change answers finally releasing simply because I’ve lost faith in Unity and how they handle their customers. For me, it’s simply a lost of trust. This is a temporary setback, as I need to re-learn UE from my school days and then re-build the prototype before I want to do a playtest.
A Focus On Personal Improvement
Before the Unity changes, I had embarked on a personal growth journey - Google’s Coursera program for project management. It takes six months long, but I believe that finishing it will help with my own projects and how I manage them. Maybe not applicable in managing a team, but it’s provided some very interesting mindsets that I wouldn’t have previously thought on my own. (I also think this will help me in my professional journey).
Like I mentioned previously, I also started learning Godot, an open source engine. I like Godot, and hopefully in the future I’ll be able to go back to it, but for now it’s on hold until further notice.
Colour Quest: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding Colour Theory
Something I’m very excited to announce is a new series called Colour Quest. It will consist of several videos that will help explain all the different aspects of colour theory! I’ve released the first two videos, they’re both on our YouTube channel. If you could go like them I would be so grateful. I worked very hard on them and I hope they help some people out!
For the Month of October
As I write this blog post, half the month is already over. I had a week of vacation and then unfortunately caught COVID so the next blog post will be the last two weeks of October. The plan now is, with the Unity changes, I will not only redo DoB entirely but also re-learn UE. And I can’t do one without first doing the other.
First, I need to finish the Project Management Course. I have several tutorials lined up for UE that I’ll be completing, and then finally I believe I’ll be ready to work on DoB. A long journey, but hopefully worth it.
Final Thoughts and Video Releases
If you reached the end of this blog, I’m sorry it took me so long to write it! I ran out of time before my vacation and had this mostly written out before it got lost. COVID got the better of me, despite having vaccines I was basically bedridden for several days before I felt well enough to even sit at my computer for longer than 30 minutes.
Several videos were released in September. A release schedule of a video on Monday and Friday has been working out well for me, and allows me enough personal time to relax and recoup. The following videos were released:
The Colour Wheel | Colour Quest - The Ultimate Guide to Understanding Colour Theory
Colour Harmony | Colour Quest - The Ultimate Guide to Understanding Colour Theory
