The journey of developing a game using Unreal Engine (UDK) for three years

[[145674]]

There is no promotion for this game (this post is the first one), in fact, it is because I really don’t have the extra energy. It’s the hardship of making things out of interest in my spare time.

The reason I posted this is to exchange ideas with people who have developed games themselves, and those who are planning to develop games by themselves. Only those who have experienced the pitfalls can understand.

Initially, it originated from a dream and a childhood wish.

For me personally, the significance of completing it is not only to fulfill a childhood wish, but also a journey of defeating myself. In the past three years, I have experienced all kinds of changes. In the end, by squeezing my spare time, I learned new languages, new game platforms, 3D modeling, 3D animation, art, sound effects, FLASH, and various configurations. I completed a challenge of new difficulty. Looking back silently, the things that I thought were difficult before are really nothing now. I also understand that one person, a small team, can create an APP used by the whole world. It is really not on the cloud. Notch of "Minecraft" spent ten years sharpening his sword. Dubbo, six Alibaba R&D brothers, created a system that supports more than 2,000 services and more than 3 billion visits every day. Redis, Antirez's open source contribution... Diaosi can also counterattack if they have faith.

In 2012, I played a somatosensory rocket game in my dream and found it very interesting after waking up. So the initial theme of the game development plan that I had been planning for a long time came into being.

I hope it is a pure game, without in-app purchases or ads, so that when I don't know what to play, I can have a fun time. It's a childhood wish come true.

As for why I chose Unreal Engine (UDK), it was because I saw the performance of Unreal on the mobile platform for the first time, and then I was deeply shocked by it. At present, the performance of Unreal Engine on the iOS platform is still the strongest, without a doubt. The "Infinity Blade" series is an ironclad proof. This is why I chose UDK very stupidly (without considering any commercial purpose, but if you want to complete the best expressive game with the lowest cost, I sincerely recommend that students who want to make games use Unity3D for 3D games and Cocos2D for 2D games. The price of Unreal Engine's expressiveness is that it is too complex and too difficult to control. Let's wait and see the performance of Unreal4).

For an individual developer, um, to be more precise, an amateur individual developer, developing a game alone, and not knowing the consequences of using the UDK engine to develop a 3D game. Especially for a programmer, 3D modeling, 3D animation, 2D textures, FLASH... complex unreal scripts, and the UDK engine really fit the saying: "A cook who can't draw is not a good programmer" + "No Zuo No Deal". Only those who have done it can understand the hardship.

I am one of the generation that grew up playing the Famicom, from the original Famicom, to the later "mid-size machine", to the DOS version of Red Alert, Chinese Paladin, various classics on PC... to today, my son hangs on my neck and plays "Ridge Racer" on Xbox with me. I have played almost all the classic stand-alone video games since the FC era ("Tank Wars", "Super Mario"... to the later "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Devouring the World", "Metal Gundam", "Yu Yu Hakusho", to "Chinese Paladin 1995", "StarCraft", "World of Warcraft", "Pineapple Series", "GTA Series" and too many to mention...). As I get older, the desire to make a truly fun game becomes stronger and stronger.

My original plan was to finish a game that I had in mind and dedicate it to my 30-year-old self. However, I dragged my feet for 3 years and suddenly I was an uncle. I admire those awesome students who can put everything aside and work on games full-time. I don’t have the courage to work on it full-time, so I have to use my spare time to finish it, sacrificing a lot of time to spend with my family. I feel guilty.

This game is dedicated to myself, a man over 30 years old, and my dearest family.

In fact, when I finally finished it, I realized that I had achieved what I wanted without realizing it. At the beginning, I also imagined that I could make some money, but in the end, I realized that if I had no expectations, I would not be disappointed.

It's something I made in my spare time, and I don't expect any surprises. I just hope that the brothers and sisters who downloaded it don't scold me. Maybe what I'll gain more from it is the process of defeating myself.

At the same time, there are some feelings:

I think we are all born in a wonderful era. We all have the opportunity to experience true virtual reality in our lifetime. The moment you put on the virtual glasses, you can go to any dreamland, achieve unlimited possibilities, and truly feel the same...

According to legend, before the ancient Chinese monks could achieve great success in their practice, they had to go through the tribulation of "entering the realm of delusion" and finally breaking out of the realm. If they successfully experienced the tribulation, they would become great immortals or arhats. The realm of delusion is a perfect "my world", where all the senses are like personal experiences and can be done as one wishes. Isn't this the perfect state of virtual reality technology? It is a path to achieve the realm of delusion for ordinary people. And the weavers of the realm of delusion are the developers of games or entertainment content of our generations.

Is it a perfect spiritual opium for ordinary people?

The ancients also gave us the answer: entering the realm of delusion is to break the realm of delusion, to experience picking up and putting down, gaining and losing in the realm of delusion; to achieve the unity of knowledge and action after empathy, and to experience in the small cycle of delusion what it means to give without harming, what it means to do without competing, what it means to do good and avoid evil, what it means to look inside the heart and see that the heart has no heart; to look outside at the shape and see that the shape has no shape; to look at the objects from a distance and see that the objects have no objects; why is it that the hair is black in the morning and white in the evening!