24 AUG 2024:
SCRAPSHIP
IS
DONE!
Whew! What to say? It's always been one of my "bucket-list" goals to make my own game. Thankfully technology has gotten to the point where it is completely viable to make a video game on your home computer. But what really got me started was finding a thumbstick with some of my old QBasic programs I made in High School . . . nearly 20 years ago. Then I found that there was a newer version of QBasic, called QB64, that allowed one to run their old code on newer machines. That was a game changer! After that, I found an excellent Youtube QBasic series by SchoolFreeware that covered all the new QB64 features. The final project in that series? A Space Invaders clone. That was enough to get me thinking about the capabilities of QB64 . . . and what I could potentially do with it.
Development started early 2020, just before the pandemic. Released a couple demos where I was just toying around with different ideas. Started the whole project over once or twice. It took over 4 years -- but keep in mind I was only working on it an hour a day unless I was sick, on vacation or on one of my many business trips.
Scrapship is far from a perfect game . . . and there are LOTS of things that could be improved on, but I am proud of what I was able to accomplish. Some of which I would deem rather complex (for QBasic at least). For me, the most remarkable thing is that I even finished it, because the truth is that Scrapship was never my dream game. A cool game, sure, but not my dream game. The secret to staying dedicated to a project for such a long time is consistency. Small doses of it, in my case. Motivational sticky quotes help.
But now that it's done, I'm super excited about the future of 40wattstudio. For one, I just got accepted to WGU (Western Governor's University) where I will be pursuing my bachelor's in Software Engineering (C# path). This is mostly to increase my employment chances as I'm currently unemployed. In my spare time, I'm looking forward to working on some "dream game" projects I have in mind. I won't share too much, but I've always liked Skyrim (and its incredible mod support) and I've poured countless hours into various versions of Civilization. So something along those lines.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"Dreams are watered by hard work."
Thanks to everyone for their support over the past few years and for making this one of the most-viewed Devlogs here on Itch.io! Have a great rest of your week!