Hello Word

Man, what a time to be alive! I always wanted to be a game designer, and now with AI I’m finally sitting in the chair focusing on the thing I’ve always wanted to do - building games!

My big dream when I was going through school was to write stories for video games. I always found them to be the best, most immersive medium you could use to tell a story. Being in college post the 2008 recession, I had some realities I needed to face about my dream, and the way I thought to get around it was to learn programming. After all, if I can build the game, I can certainly control the story that’s being told within it. And so I’ve since found a love for programming, not only because it’s what I’ve used to get my ideas onto a screen for everyone to see, but also because the way it presents problems (and solutions) is so game-like that it was just really easy for me to take and run with. With programming (much like a game), I can fail 1000 times with no real-life penalty, but so long as I get it right once, I win! (and from there can go back and figure out how to do it better next time)

Anyways, I didn’t get a lot of time for game dev once I graduated college and got a corporate job. I fell out of touch with my game dev colleagues, and while I tried as hard as I could, it was pretty difficult to actually ship anything while also working a full-time data engineering job. I’d always try and keep up with the latest and greatest, but my Unity builds were lost amongst the endless engine updates. I figured it might be worthwhile to learn C++ and contribute to an open-source engine like Godot. Finished an Udemy course and built a single C++ plugin for Godot when I started hearing a lot about Rust.

Seeing and reading about the new type- and memory-safe low-level language piqued my interest, so I dug into the Rust book and started getting my feet wet with that. Also, around this time, Cursor was really starting to gain some traction, and I read about some people being able to just vibe code from their phones using it, so I figured I’d give it a try (being a parent, any form of dev I can get done remotely is a win). While the cursor thing didn’t really work out, it did give me an idea: what if, instead of relying on some other engine, I just built my own 2D one in Rust instead? That way, my games would never break or get out of sync with the engine, and I’d be staying with the newest language that I think is the most future-proof around. And so I began my quest of building out Insiculous 2D - Cursor didn’t make the cut, but Claude, Kimi, PixelLabs, and Gemini are currently all in use in my day-to-day game dev workflow now.

It’s crazy how much it frees up so that I can just focus on making the games fun and functional (which still isn’t to my standards - sorry guys, but I am still working another full-time job + parenting lol). I’ve started the 20 games challenge; that one tale of the sculptor that made 100 cheap figurines vs the sculptor that tried to make 1 perfect one pushed me towards that methodology. Especially since after more than 12 years I haven’t released any original game, I figured releasing anything is better than nothing. I’d say real success comes from an effective pipeline, so if I can get processes in place to ship and deliver (which gets people playing my games or using my engine), it’ll greatly enhance my feedback loop and make releasing my dream games a lot closer to reality.

My love for programming really taught me how to use the best tool for the job to get your desired end result, and I didn’t think that AI was going to be on this level for some time. I’ve never been so happy to be so wrong - this must be what assembly programmers felt like when compilers first came around - the new layer is good enough, and man, does it speed things up. It’s not perfect by any means, and I still very much look forward to incorporating real artists into my games, but for rapid prototyping - this has unblocked me so much it’s unreal. Already super happy with what I’ve got thrown up here, and it’s only going to get better!