Newcomer with lofty goals, hoping Polycount will bring me closer
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Introduction
My name's Ryan. I'm an aspiring indie game developer. I use the alias Renin for pretty much everything online. It's been a long time since I've had an online community to call home, and I'm hoping Polycount will become that community for me. This may end up being a somewhat long post, but it's been so long since I've been active on the internet, and I've got quite a bit to say. I'll try to be neat and tidy with my structure, and organize my thoughts as effectively as possible. This section is just a brief overview of my history with the internet and with development-related subjects.Early Life: I can't think of a more accurate synopsis than to say that I was raised by video games and internet forums. My love for video games came to the forefront of my life around the time that I became active in online communities similar to this one, most notably Facepunch Studios and FPSBanana (now GameBanana). These forums fueled my passion. They had massive sub-communities of talented artists in everything from music production, to programming, to graphic art. Consequently, I started to dabble in everything. Even my early interest in philosophy and politics can be traced back to threads on those forums. I became very proficient in graphic design with Photoshop, music production with Ableton Live, and developed basic understandings of 3D modeling with 3DS Max and programming in C++. This decade-long upward spiral of learning and passion was frequently disturbed by trouble at school, conflict with my parents, and debilitating depression. Towards the end of high school, my parents got divorced, my college savings account "vanished", and it became quite clear that real life was about to hit me hard.
Entry Into Adulthood: I had been working part-time at a grocery store during my senior year, which became useful when I was required to move out of my home immediately after graduation. I loaded up my minivan with my dog and all of my belongings, and moved into a small bedroom that I would be renting out of a house in a nearby town. I ended up living there for about 4 years. During this time, I was up to a lot of things, but none of these things had anything to do with my passion for games and development. I certainly played video games, but in a strictly habitual and obsessive manner. I did, however, spend a lot of time making music in Ableton Live, although it was mostly various categories of electronic dance music. I wasn't programming, modeling, designing, animating, or developing anything. Most of this time was spent careening out of control in a disastrous descent through the perils of love, sex, drugs, alcohol, partying, emotion, etc. I couldn't afford to go to a university, so I had the brilliant idea to go to beauty school. I figured I would be able to get a job making decent money, and learn some social skills as well. The latter ended up being true, but the former unfortunately has not coalesced even now, 5 years after obtaining my cosmetology license.
Present: I currently live in a decent 1-bedroom apartment in the "cool" part of San Diego with my beautiful girlfriend, and I work 4 days a week at a beauty parlor. I go to the gym every morning at 5 AM, drive my girlfriend to and from her job, take myself to work around 12 PM, and meet up with a group for D&D 5th-Edition on Fridays. Other than that, I rarely leave my apartment for any reason. I spend all of my time studying and practicing game development. Most of my practice is focused on programming and technical stuff, and 3D modeling/texturing, since those are the things that I am most "behind" on. I also study other things like history/anthropology, philosophy, personal development, math/science, and I'm even teaching myself more obscure subjects like real estate and the Latin language. These things together offer enough variety to keep me motivated, and all of these subjects seem to intersect with each other in interesting and sometimes surprising ways.
Technical Skills
Programming: The first language I learned was C++. I learned the syntax with a buddy in high school, and never touched it again until the beginning of 2016. I was drawn to a course on Udemy by Ben Tristem, which teaches the basics of C++ and Unreal Engine 4. It was exactly what I needed. I spent almost all of 2016 completeing that course and others similar to it, before moving on to Unity 5 and C#. I've fallen in love with C# and Unity, and those are my primary tools right now. I would say that I currently have an intermediate skill level as a generalist with Unity.Art/Design: One of the first computer programs I ever mastered is Photoshop. For this reason, designing user interfaces and graphics is a walk in the park. However, learning to texture models has opened a whole new world for me, and I have a lot to learn in this area. I also never focused a lot on illustration as I was growing up, although I have proven to be pretty good at drawing when I spend enough time practicing. Lately I've been trying to work in some illustration practice so that I can learn digital painting, which will be extremely useful for creating game assets as well as design/concept art. When I was first learning 3D modeling in high school, I was using a "trial" version of 3DS Max. Lately, since I don't remember any of it anyway, I've decided to start learning Blender. I would say that I now have a very basic skill with Blender. I also purchased and start using Quixel Suite as part of my texturing/materials pipeline. My achievements so far include a complete, untextured, block-art, modular building set which I was able to import and put together in Unity successfully, as well as a low-poly sword that I managed to model, unwrap, texture, import into Unity, and slay enemies with.
Music: Another tool that I became very proficient with is Ableton Live, and I can use it to create a wide range of sounds from scratch. I can also take existing sounds and modify them in just about any way imaginable. Making music, however, is probably one of my greatest strengths. It excites me to no end to imagine creating a sound track for a game that I create from start to finish. In high school, I created a whole soundtrack for Minecraft, which I even tried (and failed) to have added to the game by harassing Notch on Twitter. I cannot wait to make sound effects, atmosphere, and music for my game.
My Hopes And Goals (TL;DR)
I'm at a major crossroads in my life. I have my job, which barely pays the bills. I have my dream of being a successful game developer. I also have my secondary hopes of replacing my current job with a more relevant one. My foray into real estate investing has not been fruitful, and I've thrown a lot of money away on that so far with very little return. I'm also looking into coding bootcamps for becoming a full stack web developer, which could land me a much better job, but these are way more than I can afford and it's still not exactly what I want to do. My last option is to work for a game development studio, which would probably be the most ideal situation. However, without a college degree, I'll need an impressive portfolio, and I currently have nothing other than code snippets and unfinished projects on GitHub, a somewhat embarassing SoundCloud profile, and a 3D wooden fence on ArtStation.My current project is Project Citadel, a fully-featured action role-playing game set in a dismal post-apocalyptic future. Feel free to check out the incomplete GDD. I'm expecting this project to take me several years to complete, but an idea recently occured to me: what if I can create one part of this game, and use that as my portfolio? I'll make all of the art and assets, design all the necessary game systems and features, create sound and music, include some story elements, and it will effectively be a showcase of literally everything that I'm capable of doing. Not only will this playable demo be great for marketing my game, but it could be something I can show to companies as proof of my worth.
Conclusion
I've never been good at making up my mind. It's without a doubt my greatest weakness. All the self-discipline and personal development in the world will probably never fully correct my chronic indecisiveness, and it's a constant battle to fight against the dips in motivation, frequent self-doubt, and skepticism. It's my hope that by joining a community like this one, sharing my progress, and interacting with like-minded people is the missing link. I have virtually no friends IRL, and I'm deprived of people to share my passions with. I'm eager to begin new friendships, and to receive helpful advice and feedback along my journey.People always talk about the "starving artist" as a person who cannot afford to feed themselves through their creative pursuits. But I think there's a different kind of "starvation" in the artist community, which is perhaps more destructive: the artist who is starving for connection, companionship, and a sense of purpose.
Sincerely yours and glad to be here,
Ryan Palmer
Replies
So, if we're being succinct, you're an indie game developer? Your range of skills are very varied, admittedly.
If you want to work for a studio it's really about mastery of a single skill. I know the pains as well of going to wide. There just isn't enough time I'm ones life to learn everything. Think about the Valve T shaped employee. Have one super strong skill and two smaller skills that support the first. For example a engineer that can do a small amount of modeling and rigging for prototyping.
However in order to become a technical artist you need to correctly focus your efforts. Coding gameplay features, for instance, won't be useful in your portfolio. But creating some neat shaders or writing tools for Unity editor will be appreciated. Illustration skills won't be as impressive as ability to rig characters. I also should warn you that technical art involves way too much knowledge for one person to effectively learn. This is why technical artists also specialize on some skill. For instance, a guy can specialize on rigging and animation pipeline, but he still can code shaders, just not as effectively as someone who specializes on graphics programming.