Happy new year!

Happy New Year, everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful end of the year. Not to be a Bilbo Braggins but I had the best New Year’s Eve party ever: I went to bed at 22:30! Oh, the delights of old age.

2024 was a big year for me!

I wanted to work as a freelancer for about 10 years now, and I finally took the jump last February. I started with a perfect first contract: a year-long project, which gave me plenty of time to adjust to the new required administrative chores, without worrying too much about finding gigs. It was also the opportunity to work with Unreal Engine, which I didn’t do professionally before.

By summer, I was feeling quite comfortable—read bored—in my new life and decided to focus on making a game of my own. After working on a grant application for a while, I realized my initial idea was too ambitious for a first project. So, I decided to shelve it for now and focus on something smaller—something I could complete by myself before mid-2025. Eventually, I settled on a small, liminal Half-Life game, set in the universe of my “big game”.

After having to—emotionally—survive a surgical procedure in September, I also became more mindful of my health. I started improving my diet and exercising regularly, loosing 5 kg in 4 months.

Another highlight of the year was shipping the first alpha version of BugBee, a Discord bot designed to help studios manage game feedback. There’s still one key feature I’d like to add before starting to talk about it thought.

That’s all for 2024, let’s see what the sequel has in store!

2025

With my current freelancing project coming to an end in February, I can support myself until October included. As I discussed in a previous post, I’m fully anxious about the deadline, but before focusing on finding a new freelance contract, I want to release a game. So I made a quick plan for the start of the year.

The plan

Jan. 2025

• Add an endpoint in BugBee to allow gathering reports directly from a game
• Finish the pre-production of the “small game”

Feb. - April 2025

• New game production

Mai 2025

• New game ready for release, but maybe wait for June next fest :)
• Start looking for a new freelance contract for September

The pre-production phase

The goal here is to prepare the tools and the workflow I’ll need to make the game, and to have a clearer picture of what can be achieve in 3 months.

First, I started experimenting with level authoring in Godot:

• func_godot + Trenchbroom
  Setup is pretty heavy, as well as adding new entities to the library. Once everything is in place though, the workflow is simple and versatile.
• GodotVMF + Hammer++
  To be tested, but I assume is really close to func_godot + Trenchbroom
• Blender
  Likely the least efficient workflow, as entities must be placed manually in Godot. Each update in Blender might require updating entities in Godot, making it error-prone and time-consuming.
• Godot GridMap
  While the workflow might be the simplest, adding new geometry will be a pain as each mesh will need to be created in Blender by hand.

Once I’m set on a workflow, I’ll be able to make some Stupid Wild-Ass Guesstimates for the features and content I want in the game, then axe some of them to keep the scope in check. I’ll keep you all updated on the progress!

New Year List

I like lists, so naturally I made one for the stuff I want to do/play/read/watch :)
In 2025, I’m Looking Forward To:
Continue

• Taking care of my health
• Writing this blog

Play

• The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe
• Threshold
• Mouthwashing
• Gruun
• 1000xRESIST
• Avowed?

Read

• The murderbot diary
• 16 ways to defend a walled city

Watch

• Kaamelott : Deuxième Volet
• Squid Game 2 part 2

I guess this is it for this first post of the year!
Talk to you soon.