Let's just say this up front: I'm putting Holocene on the back burner for a while. This does not mean I'm quitting it. I'll pick it up later. But there's some things I want to fix first.
I have a day job where I'm away from 7am to 7pm every day, so I get to have about two hours of gamedev if I'm not tired, after dinner and before spending time with my wife in front of the television. Regardless of how much I'd want this, I'm not a full time gamedev right now.
Now Holocene it's a big project, a very big project with a lot of stuff that needs to be done and this is where a problem arises. It's kind of my dream project, but after months of hard work, I am not making and gameplay yet. I know, procedural generation, basic UI and navmesh integration are vital. Don't get me wrong, but it feels like I'm not making progress no matter how much effort I'm putting into it.
About a year ago, I started to learn game programming and I thoroughly enjoy it, even the non-gameplay part of it. I'm really glad that I did this. But as long as this is not my profession and I don't get to pay my mortgage doing gamedev, I have to treat it as a hobby that I spend a lot of time doing.
Returning home tired or semi-frustrated after a long day's work makes you want to do fun things. While my wife is watching the singing contests on the telly, I'm going upstairs to make my game and you know what, I want to make a game.
This means that for a time I will focus on making smaller games that I think I can make in a couple of weeks. The day before yesterday I started a little football goalkeeper game where you're the keeper who needs to stop shots. Quite easy physics game. I'll make s ball and a goal and a couple of gloves with collision detection and that should be it.
I also have some ideas for a top down shooter and a platformer in a ancient Sumerian theme, like the Ur Standard in the British Museum.
Another thing I'm considering right now is to have the Holocene project I'm working on be Holocene II. I'm thinking of a Holocene version in 2D it 2.5D, like Civilization. Not sure how that would work, but it's an interesting thought.
Someone on Twitter also put the thought of trying to get a team to build Holocene or a similar game. That's interesting too, but depends on some things. Maybe I'll find a nice group of people that kind of share my view about game making.
But first I'll be making some small games just to make games, finish them and recover. I found out that in 2019 I've been ill for 17 days which is about two weeks more than usual and while gamedev had nothing to do with me getting ill, it'll help me not getting ill.
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