Comment by jesse_dot_id
9 hours ago
This was a great read. I'm in my 40's and have mostly done web dev/devops type stuff throughout my career. Making video games has always eluded me even though I've always been interested in it. I think it's that everything feels like a brand new language I have to learn. Perhaps creating an engine is the move.
I'm no game developer, but I'd say don't create an engine if what you want to do is build a game. Do create an engine if you want to create an engine though.
But yeah, it is like learning a new language. But that's not a bad thing! I found messing around / following some tutorials for e.g. pico-8 to be both liberating (two characters are enough for a variable name) and educative (using functions like min/max to the fullest)
[0] https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
If you're familiar with web development, you can make games with HTML/JS, which is almost its own "engine." Think DOM elements for sprites, CSS animations for movement, requestAnimationFrame for an update loop, etc. This has the extra benefit of zero friction for players -- no native app installation necessary!