Story of how a developer without game dev experience tries to create a game

As a tech lead at a company that specializes in developing software and solving complex technical problems for other businesses, my daily focus typically revolves around refining code, modernizing legacy applications, and integrating the latest technologies into existing solutions. Our team is composed of skilled developers who excel in their fields, but there's one area we've never ventured into—game development.

So naturally, my two adventurous colleagues and I thought: Why not dive headfirst into game dev using Godot? Sounds simple, right? Oh, and let’s do it in one weekend because what’s life without a bit of chaos? 🎮 Enter: the hackathon! Set for November 2024, this is when we’ll gather to see if we can turn years of software experience into a playable game in just 48 hours. (No pressure.)

Of course, before we even touched the code, our first boss-level challenge was convincing management that this was a brilliant idea. Because who wouldn’t want to spend precious dev time making games? (Spoiler: it wasn’t easy, but we managed to sell it.) Now, we’re working on getting more of our fellow devs excited about spending their weekend building something completely unfamiliar. It’s a work in progress. 🤔

And here’s where things get even more interesting: Our UX team will probably join us. So not only are we learning how to build a game, but we’re also diving into creating a player experience from scratch. No pressure—just designing the entire look and feel of a game in, you know, a couple of days. What could possibly go wrong?

At the moment, we’re deep in the planning stage. The format we’re going for is pretty straightforward: we’ll create three game concepts, each with some basic scenarios, so people who join the hackathon don’t have to spend hours brainstorming. The idea is to let them jump straight into development. We’re also researching galleries and examples to give participants a head start, and we plan to set up a core project on GitHub that we’ll share with everyone. This way, people can start contributing even before the event kicks off.

Now, why Godot? Well, it’s open-source, powerful, and—most importantly—free. That last part definitely helped in convincing management. Plus, it’s supposed to be “beginner-friendly,” which is kind of critical since none of us have touched a game engine before. Fingers crossed that turns out to be true!

In this series, I’ll share all the juicy details of our journey: the highs, the lows, and the “I’m not sure what I’m doing, but let’s hope this works” moments. And here’s a sneak peek at some of the things we’ll be learning (probably the hard way):

1. Expect creative chaos – Something is bound to go sideways. If not, are we even hacking?

2. Collaboration is key – We’ll combine our dev wizardry with the UX team’s magic—or at least try not to drive each other crazy.
   Perfection is overrated – This is a hackathon, folks. If it works, we’re celebrating. Does it look good, too? Bonus points!

3. UX is a game-changer – With the UX team in the mix, we’ll discover all the ways players interact with our game. And probably realize we’ve been doing UI wrong for years.

And if you have any tips on good libraries or advice on what to avoid when diving into game development, I’d love to hear them! We’re all about learning from others (preferably before we make mistakes ourselves).

So buckle up, because it’s going to be one wild weekend. Stay tuned for all the glorious (and possibly hilarious) details as we attempt to become game developers in just 48 hours. Who knows, we might even surprise ourselves.