My very first blog post!

I thought that it would be a good idea to basically lay out what I want to do with this blog for my first post. I've wanted to make my own video game for years. It seemed like every time I would research it I would either find game engines that were too complex for me to master at the time or the licensing costs were sky high. I'm not sure what motivated to take a second look at this but I'm sure glad that I did because there is waaaaaay more info on making your own video game today than there was just 5 years ago. In addition some game engines have free online tutorials and training. The one that I plan to learn looks to be very well documented and best of all its free (for the most part...lol)!

The game engine I plan to use is called Unity 3D. I've spent a little time looking at the documentation and screenshots and its the best I've found that has a free license so far. They do sell a professional version for $1500 which all in all isn't that bad considering larger companies will pay $4000 or more just for a single license of 3D modeling software like Maya much less a whole game engine. The clincher though was that a company called Much Different sells an MMO back end called UnityPark Suite that allows to scale your MMO to as big as you want (the game world is distributed dynamically among a cluster of game servers) and an Indie license (limited to just under $160,000 in year business revenue) can be purchased for right around $880. Yeah its expensive but go look at the larger commercial versions and you'll start paying in the tens of thousands of dollars. Add in that they have a free eval and I'm sold on what game engine I want to learn. Below you will find links to both products.

http://unity3d.com/unity/

http://www.muchdifferent.com/?page=game-unitypark

I plan on starting with the Unity 3D video tutorials and going from there. During my previous research on this I found that I will need to be teaching myself other skills besides just mastering a game engine. I will need to learn image editing, 3D modeling, digital sound editing/music, deeper networking skills in both the Windows and Linux worlds and who knows what else along the way. I won't lie, this will be a long journey but I feel like I have  much better overall feel for computer technology that should give me a good enough foundational knowledge to build on.

I hope to be able to post at least once a week regarding what I've learned, issues I've ran into and any other relevant information.

More to come and thanks for reading!