This post marks a return to development for me. I've been flirting with it for a few months, and for a few months more I've been filling my head with ideas for a project I'd like to tackle. It's been two years since I stopped developing in Unity, and if I'm honest there's very little reason for that. When I stopped working on Rift Defender I had the full intention of continuing my development journey, but I got trapped in the belief that I had to interact with community to sell my journey, which lead down rabbit-holes of Twitter and social media combing and Discord servers full of developers 'just like me' discussing pretty much anything except the core of what I wanted to do.

The truth is that stuff is a distraction, I'm not a sociable person really and I probably never will be. The big thing about me is that I know that for a long time I've wanted to make games and forcing myself to interact with people in such a way is just fodder for procrastination and diverging from the goal of actually making something I want to make.

So why make this post if not to socialise? 

I think the answer to that is that I want to make it real, I want to just pop mu head above the parapet, there's very few people following my itch, but since Twitter went to shit and I closed all my accounts I don't have anywhere else to just wave at the few people who interacted with me and say 'I'm not gone, I'm ok and I still have these dreams.' The other reason for this post is that I have learned in my absence that dumping my thoughts somewhere allows them to flow a little without getting muddled up. The same way a design document focussed the workload, writing out my thoughts - or journaling, to use a trendy phrase - helps me focus my mind on a task and allows me to analyse and let go of what's in my mind at any given time.

So what has all this got to do with my game, what are my ideas? 

Simply put, it's an exercise. An exercise in design. What became clear to me when making Rift Defender, was that I was in tutorial hell. I had no clue how to strike out on my own. I don't want to be stuck there again so I have to have a clear goal of what I want to achieve. Where better to set that goal than on something you love; and I love classic Zelda. Not just Zelda though, Zelda Randomizers. For a very long time I've been obsessed with ALttPR (A Link to the Past Randomizer) and I've wanted to make something along those lines for quite some time but never had the concrete ideas or right guidance to do so. The Zelda template also takes away some of the design work because I have a framework to base my ideas on. That doesn't mean I don't have to do any design work, but I have set the rules in which those ideas need to work. I also have a core mechanic that I want to focus on - the randomizer.

In future posts I might analyse the way in which ALttPR works, but for now the goal is to get something resembling a randomizer to work. and therein lays my resolve to return to development. The last few months have been spent just thinking about ideas for the game, and as I watched ALttPR streams I analysed why I like it so much, and why after 10 years or more there is still such a big community around this game. I can't recreate the love people have for A Link to the Past, but I am in a position where I think I could make a game which somewhat resembles top-down Zelda (with a twist). I am a better coder than I was two years ago - in that I haven't been Idle -  so making something like this isn't beyond my ability, in fact it's probably just the right task to take on in order to better myself.

I know what I plan is derivative and well-trodden ground, but even before Rift Defender I knew that the path forward wasn't to re-invent gaming, it was to follow the long trail, paved with the ideas and experience of countless smarter and more inventive people than I currently am. The key thing is I have a goal and I have something to cling on to and explore, and I hope that this time - this time I'll stick with it.

Most importantly though - Tutorials are the enemy, but Stack Overflow is my friend.