I was working on a ray-casting game engine in C, with the focus on enabling the largest worlds yet seen in such an engine (Minecraft scale etc). [0]
A ray-casting engine is an old style of game engine (think 1990 - Wolfenstein or Duke Nukem). The most famous, well-known example is probably Wolfenstein-3D created by ID software (John Carmack and John Romero etc!) You don’t see these engines used anymore in modern games.
So to me, they are novel and a great challenge to try and modernise. Especially as a solo dev! And for further context, raycasted levels are usually teeny tiny (Wolfenstein 3D or Shadow Warrior are the largest worlds I’ve seen, so nothing impressively scaled). I have never ever come across a raycaster with levels the scale of something like Minecraft. So that’s what my ambition is.
I spent a period of 2-3 months roughly 8-10 hour days every day on this project, not knowing much C and not knowing anything about game engines or graphics, and average at mathematics.
But I’m on a break from the project and coding after my 7 year relationship broke down.
Realised I had tunnel vision with my life and ambitions, and am now “touching grass” daily instead. It’s hard to put effort into your hobbies when you feel other areas of your life are suffering.
So now I’m lifting weights and doing cardio and reading books instead, trying to keep active and my mind occupied.
I do want to pick this project back up, I’m really proud of what I was able to achieve with no knowledge coming in and I think the project has good bones.
And I loved coding, still haven’t found a hobby that scratches a similar itch
[0] - https://github.com/con-dog/chunked-z-level-raycaster/blob/ma...