It’s been a quiet week on my dev front due to the home move. Instead of sharing my progress, which consists of nothing but unpacking and arranging my stuff at home, I’ll highlight some exciting projects from oneleif and open source games in general.
Interview with Zach
On Saturday I was honoured to have a voice chat interview with Zach, the co-founder of oneleif. You can listen to the recording here:
Zach has shared some really interesting stories, from how he ended up becoming a faithful fan of Swift programming language, to the reason why oneleif exists today.
I will conduct more interviews with the founding members of oneleif in the future, and one day maybe even with oneleif partners! If you have any suggestions and feedback judging from this episode, please do share them with me on my Twitter. This is my very first time releasing an audio interview to the world, so any feedback you have will be helpful to me.
oneleif Website Project
Our biggest collaborative project at oneleif is none other than the main website! oneleif website will serve as the homepage for:
- Organizational introduction to oneleif;
- Project showcase from members;
- Entry point for anyone wanting to join oneleif, partner with oneleif or seek volunteer help as a charity from oneleif.
The website is currently under heavy development, with version 1 being designed and planned, as well as a version 2 in the works.
If you are looking for hands on experience in web development, look no further than this website project. oneleif is still looking for developers and designers to give this website a hand, so this is your chance to leave an impact on something big!
Likewise, you can also bring your own project ideas to oneleif, be it web apps, games, mobile or desktop software, and we can help you as a team!
Learn Game Dev from Open Source Games
I’m the kind of person who 1. learns best from working examples; 2. learns best by doing. Whenever I go through a game dev tutorial online, I always find myself missing the former — a working example of something that I really, really want to achieve. My ideas always find themselves brewing outside the scope of tutorials, which are mostly made for absolute beginners, in order to let them through the front gate of the game dev world. Instead, I get ideas from production-ready, finished games that I genuinely enjoyed. Learning from their source would have solved my dilemma, but most games are close source.
It didn’t occur to me until recently that, I could have learned from open source games instead. And there are many good ones nowadays, like the following:
This is a 2D, top-down space exploration game, featuring a comprehensive trade system, missions, exploration and (arguably janky) combat. It’s like the poor man’s No Man’s Sky or Elite: Dangerous. A game of this scale is already sufficiently complex, and the opportunity to inspect its source code opens up a lot of learning experiences.
This is a great example game to inspect the source for, if you want to make a UI-heavy, management-heavy and simulation-heavy game.
2. OpenTTD
I haven’t played this, but I grew up with the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe, which defined my childhood and my gaming preference. The project faithfully follows the original gameplay and tiredlessly produces updates with fixes and improvements.
This is another project for those of you interested in simulation and management games. I’ll be playing it myself, once I’m done with Planet Coaster (if ever).
3. Xonotic
I’ll admit, I’m only adding this game because I’ve shown my bias for management sim games. I’ve only seen gameplay footages of Xonotic, but as far as open source games go, Xonotic is downright beautiful as a 3D first-person shooter.
For everything else that isn’t a management sim, the source of this game should give you plenty of inspirations to learn from.
It’s been a shorter Wombo Combo from me this week. I hope you got a lot out of it regardless. Once I’m more settled in my new home, I look forward to share more development progress with you, including my personal guide on kickstarting JAMstack website with GatsbyJS and Netlify. Until then if you want more, come say hi at oneleif and get yourself a dose of motivation!
