Have you ever reached a turning point where admission of failure is painful? When the tracks end in a certain direction and you can go no further. When you are on the wrong end of a knock-out punch that sends you to the canvas, your mouthpiece rolling out of the ring.
Am I stopping trying to make Purgatorio? Hell’s no. The equation again is time/money. I’m beginning to realize that creating a miniature version of SABA island is becoming a problem. Twenty miles of island is sprawling, but it is also a resource consumer. My system is still outclassed by the power of Unreal Engine, to which I am upgrading this week.
Then what do I mean about throwing in the towel? I have reached a stall point at this game design. I’m where it’s taking too much time to do something because the learning curve is so great or that there is no clear path. This is one problem with Unreal Engine. Sometimes a small thing is so buried in larger explanations you waste too much time going over a mile of information just to get to a kernel of headache. One little checkbox just after one right click and down one pop-up menu, to the right upper hand corner of a window. It becomes time consuming and annoying.
Second, being fully dependent on YouTube to train people is no win because 99.9% of YouTubers are not teachers. It’s no fault of their own, they just don’t have the training to teach although they have the knowledge of how to use Unreal Engine. Using a platform where your students cannot ask for further explanation adds for a unique set of circumstances, that require above average skill sets to handle. Even experienced teachers will tell you that one-way learning has its own set of problems.
So what is my problem? Maybe I should say ARE my PROBLEMS? First and foremost, is the scaling down of SABA Island. I’ve paid money for detailed height maps of the island, which weren’t all that detailed at all. I searched webpages and cartographers I found a decent map. Next was placing it in Unreal Engine at the scale of the models in a typical game was a matter of luck. Sheer luck, when there should have been some direct explanation on how to do this. There were many explanations, but never THE explanation as to how to do this.
I’m not complaining, even though it sounds like I am. There’s more, but itemizing my grievances is not what this blog is for. This blog is to usher in a game that I think will be revolutionary. However I will state that using SABA island is a hindrance. See it this way, since I bought World Creator to create Three Mile Island, I could make a fictitious island, instead of the real Saba Island, in a weekend, with all the bells and whistles, and be moving right along now.
Saba Island is at present a thorn in my side. By disregarding it, and making an island like it, at a much smaller size, which is another problem (instead of 20 km, I could make it 4 km and it will be just the same), give it another name and call if a MOTHERF*C#I@G day.
So that’s what I’m doing this Memorial Day Weekend. I’m going to ruminate over working on Saba still and all the issues involved (like painstakingly creating the aerodrome at the Saba airport instead of just making my own airport in two days). Life is far easier for a complete work of fiction to have just a little bit more fiction to move the game along. That’s what I’m doing this weekend. Changing everything around and going on a new tack and if this works well, if I find myself shooting ahead with this fictitious island instead of trying to squeeze into the tight shoes of a Saba Island replica, I’m all in.
I will say now. The towel is in hand. The next time I post, the decision will have been made.