Why and how

Hey everyone again!

I've been working on the game. Next time I might share some screenshots,  depending on how far I get with what I'm working on right now, but for now I'm only going to share my thoughts again with you.

Computer hardware. I've been an enthusiast for the last 6 years. It all started when a family member wanted to by a new gaming rig, and asked if I could help them with finding the right setup. I had some ideas about processors and graphics cards even before, but at that point I started looking into it further. Looking at different CPUs, GPUs, seeing which one performs better at what at the price was where I started asking the question. Why? Why do certain CPUs perform the way they do, and why does the other one perform so differently. What causes this difference. I watched videos. Read articles. Even more articles. "How do CPU cores even work?"-came the question. I wanted to understand it. I just couldn't stop at the "this one has more cores, but this one has faster cores" and the "this one has more cache, so its faster". I had to go deeper. Finding more in-depth information isn't that hard, if you know where to look on the internet, it turned out. Whenever I was travelling or had nothing better to do, I was reading or listening to lectures, or in-depth analyses for both CPUs and GPUs. In early 2021 I finally felt like I understood how these marvelous creations worked in a nutshell. How do caches speed processes up, how did out-of-order execution revolutionise processor designs, and why does that extra ALU in that new core architecture make it faster.

I've been playing video games since fourth grade. I always enjoyed a plethora of different genres, but my favourites were the multiplayer FPS games, because these were where I had the most fun with friends. Then came Covid. Strange times those were. We basically played games all day. We had online classes, where there was basically no interaction at all, so we could play games during them. After multiple months, we usually became tired of these multiplayer games by the afternoon, and played coop games together, or everyone played a single player game while we were still chatting. In these times I became very fond of some single player games. Before I always thought that these games were for loners. But that is just not true. PvP games can have so much frustration, that these games simply do not have. They can be relaxing  and thought-requiring at the same time. I tried out many different genres, like story, grand-strategy, RTS, survival and management. I don't like story games, even still to this day. They usually don't require much thought, and linear stories feel like you have simply no influence on them; apart from a few masterpieces (if I have to mention one example of this I would choose Detroit: Become Human). Different sub-genres of strategy games can be either pretty good, or atrociously badly designed, but eventually you always become too good at them, or just run out of content. Same thing with single player survival games too. But management. Management is different. Complex management games are very hard to master, and even if you do, you can just find another title, which will be a challenge once again. This genre is so colourful, it has so many completely different games, and so many of them are enjoyable.

With the second wave of the virus, we were back at home once again. I've studied programming languages on my own, and was practicing game development with Unity for fun. At this time I had quite some knowledge about hardware, and that was where the thought came. I like management titles, I enjoy learning about hardware, is there a game about this? Ideas about how could a game like this work, and how should it be designed stormed in my brain. I was searching, maybe I could find a game like this. I've never heard of any game like this myself, but it wouldn't be the first time that a big title exists that I don't know about. But it wasn't the case this time. Could really find anything like this on major platforms. And then I remembered...

Do you guys remember the game Raft? I do. But not the final version, that you can buy on Steam, not that one. The original. It was kind of a big thing. I still don't understand how do certain games get so much attention like Raft got, or PUBG, Among us, Phasmophobia, or now Schedule I. Why do certain games blow up like that, and why others don't? Whatever, Raft got quite some publicity, especially for a game that was so unfinished as it was. But that game was on a platform, that many didn't know before, maybe even today; Itch.io. A platform for indie developers to publish their games for free. Such a platform always has so many different ideas already realised...

Searching on Itch, I've found a game that might had what I was looking for. Named Hardware Tycoon, developed by Haxor. And so, I played the game. I've played Game Development Tycoon before, so I saw where his ideas originally came from, but it still was enjoyable, and it had potential. I saw that it got some updates not so long ago, so I was hoping it would get more and more, to eventually become the game I was dreaming of. In that time I started working on a little game project of mine, that was mostly made for learning purposes, but I was still thinking about how would I change in Hardware Tycoon, and what features would I like to see in the game. The quarantine ended, and so did my little project. During the summer I was thinking a lot about making my own game, but I felt like Hardware Tycoon was heading in the direction where such a game should and so it doesn't make sense to make such a game. I started working on an RTS that I hoped would get a much larger playerbase than a little management game. I was working on this game a lot in the beginning but as time progressed I lost my motivation an interest in the game, but I wanted to finish it. As HT still didn't get new updates at that point for quite some months, with no information if one would even get made, I decided that I would very much like to make a game like that. But first I had to finish my RTS game. A multiplayer PvP game, even though I never networked ever before. As a student I didn't have much time, and withough any real hope of finishing that game any time soon, I eventually said that I would put it away, and get back at it later, when I get my motivation back. It didn't really happen. I still have that project, sitting there, not even half-baked. It was too large to make alone. Making a multiplayer game like that alone, with such little experience, and not as a full time job, I don't even know that I was thinking. For half a year I didn't touch Unity.  Whenever I looked at its icon the stress came back that I felt when I was developing that RTS.

Early 2024. Haxor finally made a statement about the future of HT. It wouldn't get more updates. I would lie if I said I was suprised, it was quite obvious that it would end like this already in 2023 (I don't mean this in a bad way). And I would also lie if I said I was sad about it. On Itch already multiple people started projects with similar ideas, some of them were even released to the public, but none were baked enough to be enjoyable at all. At that point I was in quite different state of mind than a year before, I had motivation to make a game, a new one, and now, that motivation was boosted, multiplied even. I started prototyping, how should I make a designer where you can make a CPU, where you can decide all the little details, but still be easy to use and understand? I tried multiple times until I finally realised how. And so I started making the game I actually always wanted to make... - this was in 2024 november. Since time progressed, and so did the development. I'm quite happy with the progress I've made.

If you had the motivation the read through, maybe you should get into game development!

Jokes aside, thank you for your attention, and until next time, have a nice rest of your day, and I wish you all the best for the next week!