Behind the Scenes of My Game Dev Adventure
👋 Hello everyone,
Many of you will be here after watching my latest video on the CodeWithTom YouTube channel (and for those who are new, welcome, it's great to have you!). If that’s the case, you’ll know that over the last 3 years I’ve been sharing Godot tutorials and insights into game development there. Although, it doesn’t take a secret agent to notice that there’s been a bit of a gap in my video uploads… Roughly 2 years worth in fact, and while I may not have uploaded any new content during that time it’s been a period of immense growth, learning, and collaboration for me. With roughly 12,000 subscribers as of writing this article, I’m grateful for my community’s continued support and patience.
That being said, let me share what’s been keeping me occupied during this absence from the channel.
A Workspace Transformation
One of the exciting changes has been my workspace upgrade. After three years of working from my kitchen (not the best for someone who enjoys food as much as I do!), I now have a dedicated office space after converting my garage earlier this year. This has been a game-changer for my productivity and has allowed me to create a fantastic space for recording and editing new videos, as well as just a nice quiet space to hang out, relax and play some games!
Collaboration with Heroic Labs
In late 2020, I had the privilege of collaborating with Heroic Labs. They commissioned a series of video tutorials focused on creating a multiplayer game using Nakama and Unity. This project was both challenging and rewarding as it allowed me to get my head back inside multiplayer game development, something which I’m extremely passionate about. Following its completion, I was actually offered a position and joined Heroic Labs full-time as a Software Engineer and part of their then-new Developer Relations team in June 2021. As part of this role I’ve been heavily involved in the complete revamp of the documentation portal as well as responsible for creating tons of great guides, tutorials and videos. More recently I’ve had the pleasure of helping to create the Hiro Unity Game Framework, a product that allows game developers to massively accelerate the development time of crafting multiplayer and social game meta features. The team at Heroic are amazing and incredibly talented, and I hope to remain a part of it for a long time to come.
Quiver & The Godot 4 Course
March 2022 brought another exciting venture: a course on the then-alpha Godot 4 for Quiver.dev, a platform tailored for Indie game developers using the Godot engine. The aim of this course was to introduce people to the Godot 4 engine, showing how to create a 2D infinite runner game in the new engine.
After a short break, I was tasked with creating a subsequent and much more comprehensive course focused on building a 2D metroidvania style game. This project source code alone for this course took several months to complete, and overall the 30+ hours worth of video content took a mammoth 12 months in collaboration with Joe (jmbiv) who did a fantastic job turning the project files and my mammoth course notes document into the finished product.
Magic & Muskets: A Collaborative Game Venture
Earlier this year, and in collaboration with the talented artist Matt Dye, I’ve been working on a 3D isometric action combat game called Magic & Muskets. I’m super excited to share more details on this with you soon. If you’re really keen, why not follow me on Twitter (or is it X now?!) @CodeWithTom where I’ve been sharing some sneak peaks!
The Future of Code With Tom
So what’s next for the CodeWithTom channel and brand as a whole? Well I’m pleased to say that I’m slowly but surely getting back into content creation, both on YouTube as well as expanding the content here on the site where I hope to share more insights into the game development world. This includes devlogs, industry news, and more. I’m also launching a game development newsletter that will allow me to share interesting game development related information that might not always make it into a video or article. So if this is something you’re interested in, drop your email address in the sign up form to the right of this article to be one of the first to receive it when it launches!
I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who’s been part of my journey so far, whether on YouTube or elsewhere. Your support means the world to me, and I’m can’t wait to share more with you soon.