4 Months of Game Programming With My Own Engine 

Good job! You passed the test and didn’t restart the project from scratch. I’m impressed!

A pump-action shotgun that functionally shoots like a double-barreled shotgun, but flip-cocks like a lever-action shotgun. How beautifully cursed.

Can we just give him a medal already, he's a genius, the level editor having the cad style, the amount of math made, and the research, dude's an entire department on his own.

Honestly, this looks like a game I would pay for. It has a unique style, good job!

This is a crazy improvement, nice job man!

You have a rare gift to turn ideas like these into reality! Its always a joy to watch your progress and incredibly motivating as well. As always I look forward to seeing what you do next!

I love how this game feels like a mashup of video game history with a spice of Cruelty Squad TM on top of it.

Hey @jdh, this is an insane update. Great work on the game! I'm already getting excited to buy and play it myself. I do, however, have one piece of advice for you: find some playtesters early on, I'd recommend a few people intimately familiar with the "boomer shooter" genre. With other people playing your game and providing feedback, even in these early stages, you gain key perspective and avoid oversight. Don't be afraid to share an unfinished product, good testers understand what it means for something to be a work in progress, and they provide reasonable constructive criticism. Maybe they describe a way to make combat crunchier, like in CULTIC (try it out if you haven't already played it), or how to make the level design more interesting like in HROT. Regardless of the feedback you get, you still have control over the direction of the game. I look forward to your next update and the chance to someday play your game. :)

In one year I'll be graduating in computer science. I'm at that point where you don't really want to tackle stuff and wondering if you made right choices in life LOL. Watching your accomplishments makes me want to learn about everything with the same energy I had in the beginning of my journey in tech. Thanks and I really hope you release it as game somewhere and this makes you a shit load of money.

I really like how you focused on making the visuals interesting, instead of just trying to stay true to a particular retro aesthetic. It looks amazing!

The sheer amount of effort you put into this game is insane, and I can say it definitely paid off, good job!

love your work so far. i had an idea while watching- what if the eye represented the player's health by (instead of saying LIFE) it starts off normal as we see in this video but as the player loses health, it gradually gets more irritated with redness, veins, tears, etc. i think it'll add to the surreal vibe you have going on here! best of luck going forward!

jdh is becoming the next Spytihněv/Hakita/etc and I'm all in for it.

I absolutely love this visual style, even with the amount of 'PS1 style' games out there now, this still looks really unique!

This game looks gorgeous! I really appreciate the authentic pixely look the game has oppossed to the more commonplace texture filtering. My only complaint is I feel the chromatic effect doesn't quite fit the sharpness of the rest of the style, but that's only a testament to how cohesive it all feels otherwise, I'd just hope it becomes an option. Keep up the good work!

19:48 'pantheon' sounds like a pretty cool name for game you should consider it

for the last month or so, i've been trying to make a 2d falling-sand-type game on pure c++ with sdl2. this is insanely impressive. i can't even imagine how you managed to make a full 3d engine on c, but i hope i can at least come close to your level some day!

the scrolling text on walls is such a cool dynamic

I really like your projects and these videos explaining the process are top-notch quality.

I really like the numbers on the body aesthetic, I think that's super cool

Maybe modulating the pixelisation by distance to the center of the screen could be intresting. I find it a bit hard to see enemies or detail when you get a bit far, but the edges of the screen are a bit too detailed compared to the center in those cases. Of course, this is only my opinion. Nice project, keep it up :D

This is looking amazing! Some really solid work, good job. I love the direction the art style is going in. That dancing dithering effect is subtle but so, so cool. I'm excited to see where this project goes. It's creators like you that really make me want to go into game development. Thank you for being an inspiration for me to keep working on my game development journey.

The idea of seeing stats on your arms and hints on the walls through the little eye that you hold gives off the vibe of peering into the code, which feels thematically appropriate for a game you've built on an engine you made from the ground up. :>

I always look forward to these retro low-level coding adventures! I would love to see a port of this to n64!

This series has really made me appreciate the fps forefathers that much more. I can't imagine finding my way here with the total lack of precedent that they had

this looks actually awesome. reminds me if post void was like darker and more complex, def gonna play this when you release it

I love the vibe the text on everything creates! I feel like the many flashes of light tho could get a bit exhausting on the eyes so a way to turn them off or tone them down could probably really help with that.

the stress test looks really cool, its awesome to see the small details you added to increase the intensity all at once, the game really has a lot of action!

Your style of game has absolutely impressed me. The colors, the light, the wiggling of the camera when turning made me fall in love with what I was seeing.

woah this is actually coming together really well! I really like a lot of the stylistic choices you've made - however a lot of the levels seem very dark and it makes it sort of hard to distinguish anything from one another. At 12:10 I think the general 'brightness' was pretty good!

god, the confusing commit messages are way too relatable...

i rarely comment on videos in general, but damn dude, you've got a lot of potential in you, the progress is staggering, i wish you all the best and keep up the good work! This actually visually reminded me of a Devil Dagger, wich is a staggering game on it's own, and i always thought about having some sort of linear gameplay in that game. I really do hope it's gonna rail somwhere big, keeping my fingers crossed for ya.

Really cool and inspiring stuff here. Love it. Particularly love the reload mechanic and the way you've laid the HUD info directly into the visible player models. So fuckin' cool.

This is really what you want from somebody who makes a game in their own game engine. Really nice!

I love the idea of rendering the gui info on the player hand/weapon. What a cool aesthetic

Yo this shit is fire. The amount of progress is insane and design choices for the visual presentation and gameplay are also cool to see Can't wait to see more of it

This project feels so fresh! I can't wait to see where you take this because the direction is so unique in the current market. Lots of unapologetic jank done effectively. It kind of takes the idea of games like Cruelty Squad in a much more deliberate and readable visuals, it definitely reaches into DOS era aesthetics but feels like an evolution into an intentional horror theme instead of just aping old techniques for vaguely retroish ideas.

I would do unspeakable things for Mr. Test Cube.

i think that this is turning into a 90s ultrakill super fast paced fps and i love it (please add more flying around knifing things using really difficult movement tricks with a hgih skill ceiling)

this is amazing, I can't believe you're still on the train of doing everything by yourself in C! do you know where you could learn all the math needed for doing these graphics calculations or at least what kind of math knowledge you need?

You have talent !, i wish i was able to do everything in this video because i just started learning python and this looks like so much fun to make your own game from the ground up. you earned my sub please make more programming videos

If you dont want to do bones you could try morph target blending between the different obj models as long as they have matching vertex order

This looks amazing! I hope this game (or engine) will be out someday ... With your luck. I will be happy to wishlist it when it's ready

This game looks super fun and unique! I can't wait for the next episode!

gosh this is sweet! i love the fun surrealist style, and the gui text being painted on the arms and guns is great...

I think you should go in the silly game direction, and keep finger gun and lemon launcher in the game as weapons.

Bro is like me, can't stick to a single project but each one is just so fun

Entrei a dois anos na criação de jogos e é perceptível o quanto você já estudou, minha meta é te alcançar, mas parece tão longe :D Admiro seus trabalhos.

what an improvement, it's surprising that this is the same engine

Do you plan to have a tutorial series on creating a game engine ? I think it would be super cool

I must say the "handgun" caught me off guard at first but it's actually really funny. Please keep that thing around.

bro is just casually one of the best programmers on the face of the planet.

This looks amazing, I'm jealous of your ability to get stuff done. This is only four months of progress and its an entire overhaul and graphics pass. The video was great and I think fair to say 'Lague-like". For the 12:35 shotgun animation, I think a nice win for juiciness would be exaggerating the muzzleflash by increasing its size 2 or 4x, and adding a second color to it, along with animating some projectiles out of it. If you only look at the shotgun itself while you fire, it basically just lighten a bit and a tiny star is shown.

1:40 i skipped a cut scene

you can do all this while i cry attempting to write 10 lines of safe c code

"next time its 5 months" its been almost 11 months, whats new?

Actually decent development done, good looking gameplay, and he didn't scrap literally everything for a new project. Dang. Good stuff

10x developer

over the years, ive realized that, what brings me immersion or makes me feel like i have an impact on the world, is when a game ahs a "pickup and move items around with physics" system. like the fallout games do. it doesnt even need to be for any gameplay progress reasons. its like fishing in games, it adds a level of interaction that i just adore

omg this is like wow also the health etc status being drawn on the hands is such a unique idea

cant help too notice the cruelty squad vibe love it

dude... this project is AWESOME. i can't wait to play it! pls keep going with it and don't give up on it like your last project 😢

watching this video again and still looks so amazing. Really makes me wanna make my own engine like this fr

I love that your character is just the set of stats that and the reload method is super unique.

Very nice, great progress for just 4 months of work. And seems like you have a good base to keep adding on already, so hopefully you won't throw it all away and start from zero again, good luck!

Great job on the engine! Very nice to watch the video as well. Regarding the animations, just a quick tip: the triangle face data (the vertex indices) will never change between frames, so you only really need to store and read them once. And with that out of the way, you don't need to export the vertices for every frame, only when there is a keyframe and then you just linearly (or something else) interpolate the vertex positions between the frames.

This is so fucking awesome. I hope we'll be able to play it soon!

I like how you found a way to make the game look realistic and stylist at the same time, just like, squint and it looks real

2:44 thats a pretty good description of o-block chicago

Nice Work, dont stress yourself about the Story. The best Stories dont explain everything that happens

I LOVE the way this game is taking shape, it's an intriguing an unique idea and i'm looking forward to further dev updates! If i may, can i suggest adding an accessibility menu to the game? the text on the hands and eye can be hard to read for people with visual impairments (static numbers in the corner of the screen maybe?), the reload mechanic can become painful for people with hand mobility issues (add a toggle that instead adds a slower, fixed reload delay?) and the sideways tilt can lead to motion sickness (i'd suggest a toggle like you already considered for view bobbing). I suggest these because i love the artistic direction this project is going, but i also know a couple people who would love to play a game like this, but have these kinds of disabilities. Keep up the good work! It's fascinating watching the game slowly take shape as the creative process comes along. Thank you for taking us with you!

soft shadows? Percentage Closer Filtering? Nah man, I prefer my shadows QUAKING IN FEAR

Very impressive! Some of your visual choices are not my cup of tea but technically it looks amazing!

THIS LOOKS great, the stats being on the gun and hands are really cool. I'm a cool parkour man myself. You get the cool approval.

this looks kind of like ultrakill, i like the stylistic direction you took this

This is looking incredible! Turns out you are not just a programming wiz to make an engine from scratch, but it's actually shaping up to be a really interesting game.

As soon as this started I immediately felt like I was watching the dev process of Cruelty Squad, I'm glad there was an actual name drop later in the video as your game really reminds me of it

the vertex snapping at 14:11 is so cool for some reason

Looks very cool, reminds me a bit of the 1st person "possession" view in Dungeon Keeper.

I have watched this devlog series so many times, super fascinating

this is awesome stuff! insane progress and great visuals! i think the dash flash is a little too much like a flash bang and the text on the arms makes things a little busy. but so excited for the final project!

istg your entire visual style is a compresion algos worst nightmare, it took me a solid minnute to be able to even tell where the walls are lol i hope you post a full quality screenshot so i can see in all its glory

This is fantastic! I love where this is going! But I do have an idea for the eye. I was thinking that you can scan your surroundings with the eye, and it would have a cool scan animation. I think the animation should be where it gives the anything in front of you a blue overlay, and coats it slowly from start to bottom. The use for this would be to show hidden stuff, like the text on the walls instead of the trigger coming close to it. I think this would be a cool mechanic and it would super awesome if you were to add it :)

Man, I’ve been in a bit of a rut the past 6 months of my game engine, and seeing you make loads of insane progress on this totally has inspired me to get back into game engine dev. Ps, I’d pay for your game, 10000%

It would be really cool if there was teleport juice that worked as a checkpoint- like in the middle of a map, there's black teleport juice that does nothing, but once you find another pool of black teleport juice, it changes color and you can go between the two. It would be cool if you used it for easily travelling back and forth between areas if one of the areas is behind a pay door and you don't want players to get through before paying.

This is one of the first devlog games ive seen and actually really wanted to play

If this game came out back in the 90s it would be completely revolutionary. Current decade aside this project looks amazing and as an aspiring game dev your skill in programming and game design is very impressive.

i reaally love the text overlays hud and walls

just found the channel and subbbed. this is super cool work code and editing wise keep it up man

This honestly looks like a new blood worthy game! You deserve a medal because of the literal from scratchness of this

man, not only are you an insane genius at programming stuff unnecessarily low-level, but your game design and visual design style is so cool too!

This feels insane. Youve done an amazing job and the current iteration is super cool. I like the text part cycling down. Would be cool to see the code cycling on the walls too! -- very meta

If you want to truly build-ify this, you can add ceiling/floor portals. These would allow functional sector-over-sector, by simply joining disjoint sectors across the map via a seamless portal in the floor or ceiling. The obvious issue being, it's not clear how it would effect the lighting algorithm, if it has to trace rays across portals.

I like what you've got so far! Since it looks like the lore you're heading towards is that the eye is seeing some things for you, it would be cool if there was a mechanic where you could put the eye down for a bit while you enter certain zones, and then pick it back up when you leave. The chromatic aberration could be reduced and the hud text replaced by a vignette and maybe a static-y filter. As for how gameplay might change in the eyeless zone, maybe they lose fireball capabilities and look more like regular people? Could be really interesting for the eye to be something that is negatively altering your perception of reality but also necessary for the completion of the main characters goal.

Thank god RU-vid recommended me this, I completely forgot about this page.

I love how over the course of the video, it went from a fun 3D rendering project and then slowly transformed into it's own game.

i adore this aesthetic and how it handles map editing

the UI being on the player/eye model looks so amazing!

Goodspeed to you sir you didn't restart the project from scratch. Honestly I can't wait for this to drop so I can play around with the map editor

Honestly I came to like the low res texture filtered look when I took a look at spinning cubes with and without filtering and with/without mipmapping