velipso wrote:

We saved up money and took this past year off, which allowed us to work on our business full time. Unfortunately we have to go back to work to pay the bills, but it's been a lot of fun this past year.

I work professionally as a web developer, and my partner works in marketing.

Working on a game on nights and weekends is really tough, I've tried that over the years, and never really had success with it... but everyone is different. For me, it's better to save up and take time off between jobs (and keep expenses low, so money lasts longer!).

Thank you for sharing your perspective, that helps. My wife tells me, "You have to want to more than you don't know how" so I keep on trying despite not knowing where the road will take me.

I will definitely take time off work for the next GBA Jam. Thankfully this one is small in scope, and my approach to GBA dev is novel enough that I'll be proud just to get my dog working and pettable on real hardware.

velipso wrote:

I started back up again after becoming utterly fed up with constantly shifting technology. Some of my SDL projects died after an OS update, and it was the last straw. At first I considered making my own virtual console, until it dawned on me that the GBA is the perfect real console for 2D game programming.

Me and my partner have been working on a puzzle game over the past year, which we hope to launch a kickstarter for in the next couple months. I've been doing the programming and music, she's been doing the art and animations. Our company is called Pocket Pulp (pulp.biz), and we've also launched physical puzzles this past year, which are for sale.

What do you mean by virtual console? Certainly not this definition right?

I am excited and hopeful for Pocket Pulp's success. Is your partner on this forum?

...whelp I just climbed out of your van-dwelling rabbit hole. Your transparency and vulnerability on display is impressive. I've gone on a few road trips living out of Jeeps, so a lot of that resonates with me.

Is it possible to add a dark theme to this forum? My poor eyes are melting.

SkyLyrac wrote:

After a few years I got tired of PC and rediscovered GB homebrew. I spent a couple of years creating GB games such as uCity and demos (and improving the toolchain I was using, RGBDS). I got tired of this as well, because developing in GB assembly is super slow and painful, and I decided to try GBA for the first time, where I've created a couple of libraries like libugba and GBT Player, and I ported my uCity to GBA!

That's so cool that you ported your homebrew GB game to GBA! How many people have done that before? I never would have considered it honestly.

Around the internet, I go by just e9. That's not my legal name but it's good enough right?

Growing up in the 90s to 2000s, my Game Boy was my oldest friend and constant companion. It never betrayed or threatened me, and I could always find a new world to explore or challenge to conquer when I'd otherwise be sitting on my hands at the dentist office or riding the bus. Pokemon made up 90% of my playtime back then.

Since computers and the internet were blowing up and revolutionizing daily life around that time, I learned a great deal about software and played a ton of early FPS games whenever I could. This included installing Doom on every school computer I possibly could and being a thorn in my sysadmin's side.

I'm currently learning all I possibly can to make weird projects using a Doom engine source port that's changed hands multiple times, most notably ported from PC to the GBA by Doomhack. My fork is called Tantalus, named after a Greek mythological figure cursed to have his desires just out of reach. It's a mess, but it's fun.

Do you guys have full time jobs outside of game development?

I work full time, and have been going to college part time, so it's difficult for me to make real progress on my work outside of weekends. Even those days can quickly clog up with non-GBA errands 😅

How do you find the time to work on your passion projects?

I try to schedule days after my job to sit down and do nothing but try to learn or create. It always feels like this should be my last priority, but it's honestly a great hobby that brings me a lot of joy.

Those drawings look great. The knight has a heroic face shape for sure.

I'm stoked! I have a few ideas that I'll start on the first and it'll probably be hideous, but it'll be mine.