In an extended cellar in the Limmattal, I develop the game Pax Augusta – build your Roman Empire. Since 01.08.2019 I am on it non-stop.
Although I’m a trained electronic technician, I’m usually not that interested in hardware. It just has to be quick. 😉 That’s why I decided to use the following devices 🙂
PC equipment:
Processor: Intel i-9700 / 3.6GHz
Working memory: 32 GB Ram
Graphics card: Geforce RTX 2080
Hard drive capacity: I don’t know, all SSDs together a little more than 4 TB (incl. NAS)
I am very picky about the keyboard. After 3 hours of trial typing in a specialist store, I chose this one: “Razer BlackWidow Elite”. This thing is very comfortable to type – precise and light keys, but also incredibly loud. You get the feeling that someone is playing ping-pong. 🙂
SCREENS
To develop a game on a single screen is very tedious. You have to be able to monitor an extremely large number of things at the same time or be able to exert influence quickly. On the top of the screen, I see the game. On the left, I have the code editor. In this editor, I write the functions to make the game actually do something. Since I never learned to apply the 10 finger system, I have to look at the keyboard a lot and I also often take the code window on the main monitor. Usually on the main monitor is the development environment of Unity3D. There the buildings are placed and menu items are defined.
In the background a lamp shines on the wall. I do not know why, but this bright wall makes me much less tired.
DEVELOPMENT TIME
The question arises, when there is time to develop such a game. A friend once told me: No matter if rich or poor, we all have the same amount of time. It’s all about the priorities you set. So if someone says that he has no time, it just means that he has distributed the priorities differently.
At 6:00 AM, after I have already studied for my degree, I usually design the buildings for about 30 minutes. These are tasks that I don’t have to do in one go, but where small partial steps are possible. After work, I can usually continue with the game for about 2 hours. Then I build smaller things into the game. But at 8:00 PM I am strictly ending my working day. Then the free time begins. On weekends I have two full days where I can work on the game. Then it’s time for the program parts that require full concentration and are more extensive. For example, I program the food production and test it for two days.
Recently I saw on one of the first screenshots of the game that I was playing a tank game in the background in the taskbar. Then I noticed that I haven’t played a single PC game for about 1.5 years. Anyway this wouldn’t be possible at all, because I want to invest my time for Pax Augusta -build your Roman Empire. It is all about setting the right priorities. You want to be there live and see the final end result? Then subscribe to my YouTube channel, where I show you exciting videos about the game development and read my blogs. In the next blog, I’ll show you what kind of street types the game will have and at which places I researched for it!
