Dev 'n Life Jan David Nose & Roberto Pando

Rob is diving into Rust and feels like he has to relearn everything. JD has been diving into game engines, and has set up Bevy for their project. He's hacking around to get a gRPC API set up within the engine, and is blown away by learning about Entity-Component-Systems and Data-Oriented Design.

JD wonders if it makes more sense to focus on game development, or invest equally in building up a community around the project. Rob's concerned that someone might steal their work, and is not too enthusiastic about the idea of open source. The two start a long discussion around this, diving into the pros and cons of open source, the difficulties of monetization, and their fears and concerns regarding the success of the project.

After deciding to try the Shape Up methodology to build the game, JD and Rob sit down to discuss what to build first. Feeling a bit intimidated by the complexity of the project, they discuss reducing the complexity by focusing on singleplayer first and using a game engine. At the end, they make plans for their first bets for the first implementation cycle.

On their One Year Anniversary, Rob and JD dive deep into the Shape Up methodology and discuss how they can use it for their new project. Rob shares his concerns around finding a good balance between planning and execution, and JD is excited about having focus and direction.

Rob is back, and JD catches him up on the latest developments with their game. JD shares some background about the inspiration for the game, considerations for an early prototype, and the technologies he wants to use to build the game. The two discuss Rust, React, and gRPC, and share their concern for the complexities of designing an interesting video game.

Rob is about to move, and JD has been thinking a lot about the intersection of practicing programming and video games. Unhappy with his current approach to start a new side project for everything he wants to learn, he wonders if we can't create a game that provides programmers with a sandbox to try out things in a fun and engaging way.