How did your efforts on your earlier works impact the design choices and process of your work on Selfloss?
Goodwin: Two main conclusions that I’ve received from previous projects for myself: 1. Don’t rush. Do everything the proper way.
2. I need to think about the player’s experience and how to make it the best it can be and emotional. The player should be my focus and not what’s on my mind as the author. Everything else just evolves naturally as you gain more knowledge and expertise.
Considering you teach Unity to children and Unreal Engine courses at ITMO University in St. Petersburg. What made you decide to go with Unreal Engine for this game’s development?
Goodwin: I’ve been working on my Ph.D. for three years and also teaching Unreal Engine and Game Design for Master’s students at ITMO University. There were a couple of clean reasons why I switched to Unreal:
- The lab where I was working while getting my Ph.D. used Unreal as the main tool for any kind of scientific and entertainment project. Although they had some Unity tasks, for me, I needed to learn Unreal fast enough to be able to help on other Unreal Engine projects in the lab. There were really smart guys there, smarter than me but not too many artistic specialists so I felt like a missing puzzle for most of the Unreal lab projects.
2. The right question is not always about the engine but about the ecosystem as a whole. And I say it without any adulation and considering only facts that happened while I was using Unity and Unreal, Epic Games is a better provider of the engine and provider of your career as a game developer. The main third reason here is, I just never felt any attention from Unity to me as a developer. And I knew based on my friends who work with Unreal Engine that it is not like this with Epic. And just like in a good relationship, attention from your partner is much more important than anything else.
Are there particular elements of the Unreal Engine that have helped you—as a solo developer—achieve the sort of experiences you hope to bring to life in your games?
Goodwin: At first I was kinda hustling with the game framework architecture inside Unreal. All those game modes, game states, game instances, all that. But after some time I realized that it actually helps me to avoid certain architectural mistakes and helps to save time. Another great thing is the material editors. Of course, there were no official visual material editors in Unity back in 2018, so, for me as a visual guy, it was a blessing to make any kind of material easily. The same goes for the sound graph.
What are your thoughts on Unreal Engine 5 and what are you hoping to do with it once it fully releases?
Goodwin: I think I am most interested in the new audio approaches in Unreal Engine 5. Real-time GI is super cool. I’m interested in using UE5 to explore stylized-looking games.
Source: Unreal Engine Blog