Major change to my deveopment platform

I posted this on my facebook recently but now I am going to talk about it on here.

I have been developing a 3D engine for a while now for the Windows Phone marketplace.
Recently I have decided to abandon that entirely and switch over to doing exactly the same thing but on the Android platform. There are long term compelling reasons for the change.

I had been lacking enthusiasm for the 3D engine development and did not really realise it until I had a chat with friends who are also developers and some entrepreneurs. Windows phone market has been closing for a long time now and that is more true now than it was previously. In the back of my mind, somewhere in the subconscious, I knew this but continued to develop in it. This, as it turns out, was a very bad idea. It caused lack of motivation because subconsciously my mind would think what result would I get in one of the smallest phone marketplace?

Conversations with above mentioned friends also showed that I had to create focus. What was really important to me? Is it the journey of developing a 3D engine to a point where I can make a video game, or is it just a need to make a video game? Had the focus been the latter then coding in API such as direct3D is a really bad idea. Development would be very slow, a lot of work will need to be done before I could even think about generating content. Instead I would have opted for something like Unity3D, have a great scene going in about 14 minutes, concentrate on game ideas to implement, get to creating content sooner, and have a game out of the door, quite possibly before a year has elapsed.

What I found in thinking about focus is that building a game is not as important for me as the journey to get there. I want to build upon my knowledge of 3D, build up on the mathematics, understand how a game engine is built. So that is going to be my focus and a game will come out of it at the end which brings me back to platform of choice. There is no guarantee how long the Android market will stand, but it will certainly be a lot longer than it takes me to build up my 3D engine. Sticking with the windows phone market, I feel, would be akin to developmental suicide.

It is a huge set back, throwing away so much work and rebooting on a new platform. I have to learn the new platform, the new market place, potentially new tools and new ways of doing things. Instead of a setback, I see it as a beautiful thing, a challenge, a chance to learn more things, keep me interested and the brain working hard. It also gives me a chance to do things differently by learning from my previous mistakes. It also gives me another opportunity to tap into my ability to learn anything really fast, add experience to that, and develop that skill even further.

To overcome the challenges I have started extensive research into the new market I will be entering. I have spoken to a few people who have been involved with the android market, taking their advice, reading materials they have recommended. These people have been there, done that and for me, the fastest way to make sure I get there too in the most efficient way possible. Time is precious and it has to be managed with the greatest of priorities. There are books to be bought, and hardware to be purchased. At this point I want to go for the newly released Samsung Galaxy S7 so that the hardware is less old than if I went for something like a galaxy S4, towards the end of this development.

There is one other thing I will be doing which I have not been with my windows platform. I will blog more about what I have been learning in my journey into the Android (and potentially later into iOS) platform. I will be posting about code examples, about the openGL ES api, about the progress of my engine. Where possible I will post videos and pictures. Why? So that others can start their own journeys by using mine as a tutorial.

So it is a new beginning and a step in the right direction. A journey into something exciting, that will have the potential for bigger rewards and most of all, I get to continue to do what I really enjoy doing.

Let's get started.....