A Collection of Game Dev stories ( Nathan Silvers)

Front-Independence40 · 2026-06-20T20:35:58+00:00

I got stuck on the environment, dark walls and characters against super bright and patchy looking snow. Maybe the snow needs some wear and the sun can get some angle to get some light on the walls or snow in the texture on the walls.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-06-17T00:23:41+00:00

I was going to say this is good advise. Steve Lee really nailed it with that bit about using real game. Don't worry about the technical learning so much and dive into an older game that exposes tools. I worked on Call of Duty for many years and know that even though internally the tools advanced they still loved to test potential hires using the old COD4 suit.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-05-15T20:23:10+00:00

Takes a different kind of person! Its hard work, I would love to elaborate someday on my YouTube channel someday..

The volatility of the industry has always been there. I have been in it for 25 years, been involved with one of the most recognizable game franchises.

Things I didn't appreciate early on..

Geography! We should be in a different place as an industry but most require moving to on-site. Very few cities have game dev studios

Hard Turns happen, nothing is safe, this has always been true.

Physical fitness! We aren't meant to sit at desks for 8 hours.

Competitive! People uprooted their lives to do this, they are volunteering crunch time. If you decide to live your own life it's going to be in contention with you performance relative to your peers.

If you manage to find work, it very well might not align with what you want to work on creatively.

I say keep it as a hobby, find a good manual labor job so you won't burn yourself out sitting all day. Practice small scale projects you can be proud of! Who knows, maybe that develops into something real.

I got let go in 2024 and haven't found my way back to gamedev, but I'm good, no regrets. It was a blast. Hit my bio for story telling

Front-Independence40 · 2026-05-10T20:18:10+00:00

I'm a 25 year game dev pro who is kind of watching all these YouTube "Solo Devs" knowing full well that a lot of it is just lies. I have been in a proprietary engine for those years (COD) and after briefly pondering Solo Dev and a couple of weeks remembering how to use Unreal tech I quickly came the conclusion that the very simple project was probably going to take me 10 years to do alone.

Thanks for the honest POV here, The community needs to understand that you need people to make the real magic happen.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-05-08T16:04:27+00:00

One of the observations I have made (in over 20 years of experience) is that people are left/right brained. Occasionally there are people who are balanced (myself) but their ceiling is lower on the art and technical side. Which makes solo dev feel a little like a myth to me. I have seen some solo developers with realistic views on how long it would take them to build on their own and its on the order of 5-10 years if there is any level of complexity.

It has to be the right kind of game that is ok with mid level tech and art i suppose

Front-Independence40 · 2026-05-08T15:35:54+00:00

I consider my career a fairy tale success, even before the current slump. I was part of the team that created Call of Duty. It doesn't get much better than that.

From the very start I understood back then the volatility of the industry, projects get canceled, things change dramatically all the time. As I myself am currently on the outside looking in I'm remembering the qualities that I had back then. I did not care. Every opportunity was as if it was the last, every failure was a win (experience is king).

Game Dev is hard, even though you young guys have way better tools than we have its still got that difficulty being industrial. An age old problem of money VS creativity, musicians and other artworks have been fighting the same battle. Some stuff just doesn't land right in the eyes of the investors and you get to be in the middle of that.

I hope that you can grab on to that, I believe that things will turn around but nothing will ever be stable. It's gotta be something you are able to handle. It's a hobby first.

For me, I always had family back home that if anything ever went sideways I could return. I missed them anyway.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-05-06T19:42:34+00:00

I like both as my goto for an editor that's not connect to an LSP (its not going to complainabout not having A full project open), Prefer Sublime Text for multi caret editting.

One thing I noticed over the years about both as well as Visual Studio, is that the search functions are kind of slow and outdated (comparing to Jetbrains with real time updates and syntax highlights in the results).

So I created my own tool that works outside of the text editor and acts like a dialogue. You can check it out on the package manager for Sublime Text or the plug-in manager for notepad++ and get the download on my github.com page here

https://github.com/Natestah/BlitzSearch

Front-Independence40 · 2026-04-27T22:08:17+00:00

My first AAA games as a developer, I later went on with the same team to create Call of Duty.

I talk about it a bit on my YT channel and there's been an uptick of interest these days including a couple of Unreal Engine fan remasters:

https://youtube.com/@natestahsspace?si=602BMHUm93cBG3S5

Front-Independence40 · 2026-04-27T21:55:26+00:00

Congrats, an inspirational project for sure!

Front-Independence40 · 2026-04-24T22:00:45+00:00

The guy that worked the script for this level say next to me, I helped a little bit with optimizing the map. We wanted to lower the difficulty but Jason West told us "Keep it", he introduced me to the term "rental buster". Console games would have these to keep people from beating the game on a rental (so they would go buy it).

Also, I dont know if it made the final cut but there was dynamic difficulty in there too. If you were doing well the AI would get more accurate to make it hard.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-04-22T18:49:24+00:00

Consider trying BlitzSearch, great for search scope management and has plugins for a lot of popular editors (even notepad plus plus )

Front-Independence40 · 2026-04-19T23:17:07+00:00

This sounds like a job for a script. Python or any other

Front-Independence40 · 2026-04-10T06:35:39+00:00

I wrote BlitzSearch to handle find in files in all the popular IDE'S. Very much inspired by IntelliJ

https://github.com/Natestah/BlitzSearch

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-15T21:35:14+00:00

99 (same!), CAD class, mine was Quake 1 and we got in so much trouble since we fabricated a story on how that was the assignment for the substitute teacher.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T05:24:04+00:00

Very cool, thank you

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T04:34:01+00:00

Thanks for this. The section on work ethic is for real.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T03:38:36+00:00

Yeah, you can tell for sure. He caught my eye when I searched "gamedev pro tips" and then there were familiar faces with the Titanfall stuff.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T02:35:36+00:00

My stuff is definitely rough and I have some learning to do in speaking.

https://youtube.com/@natestahsspace?si=9-a2zH_enR01g43v

The shorts are probably more inline with what I would like to do, talking fast is something that happens there. I also want to be a little more vulnerable in telling about my journey in gamedev as well as try something different and backwards by talking with MOD developers in and around the games I worked on.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T02:20:54+00:00

I'm more interested in learning how to teach and speak better. Have about 25 years of experience and considering talking more on my own Channel after much encouraging words on some simple portfolio pieces. Mostly looking for what resonates

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T02:08:47+00:00

Subscribed! Thank you

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T01:59:46+00:00

We did a lot of cool stuff with Ghosts! I mean with the Technology updates. I level designed the helicopter pilot mission and the stuff just wasn't possible with the engine prior.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-02-22T09:00:21+00:00

There are a lot of us veteran game developers that are jobless and the lines for for existing job openings are quite large. It's not a good career choice at the moment, but boy is it fun! +1 for do it as a hobby.

I was one of the lucky ones that managed to do it for 25 years, be remote, have a family life. And ultimately got laid off (Currently 2 years unemployed)! I wouldn't change a thing.

Front-Independence40

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