Welcome to my dev-blog!

I'm Malindu. I'm 24 years old and I live in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

I recently completed my BSc. (Hons) Software Engineering (University of Plymouth, UK) degree at NSBM Green University, Homagama, Sri Lanka.

I did my A/Ls on the Mathematics field in 2018 but couldn't sit for the exam due to immense stress, depression and other family issues. Immediately after the huge fall in my life, my mom found me a music class. I started training my voice, started singing, played a box guitar, a bass guitar, some violin and tried my hands at composing music and writing songs. I was pretty good at it.

A few months later, my mom encouraged me to apply for a private university, and a new friend from my music class introduced me to NSBM, and that's where I changed my path from Engineering/Mathematics to Software Engineering.

And here I am, after applying for a software engineering job for a few months (and failing) and finally ready to do something I'm truly passionate about. Game development.

The little game developer in me

When I was very little, I was a silent kid alone in my own world (I wasn't alone physically, I have an elder sister). My imagination created my world. It's quite weird thinking about it, but I played games, with imaginary friends, and sometimes they beat me.

As a little kid, I wasn't privileged to have gaming devices (playstations, gaming computers, or whatever) but we had a computer which I could play some games (like Mario, Dave...something, pinball or stuff like that). One of my most nostalgic games was MegaMan X3. That game was super hard for little me but it was so beautiful and breathtaking for the little me (it still is tbh). And then I found out there were things called RPG games (I'm talking stuff like Final Fantasy 1 and 2, that vampire game with a vampire dude, little vampire girl and two ghosts or something). These games set in me so badly that I started playing those games on paper, with my own enemy AI, own levels, powers, game mechanics and whatnot.

Since my mom worked in a bank, I had a lot of papers which I could just do whatever I wanted with. I took a bundle of papers and started drawing tables, ability sheets, character stats, stories, personalities, a bunch of different colored pens and started playing the game in my head, and wrote down every single action, and updated the UI, on paper, when I was around 7. Yeah, I was weird.

The J.K.Rowling dream

When I was around 12, I started making my own worlds (this time, literal worlds, unlike playing with imaginary friends). The world I lived in wasn't a very beautiful one. Ever since I moved to a new, bigger school, I started created my own universe for me to live in. I was innocent and getting bullied all over the place. The new kids weren't the nicest, nor spoke the sweetest words. Therefore, I created Mystiquose, a world where people were nicer, where humanity lived in harmony with nature, where mother nature gifted humanity with powerful abilities.

I started writing in my native language (Sinhala), on pen and paper and this story or this universe wasn't the first. It was rather the most prominent and closest to the reality. Then I switched to writing in English, where most of my writing skills improved forever. I learnt new words whenever I could, read as many books as possible, and then tried to copy the styles of those books into my own. I wanted to become the next J.K.Rowling, to make the next Harry Potter.

Cards, and Ben 10

During my school years, I bought a pretty card pack with characters from the Ben 10 universe from a store. It had shiny labels and a lot of numbers (they are meant to show the power levels of those cards... I think). I was a huge Ben 10 fan by this time, and I loved this card pack, even though I couldn't understand how to play anything with it. This is when I started inventing probably the closest to "actual games".

There were around 5 numbers for each card, and I created my own meaning to all of them (it was easier since I already knew all the characters). And then my writer brain kicked in and started making my own new aliens (in case you didn't know, Ben 10 is a kid with a watch that lets him transform into different alien forms). These aliens kinda blew up in my class. I started making friends that I have never talked with before. My classmates started making their own new aliens. This gave me an idea; What if we play against each other, with our own aliens? And that is how I created my first card game. We played with our aliens during our free periods, and on our way home in the school bus. It was a lot of fun. I remember feeling so good being able to play a cool game with friends, without any electronic device. I loved seeing others enjoying it as much as I enjoyed playing with other people.

At several instances, I have invented other card games to play with my cousins when we were odd in numbers and would have otherwise had to pick one person out of the game. Ideas always used to come to me when I needed them the most.

Growing up...

With time, life got tougher, the little innocent kid in me hid away, and I had to create a new personality to face the harsh world. I lost most of my imagination and started living in the reality. I was one of the smartest, highest scoring students in school, and that faded away with my own personality slipping away from me.

Closer and closer to A/Ls (high school equivalent in my country), I wanted more and more to stop existing in this world. I was good at math, but I didn't want to become an engineer. If you've read this far, you'll probably agree. I kept writing and even posted my stories online (on Wattpad). But I couldn't run away from the reality, and it finally broke my mind. I couldn't focus on doing anything at all, and I started getting lower and lower scores on my exams, up to the point I started skipping exams. I just stopped caring about everything.

And you know the rest.

Forward!

Right now, I'm a Software Engineering graduate. I'm good with programming, making websites, mobile applications, and games. I learnt Unity on my own, created my university final year project using Unity and I'm going to keep making new games, learn new things and post them here in this blog.

I've already made my first playable game and published it on itch.io. But I didn't post any dev-blogs anywhere till now.

Since my first game, Hyper Towers is still early in development, I will post all the notes I've written down in my Obsidian vault up to the current development stage and then keep on adding any new updates on the game, things I've learned, useful code that might help someone else and more in this blog.

Thank you for reading and I hope I can keep making games and let video game enthusiasts all over the world have fun playing them!

-MaRK