Travis Vroman

Since I announced the Homebrew Journey series, I have been asked numerous times what I mean when I say “from scratch”. Some take this to mean simply that I don’t use libraries while others take it to mean implementing everything down to my own sqrt function. If we want to be pedantic, we could argue that “from scratch” means bare-metal programming in assembly, or even lower than that if we consider operating system, etc. Technically, any of these definitions could be correct. So, in a brief effort to clarify my position, “from scratch” in this case means that we will be using a very limited amount of the standard C libraries at first (with many, but not all functions eventually being replaced with our own), The Vulkan SDK and the Win32 libraries as we have to use them for windowing, […]

I am announcing a new project. Yes. Another one. BUT, allow me to explain a bit first. Earlier this year I mentioned in a post that I’d be working on creating a game using Vulkan from the ground up. This blog has been dark ever since. That project never made it off the ground. Truth be told 2020 has been tough – although I recognize not nearly as rough for me as many, I am not complaining and do recognize that I am fortunate – but it does not mean this year was without its challenges. I was working a lot earlier in the year, often in the form of crunch and overtime to release games. Thus, this and other projects fell by the wayside. This had caused me to lose my passion for making games for a bit. This […]

I have decided to do a thing. A big thing. I’m going to make a game completely from scratch. Start to finish. Not only the game logic, but the engine which runs it, as well as the art. Possibly even the music. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years, and I think I am finally ready to do it. It is going to take a long time, and will be extremely frustrating, but it is time. I do not yet have a full vision for what the end product will be yet, but I do have a lot of inspiration and a general direction. I’m planning on doing several things: Keep a running log of the entire process from start to finish. Some of it may be here, some will likely be in the form of video down the […]

For a long time, I’ve been teetering on the fence on learning Vulkan because of its steep learning curve. Well, earlier this month I finally decided to take the plunge. This is the first in a series of articles discussing my process of learning Vulkan and my progress along the way. NOTE: I’ll be posting links to a lot of resources at the bottom of this article. A Brief History I’ve been programming against OpenGL and its variants since around 2011 or so. In the last couple of years I’ve done a lot of programming against WebGL and more recently I’ve begun experimenting with WebGL2. I also did some DirectX 9, 10 and 11 programming several years ago, but never really went anywhere with it. So, I started this with a familiarity with graphics programming concepts – at least on […]

I wanted to post a quick but super-helpful resource that was pointed out to me for Japanese immersion. It’s a live, constantly-running, freely-available news stream. It is available to watch here or on YouTube directly: Enjoy!

First, a recap of 2019 (and 2018, kinda) 2019 has been a difficult year for me in general. I’ve been very busy with life and work. 2018 was much the same unfortunately. Sometimes there are more important things in life than hobbies, such as a close family member becoming sick and shortly after losing them, or another having a very close call. It serves as a reminder that, no matter how much you want to do something, life sometimes unavoidably gets in the way. And that’s okay. The key, however, is to bounce back from whatever trials you may encounter. This post is the start of that bounce-back for me (technically, the bounce-back has started, but now I am recording it). In 2018, I launched my game development YouTube channel over at http://youtube.com/travisvroman. A *lot* of time went into that. […]

Made some minor updates to the site to make it more easily updated while still quick. With the exception of archives, I’m now making posts in markdown format. The latest news will always be available here. UPDATE: See the top page for the latest. In other news, I finally finished reading Masters of Doom. What a fantastic look into the early days of the game dev industry, as well as the beginnings of id Software. It’s been a very motivating read, and has made me want to go back to lower level programming to gain a better understanding of how and why things work. At some point I’ll likely do a deep dive of this, I hope. I also went to see Iron Maiden this month. What a show! Easily one of the best I’ve ever seen: Going to see Korn […]

Things have been crazy busy as of late. I’ve been working on a major project on the side as well as preparing for great things at work. Speaking of which, I’m going on a business trip to South Africa soon. It’s been almost 3 years since I was last there, so it should be interesting and fun. I’ll be sure to post pictures when I return. YouTube-wise I’m still in the planning stages of the next big project. I’ve got a sizable game design document written so I can maintain organization and direction. The entire thing will be open source using NamorvTech and developed mostly on-screen in the next YouTube series. More coming on that later this month. As a side note, I started growing my hair again. I look quite different than my last appearance on YouTube! It’s for a good […]

It’s been a while since I have created and actually published a game. The last one I did was released in 2014, which was just a simple Flappy Bird clone called StupidDuck. Having the itch to release a game of my own again, I decided to set myself up with a challenge – to complete a game in 24 hours. The challenge was to develop an entire game in less than 24 hours total time. To clarify, this means 24 hours of development time, not one calendar day. The game is based around an idea I roughly came up with almost 10 years ago. It involves a farmer named Jethro, who must rescue and protect his cattle during an alien invasion. The game would be a sokoban-style game, which involves the player moving cattle on a tile-based screen to a series of goal tiles. The game […]

I made some updates to the Discord server, with more channels and whatnot to discuss content, programming and general game development. If you haven’t already, head over and check it out.