In February 2024, I decided to take a shot at learning how to make my own videogames from scratch, with barely any existing experience with game development or coding. Going with the Godot engine and learning to use Blender to make my own game assets were the obvious choices for something with the scope that I imagine I'll be able to handle by myself. After doing some innitial planning work for a number of game concepts and getting some basic experience with the software, the release of version 1.0 of the COGITO template for Godot in December 2024 made me settle on attempting to make a 3D first person ImSim heavily inspired by Thief: The Dark Project from 1998. COGITO is already doing a lot of the heavy lifting regarding the coding for the basic game mechanics, which makes the process of making my own game much more like doing a total conversion mod with asset flips rather than actually creating a whole new game from scratch. This might very well save me actual years of development time.
Since I plan on making most of the game's assets by myself to have a consistent visual art style, I am aiming for the look of 3D games from the late 90s, specifically Unreal Engine 1, as was used in Unreal, The Wheel of Time, Deus Ex, Rune, and Undying. The visual style of this game engine uses textures and 3D models that can be done relatively easily and quickly compared to both higher fidelity modern graphics and 2D pixel art, while still allowing for very evocative stylized looks.
In addition to the basic Stealth gameplay of Thief, my idea for this game also draws heavily on the dialog system, semi-open world format, quest design, and overall approach to storytelling of Fallout from 1997. In some ways the concept resembles the Vampire game Bloodlines from 2004, though of course with a much more modest scope and a simple, fully text based dialog system.
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