Alright, so a few of you have been pinging me about that “game go jackson” thing I was tinkering with a while back. Figured I’d just lay out the whole shebang, how I went about it, what I bumped into, the whole nine yards. It ain’t a story of massive success, mind you, more like one of those ‘learning experiences’ they talk about.
Getting Started with the Idea
So, this “game go jackson” notion, it wasn’t some grand plan to change the world. It really just started as a personal challenge. I wanted to see if I could build a small game, something with a bit of an old-school arcade feel, using Go. The “Jackson” part? Well, that was just a codename, really. Kinda like a placeholder for the vibe I was aiming for – think gritty, a bit rough, but with a solid core. Not your shiny, polished stuff.
First off, I set up my workspace. Fired up the ol’ computer, got Go installed and ready. That part was pretty straightforward. Go is usually pretty good about that, not too much fuss.
My initial checklist, if you could call it that, was simple:
- Figure out basic window creation.
- Get some shapes drawing on the screen.
- Handle player input.
- Try to make something actually move.
Sounds easy, right? Ha.
The Nitty-Gritty and the Hurdles
Now, I knew Go wasn’t exactly the king of game development. It’s more of a backend beast, good for servers and tools. But I was stubborn. I wanted to wrestle with it. I started digging into libraries for 2D graphics. There are a few out there, but none of ’em felt like a perfect fit for what I had in my head for “Jackson”. Some were too complex, others too bare-bones.
I spent a good chunk of time just trying to get a stable window up that wouldn’t flicker like a haunted house. Then came drawing sprites. Man, pushing pixels around, trying to get that specific “Jackson” feel, it was tougher than I thought. Go is fast, sure, but when you’re dealing with graphics rendering directly, without a big engine holding your hand, you feel every little bump in the road. It’s not like just spitting out JSON, you know?
I remember one week, I was just stuck on collision detection. Simple box-to-box stuff, but getting it to feel right, to not be glitchy, that ate up days. My code started looking like a patchwork quilt. I’d try one approach, rip it out, try another. It was a lot of trial and error. Mostly error, if I’m being honest for a bit there.
And, you know, life doesn’t stop just ’cause you’re trying to code a game. The roof started leaking. Had to deal with that. Then a freelance gig came up that I couldn’t really turn down. So “game go jackson” got pushed to late nights and weekends, whenever I could steal an hour or two. That’s how these personal projects go, isn’t it? They fight for scraps of your time.
Where It Ended Up
So, did “game go jackson” become the next big indie hit? Nah, not even close. I got a prototype working. You can move a character around, there are some basic mechanics. It’s got a hint of that “Jackson” vibe I was after, I think. It’s clunky, it’s unpolished, but it’s mine.
What I really got out of it was the process. Forcing myself to use Go for something it’s not typically used for, that taught me a lot. Learned about its limitations, for sure. But also found some surprising strengths. And mostly, I remembered that building something, anything, from scratch, it’s about the journey. It’s about sitting down, facing the problem, and just chipping away at it. Even if the end result is just a quirky little thing sitting on your hard drive.
So yeah, that was my “game go jackson” adventure. A bit messy, a bit frustrating, but definitely a practice I don’t regret. It’s all about doing the thing, right?