From Technic enthusiast to Game Dev

[Hopscotch1337]

Hey, this is qestion for game devs. Not only but also included from Factorio

Here is my story background:

I am now 36 and worked for 14 years in the Industrial robot segment. I started as a electrican, was onside in industrial construction sides all over the world. Later I was the onside leader and also did the Robot progamming (KUKA, ABB, Reis). That was the first time I got in touch with programming. It was good fun!

Later factorio came out on steam and I was laught at that I am doing the same thing in my freetime and in my work. I was making factories ;D
As the game developed so did also my intrest in game dev. But I always thought, this is just too hard I will never be able to do something like this and so I did not even try it out.

Right now I am working for another Robtic company for 4 years where I do not have to travel so much. After spending about 10 years only in hotels this was an important step for me. The bad thing is that in this job I do not programm anymore and I started missing it.
For fun I signed in at Gamedev.tv. I heared that the Unity engine is easier for beginners that is why I started with it. I made my own litte game with a tutorial and after that polished it until I was satisfied. It isn´t something special but I like my Version of the Space Defender.

Now half a year later I am still in my non programming job but I realized that I hate it. I earn good money but its nothing I want to do anymore, every day fells like I am selling my time and body just to earn money. I was never so excited doing something, as I was programming my little game. Now I realize I would rather do Game Dev and be happy in my job, even when I will be paid much less.

I made myself a roadmap for the next 3-4 years to prepare carefully my job switch. And I hope that is enough time to achive the fundamets of Unity, establish some port folio, learn the best practice programming patterns, also have a peak in C++ and so on and so on.

So now comes my question, what do you think are my chances of joining the indi scene?
Do you have some tips for me?
How did it work out for you?
Are there does and dont´s you would recommend?

[Tertius]

Having studied computer science, I have some remarks from the conceptual side of software development. Software development is not just coding stuff, implementing stuff. With coding I mean writing program code and creating game assets within an engine.

What I recommend you could try to educate yourself is about about learning concepts about designing games (if you want to start in the gaming industry), concepts about how and why to create maintainable software, stable software, coding concepts like (no) global data variable storage, class design, class inheritance, event-based software. Concurrent software execution ("multi-threaded"). This isn't programming language specific, it's general. How to test software and software modules. How to embed testing in software development. How to work together in a team (software repositories/github). Career changers into software development tend to lack some education in programming concepts that leads to properly coded software.

If you want to work simply as a coder, someone who's building but not designing stuff, this is less important. But it's always good to have the bigger picture in mind. Building manageable and structured code is definitely important.

[Hopscotch1337]

Having studied computer science, I have some remarks from the conceptual side of software development. Software development is not just coding stuff, implementing stuff. With coding I mean writing program code and creating game assets within an engine.

What I recommend you could try to educate yourself is about about learning concepts about designing games (if you want to start in the gaming industry), concepts about how and why to create maintainable software, stable software, coding concepts like (no) global data variable storage...

Thank you for your repley, that is actually something what I am doing right now.
Started a course where things like that are described. I also think that learning to code good is the first step in the direction to be a good programmer
I will write your keywords down and see if I can implement them inside my trainings

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