Goal State: Backer Update - January 2025
And we're off!
In December of 2024, the first Kickstarter campaign for Goal State was 154% funded. Every month I will be providing updates on the ongoing work to complete the project, and deliver the end reward of complete video lecture and tutorial series on the foundations of AI for game development. While the original 30-day campaign has since closed, you can still sign up for late pledges via the Kickstarter page.
Hello all, and welcome to the first backer update for Goal State! Every month I’ll be providing an update to all Kickstarter backers on how things are progressing, and what to expect!
EDITORIAL NOTE: Hey all, I only realised after this was setup that somehow I had pressed the wrong button when setting up this new ‘section’ of the AI and Games site, meaning that everyone prior to January 20th is automatically receiving emails for this publication. That was not my intent, and I’m sorry for the spam! I’m a tad reluctant to now ‘delete’ this from your notifications, lest I also in-turn delete all of your subscriptions! Yikes… You can manually edit your notifications by heading to your account page if you wish to opt out of these updates.
Once again, so sorry for the mix-up! -Tommy
First Things First, We’re Funded!
I mean, wow! First and foremost thank you once again for funding Goal State and getting us to where we are now. It was all a little surreal as things wrapped up whilst I was in the middle of attending a game developers conference out in the Czech Republic. The conference had ended the day before, and so now I was out doing some sightseeing with my fellow speakers, and being guided around by a couple of the conference organisers. So I can say with some confidence, that seeing the timer run out as I hung out in the Jewish quarter of Prague was pretty special!
The funds from Kickstarter rolled in about two weeks ago, so I better get started! Don’t get me wrong, I was keen to get things rolling as soon as it all ended, but 2024 was a crazy year for me personally and professionally, so it made sense to take some downtime and start planning out everything. But yeah, seeing the funds transfer to us made it all very real!
Don’t Forget, Late Pledges Are a Thing
So it’s worth mentioning that to anyone reading about Goal State now thinking ‘oh hey, this sounds pretty neat, I want in on this’, that late pledges are still live on the Kickstarter campaign. What that means is, anyone who has not pledged already can still visit the Kickstarter page and sign up. I’m keeping the late pledges open for the time being, and I will continue to honour any stretch goals it may hit over time.
However, I will stress that the late pledge feature on Kickstarter only works if you haven’t pledged already. It doesn’t allow you to edit your existing pledge, which is kind of a pain. It would be nice to allow people to top-up if they so wish.
A Reminder of What We Funded
So just as a quick recap, what can we actually expect in the final delivery. First up for backers is the main course content:
The complete lecture series of the Game AI 101 course.
The video tutorials in both the Unity and Unreal game engines.
Plus we will now also release for free to everyone:
The source code deep dive on DOOM (1993) and Quake III Arena.
A dedicated episode of AI and Games on Quake III Arena.
Getting Started
So for this month, it’s largely about preparation and planning, with a little bit of writing to boot! Returning to work this month has been a bit of a balancing act as I get the four separate corners of my business back up and running again.
Initial preparations for the 2025 AI and Games Conference, while also finishing up the editing and release of over 20 videos from our 2024 event.
Getting the main AI and Games YouTube channel up and running delivering monthly content.
Writing the AI and Games Weekly Newsletter on Substack.
Last, but most certainly not least, getting Goal State delivered.
Getting these four things up and running took two weeks in all seriousness, as lots of separate plates needed to get spinning again, and that was admittedly a frustrating process given all I wanted to do was just start writing. But now we’re back to a point that I can really begin to dedicate time to Goal State.
But we’re at the point now that we have a spreadsheet! The all important planning document, and as you can see I’m also trying to ensure that we identify where other obligations are in the calendar so we can plan in advance! I mean the Guildford Developer Summit is just one day, but for example GDC I will lose close to two weeks of work time to that.
Backer Survey
The backer survey will got out from Kickstarter by the end of this week. This aims to capture any and all relevant information I need for the processing all rewards for pledges. This includes:
Discord IDs for access to our dedicated Goal State area of the AI and Games Discord server as well as your special role celebrating your contributions to the project!
Email addresses for a couple of elements. Naturally you may wish for it to simply go to the original address in your Kickstarter account, but maybe not? The email address on file will be used for:
Sending links to downloadable assets (wallpapers, downloads etc.).
Redeeming the paid subscription to the AI and Games Newsletter on Substack.
Sending the final link for course access.
Preferred display name for use in the front or end-slate video credits.
The survey is painfully short, and will only take a couple minutes to complete. So please keep an eye on your inboxes as this rolls out in the coming days.
Production Timeline
Getting back to work means we also need to start putting together a realistic production timeline. The work is very much broken up into five main components:
Writing the video scripts, the book, and the slides. These all accompany and reinforce one another.
Coding up the demos to put out as part of the tutorials as well as the main lecture segments. These need to be done partially with the writing of the material, while some others can be done separately and edited into the final videos when ready.
Recording the videos for both the lecture and tutorial materials. I’ll be recording during the writing process to help me get a feel for everything, as well as taking on feedback from backers as I go.
Editing the videos for final release. This will also be gradual, but the bulk of it will occur in the latter half. My plan is to bring in an editor to help expedite this, given the number of videos will be substantial!
Releasing the content via our chosen distribution platforms. This means hosting all of the videos and related written materials, as well as providing locations for the downloads of assets as part of the reward delivery.
This isn’t a linear process, given we’ll no doubt we reworking some parts as other elements take more shape.
Setup Writing Documents
We have a lot of writing to do! But while the video scripts are just boring text files, I also have the booklet of the course, as well as the slides to prepare.
Funnily enough, I am essentially writing a book for this course, which is then being recorded into a video series - or is it the other way around?) So I’ve already got started in preparing the written elements. As we’ll discuss below, the first real batch of writing starts next month.
Initial Recording Tests
The first thing I did to put the new budget to use, was went ahead and ordered some equipment. If you have followed my work on the AI and Games YouTube channel for a while now, then you’ll know that the editing of videos and such isn’t really a concern. It’s something I can do quite comfortably. But the big shift is in having me present directly to camera more often.
Now in truth I already have a stack of equipment to help facilitate this, but when I have done one-off camera-facing episodes it’s often relied on some…. creative placement of furniture and other elements. So I ordered in some new lighting and tripods such that I can position my DSLR camera correctly in my office. The final equipment literally arrived yesterday, so my plan is to start running some recording tests in the coming days, and I’ll share the results with you in a future update!
Video Production Tools
So there’s a lot of additional little bits and pieces that need to start being put together for making the videos themselves. A lot of my work on the YouTube videos for
is templated, such that I drag in things like episode titles, end-slate credits, lower-thirds and such. It means that a lot of little things that become part of the making of each episode becomes rather structured, knowing I need specific assets and when I am going to use them.So one of my impending tasks is to start putting that stuff together. What does the opening and closing of each episode look like? How do we template things key and recurring elements of each video. This will be a little more gradual as I figure out what the style and tone of each video is like. But critically it will make editing a lot faster when we have all of this stuff templated up.
Let’s Get Crackin’!
And so with that, I’m off to the races. Critically, next month will be when we start producing some actual deliverables, given as mentioned much of the past couple weeks has been getting back to work, and also wrapping up video production from the AI and Games Conference.
But yeah, very excited to start putting down some video tracks and some chapters on all of the material we have planned out, and hopefully we’ll have a bunch of stuff to report back on next month!
In the meantime thank you all once again for your support, and I look forward to sharing more with you in the coming months.
-Tommy