So yeah, big suprise that me, autistic data analyst is also pretty deep into FOSS stuff.
My plan would be to dual boot it with PopOS! I jave been using (and actually doing quite a lot of useful testing) for PopOS! untill my life shittified. I am very familiar with it at this point, and at least the way I was using it on an AMD GPU/CPU(x86/64) was /very/ stable, amd because its ultimately based off of debian, it has a /huge/ library of free software.
The Steam Deck actually has an official dock now, basically quite similar to a laptop dock… set it in, and the dock connects to keyboard mouse monitor external controller, etc.
And I have already been learning Godot for a while too! Especially after Unity has just kind of shit the bed in terms of the recent ‘you owe us a cut of all the profits’ bullshit, Godot seems like a great option.
I have already found a lot of good tutorials and used them to prototype basic map system, third and first person animations and camera movements, and Ive already spent time blocking out about the first year of getting core systems and mechanics in place. Godot Script or whatever is very similar to Python, which I have a lot of experience in.
I am also a decent writer for dialogue and such, and could honestly just use chatgpt to fill in the gaps haha, and I could use speech synthesis until I can afford to pay voice actors. Also, I know how to 3D model and do textures as well!
The most time consuming things for me personally would probably be adding in more custom animations, as that isnt something I have prior experience with.
Mixamo does have a lot though, and I may be able to sort of isolate parts of them and have other anims be partially or totally procedural.
As for player models themselves, Godot already has something like a plugin called like HumanCreator or something, which would serve as good foundation for a character creator, and could also be set to use various bounded variables as presets for different NPC races or factions or whatever.
Beasts and animals are a bit trickier, but I can always try to tackle that /after/ I have made decent progress on other parta of the game.
Further, as I have often been bored with not much elae to do, I’ve already spent a lot of time writing down worldbuilding ideas which also inform, impact and in some cases define much of the actual gameplay I am going for… backdrop lore for the world itself etc.
Finally: I do not need to immediately be making a living wage, as I have SSDI to keep me alive until I feel that what I have ia good enough to start up the kickstater, indiegogo, or steam early access.