The PTO doesn't have to be all or nothing. Would a more strategic 2-week (or 1-week) break be better received?
Also as a more passive job-seeking strategy, you could leverage your professional network of past co-workers to let you know if any opportunities come up (always had a lot of success with this personally). That way you can dip your toes into the job pool without having to switch focus completely.
It may be helpful to consider the matter from the lens of 'what is my core competency'. I had similar existential questions recently, and pursued an MBA to that end (after realising that I enjoyed analysing people behaviour in companies and thought that might translate into a management career). By the end of it, I realised that I was simply able to 'do' the job of a dev much more naturally than becoming a manager. At that stage, the problem changed from 'what do I want to do' to 'what can I actually do'.
I'm sure you are capable of switching careers and skillsets more successfully than I was, but for me, metaphorically speaking, after peering over the hedge, I came to be content with the color of the grass on my own side.
My advice would be to dip your toes into some of the languages / frameworks that the "specific tech stack" jobs are wanting, so you at least have some exposure to it. Then, you can focus on selling your wealth of general programming experience and transferrable skills to bridge the gap.
A good lens might be to view those positions as senior first, and technology second, even if you don't necessarily voice that perspective in the cover letter / interview.
Agree with this. For me, being able to tweak Quake (when it came out) was massive. You could poke around in QuakeC, make a funny model / map etc. The fact that customisability extended to it's two sequels was even better.
To a lesser extent, even being able to modify pretty much any game mechanic via the pull-down Console was amazing too. A great entryway to programming for the young enthusiast!
Always was a wonderful advantage to owning a PC over a console. That, and the accompanying utilities you could combine with the game, to create new graphics, sounds etc.
Game modding is going to go away almost entirely soon. The vanguard here is Capcom. They have gotten a bit uncomfortable with modders who do things like put Chun Li and Cammy in bikinis, not to mention the possibility for cheat mods. Accordingly, they now consider modding to be the equivalent of piracy and have implemented mod-preventing DRM in their back catalog of PC games.
Other companies will soon follow. There's too much risk to a company's bottom line and reputation to allow or encourage modding. Mods compete with official DLC packs, and if someone streams with, say, a mod that puts a swastika on the main character or something, that harms the publisher's reputation.
I would say hang on to your old copies of Doom and Quake... but Doom and Quake are Microsoft products now, and Microsoft doubtless has ways to make the asset packs unavailable except to official ports which require a Microsoft account to play.
Similar thing in Terminator: Skynet back in the day. Shoot at the moon and you get an "Ow!" message appearing in your status area. A few more potshots and it literally falls out of the sky - great stuff ;)
Certainly id's code is clean and well-structured, however I always had a tough time trying to grok it as a layperson. Comments (those within the functions) are relatively sparse, and the code often contains quite cryptic expressions that are somewhat bewildering to those without an high understanding of 3D graphics.
This, of course, makes perfect sense as an output from an industry leader in the field (Carmack). However it definitely requires a lot of foreknowledge and, dare I say it, a mathematical bent to follow with confidence.
Also as a more passive job-seeking strategy, you could leverage your professional network of past co-workers to let you know if any opportunities come up (always had a lot of success with this personally). That way you can dip your toes into the job pool without having to switch focus completely.