Devlog #001 - Go... do it (Patreon)

Changelog

Hopefully this is okay. I can't really format it nicely within the constraints of Patreon, so a screenshot is the next best bet.

The engine makes it go

I never liked Unity.

As a kid, I made games in GameMaker (that was even before YoYo Games bought them), and eventually Flash. In college, I joined the Video Game Development club, and while everyone else was using Unity, I was the weirdo making Flash games.

I don't know. Something about Unity was just... clunky, especially for 2D games at the time.

A Stroll Through Slipspace, a co-op 2D Flash game I was the Team Lead for in college.

Obviously, using Flash to make a game nowadays isn't exactly the best idea... especially if you're gonna upload it to Steam. But I wasn't particularly fond of Unity, and Unreal was a bit overkill for what I wanted to do. Modern Game Maker also felt kinda... off to me. I'd actually recently installed and messed around in it with my 8-year-old cousin. He seemed to like it, at least, but it was too cluttered for my taste.

So, then what?

I mean, I had heard about it, and with Unity exploding (this is when the whole pricing fiasco was going on), I might as well give Godot a try.

Turns out, Godot is actually pretty similar to Flash.

It uses a familiar Node system, where practically everything is a Node and Nodes could be children of other Nodes. (Analogous to Flash's MovieClips.)

It uses GDScript or C#. GDScript actually feels quite similar to ActionScript 3 (and Python). I really hate futzing around with lower languages, so this was also a plus for me.

It's also open-source and free?! Sure, sign me up!

Getting to know Godot

Diving head-first into a new engine and expecting everything to work is... not a great idea. So, I did what I always when learning something like this - I made a few tiny prototypes.

Making a number-guessing game is always a good exercise. It covers all of the basics:

A game loop (Player guessing -> Player victory -> Restart)

Randomness

Output

Player input (more work than you might think)

Score (keeping track of # of guesses)

I also recreated a game I made on the TI-84 in high school, during Spanish. ...I was bored, okay?

Also had a game loop (Main menu -> Ready -> Game -> Level+ -> Defeat screen -> Restart)

Real-time gameplay

Slightly more advanced graphics

I think I'd learned enough. Enough of that, we're not getting stuck in tutorial hell here!

Initial prototype

What glorious placeholder programmer art.

We have a start. Pictured is the earliest screenshot I have of the game. You can move the wires around (wires, you say? 👀), put them in the outgoing tray on the right, and I'm pretty sure you can unscrew and screw the... screws.

But hey, it's a start! In fact, much of this code still exists in the game today.

And now, to build the rest of the game...