I made an endless jumper!! Kitten Cloud Jump

 Hey everyone!!

Life stuff has been taking up a lot of my time lately, and on account of being a fan of just “winging it”, rather than having a clearly defined schedule for gamedev and content creation, this update is making it’s way to you a few weeks later than planned 🙂

I have been busy prototyping yet another new game, a *simple* vertical jumper. I’ve achieved Minimum Viable Project status on the 3rd of April. Since then I’ve hit a stumbling block with trying to implement a Camera2D object to track player movement, *gracefully*.

Kitten Cloud Jumper

I’d started off with what I believe most newer devs have done, and that’s to just attach the Camera2D as a child of the Player. While this works well for quick ‘n’ dirty prototyping, it limits what options are available when trying to customise and tailor the camera to suit any specific needs you might have.

I’ve also been looking into making the User Interface and on-screen elements scale *neatly* and uniformly when the game window is resized.

What you’ll see from me moving forward, is an amorphous blob of incremental progress, distributed across all of my current prototypes, and a general uplift in quality and polish on all new prototypes!!

As always, I’m excited to hear where you’re at in your GameDev journey, please also drop a comment on what you’d like to see from this blog in the future!!

Design Iterate Refine Discard

I'm using a Space Shooter game as a testbed for new functionality!!

Well this is exciting!!

I've finally figured out how to add mobile touchscreen controls to the Space Shooter I created using the Godot game engine.

Just please don't ask me how long it took... 🤣🤣

For the better part of a day, I was stuck on trying to get the game to properly respond to multiple screen touches. Scouring through online forums and watching countless Youtube videos almost to no avail.

Until finally, a copy of text here, a paste into the Godot editor there, and... et voila!!

Here's a list of additional features I will try to implement as I continue to learn and progress my Godot knowledge:

Background music        Implemented    29/03/2024

Main menu                    todo

Pause button/menu        todo

Persistent high score     todo

Powerups/upgrades       todo

[I'll add to this as I think of more things to add]

I'd love to hear about a part of your journey that was particularly challenging, and how you managed to overcome any obstacles that popped up along the way!!

Design    Iterate    Refine    Discard

I made another game!! It's a Space Shooter!!

I made another game!! I somehow mistakenly enrolled in a Portuguese Udemy course to make a Space Shooter game with the Godot Game Engine. 

Space Shooter

Despite me not knowing a single word of the language, the instructor was very thorough in their navigation of the Godot editor, and I was able to follow along and complete the course and ended up with a completed, working space shooter!!

It was designed to run on a PC, so when I built a copy to run on my mobile, unsurprisingly, it didn't work. I now have to go off on a tangent and learn how to build a touchscreen controller to augment the game with. 

I'm going to need all of the caffeine, all of the Youtube Godot tutorials running at 2x speed and a whole lotta patience!!

Wish me luck!!

Watch this space!!

Design Iterate Refine Discard

I made a game!! It's a Flappy Bird clone!!

 I finally committed the time to finishing a free online Udemy Flappy Bird course.

It was a Flappy Bird clone in Godot, but appeared to have been made in version 3 of the engine. So after a little fumbling and stumbling through youtube videos, I got it to run on Godot version 4!!

Flappy Bird clone

I know, I know, it's not as though I made my *own* game, however there's something to be said for the satisfaction that comes from putting your mind to something, and seeing it through to completion.

The possibilities of what lay ahead are now bubbling and frothing away, just beyond my reach, and I'm finding myself having to resist lurching and lunging forward too quickly.

I feel like what might work best for me right now, is to consume more guided tutorials and projects, increasing my knowledge of the Godot engine to a place of competence and familiarity.

All the while, testing my growth by branching out into proof-of-concept mini projects along the way.

Look forward to more frequent updates on my journey, it's going to be a bumpy yet fulfilling ride!!

You'll see links to my other socials where I post all of my content, over to the right. Your ongoing support inspires me and motivates me to keep learning and growing.

I'd also really like to hear about your Gamedev journey, why you started, what continues to motivate you, what you've already accomplished and what your goals and dreams are.

Design, Iterate, Refine, Discard.

My long overdue first post!!

 Well... this has definitely been a long time coming!!

Welcome everyone to my Solo Game Development journey blog.

While the journey *officially* began a few months ago, life stuff inevitably got in the way, as it usually does.

Many years ago I was fluent with C#, having tried my hand at building my own 3D game engine with the XNA framework. I got stuck while trying to figure out how to write my own collision detection code and had to shelve the project shortly afterwards.

I've begun to explore game development with the Godot game engine, which is completely free to use. I've decided to take the plunge and dive in head-first, fully aware of the many hurdles that lay ahead, full of naivety and enthusiasm to tackle them head-on!!

I currently have a few test projects in progress, continually creating mini projects to test issues as they arise in my main code. These include the following:

• Tetris clone
• 2d platformer
• scrolling parallax background test
• player state machine test
• multitouch test for mobile devices
• Firebase online hosting and storage test
• Sprite instancing and mouse interaction test