Post your thoughts/realizations/vents about game dev.

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9/4/2021

Had a bit of trouble of deciding what to make at first. I was going to make a shadow of the beast clone but it ended up being more complicated,  time consuming and stressful with this amount of time. So I went smaller and simpler, make a game about smacking my OC with rolled up newspaper. Something this simple took a lot longer then I thought however, as I had to look up many different tutorials for bits and pieces of info and code.

I am very happy how this is going, it's almost done too, and I think I finally know how to use signals correctly, my past enemy is now my friend after defeating him.

My mind clicked, it feels like I know exactly what I'm doing now.

9/5/21

With one effective day left, its time to really finish this. So far it looks like this card game will have only one card, but I'm fine with that. About to rest, hours from now, the focus will be on transforming the lobby code I tinkered with from a tutorial to the netcode for my game.

Last jam I didn't finish on time, so my focus is set!

I started with a puzzle game idea. Classic clone of something actually good. For a first game attempt. 

Ran into plenty of trouble, starting with import settings the filter toggle. I figured it was the camera, so long time looking into the various options and toggles, maybe it was a scaling effect or something... a few tutorials didn't even mention it. Then trying to get some blocky physics... tweens needed for a nice slow lowering effect and that was all of day 1.  Attempting to tile map the blocks... big no on that...

Day 2 I said heck it. It's not even the part that should be tough and GD script is totally new to me (it's a little like lua perhaps python-esc? I'm not great with either. More C# or C++) . I did want to keep some tile action (a few future plans have need of tiles) .

Project 2 - day 2. Well I've got a nice tutorial. Borrowing a few assets here and there... and I've got a character who can move around. But what's the game about? 
Something simple... nap time is idea time. I nap and it's baba is you but pokemon. Push the monsters into battle, rock paper scissors type weakness. There's a few assets I ear marked for their awesomeness and they're also thankfully within the allotted budget ($0 - but support the creators you love when and if you can) . Prototyping... uhh how do I convey X did this to Y... pokemon had HP bars... do I cheap out and make it a 1 hit KO? PASS on that. 

Project 3 - day 2.  So man... little man... that's the character what does he do? Something simple... simple to him perhaps.  Ah the "little man" in the TV box! He's a little man in a computer window... uhh so what does he do? Is he the AI you play against... (So I'm making a game within a game? That's a little meta...and too many games) nah, he runs the PC... moves the mouse and stuff. Like baba moves some cute characters around, it's man and mouse. 
a few hours of signals how do they work?! (Oh gotta be in the scene that has the correct scenes in the tree...) along with collisions and let's just make it a bunch of bools latch it all, make it into nice methods later. BaM! It's... almost a project. No happy ending... it's a puzzle but also an avoider game? It got a little too meta. Trying to make a UI that snaps to 16pixel increments is tough... attempting to borrow from Godot's UI was a very bad move... it's not great for zoomed in pixel stuff.   

The art style is all over from getting assets here and there and trying to use some inbuilt things without skinning. 

So tl;dr un-meta a little. Plan more?  Failing fast worked out-ish... godot in a very lazy ~80hour time span. Wait for 4 if doing things with tile maps. Otherwise go for it. maybe DIY tile maps, open sauce means it's all yours to break.

9/6/21 -

Today was to be network work day. Decided to release before something like my computer conks out, its being naughty... May never be fully realized, but hey its interesting to me. My art was made several days prior, before I learned of the jam. On the second day I was going through a mind crunch as to what to make. Since I had those assets sitting around, I thought to make a game from the idea. Also I opened sourced my projects in the idea that someone could learn from the server design I used, but maybe I'll get around to it... 

Final Thoughts: Not too happy with what I made, but maybe it will grow on me. If I make it work, it might become the basis of a much more ambitious card game I want to make.