28 JAN 2023:
This week was all about the Cargo Ship boss enemy!
Originally it was orientated horizontally but I quickly realized a couple problems with this:
- It would be strange to have the cargo ship moving left/right when the player is mostly moving up/down.
- Too much lighting made the 3 guns harder to see.
- Having the guns rotate to follow the player would be a headache to program.
So instead, I tried a vertical orientation, muted the colors of the cargo ship and changed the colors and positions of the guns.
I'm still working on it, but I think this looks much better and will make for a more interesting boss fight. These 4 guns will be stationary, but the cargo ship will be able to move around left and right while still moving forward. Right now all the guns fire the same type of projectile, but I'll probably change that a little.
IN OTHER NEWS:
Hopefully I'm wrong in this, but I'll probably have to look for a new job in about 2 years. As a result, one of my goals is to finish Scrapship before that happens. I'll be trying really hard to finish it this year, but even if it doesn't it's almost guaranteed to be done the year after that.
So time is very precious right now. I've noticed that I'm the sort of person that easily gets sidetracked -- ESPECIALLY when it comes to Youtube. But just this week I came up with a couple of productivity hacks that I think will help me to focus more:
- I now use 2 web-browsers and not just one. Firefox is for "lazy me", so lots of entertainment-related bookmarks and accounts. But now I also have the Vivaldi browser, and this one is exclusively for "busy me". This one has all my gamedev bookmarks and accounts. The idea is that I will only have one browser open at a time. So when Vivaldi is open, I'm not seeing any "entertainment" content that might get me sidetracked. So far it's worked really well!
- To further encourage myself to be more productive, I made it easier to start up all the content that I use for "busy me". I did this by creating a batch file that automatically opens the Vivaldi browser to my 40wattstudio email, itch.io dashboard and 40wattstudio YT account with all my gamedev-related subscriptions. It even automatically opens up QB64, which I am using to make Scrapship. Less time clicking and typing = more time programming!
On the side, I've been slowly teaching myself how to program in C++, mostly using the YT tutorials by Codebeauty. Having tried python and java, I finally decided to learn C++ due to its long history and use in programs like QB64 and Unreal Engine.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"Be undeniably good. No marketing effort or social media buzzword can be a substitute for that." -- Anthony Volodkin
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!