itch.io

Yeah here's the whole Twitter post along with its replies.

1. Hello, you all! This is (depending on time zones) the last day of Devtober! You should probably start thinking about your post mortem, by now, so let's get into details about what it is
2. A post mortem, to put it simply, is a document meant to list what you've learned through a project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmortem_documentation Usually, it follows a simple structure of "What went right / What went wrong / What to fix or improve next time."
3. Now I'm not your mom nor your teacher, but I really recommend writing something! It's not only gonna help you digest your month, process what you've (consciously or not!) learned, but also allow you to share with others so they can learn from your own experiences.
4. Now, don't necessarily focus on the project itself - the goal is not to explain how you found the one line of code that fixed your collision system, but rather explain the process of how you found solutions to a problem.
5. It doesn't have to be all negative either, make sure to talk about things that went better than expected, and what you did to make it happen!
6. In the context of Devtober, I think it'd be more interesting to talk about the various mental hurdles you've had to go through. The whole goal is to build up a routine and work every day - and if you can, help others achieve that.
7. For example, @_emmaPrats in one of her video, pointed out that she ended up doing a few meaningless changes or features every day just so she'd have something to share, and how she got over that state of mind.
8. And the final advice I'd have for now: keep it short and interesting. Don't think too much about the trivial and the one-time things, and instead dig deeper on what could be reoccurring issues.
9. Format doesn't matter, by the way! You can make an itch io devlog, a googledoc page, or upload a video, that's entirely up to you. And it's -your- learning process, so focus on what you wanted and have learned. We'll see you on the other side on november 1st. 💪
   

Hello, I know this post is entirely new, but I’ve been participating in the Devtober Jam since it started this month. While I was hoping to work in secrecy and post my game on the last day along with this post-mortem, I sadly failed to get my game ready in time. However, I don’t consider this a failure, as this was my first real attempt at making a game from scratch. While I could work on the game from the start, I ran into many roadblocks and bugs, which were both colossal pain to work around. I regret not teaming up with someone, but I didn’t know how far I would get, and I was afraid to waste someone else’s time considering my lack of coding knowledge. I did get close to having the main mechanic and level playable, but there are so many issues I have to solve that if I released it for people to play right now, it would be a mess.

Even though I’m using Godot, learning how to get nodes to interact with each other was a huge undertaking, and I found out many times that GDScript does not like while loops. Pathing was a pain because the NPCs would get stuck on each other, and when I set them to avoid each other, they ended up pathing into areas they weren’t supposed to be in. Signals through code were kind of difficult for me for some reason. I couldn’t get the nodes to signal to each other though I assumed it was because I was instancing some nodes (i.e., the NPCs and Mobs) into the scene during gameplay instead of having them placed in the map already. So most of my interactions were through triggering hitboxes.

I don’t consider this a failure because I learned so much along the way. Pathing was something new to me that I had to use for the level to work how I wanted it to, and while the pathing for one of the NPCs kept getting screwed up, it mostly worked. I learned how to make, rig, and animate a character for the first time in Blender, which surprisingly took less time than figuring out pathing in Godot. Finally, I learned how to shorten my code to make it more efficient despite it still being a plate of spaghetti. Even though my game might be held together with duct tape and glue at the moment, it was enjoyable to work on it, and I still plan to finish the game hopefully soon; If not, I guess I’ll work on it during the next Devtober.