Mystic Valley Dev Log - Engine Considerations & Enemy Animation Marathon

Hey everyone! Been working on Mystic Valley today and wanted to share what I've been up to.

Exploring Godot 4

So I spent some time today looking into potentially switching from Unity to Godot 4. With all the changes happening in the Unity ecosystem lately, I figured it was worth exploring options. I actually went through the process of converting my core systems scrips to see how it would work in Godot.

Honestly? GDScript and the node system weren't intuitive for me at all. Probably because Unity is the only engine I really know, even though I'm still learning it. Going from GameObjects and C# to nodes and GDScript felt like learning a completely different language, O I guess is IS a differnt language lol. Where Unity uses components, Godot uses this node tree structure that just doesn't click the same way for me yet.

The conversion technically worked, but I kept finding myself thinking "this would be so much simpler in Unity" because that's what I'm familiar with. It's hard to tell if Godot is actually more complex or if it's just different from what I know.

Still weighing my options here. I've already built a solid foundation in Unity with:

• Complete health/mana system with regeneration
• 4 magic schools with spell progression
• Scene transitions with spawn points
• Advanced player movement with multiple states
• Inventory system framework

Maybe I'll revisit Godot later when I have more experience under my belt. For now, the Unity devil I know might be better than the Godot angel I don't.

The Real Work Today - Enemy Sprites!

After all that engine exploration, I buckled down and did what really needed doing - cutting sprites! Spent several hours today slicing up a few hundred enemy animation frames. My hand is definitely feeling it after all that precise cutting work.

Working on getting all the animation states ready for the enemies - idle, walking, attacking, hurt, death animations. Each enemy needs multiple directional sprites too since it's a top-down game. It's tedious work but super necessary to bring the world to life.

The Water Slime enemy already has its AI implemented in the code, so once these sprites are properly integrated, they'll actually start moving around and reacting to the player. There's something satisfying about seeing static sprite sheets turn into living, breathing (well, bouncing) enemies.

What's Next

Tomorrow I'm planning to:

• Import and configure all these freshly cut sprites
• Set up the animation controllers for the enemies
• Test the enemy AI with the proper animations

The magic system feels good, the player movement is smooth, and now with enemies getting their animations, the world is really starting to come together. Sticking with Unity for now - better to make progress with what I know than get stuck learning a new engine.

Would love to hear from anyone who's tried switching engines early in development - did you stick with it or go back to what you knew?

Back to sprite cutting... these enemies won't animate themselves! 😅