Posted November 29, 2022 by BirdNews
What a fun Gamejam, I've been learning Godot over the last few weeks and I'm proud to have made something that even remotely resembles a game. I'm not entirely happy with the final result, but going into the jam, I had one goal. If all else fails I will make the game complete from start to finish. The things I wish I could work on...
1. Better art
I'm woefully inept at creating digital images I'm proud of, and I so desperately wanted to put tons of unique art assets in this game. CC0 assets are amazing and I wanted to stuff my game with them, but it is difficult to find quality assets that mesh well together. Without artist friends and a deep rooted fear of licensing requirements I resorted to making my own assets for this game. Everything that isn't pixel art I drew myself. I'm not happy with the style collision, but I had to choose between finishing the game and making/finding assets that work together. I particularly was fond of the situation I found myself in where I had to deliberately choose what assets I would make. I wanted to make a 4 direction character sprite, but I quickly realized it wasn't worth it. I am not a fast enough drawer and what I can make takes me too long. After every sprite I made, I became more and more aware of the value I could have added elsewhere.
2. More interesting situations
Scope creep is such a problem in these projects, and this was no different, but I feel like I spent so much time just working around engine cruft. In the boss level there I wanted to move the camera slowly to show the boss without disorienting the player, but Godot 3.5 doesn't handle camera transitions well so after hours of getting almost there with large cumbersome solutions, I just resigned to cutting it. I also wanted to add more dialogue it's a great cheap way to add depth to a game, but I didn't want to just leave pillars around with logs, because this game is too short to have serious lore. And I wouldn't have been able make more assets, but in retrospect I could easily paint stick figures more colors. Oh well, something to remember for next time.