Tomorrow, I plan to work on the following:
I’m not sure yet of exactly what I’ll be tackling, but it’s probably going to be something on the game screen.
While I do love this Devtober challenge, I must admit it’s been quite exhausting. I’m working all day on very technical stuff, then spend my evenings on more technical stuff (in addition to, you know, life).
To make sure I don’t burn myself and the project out, I’ll permit myself to stop after only one feature or bug fix per day. That means that I’ll have slower days (like today), but I think it’s the only way I can get through at least the month, and ideally the whole project. I might even go as far as allowing days off… but not before the end of the month!
Tomorrow, I plan to work on the following:
Tomorrow, I plan to work on the following:
Now that I know I want to have my HUD as a side panel, I’d like to use the remaining space as the gameplay area. This means having the player centered in that zone, and not in the whole game window/screen. I also want the popups to be centered in that zone. And, clearly, I don’t want any action to happen behind the HUD like it was the case up to now.
I’m reading multiple articles about viewports, cameras, etc. It may be because I’ve been a bit brain dead in the last couple of days, but I can’t seem to make sense of it all. This KidsCanCode recipe seems to hold the answers I’m looking for, but it came a bit too late in the evening. I’m keeping it open, and I’ll jump back to it tomorrow morning.
And if there’s a Godot king/queen among you, please let yourself be known; I would really appreciate some guidance here. ;)
Tomorrow, I plan to work on the following:
I was finally able to create the kind of display I want for the viewports and camera. The player is properly centered in the game area, and game input still works as expected (aiming with the mouse, etc.).
However, since I started to play with viewports, it seems like the mouse clicks are not consistently reaching their intended UI elements (buttons). I guess I’ll have to come back and read this article once I’m a bit less brain dead.
Tomorrow, I plan to work on the following:
October has ended, and this Devtober project for me… Not exactly at the end, no. Far from it, in fact. Going in, I knew I wouldn’t be able to complete that fantastic game I described in my second post, but I still hoped I would at least have some kind of complete game loop: doing missions, piling cash/credits, upgrading the war machine… In the end, what I have is more like an embryo of a game engine.
That said, it’s not all bad. I learned a lot in this project, both on the technical and personal sides.
I gave myself the objective of working on the project each day and report on it by the end of the day. To be fair, it really kickstarted the thing gloriously, and there was real and visible progress for the first two weeks or so. There was always something new to do, enough so that I didn’t even have a proper to-do list/Trello board at that point. Ideas were flowing in, and the motivation and energy were there to make them real.
It also helped, at the end of each day, to think about what I could do the day after. That way, if I was not inspired, I would just have to jump on that thing that I knew was ready to be tackled.
In retrospect, Godot was indeed the perfect game engine for this project. It’s easy to use, fun to learn, and powerful enough for a game like Privateer, even in its expected final form. There’s also a large community around that game engine, and since the game I’m trying to create is not breaking any technological boundary, it was easy to find the help I was looking for (most of the time).
Using free assets also helped in not spending too much time/energy in creating them, considering this is absolutely not my forte (nor is it a pleasure for me). And since the assets came in a pack, it made the whole look and feel consistent, which was another nice win.
Yup, this concept belongs to both “good” and “not so good” categories, at least for me. While daily accountability really helped to get the project going, it began to feel like a burden around the middle of the month. Fatigue from the project started to settle in, the initial motivation drive dwindling, and the rest of life still happening. After a hard day at work, where I gave it all, my mentally-drained self still had to work on my Devtober project. The initial tasks, full of discovery and concrete impact, were replaced by very specific bugs or features that were harder to implement and had less visibility in the game itself. The excitement was slowly replaced by some sense of dread.
I consider myself “lucky” to have fallen sick toward the end of the month. Nothing too bad, just enough for me to miss a day at work, and two nights on this Devtober project. Taking that forced break, having to rest for a little while, gave perspective to the whole thing. Sure, I already felt this project lost its fun and appeal some time before, but that pause gave me the permission I needed to just stop before I burn myself and this project out. If I am to see this to the end, I need to make sure I listen to myself and adopt a better/saner pace. There’s a reason why we do not (or at least should not) work seven days a week, for multiple weeks at a time.
I described my ideal game in my second post, and already decided it would not be feasible in a month. As such, I targetted something smaller, complete, and doable (at least in my head). However, that something was not exactly clear, and I made no concrete plan to achieve it. Each day, I was just putting some more work in, working toward some unknown final state.
With a plan, I feel like I could have spent less time on some features (e.g. the viewport thing I was working on in the end), and focus on the targetted game flow. Yes, it would have been flawed and riddled with odd bugs left and right, but at least, it would have given me a good idea of the game in its entirety, and maybe would have helped with the motivation.
The main takeaway, at least for me, is that there’s a limit on how far the excitement can carry a project. For something that large, I need more than “a good motivation and a kick in the butt”. I need a plan. A flexible plan, but a plan still. I also need to take care of myself. When I feel like it, I must take advantage of it and put the work in, but when I’m too tired, from work or otherwise, I need to rest a bit. In the end, I’ll get up and running faster that way, which is good both for me and the project.
As for this game, I still want to work on it. I think it can be fun to play, and fun to create. Not having a rigid development schedule, like the one I imposed myself last month, will help me bring that fun back in Privateer.
In the end, I am glad I participated in this game jam. I now have in my hands the very basis of the game I had only in my head for the last couple of years. Now, let’s see where it goes from there.
