Day 18:

Today I just worked on a really simple menu, in which you can switch between scenes. So sadly nothing to show off. I also noticed it takes longer than expected, because you can do so much more to it, e.g. Themes in Godot. Because of this I'm going to give this task some more days.

Day 19 ToDo:

• Main menu (Day 2/3)

Day 19:

Today I was also working on my menu again, this time I was thinking how I could design it best, without sticking to a tutorial. I also decided to stick to a really simple menu to have this part ready for the submission. After devtober the work on the menu will continue to have something "better".

Day 20 ToDo:

• Main menu
• Options menu

It's also time for a GIF again, tomorrow :-)

Day 20:

Today I was finalizing the main menu, so at least this part is ready for submission. At some point I will work on it again because at the moment it's a really basic one, but this sometime after devtober. In addition to that I worked on the options menu & the credits today, really like how both turned out. I really like this little gimmick in the credits screen.

Remember: "PixelBall" is only the internal name and not the final one

Here again a GIF from todays work:

Day 21 ToDo:

• day off (breaks are a MUST!)

Day 21:

This is not the devlog you're looking for.
Move along...
Move along...

Today I took the day off, because every good developer needs a break :-) I did nothing with exception of playing some Pinball FX3 go get maybe some new ideas for the time after devtober.

Before I do the next day off next Thursday the game have to be finished for submission, because afterwards I'll just set up the itch page with the game and write the post mortem so that in November the work can continue again.

Day 22 ToDo:

• work on bonus indicator lights

Day 22:

What's a pinball game without a way to get higher scores?

So here it is: the Bonus Indicator, the longer you play with one ball the higher your multiplicator gets to achieve higher scores on the table.

Really happy how it turned out, finally the center of the table isn't this empty anymore. Nevertheless more work is needed to have some great background to fill the table more.

Day 23 ToDo:

Finally:

• Highscores

Day 23:

What's a pinball game without something you can compete against? So here they are Highscores/Leaderboard. They will be saved and loaded up again when you restart the game.

Remember: This is not the final position of the leaderboard. In November/December this one will be moved to a table-select-scene and on the table itself you'll only find the 'next score above you', which you can compete against. I currently just put it on the table because there's currently no need for a table-select-scene with only one table.

Here again a GIF from today's work:

Day 24 ToDo:

• Droptarget groups

Day 24:

Even though I achieved what I wanted to do today, it wasn't my day. First of all everything took pretty long to code, maybe also I had no real concept how to achieve my task. Second not everything works as thought for now.

Droptargets get immediately reset as soon as these are down, sure I could solve it with a timer attached to the group, but I think it isn't this flexible. So I've to think about it again.

Here again a GIF from today's work:

(Hope you don't notice the two balls in the plunger lane, this has to be fixed at some point)

Day 25 ToDo:

• Rollovers

Day 25:

With today I have accomplished everything I wanted to achieve in Devtober.

Presenting: Rollovers, they come in two forms, buttons & wires. With this table element I also moved to a new system how the ball interacts with table elements.

So far everything is handled by the ball, be it the collision detection or the points you'll get. But with the new system, all of this is moved to the respective table element. So it's more flexible now and not this much dependent from each other.

I'm really happy about today's work.

Here again a GIF from today's work:

Day 26 ToDo:

• move table elements to the new system
• bug fixes

Day 26:

Today there was a lot of under the hood stuff, so not this much you can see.

I changed a lot of table elements to the new system, so the code is in their respective table elements and not anymore in the ball, which was cluttered with code on how a table element is behaving on a collision.

For the visible part: drop target (groups) don't reset immediately after a collision with the ball. It takes not some seconds until they reset.

Here again a GIF from today's work:

Day 27 ToDo:

• bug fixes
• adjustments
• make settings work

Last day to work on the game, which will continue in November

Day 27:

Because it was the last day to work on the game until the this one will continue in November, I tried to get the game prototype as stable as possible to be ready for release on Sunday.

The first task I did today was giving the settings menu some life, so far it didn't save anything you changed until now. Next I made some slight adjustments to some table elements and GUI. Lastly I fixed some bugs.

So far I'm really happy what I've achieved in the Devtober, more in the Post Mortem in some days.

Day 28 ToDo:

• day off (breaks are a MUST!)

Day 28:

This is not the devlog you're looking for.
Move along...
Move along...

Today I took the day off, just resting, playing some pinball games and getting ready for the last, really small part of Devtober.

Day 29/30 ToDo:

• Create itch.io page, screenshots, texts and so on

Day 29/30:

On these day I created the submission page on itch, currently it's a draft and will go live tomorrow as soon as I finished writing the Post Mortem.

I also learned about the creation of custom export templates in Godot, which was quite a hassle to get everything working. But in the end I could reduce the file size by 43%.

So be excited.

Day 31:

• Write Post Mortem
• make the submission public

Day 31 1/2: (last day)

Today I was writing the Post Mortem and worked a bit more on the project page to give it the final touch. I made the game page public and submitted to devtober, you can find this submission page over here: https://itch.io/jam/devtober-2021/rate/1254705

Day 31 2/2: (last day)

Devtober ‘21 – Post Mortem

This years Devtober was the best month of all the ones before, because I had so much more time to work on something, to learn something new. Because I wasn’t happy anymore with GameMaker since some years, I finally did the switch to Godot. So this Devtober is where it all begins.

State of the project:

In the past two Devtobers I always already had a project I was working on, so I continued with those. But not this time, no concept, no project files. There was just the genre of the game I had in mind. Because I wanted to use Godot for my game and I almost doesn’t know anything about it, just a bit of testing around in the month before Devtober, it was great to start without anything.

What went wrong?

This year it’s really difficult so find something which went wrong, since I didn’t know this much about Godot, you also didn’t build this complex ‘structures’ so you are not this susceptible to mistakes.

Still, I think the sounds I designed for the game went wrong, I’m really not happy about them, it’s also because I lack skill in creating those. But there’s always time to learn something and with this project I’m more eager than ever before.

What went right?

So far everything went right what I wanted to do. My goal this year was to learn more about Godot, so I concentrated myself more on the coding part than art or composing. Because of this focus I had in mind, things went much smoother this year.

I went from zero to 100 in one month. In the beginning I was still using from time to time tutorials, but this changed over the time in Devtober a lot. I was more independent of those during the time, until I created the code/mechanics fully myself. So yeah, now I’m at this stage again in Godot where I was in GameMaker before, to do stuff in the engine by yourself.

So I think I achieved my goal in this Devtober and I’m more than happy about it.

Now I’ve a polished prototype pinball game, which is working, with a leaderboard and so much more.

What’s next?

I will continue to work on the project, maybe not every day with one or two tasks each day, but more like something larger and to work on more complex ‘systems’ for the game, something I can work on for days.

Anyway the project must grow! Grow much further! I will again plan structured days and tasks which need to be done. Things have to be reworked, some new tables have to be created.

In case you want to be up-to-date about the project you can follow me on twitter.

The End!