Dev Log for Apr 2024, Week 18:

Lofty Goal:

Still on hold, but things are progressing well on other fronts.

Monday:

This was the last day of the trip, so I spent a good chunk of it in the car getting home and unpacking.

Tuesday/Wednesday:

These two went to playing catch-up on con stuff. I poked around some art but nothing real solid. It’s days like these I can really feel the pull in multiple directions. I like the business when I’m in the middle of it, but there are times when I’m handling the “have to” stuff that I wish I could just be working on this instead. It’s all good though, a lot of this stuff is temporary, and the more I plug away at it, the more time I get back for this.

Thursday:

So I was able to get some good time in on it during this stretch. I was able to knock the kinks out of the stuff Trinaught and I worked on and get integrated nicely. The controller mapping stuff was nice, since now that’s pretty streamlined in the game and can dynamically change as needed.
I was also able to clean up the problems that popped up in the landing screen for the game. This came about partially because of the controller ID thing, as I needed to switch the root node to handle grabbing all that info, which in turn caused UI issues. Like most things, this was a problem more because of a lack of understanding on my part than Godot, so a little bit of research got it handled.
From there I was able to start building the resource class for the characters, which will give me a spot to hold all the info they need as this gets closer to the vision in the design document.

Friday:

I almost didn’t get a whole lot done today since I was catching up on a 3D printing project I’d left unattended for a bit, and then remembered it was my pair programming night with Cotillion. I had some new perspective on this after the weekend at Trinaughts, it was an interesting kind of role reversal. I can better appreciate the scenario of “Hold on, try this first before you do that” from both angles now that they’re both fresh in my hard drive. So this started with us going through his Gamemaker project and getting some of his to-do knocked down. He has a good mind for all this stuff, and seems to be enjoying it, but like me, needs more practical experience. He’s going to get there though, I’m sure.
So after doing that for a while I cracked open Deck and Balls and started giving him the tour…
This is the part where I remind (or tell) you that I’ve got a complicated relationship with Gamemaker. In a lot of ways, that engine is why I’m here in the first place, but man did Trinaught and the Odin Project have to put in work un-fucking some of the ideas it put in my head. I see Cotillion forming some of the same habits. This is all to say that at some point in our pair programming nights I end up schilling for Godot (Sorry GMS2 stans).
So in the process of showing him the differences in building certain assets between the two engines, how classes and inheritance work, I end up building out some more assets and a few resource classes that needed to get done anyways. All in all it was a great night, though per the norm we stayed up WAY too late.

Saturday:

Man I am CHILLIN today!
I lied kinda. So I was super chilling this morning, then I had the idea to start laying down the groundwork on expanding movement so I got some of that started. I was also able to clean up the documentation a bit too.

Sunday:

Today I will definitely chill.

So how did it go:

I’m not upset at the week considering I was getting back in town, and have a bunch of stuff happening all at once. If you’re reading these periodically, you’ll know a theme of mine is that I want more time to do this game dev thing. Balancing that is hard. I do have more of it now, and I can appreciate that this is just a crazy window. I’m happy I’m getting things knocked down though, and look forward to getting this project wrapped and delivered,