Dev Log for Oct 2024, Week 41:
Dev Log:
Monday has been a weird one so far. I think it’s officially become my second day off (for a while I though I was working Monday through Saturday, apparently not this week), but I am going to at least get my outline in and try to get a review in.
Okay, so the project is essentially a mash-up of a virtual table top RPG and a digital board game, with the intent of trying to get the best of both worlds in rogue-lite format. My plan of attack with this has been roughly:
- Get most of the player UI up.
- Have a small handful of world interactions (enough to test out mechanics for task resolution, dice, and some basic interaction).
- Network that shit.
- Get basic multiplayer up (beyond being a requirement, this would help me start on playtesting)
- Work on the Calamity Master stuff (which is later in this process because it involves front ending the creation of things I figure I wouldn’t have until this point anyways).
That’s super high level, and leaves more than a few things out (mostly world stuff like combat and regions, but I haven’t forgotten about them). I think where I’m struggling is when is the optimal time to start integrating the networking aspect. I will probably hit the Godot discord to see if anyone has any opinions.
In the mean time, I will be mostly focusing on item integrations, covering things like equipping, applying bonuses and correct data storage.
Falling completely off the rails…
Well, I fucked up. Kinda. So, I was watching a tutorial on networking, which got me freaked out. This led me to looking at more networking stuff, which led to Nakama which threw me down the rabbit hole of localization which (like this sentence) ran off into me freaking out about how I’m going to handle the millions of users I don’t have for my game that isn’t made.
So I opened up another project. See:
Then this started me down another rabbit hole, which brings us back to now:
I gotta get my shit straight. What does that mean?
I think there’s a lesson here.
Or maybe an observation? And probably more than one:
- I think it’s a good sign that I ran from one project into another. To be clear, I mean it’s good that I stayed in the wheel house. I know and have been the cat that hit the wall and just went and did something entirely different. I’m taking this as a sign that I’ve started to get really comfortable with programming and Godot.
- I hit my wall on Wednesday and got this up by Friday (It’s Sunday now and I decided to take a full weekend for once.), not to mention also getting some art done for UI and playing with some plugins. This is really only important because a year ago I wouldn’t have stood this up so quickly. Considering all of this started as an exploration into game dev, I’m calling this a sign of success.
- I didn’t get stuck on this side street for too long. I’ve been the cat with the shelf of broken dreams, filled up with all kinds of half finished ideas or notebooks full of concepts. I know this is where it starts.
So what happens now?
I get back to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. I’ve committed to getting the main player loop up to test and see if this is viable, so that’s what I need to do. Shit, by the way, I’m only saying this to remind myself of what’s important here, which is the task at hand, not fictitious future problems. I’m still super hyped about this, I just let my imagination run away on me for a second and have to pull it back.
I’ll keep that other project around for if I need to take a break, the fact that’s it’s real time and what I’m working on currently is turn based makes it different enough that it’ll be a good way to relax, but I’m keeping my priorities straight until I hit my mark.
As far as the thing that started this: The networking. I’m not going to worry about it. I’ll need to go through and re-write some stuff sure, but it won’t be the end of the world. And if I have to do it again to handle some future issue, then that’s what happens. I only need to worry about getting it networked enough to playtest, and there is still stuff to do before that.
Closing Thoughts:
Assuming I’m back on track tomorrow, I actually think this is a nothing-burger. In terms of time, it’s a blip, but it did help put into contrast how far I’ve come from where I was last year. Mostly just want to get back on it now!