Ross Karchner

It’s not a game yet– but it’s interactive! By tomorrow night, I should be able to have a couple of playable levels, and that will leave me most of a week (including the weekend) to focus on improving the graphics, adding sound, and other fit-and-finish work.

A feeble #screenshotsaturday for my Godot Wild Jam work in progress. The current idea is something like Pipe Mania meets Snap Crcuits. This screenshot does not convey any of that, but I did get to the point where the game can detect whether a complete circuit has been made and react accordingly.

I decided to dip into Threads a bit over the last few days: it’s mostly people talking about Twitter, Elon Musk, and the new Deadpool movie.

One of those things is interesting to me, but I can wait until it’s on Disney Plus.

GWJ72

When I was writing this post, I almost committed to sitting out game jams for a while, in order to focus on a small number of longer-term projects. Honestly, I could use some momentum right now, and I feel the most momentum after finishing a game jam.

So, I’m signed up for Godot Wild Jam 72.

This time around, I’m going to try to make a really simple game, and focus on the visuals and providing a quality, polished experience. In other words, I won’t try to design a whole-ass magic system.

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The previously seen water shader, applied to a sphere (by request):

Quack Circuits August 2024

This is admittedly a strange one. Help a scared-of-the-dark duck escape to freedom by… solving circuit puzzles? Created in 9 days for Godot Wild Jam #72. Ranked 21 (out of 156) in the “originality” category. Play on itch.io.

I’m enjoying Kaan Alpar’s Godot Shaders course, and finished the 2D section last night. In this video, the animated background, greyscale, distortion, dissolve, masking (the spiky block) and re-colored trophies are all achieved with shaders.

What's next for games?

Two years ago, while my son was attending an event at the library, I spent some time flipping through a book about the Unity game engine (maybe this one?). It wasn’t intimidating, and looked fun. I came away thinking: “huh, I could make games”.

Then I got home and couldn’t make Unity run on my laptop. There’s a happy ending, though: I found Godot, which ran just fine.

I followed a few tutorials to make a flappy bird clone, a breakout clone, a simple platformer, and made progress on a much larger platformer, but after a few months I kind of drifted to other pursuits.

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I’m working on a tech-company name generator for a project, some examples from a recent run:

  • Vibrant Institute
  • The Logic Company
  • Urban Mammoth
  • The Cortex Company
  • Keen Lamp Corp
  • Gear & Path
  • Urban Pod
  • Widget & Scholar
  • Acoustic Sprocket
  • Vibrant Scholar
  • Central Sunrise
  • Elegant Root

Finished Listening: Moonbound by Robin Sloan 📚

It’s been a while since I’ve had the sensation of being sad when a book ends. I want to spend more time with these characters and places.

Currently reading: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville 📚

Not my first time starting, but maybe recording it here will motivate me to finish.