I spent some time last night and this morning learning about Orchestrator, a visual scripting plugin for Godot. I was mostly taking a look to see if my son might want to try it out, as an alternative to “regular” coding. He knows Scratch pretty well, but hasn’t taken to written coding yet. I thought Orchestrator might offer him a way to make stuff happen in Godot, using a style of programming he’s used to.
I used the Pong Wars deployment as an excuse to try out GitHub actions. It’s nice! Almost too nice, like the fact that it’s free makes me suspicious.
I ended up struggling with what I thought would be the easy part– GitHub pages. Back when I was a young man, all you needed to do was push your site files to the gh-pages branch. That still works, after you do some extra configuration. It was only the next day that I figured out what the problem is.
I’ve published my Godot re-creation of Pong Wars by Koen van Gilst on GitHub (and embedded it below!) It’s not exactly a game– more of a “visual toy”. I did add some fun extras:
People who think the web is dead or dying haven’t used the Domino’s Pizza Tracker.
I recently updated my /games page so that each game has video.
Finished reading: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris 📚
The kiddo and I had a good time at NOVA Game Developers Meetup this afternoon! It was fun to play games, show what we’ve worked on, and chat with other devs.
Today is Free Comic Day, for those who observe
It’s like they really see me.
Honestly, I had convinced myself that I was going to rank higher in Godot Wild Jam #68, at least in the originality category. Being in the top third for originality is OK, though.
Much of the written feedback (even on the much rougher Ludum Dare version) supports the idea that this is worth developing further. I’m thinking of digging in and trying to make the best version of “Zummoning” that I can, and see where I am at the end of summer.
Here’s footage of gamedev and streamer ObsidianBlk playing The Zummoning!. He’s got some (entirely fair) critical feedback, which I respond to (in writing) here.
I would have put more work into the game description if I knew it was going to get a dramatic reading…
Currently reading: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris 📚
Part 2 comes out next month, and I want to refresh my memory of the characters and unresolved mysteries.
Finished Listening: The Sandman Vol. 8: Worlds’ End by Neil Gaiman 📚
I’ve made many improvements in the new version of “The Zummoning” submitted to Godot Wild Jam. Unfortunately, the name isn’t one of them. Oh well.
It’s still far from a professional production. But, I think it’s fun?
I’m cleaning up “The Zummoning” for submission to Godot Wild Jam this weekend (The GWJ folks usually disallow games submitted to other jams, but make exceptions sometimes when schedules completely overlap, which was the case with Ludum Dare this month).
Tonight, I hope to improve the card-combining systems and remove some of the annoying gaps.
If I get more time before the deadline (Sunday night), I hope to add some UI improvements (primarily, make it less mysterious what the cards do, alone and in combination). I’d also like to make it clearer what’s actually happening during the combat phase.
If this works, then this blog post was published with Godot!
Finished Listening: The Sandman Vol. 7: Brief Lives by Neil Gaiman 📚
“The Zummoning” (which only occurred to me when I realized I had to name the thing) has been submitted to Ludum Dare 55. It needs a TON of work, but… you can play it. It’s a game. That’s something. If you’re going to try it, please read the caveats on the LD page or itch.io.
I think I’m onto something promising, but I’m not feeling confident that this will actually be a fun game and not look like ass by the jam deadline (tomorrow, 9pm). I’ll sleep on it, but this might just end up being a Godot Wild Jam submission (which is fair game, since they overlap) in six days, instead of a Ludum Dare entry tomorrow.
19 or so hours into this 72-hour game jam, and I’m only just starting to code. So far, I’ve spent time researching demons, sketching out a magic system, and entering cards into a spreadsheet. I think I read somewhere that game designers mostly live in spreadsheets. Maybe I’m progressing?
What privacy laws only apply to ages 13-15?
Working on a Godot recreation of Pong Wars. I might write this up as a tutorial?
I struggle to resist:
Currently reading: Make Your Own Pixel Art by Jennifer Dawe 📚
I’ve started a few video tutorials on pixel art, but didn’t manage to stick with it. Maybe a book will work better for me.
Currently listening: The Sandman Vol. 7: Brief Lives by Neil Gaiman 📚