Ross Karchner

Donelike

I did the thing! I finished all 13 parts of Selinadev’s Godot 4 Roguelike tutorial.

There were a good number of things that were new to me: procedural map generation, AStar navigation, custom resources, and using those custom resources to compose entities. I’m happy with the knowledge gained by working through this.

The end product is… not my cup of tea, really.

On roguelikes generally: When I was a kid, one of the computers available to me had nethack installed. I poked around a bit, but it never really clicked for me (and the same computer had SimCity! ). One turn-based roguelike I do play these days is Hoplite. I think what I like about Hoplite is that it plays almost like a board or puzzle game, the challenge is in reasoning about how to get through the level safely.

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I generally don’t care much for professional sports, but I definitely feel some nostalgia for the time before sports betting was everywhere.

Anti-deliverabity

I received a (legit) notice of eligibility for this Verizon settlement in my junk email folder.

I know there are best practices and a class of professionals focused on email deliverability. I wonder if the opposite exists? A service for companies who are legally obligated to send out notices of some sort, but would prefer they not actually be received.

(to be clear, I’m not claiming that’s what’s happening here)

Finished reading: Game Programming Patterns by Robert Nystrom 📚

Honestly, I skimmed quite a bit– some parts seem more geared to engine developers. It’s probably good to understand some of the thinking that goes into engine development at least, even if I suspect I’ll never be doing that myself.

This is definitely a book I’ll go back to for reference. The whole book is available online.

#screenshotsaturday

I’ve finished part 11 of roguelike tutorial. Now, you can delve deeper into the dungeon, and the player gains experience points and levels. I’m excited about the next part:

Our character can now go deeper into the dungeon. However, right now all the floors are identical in their challenge. The RNG will mean that they will encounter different mixtures of monsters and items, but it still lacks progression. So next time we will look at a way to increase both the difficulty and the reward the deeper the player goes

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This history of gamification within games was more interesting than I expected. These are the game-y things like experience points, levels, and achievements that are often used to make non-games more fun or addictive.

The article is mostly judgement-free, but does include some criticism of the effect these ideas have had on games:

This is really the heart of why I think gamification harms player agency: gamification kills curiosity. If you don’t get any points, items, or achievements for the thing, the thing doesn’t matter. When the whole game is built around extrinsic rewards, you lose the player’s intrinsic motivation along the way. There’s simply no room for explorative curiosity in such loops. It becomes a “content treadmill” for both players and the developers.

Seeing chatter about a new BBEdit release has me a little nostalgic. I used BBEdit Lite while HTML-ifying recipes for Hershey in the 90’s.

I’m mostly on Linux these days (outside of work) and BBEdit is Mac-only.

#screenshotsaturday

I’m up to Part 10 of @selinadev@indiepocalypse.social’s Godot 4 Roguelike tutorial. What’s new?

  • Potions to heal with
  • Scrolls of lightning, fireball, and confusion
  • saving and loading
  • That main menu screen where you can either start a new game or continue where you left off

My son suggested adding some instructions on the main menu screen. He’s basically my project manager at this point.

… and that is the most words I’ve written for public consumption, in quite a long time.

Currently listening: The Twilight World by Werner Herzog 📚

I picked this up after finishing Herzog’s memoir, both because the story sounds interesting and I enjoyed listening to his narration, but there’s something about his writing here that almost begs to be read from actually pages. I may do that when I’m done listening.

Gamedev Goals for 2024

In the next year, I’d like to:

  • Watch less YouTube, watch more Udemy, more O’Reilly Learning, more books, more blog posts and independent websites.
  • Whip the not-yet-titled “jumping game” into something you can download (buy?) on (at least) the Google Play Store.
  • Create a new game, that teaches some cybersecurity concepts, and get it out in the world (even as a beta or preview) in time for Cybersecurity Awareness Month (October). This is not courseware. My reference point is SimCity. SimCity doesn’t teach you how to work in local government, but you walk away with insights into the sort of decisions and trade-offs that go into running a city. I want to make something that puts fun first, but where success means thinking like a CISO (or someone similarly in charge of cybersecurity for an organization).

Ending the year by starting a course of paxlovid…

I couldn’t stay away– I once again have an account on the gamedev.place mastodon server.

The main thing I missed was #screenshotsaturday– when I wasn’t participating in a gamejam or something, it provided a motivation to have some bit of progress to show every week. I want to get back into doing that.

I changed my mind on that (surprise!). I’m perfectly capable of creating a habit without the external validation.

Or at least, I’d like to think so.

Roguelike, Part 7

I just finished part 7 of the roguelike tutorial.

New stuff:

  • Baddies!
  • … that chase you
  • … and can also die
  • (but you can die too)
  • A user interface that let’s you make sense of what’s happening.

I like how the author sets up the UI, I’ve learned some neat tricks there. I was a little fuzzy on the vim-like modal input system before this latest part, it clicked when adding the ability to scroll back through the message log.

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CBS is missing an opportunity to point out that that they have Drew Carey followed by Mariah Carey

fixed it

I usually don’t consider myself very “handy”, but I’m proud of the job I did today switching which side the refrigerator door opens on. One of the screws holding the bottom bracket on broke of, leaving most of itself in the hole. I tried a few methods of getting the partial screw out, but that was a doomed effort.

So, now our refrigerator opens on the right instead of the left. Annoying, but better than any of the alternatives.

I’ve been working through SelinaDev’s Godot 4 roguelike tutorial and I like it so far. I just finished part 4 (of 13). There are no enemies or things to do yet, but just wandering around the dungeon, and seeing the lighting and “fog of war” effects in action is pretty satisfying.